Tag: Location: North America

Novi orbis pars borealis, America scilicet complectens Floridam, Baccalaon, Canadam, terram Corterialem, Virginiam, Norombecam, pluresque alias provincias

Read the Transcript
This is a map entitled “Novi Orbis Pars Borealis America” by a mapmaker by the name of Matthias Quad. It was done in or about, uh, 1600 and was, like so many maps of the day, an effort to understand what the North American continent was all about using very, very limited information. Despite these limits, Quad was working with some important feedback and information from some of the great explorers of the day. They included Jacques Cartier, Sebastian Cabot, Giovanni Verrazano, and Sir Walter Raleigh, among others. The, um, depiction of North America is, of course, very squashed and, to the modern eye, not at all realistic. But it is quite comprehensive, uh, including that portion of the map that is today the United States and that portion of the map which is today Canada, identified almost throughout as “Francia Nova.”

Perhaps the most interesting and curious feature of the map is the long strip of sea that goes from East all the way to West. Here, the mapmaker was speculating. There was a great deal of hope on the part of many in Europe that there would, in fact, be a passageway – a so-called “Northwest Passage” – that would go transversely across the North American continent, providing an opportunity for European ships to reach the Orient directly without having to go all the way down around the bottom of South America and travel up along and across the sometimes-violent Pacific Ocean. So, in this particular case, uh, the wish became the fact, and Quad depicts a Northwest Passage that, in fact, did not exist. I think it’s interesting that in today’s modern times, with, uh, the enhanced ability of ships to traverse the Arctic region, ships are once again imagining regular commercial traffic through the icy waters of the Artic and, perhaps today, there is some version of a Northwest Passage that is actually shaping up.[1] 

[1] “Until 2009, the Arctic pack ice prevented regular marine shipping throughout most of the year. Arctic sea ice decline has rendered the waterways more navigable for ice navigation.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage Accessed 24 Mar. 2021.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935558

Linguistic Stocks of American Indians North of Mexico

Read the Transcript
This is a map depicting the linguistic stocks of American Indians north of Mexico. It is based on, uh, the exploration and work of a famous explorer of the 19th Century, John Wesley Powell, who had many explorations, of course, particularly in the, uh- in the west, and this map is some record of where the several Indians, uh, were located in the North American continent before some, unfortunately, were probably already being pushed to one side by the arrival of the colonists and the expansion that was going on already in the early 19th Century. But you see the areas that were occupied by people speaking a language called Muskhogeon, then there is Iroquoian – the great Iroquois Nation, of course, both in the, uh, Mid-Atlantic area and also up in the Pennsylvania, New York, and Great Lakes vicinity. So, uh, and off to the- off to the west are still more smaller areas reflecting what was spoken, uh, in those areas as well. This, um- This, uh, map, therefore, tells a story. It tells a story of who were the peoples, the Indigenous peoples of the Americas in the early-to-mid 1800s.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935561

America Septentrionalis

Read the Transcript
This is a map by Tobias Lotter. Lotter created this map in about 1760 and it depicts virtually all of North America and the Caribbean. However, one of its most distinguishing features is that there is all blank space above what is called “Nova Mexico” and west of what is called “Canada” or “Nova Francia.” So, in this particular case, Lotter decided not to speculate and consciously simply left the upper left-hand portion of the map un-filled in altogether. Like so many of the maps of the period, it has a glorious cartouche in the upper left-hand corner, and Lotter pays due respect, something that mapmakers never- or frequently failed to do, to a mapmaker by the name of De L’Isle, whose geographic work, cartographic work, preceded that of Lotter, and Lotter clearly made considerable use of it.

[1] “Cartouche, in architecture, ornamentation in scroll form, applied especially to elaborate frames around tablets or coats of arms. By extension, the word is applied to any oval shape or even to a decorative shield, whether scroll-like in appearance or not.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/art/cartouche Accessed 9 Mar. 2021.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935559