THE COLONIES

Maps of colonial North America are more than just descriptions of geographical areas. They are documents of possession, claims to property, and sovereign rights. The New World was claimed in and through maps. They made visible the claim, outlined the possessions, and recorded territory involved and colonization. The maps tell a story of a land already settled, the people there, how it was taken over, resettled, renamed, and brought into a wider sphere of trade and power. The maps show a contested space and the creation of a new geography. Colonial maps reflect both victory and loss, possession and dispossession, the coming of a new order.

The maps shown here are taken from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and show colonies along the eastern seaboard and in the interior. These maps are not just depictions of territory. They are rhetorical devices that act as claims of possession and sometimes enticements to other potential settlers. The names that speak of the Old World, such as New England and New France, were ways to both claim the new land and make it appealing to future settlers. The "New" gives a sense of promise and hope, the European name a sense of continuity and order.

Although the map of Virginia and Florida (fig. 6) is dated 1671, it draws on the information contained in older maps and reports. This was a common feature of early maps. They would repeat previous maps, mistakes and all. Maps were continually printed but only occasionally updated. This late-seventeenth-century map draws on the late-sixteenth-century reports of the

Englishman John White and Frenchman Jacques Le Moyne. White had made illustrations and maps on his travels to Virginia and Le Moyne had traveled with the French expedition to Florida from 1562 to 1565. Their reports and maps were the basis of a map produced in 1606. The map of 1671 is a later version of this earlier map. It shows the careful delineation of the Virginia coastline, based on the work of White. Further south, on the coast, building on the work of Le Moyne, it shows the French fort at Porto Royale. In between these better known areas, the coast is only lightly annotated, indicating the general lack of information about this region.

The earliest European settlements in North America were concentrated on the coast. A coastal location was vital to maintain the necessary links and ties with the mother country. As a general rule, European knowledge decreased further away from the coast. The Appalachian Mountains are shown inland, as well as two great lakes. The depiction hints at firm geographic realities, but the overall picture is still hazy. Inland from the better known coastal areas, myth and fancy coincided with distant reports and vague knowledge.

The map indicates a land already peopled and settled. The cartouches in the bottom right and top left of the map show Native Americans and the map is littered with the names of tribes, such as the Powhatan and Secotan in Virginia, and villages such as Saturia and Seloy in Florida. This was not an empty land.

The map of Virginia and Maryland (fig. 7) was published in the 1676 edition of John Speed's geography text A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World. It is oriented with the west at the top. It is an extremely detailed account of the coast and immediate coastal areas. The indentations of the Chesapeake Bay are carefully delineated. Notice how English names proliferate around the bay, names such as Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Charles. This is a land that has been occupied. There is still evidence of the continued presence of Native Americans; in the bottom right of the map the names of Native American tribes, the Minquaa and Tockwoghs, are indicated.

But they are being pushed toward the edge of the map.

The layout of the map emphasizes the coastal areas, the main area of English control and presence. Inland the geography becomes hazy. The mapmakers use a large illustration, elaborate cartouches, and scales to fill in the interior space—all useful devices to conceal a lack of knowledge. Further from the coast the land is scarcely known; it is mainly imagined. Compared to the previous map this one records the increasing presence of the colonists in their renaming of the land and their positioning of boundary lines that divide up Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. Their presence is still restricted to the safe haven of the coast. Further inland the colonists' ability to colonize and map is severely restricted.

The map of New England shown here (fig. 8) was the first one printed in North America; it is a truly American map. It is a large-scale map of the New England coastal area from Connecticut to Maine. The map was part of William Hubbard's book Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New England published in 1677. Hubbard was a minister and acting president of Harvard College. The title of the book speaks to the contested space that was New England at that time as colonists moved into land occupied by Native Americans. The map shows the typical coastal orientation of the early European settlements and the toponymy of the colonies embodied in such names as Deerfield, Weymouth, and Newhaven. The map also indicates Native American land holdings: Pequod Country, Naraganset, and Nipmuk are all represented. The map indicates both the causes of the conflict, with Native American inhabitants and colonists now competing for the same territory, as well as the resultant struggles. The key in the upper right of the map tells us that the numbers beside the names of towns and villages refer to the number of assaults by Indians. The map records, quite literally, the struggle between Native Americans and the colonists. It was a struggle for land and survival.

John Seller also represents the conflict between colonizers and Native Americans in his map of New England (fig. 9). First published in 1676 and reprinted with minor changes at least three more times, this map is a later variant. It depicts a broader sweep of New England than the previous map and the orientation is traditional, with north at the top, whereas the previous map was oriented with west at the top. This map takes us further into the interior and is more detailed. The landscape is dotted with hills, trees, and native animals: A turkey is depicted, as are deer, beaver, and wolves. This suggests a rich country, an often used technique in colonial maps to encourage more settlers to leave their home country. It also provides us with a picture of the ecology of the time, a well-wooded landscape rich in wildlife. That land is also a shared space. The map indicates at various places the presence of different peoples: "The Mohawks Country," "The Connecticuts Country," and "The Mohegans Country." But more prominent than these are the labels "Plymouth Colony" and "Connecticut Colony" as well as very English names such as Cape Ann and Elizabeth Isle. And at the top of the map the English crown appears, indicating the sovereign power in this land.

In the area marked as Plymouth Colony, just north of Rhode Island, a patch of land is referred to as "King Phillip Country." King Philip was chief of the Wampagnoag Indians. In 1675 he led an uprising against the colonists. The previous map indicated the extent of casualties among settlers. Part of King Philip's War is also depicted on this map; just east of the Connecticut River an encounter between Native Americans and settlers is illustrated. It is probably a reference to the defense of Hadley on 1 September 1675.

Seller's map depicts a New World rich in wildlife, with settlers moving into the territory of Native Americans. The resultant conflict is also vividly shown on the map. The map tells the story of a place of tension, a source of conflict. In August 1676 King Philip was killed. Native American resistance did not end, but his

death and the defeat of the uprising marked the beginning of the end of Native American control of land in New England.

By 1722 the map of New England (fig. 10) shows no trace of a Native American presence. What is shown is a landscape populated with English towns. Few indications of a Native American presence can be identified. "The Mohawks Country," "The Connecticuts Country," and "The Mohegans Country" have all but disappeared into the anglicized landscape.

The map also represents the separate English "plantations" as a connected whole. Plantations means English settlements rather than specific forms of agricultural production. The map visualizes the separate colonies as one whole: from New England down to Carolina with inserts of Nova Scotia, Jamaica, Bermuda, and Barbados. The map shows the English maritime empire. There were links between them: Slaves were brought from Africa to the sugar islands of Barbados, Bermuda, and Jamaica as well as the colonies of Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. Sugar and tobacco were shipped back to Britain, and agricultural produce as well as pelts and furs also traveled from the more northerly colonies to Britain. The colonies were a vital part of a system that linked them with Britain and Africa in a triangular trade route. On one page the colonies are shown as a coherent imperial presence linked by commerce. Trade and shared sovereignty are the cement that binds these disparate areas. The map of 1722 is a map of Britain's North American commercial empire.

Hermann Moll's map of New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania from 1736 (fig. 11) shows evidence of an expanding colony. The map now covers a larger area than just a narrow coastal fringe; colonists and thus British power are moving further inland. The area around the coast has been won. Now the expanding frontier is further inland. In western Pennsylvania and the upper Hudson the map records Iroquois, Mohawk, and Oneida tribes. And further north, Lake Champlain indicates the boundary with New France. The expanding

colony is confronting new forces, new sources of conflict and tension. Inside the colony the map records the creation of an integrated society. The written account in the bottom right-hand corner of the map refers to the creation and operation of a postal service that links the main centers of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia with smaller centers around the territory. Postal service both reflects and embodies linkages between different parts of what once were separate colonies. The separate colonies are becoming more connected with the beginnings of a coherent identity, a distinctly American community still reliant on the mother country but showing the first signs of a separate identity, a North American colonial character.

The "accurate map of the English colonies" dating from 1754 (fig. 12) is less an accurate topography and more a geopolitical claim. If you look carefully you can see the boundary of each colony as dotted lines. They begin on the coast and move inland, uninterrupted in many cases to the edge of the map. The southern boundary of Virginia, for example, begins on the Atlantic coast south of Cape Henry and moves inland, through what the map refers to as the "Apalachy Mountains" and beyond the Ohio River to the west of the map. These boundaries are claims for the interior that was yet to be settled. They should be seen in the light of imperial conflict with France and Spain, the hazy nature of what was known about the interior, and which power had not only the better claim but also the military wherewithal to assert it.

Close to the coast the geography is more accurately portrayed. The coastline is recorded in some detail and the careful depiction of river mouths and coastal settlements indicate the nature of English settlement in the New World colonies; it was concentrated on the coast, where easier transport to and from the imperial center was possible. The inland waterways are described, probably through information provided by river-borne explorers and Native American informants, but south of the Great Lakes the interior is only comprehended in part.

Just south of Lake Ontario, the map records the presence of the Iroquois and accords them the dignity of the title "Six Nations." The Iroquois were a powerful force in the entire region, in control of much of the fur trade and vital allies in the struggle against France. In London the English wanted to maintain a strong alliance with the Iroquois. In colonial America, however, many of the English looked on Iroquois territory with envy and land-longing.