Ma-a-a-a-ps, wait!

America Septentrionalis (1640)

http://www.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett/maps/1640h6.jpg

            When looking at this map, I first noticed how wildly inaccurate it was. The only part of the map that was accurate and generally to scale was the Eastern coast line. The Massachusetts and Virginia areas were extremely detailed and included many names of locations, all using the European name. Once the map moves south to areas such as Florida, Mexico, and the islands between them, the map becomes more accurate even though many places are still labeled and many areas depicted. The people who made this map spent for time and effort on the Central and South American regions rather than that of North America. Above 40 degrees parallel, the map includes little to no information or representations of the land. In the far west of America, the Baja California peninsula is shown, but extremely out of proportion and unconnected to any other land.

            “A small band of settlers—male and female, gentry and yeomen, religious and secular—stand gathered holding guns and javelins, foregrounded against a large landmass dotted with men in scouts’ garb, deer, foxes, dogs, bears, and women and men in bearskins.” This is how Valerie Babb describes a particular map in Crafting Whiteness in Early America and this is also how the map of America Septentrionalis shows many details. Throughout the mainly undetailed areas of America, the cartographer chooses to place pictures of many wild animals through the empty land. Animals such as wild horses, deer, rabbits and buffalo demonstrate that the European settlers probably had some idea of the type of animal that lived in America during their time; however, in the lower United States region, just above the now-border of Mexico, there is a lion shown which makes me feel that even though the surrounding areas were surveyed, these settlers didn’t always know what was actually living there.

            Another point that I found interesting was that the map only seemed to include European names and didn’t demonstrate any relations with the Native American tribes. Obviously the cartographers must have come across Native Americans or at least heard of the people inhabiting the regions they were surveying, yet it was an intriguing choice to only include the European view. The cartographer also represents the amount of settlers and explorers by having many ships through both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which gives the idea that the voyages to the new land were plentiful, and on voyages to many diverse areas.

            This map does not relate as well to the texts that we have read so far because it is more focused on Central and South America and also does not show any relations with the Indian tribes. Authors such as John Smith and Mary Rowlandson fixated their stories on their interactions with the Natives on the Eastern coast of the United States yet this map showed more detail further south and more perspective from the Europeans on what they thought the land consisted of.

 PS: Anyone catch the titular song reference? :)