EARLY MAPS OF THE NEW WORLD

When Christopher Columbus landed on an island in the Caribbean on 12 October 1492, it signified a creation as well as a discovery, for the New World was invented as much as it was discovered. The cartographic construction of the New World relied as much on imagination as actual reports. Accurate and not so accurate reports from travelers and mapmakers slowly completed the story of the land. However, it could be a slow process as those moving in from the coast or traveling along one river system often had little knowledge of how it connected with other parts of the country. It took a long while for a coherent picture to develop. The coasts were first known and knowledge was accumulated slowly and fitfully from the coasts and along the rivers. The knowledge varied by colonizing powers. The Spanish settled North America in the Southwest, the French along the St. Lawrence and down the Mississippi, while the English moved in from the eastern seaboard. Geographical knowledge varied among European powers. And when all else failed the gaps in the map could be filled with fanciful images of imaginary cities such as Norumbega or imprecise rivers and mountains. The New World was made as well as uncovered.

The imaginative construction of the world is evident in the earliest European maps of the New World. The very first one we consider (fig. 1) was published in 1540. It appeared in books written by Sebastian Munster (1489–1552). Munster authored a very popular text entitled Cosmographia, that appeared in numerous editions between 1544 and 1628. For the literate of Europe it was the most popular and comprehensive global geography. The map's subtitle is "the new islands discovered in our times by the King of Spain in the great ocean." Central and South America are shown in greater detail, reflecting the course of Spanish exploration and colonization. North America is less well known, with only the shape of

Florida bearing any resemblance to its real geography. The interior of North America is a figment of creative imagination, with only a narrow belt of land connecting Spanish Florida and French North America. At that time, the interior of North America was still a relatively unknown land to Europeans. Central and South America, in contrast, are shown in relatively more accurate terms, with Caribbean islands such as Cuba exaggerated in size. The city of Tenochtitlan is also shown in Central America.

In the northeast of the South American continent, an illustration depicts the practice of cannibalism, with body parts being shown roasting on a fire. Munster had a wonderfully rich imagination and his Cosmographia is full of one-eyed men and people with giant feet. He also drew upon ancient prejudice as much as contemporary reports. The cannibal scene was part of the fantastical depiction of the world outside of Europe. Just to the west of Central America, the island of Zipangri represents Japan and further west Cathay and India are shown. The Pacific is clearly undersized, embodying the hopeful belief that the New World was a convenient stepping stone to the Far East. The ship sailing through the waters of the Pacific is probably a representation of Magellan.

One of the best known earliest European depictions of the New World, this map shows North America as a hazy unknown extension of the better known, at least to the Europeans, Central and South America.

The 1576 map of the New World, Mondo Nuovo (fig. 2), is a fine example of sixteenth-century Italian cartography. Throughout much of the middle of the sixteenth century, Italy was a center for the dissemination of geographical knowledge and mapmaking. Rome and Venice became important publishing centers for maps. Tomaso Porcacchi (1530–1585) was cosmographer to the Venetian republic and produced many copper-engraved maps. His maps illustrated Ramusio's 1550 book Delle Navigazione e Viaggi, the first published account of New World travels. Porcacchi developed the idea that there was a route between North America and Asia that he called the Strait of Anian, named after Marco Polo's Kingdom of Anian. The very first map that showed the strait on a map was engraved in Venice by Bolognino Zaltieri in 1566. The 1576 map is a later variant of this map.

The map depicts a New World that is coming into better focus for Europeans. It is based on European knowledge and travels, hence the exaggeration of the coastal areas. The name Florida appears on the map although there is little evidence of its telltale peninsular shape. The French incursions along the northeast coast of what is now Canada are represented in the naming of Labrador, Arcadia, and New France (Nova Franza). The Spanish presence in the Southwest is recorded and the Baja correctly portrayed as a peninsula; later it would be seen as an island. In the West the term Terra Incognita masks a monumental ignorance. The English had yet to arrive so much of the eastern seaboard was unknown and as a result, the interior region in the map is reduced to an insignificant size compared to the better known Caribbean islands.

The depiction of the New World conveys a sense of boundless commercial possibilities. It is shown as very close to Asia, with the Pacific shrunk to a navigable size; Japan, shown as the island off the coast of California named Giapan, is very close and the Strait of Anian between Asia and North America provides a quick passage around the continent. Commercial interests shaped the representation of the New World as a place of new economic opportunity, easily connected the existing system of global trading.

The map entitled Norumbega and Virginia and dating from 1597 (fig. 3) appeared in the very first atlas of America produced by the Antwerp lawyer and cartographer Cornelius van Wytfliet. The atlas contained eighteen regional maps of the New World. This map drew upon two sources. The first was the manuscript map of the Virginia-Carolina coastal area drawn by the artist and illustrator John White, who accompanied an English colonization enterprise sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh. The expedition that settled briefly in Roanoke, Virginia was not a success; it was abandoned after a few short years. But from July 1585 to June 1586 John White, accompanied by the mathematician and cartographer Thomas Harriot, surveyed the outer banks and coasts of

what we now call Virginia. Their detailed work carefully depicts the numerous islands and Native American villages. The second source was an imaginative depiction of a mythical land named Norumbega. Between the detailed mapping of the Virginia coast and the better known New France north of Cape Breton, Wytfliet followed the lead of other mapmakers of the day who simply filled in the gap with a fanciful land with a made-up name, Norumbega, and even a mythical city located at the fork of two rivers. It would be over a decade before the Hudson River and Long Island became known to Europeans and codified in maps. Until then the mythical land of Norumbega comprised the gap between the Chesapeake Bay and Cape Breton.

The map of 1703 (fig. 4) is both a geographical text and a political document. Its geography shows an improvement over the previous maps of North America. East of the Mississippi the lay of the land has become better known. The coastline from Florida up through Virginia now includes Long Island and New England. An attempt is made to better connect the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes, which are now shown in greater detail than in any of the earlier maps we have seen of the New World. The Mississippi River is illustrated in approximately correct orientation. West of the great river, geographical knowledge becomes hazy and imprecise. The general area is known as New Mexico, Spanish knowledge of the Southwest is expanded upon to fill in the entire western territory. And California is shown as an island, long a factor in the cosmography of early European explorers and in early maps. In 1541, however, Domingo del Castillo drew a map in which the true nature of the Baja's geography was depicted. The Baja was clearly shown in Castillo's map as a peninsula. Spanish and even some English maps made after 1542 and throughout the sixteenth century reflected the view that the Baja was a peninsula. However, the island myth did not disappear, it was simply in remission. It was resuscitated in the late sixteenth century. The New World was visualized as a collection of islands; the passage to China and the Far East was just waiting to be discovered. In the late 1570s Sir Francis Drake sailed around the world, landing somewhere in California and naming it New Albion. Drake's presence and quick return home made the Spanish believe that perhaps the Gulf of California joined with another ocean to create a Northwest Passage. This belief in a Northwest Passage beyond the tangle of islands to the fabled Far East was espoused by all European merchants, explorers, and governments. By the very early seventeenth century California was again being described as an island. The myth of a California island endured most of the seventeenth century. In 1622 a map of the world by Michiel Colijn marks the first example of the second flowering of the myth. It was not until 1700 when the doughty Jesuit Father Kino, who traveled in the area, published his map of California as a peninsula that the myth was seriously questioned and refuted. It persisted and lingered, but by the middle of the eighteenth century the myth was completely routed.

The map of 1703 is also an explicit and implicit political document. In the bottom right-hand corner of the map a group of people are shown. Three large-scale maps are unfurled. They show the imperial claims of Spain, France, and England. The French claim the Mississippi basin, the English claim the eastern seaboard, while Spain gets California and the West. The North American continent is thus divided up into outposts of the European colonial powers. The map is also an implicitly political document in the way Europeans name the continent. New France, New Spain, and New England are not just geographical descriptions; because acts of naming are also acts of possession and legitimization, and the names become territorial claims. There are some Native American words on the map. It also shows, perhaps for the first time, the name Canada on the map, but this name is located between Nova Britannia and Nova Francia.

By the late eighteenth century it was common knowledge that California was not an island, and the map of 1768 (fig. 5) reflects this understanding. The map locates North America in a wider context, showing, albeit in rudimentary geography, how the continent is close to Asia, if not the Asia depicted in the map of 1540. The map, a polar projection, depicts the Aleutian Islands in some detail, but the entire Pacific Northwest and Alaska are still hazy in outline. The Rockies do not figure at all in this map. The map shows the Asian northeast much more accurately than the North American northwest, which was still relatively unknown and uncharted by European powers. Although the interior of the continent was clearly better known at this time, the Rockies and areas west of them were still largely unknown in the knowledge centers of the East and Europe.