1646 Merian Map of America

This is a scarce 1638 Matthias Merian map of the Americas. Merian had already, in 1631 produced a larger-format map of America, based on Jansson’s 1623 America noviter delineata. Merian's source for the present map was not, as Burden suggests, Jodocus Hondius Jr.'s 1618 map of the same title, but Blaeu's Americae Nova Tabula whose detail here is presented with a high degree of faithfulness (although dispensing with Blaeu's decorative borders). It is an interesting choice, but appears to be consistent with Merian's decision to copy Blaeu's world map in this volume.

Tierra del Fuego: Blaeu not Hondius

Hondius’ 1618 map of the Americas bears many similarities to the Blaeu; one area of divergence is in the depiction of Tierra del Fuego. The first issue of Blaeu's map in 1617 was notable for its very primitive depiction of the island: Blaeu had been barred by the Dutch East India Company from including the discoveries of Le Maire and Schouten. When confronted with the reality that other mapmakers were not so unfairly circumscribed, the VOC relented and permitted Blaeu to amend his map in 1618. Blaeu's map lacks Hondius' Draex Eylanden, but includes the Pacific Islands reported by Le Maire and Schouten, which do not appear on the Hondius. In the Atlantic, Blaeu's map shows the I. Dos Picos at the Tropic of Capricorn. The presence of these islands on the Merian attests to a relationship to the Blaeu rather than the Hondius.

Greenland and Iceland

Like the corresponding Blaeu and the Hondius maps, Merian's America includes an inset map focusing on Greenland, Iceland and Frisland, and the Davis Strait. The inset in the Hondius is oriented to the east; the inset here is oriented to the north, corresponding again to the Blaeu.

Norembega

Norembega or Nurembega appears in what is today New England. This mysterious land began being mapped with Verrazano's 1529 manuscript chart of America. He used the term, Oranbega, which in Algonquin means something on the order of 'lull in the river'. The first detailed reference to Nurumbeg, or as it is more commonly spelled Norumbega, appeared in the 1542 journals of the French navigator Jean Fonteneau dit Alfonse de Saintonge, or Jean Allefonsce for short. Allefonsce was a well-respected navigator who, in conjunction with the French nobleman Jean-François de la Roque de Roberval's attempt to colonize the region, skirted the coast south of Newfoundland in 1542. He discovered and apparently sailed some distance up the Penobscot River, encountering a fur-rich American Indian city named Norumbega - somewhere near modern-day Bangor, Maine.

The river is more than 40 leagues wide at its entrance and retains its width some thirty or forty leagues. It is full of Islands, which stretch some ten or twelve leagues into the sea. ... Fifteen leagues within this river there is a town called Norombega, with clever inhabitants, who trade in furs of all sorts; the town folk are dressed in furs, wearing sable. ... The people use many words which sound like Latin. They worship the sun. They are tall and handsome in form. The land of Norombega lies high and is well situated.

Although Roberval's colony lasted only two years, Andre Thevet, writing in 1550, records encountering a French trading fort at the site of Norumbega.

A few years later in 1562, an English slave ship wrecked in the Gulf of Mexico. David Ingram, one of the survivors, claimed to have trekked overland from the Gulf Coast to Nova Scotia where he was rescued by a passing French ship. Possibly inspired by Mexican legends of El Dorado, Cibola, and other lost cities, Ingram returned to Europe to regale his drinking companions with boasts of a fabulous city rich in pearls and built upon pillars of crystal, silver, and gold. The idea caught on in the European popular imagination and expeditions were sent to search for the city - including that of Samuel de Champlain.

The legend of Norumbega thus seems to have transitioned from Allefonsce's most likely factual description of a lively American Indian fur trading center, to Thevet's French trading fort, to Ingram's fabulous paradise dripping in wealth. Allefonsce's description of the American Indians he encountered in Norumbega corresponds well those of Hudson, who also met a tall well-proportioned people. Sadly only a few years later many of these tribes began to die off at extraordinary rates (over 90% of the population perished) due to horrifying outbreaks of smallpox and other diseases carried by the unwitting European explorers. It seems reasonable that Allefonsce may have stumbled upon a periodic or semi-permanent indigenous fur trading center on the Penobscot. It also seems reasonable that French colonists may have set up their fur trading post at the same site, for it was fur, not gold that was the real wealth of New England and Norumbega. Alas, it was Ingram's fictitious account, which, though wholly the product of a drunken sailor's imagination, produced the most enduring image of Norumbega.

El Dorado

Merian here maps El Dorado (Manoa al Dorada) on the shores of a large lake in what today Northern Brazil or southern Guyana. Most Europeans believed that the most likely site of El Dorado legend was the mythical city of Manoa located here on the shores of the Lake Parima, near modern day Guyana, Venezuela, or northern Brazil. Manoa was first identified by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595. Raleigh does not visit the city of Manoa (which he believes is El Dorado) himself due to the onset of the rainy season, however he describes the city, based on indigenous accounts, as resting on a salt lake over 200 leagues wide. This lake, though no longer mapped as such, does have some basis in fact. Parts of the Amazon were, at the time, dominated by a large and powerful Indigenous trading nation known as the Manoa. The Manoa traded the length and breadth of the Amazon. The onset of the rainy season inundated the great savannahs of the Rupununi, Takutu, and Rio Branco or Parima Rivers. This inundation briefly connected the Amazon and Orinoco river systems, opening an annual and well used trade route for the Manoans. The Manoans who traded with the Incans in the western Amazon, had access to gold mines on the western slopes of the Andes, and so, when Raleigh saw gold rich Indian traders arriving in Guyana, he made the natural assumption for a gold hungry European in search of El Dorado. When he asked the Orinocans where the traders were from, they could only answer, 'Manoa.' Thus, did Lake Parime or Parima and the city of Manoa begin to appear on maps in the early 17th century. The city of Manoa and Lake Parima would continue to be mapped in this area until about 1800

Publication History and Census

This map was executed in 1638 for inclusion in Matthias Merian's Neuwe Archontologia cosmica, a German translation of Pierre d'Avity's 1616 Les Estats, empires, et principautez du monde. We identify about ten examples of later editions of Merian's Neuwe Archontologia cosmica in institutional collections, and twenty examples of this separate map are so catalogued.