Nicolas Sanson, Amerique Septentrionale , 1651 (First Edition, Second State)
Nicolas Sanson, Amerique Septentrionale , 1651 (First Edition, Second State)
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Nicolas Sanson
Amerique Septentrionale
Copper Plate engraving
Paris, 1651
Paper Size: 21.7 x 15.4 in)
The most influential European map of North America in the 17th century.
Sanson is regarded as the founder of the 'French School' of cartography. His map of North America was the most advanced depiction of the continent in the mid-17th Century and was the source map for most subsequent maps for the next 40 years.
Sanson's map the first map to depict the Great Lakes in a recognizable form, and the first to name Lake Ontario and Lake Superior. In Sanson drew on information derived from The Jesuit Relations, published in Paris in 1649, which provided contemporary accounts of many regions of North America visited by French missionaries. His sources included Father Paul Ragueneau's account of his visit to Niagara Falls and Jean Nicollet's discovery of Lake Michigan in 1634. Montreal is named, having been founded by the Sieur de Maisonneuve in 1642.
The area delineated as "Mer Glaciale" is a reference to the Northwest Passage. On the east coast "N[ouvelle] Amsterdam" appears (New York), as does the first appearance on a printed map of "N[ouvelle] Suede," the Swedish colony centered on Fort Christina, founded on the site of present-day Wilmington, Delaware in 1638.
In the Southwest, Sanson draws up the reports of the travels in New Mexico of Father Alonso Benavides Memorial, published in Madrid in 1630. It is the first printed map to label "S[anta] Fe" (incorrectly shown the Rio Grande) and the "Apache," "Navajo" and the "Taosij" (Taos) Indian regions. California is shown as a large island, based largely on Johannes de Laet's map of 1630. The region in the north called "Conibas" represents a mythical land between North America and Asia.
Sanson was the first to employ a sinusoidal projection, which was also adopted by John Flamsteed, the first Royal Astronomer appointed by the King of England.
There are three states of the map: the first state, of which only two examples are known, which has no land to the north-west of California; the second state (our map), also quite rare, adds coastline to the north and west and eliminates a few place-names north of California; the third state is the same as the second, except that Lake Ontario has been shaded to match the other Great Lakes. It was officially published in 1658 as part Sanson’s atlas, Cartes générales de tout les parties du monde, which was France’s first comprehensive atlas, and which presaged France’s growing influence in cartography, which had been dominated by the Dutch for a century.
California as an Island:
The popular misconception of California as an island can be found on European maps from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. From its first portrayal on a printed map by Diego Gutiérrez, in 1562, California was shown as part of North America by mapmakers, including Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius. In the 1620s, however, it began to appear as an island in several sources.
The myth of California as an island was most likely the result of the travel account of Sebastian Vizcaino, who had been sent north up the shore of California in 1602. A Carmelite friar, Fray Antonio de la Ascension, accompanied him. Ascension described the land as an island and around 1620 sketched maps to that effect. Normally, this information would have been reviewed and locked in the Spanish repository, the Casa de la Contractación. However, the manuscript maps were intercepted in the Atlantic by the Dutch, who took them to Amsterdam where they began to circulate. Ascension also published descriptions of the insular geography in Juan Torquemada’s Monarquia Indiana (1613) (with the island details curtailed somewhat) and in his own Relacion breve of ca. 1620.
The first known maps to show California as an island were on the title pages of Antonio de Herrera’s Descripcion de las Indias Occidentales (1622) and Jacob le Maire's Spieghel Der Australische Navigatie (1622). Two early examples of folio-maps are those by Abraham Goos (1624) and another by Henry Briggs, which was included in Samuel Purchas’ Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625). In addition to Briggs and Goos, prominent practitioners like Jan Jansson and Nicolas Sanson adopted the new island and the practice became commonplace. John Speed’s map (1626-7), based on Briggs’ work, is well known for being one of the first to depict an insular California.
The island of California became a fixture on mid- and late-seventeenth century maps. The island suggested possible links to the Northwest Passage, with rivers in the North American interior supposedly connecting to the sea between California and the mainland. Furthermore, Francis Drake had landed in northern California on his circumnavigation (1577-80) and an insular California suggested that Spanish power in the area could be questioned.
Not everyone was convinced, however. Father Eusebio Kino, after extensive travels in what is now California, Arizona, and northern Mexico concluded that the island was actually a peninsula and published a map refuting the claim (Paris, 1705). Another skeptic was Guillaume De L’Isle. In 1700, De L’Isle discussed “whether California is an Island or a part of the continent” with J. D. Cassini; the letter was published in 1715. After reviewing all the literature available to him in Paris, De L’Isle concluded that the evidence supporting an insular California was not trustworthy. He also cited more recent explorations by the Jesuits (including Kino) that disproved the island theory. Later, in his map of 1722 (Carte d’Amerique dressee pour l’usage du Roy), De L’Isle would abandon the island theory entirely.
Despite Kino’s and De L’Isle’s work, California as an island remained common on maps until the mid-eighteenth century. De L’Isle’s son-in-law, Philippe Buache, for example, remained an adherent of the island depiction for some time. Another believer was Herman Moll, who reported that California was unequivocally an island, for he had had sailors in his offices that claimed to have circumnavigated it. In the face of such skepticism, the King of Spain, Ferdinand VII, had to issue a decree in 1747 proclaiming California to be a peninsula connected to North America; the geographic chimera, no matter how appealing, was not to be suffered any longer, although a few final maps were printed with the lingering island.
