1743 Bellin Map of North America w/ Speculative Cartography

An important and influential first edition first state 1743 map of North America by the French cartographer Jacques-Nicholas Bellin. The map is a profoundly French production, illustrating that nation's plans and ambitions for America in the decades preceding the French and Indian War (1754 - 1763). It includes speculative river systems and hopeful cities of gold and suggests broad, if ambiguous, territorial claims.

A Closer Look

Bellin's map covers North America from the Arctic to the Spanish Main, including modern-day Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies. It features an impressive river system leading from Lake Superior to the Pacific - see next section. Much of the Pacific Northwest, beyond Cape Mendocino, is left blank, as it was unknown. The Mississippi and Great Lake, stomping ground of French fur traders and adventurers for a generation, are well mapped with numerous American Indian settlements noted. The map features interesting annotations throughout, including a comment pointing out the dubious existence of Quivira and Teguaio, mythical undiscovered cities of gold sought since the days of the Conquistadores.

Montagne de Pierres Brillantes

This map's most striking feature is the broad open water route extending westward from Lake Superior, through the Lake of the Woods (Lac des Bois), and continuing via the River of the West (Fleuve de L'Ouest) through Lake Winnipeg (Ouinipigon) to the mysterious Mountain of Radiant Stones (Montagne de Pierres Brillantes). This unusual presentation is based upon Bellin's extrapolations from the explorations of French Canadian fur trader and explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Le Sieur de La Verendrye. This river system derives from a canoe map drawn for La Verendrye in 1728 by the American Indian Cree guide Auchagah. The ultimate westernmost point of La Verendrye's route, as here mapped near a Montagne de Pierres Brillantes [Mountain of Radiant Stones], is in reality just west of Lake Winnipeg (Ouinipigon) and thousands of miles from the Pacific. Bellin's error here comes from his attempts to extrapolate from the distances, direction, and portages illustrated on Auchagah's map, compounded by a lack of direction and surveyed points west of the Lake of the Woods. The result is a double mapping of Lake Winnipeg and a vast overestimation of the distance represented. The 'Montagne de Pierres Brillantes' is an early American Indian descriptive term for the Rocky Mountains, a nearly impenetrable barrier located about 1200 miles further east than Bellin's map suggests.

Apocryphal Islands in Lake Superior

Though not textually identified, Bellin's four spurious Islands in Lake Superior are represented - making this the earliest representation of those islands on a map by one year. Most believe that the earliest representation of these islands occurred in Bellin's 1744 specific map of the Great Lakes. This map, though present in the same publication, actually predates the 1744 map in its compilation by one year. It was Charlevoix who invented the four spurious islands in Lake Superior, known as Philippeaux, Pontchartrain, Maurepas, and St. Anne.

The islands were intended to honor Charlevoix's personal patron, the Count of Maurepas, Jean-Frederic Phelypeaux. The largest of the three islands, Philippeaux, is named directly after the count. The second largest island, Pontchartrain, refers to Phelypeaux's family estate. The third island, which may be a mismapping of the factual State Islands, is named after the count's seat, Maurepas. St. Anne, the fourth and smallest of the islands, references the count's patron saint.

Charlevoix described the islands as rich in minerals, leading numerous explorers to search for them in vain. Bellin dutifully introduced the four islands to his map, offered here, and such was his influence that they were subsequently copied by most cartographers, including John Mitchell in his seminal 1755 wall map of North America. The highly regarded Mitchell map was used in negotiating the 1783 Treaty of Paris that formally concluded the American Revolutionary War. Therein, Philippeaux was assigned as a marker for the new United States - British America border, thus setting the stage, as one might imagine, for later political strife.

Profoundly French

Bellin's map is a profoundly French production indicative of both the sophistication of 18th-century French cartography and the influence of French political ideologies on mapmaking. The map centers on the Mississippi, with French territory extending from the Appalachian Mountains to the Rio del Nord (Rio Grande), including all of Texas and parts of modern-day New Mexico. These claims were associated with La Salle's explorations and colonization of the Gulf Coast in 1685 (these claims, incidentally, led to 19th-century U.S. Ccaims on Texas associated with the Louisiana Purchase). The map identifies numerous American Indian nations and settlements throughout the territory, mostly along known river courses, underscoring France's paternal and comparatively peaceable approach to New World Indian relations, commerce, and colonization. The contrast is partially noteworthy with regard to the English territories to the east of the Appalachians and the Spanish Nouveau Mexique, where few American Indian settlements are noted. Just 11 years after Bellin drew this map, these and other tensions would eventually devolve into the French and Indian War (1754 - 1763).

Publication History and Census

Bellin prepared this map to illustrate Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix's Histoire et description generale de la Nouvelle France; however, most of its major updates are based upon the manuscripts compiled by Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Lery, a French Canadian military engineer active throughout French America in the early 18th century. Charlevoix himself was a Jesuit missionary and traveler commissioned by the French Crown and the Duke of Orleans to reconnoiter French holdings in the Americas. The French had just lost control of Hudson Bay and were actively searching for a profitable route to the Pacific, which many believed lay in the network of rivers and lakes west of the Great Lakes. Charlevoix thus had the secondary commission to 'inquire about the Western Sea, but [to] still give the impression of being no more than a traveler or missionary.'

Charlevoix's history and this map thus proved exceptionally influential as one of the most comprehensive works on North America predating the French and Indian War. Copies of the Histoire et description generale were found in the libraries of many 18th-century luminaries, including Voltaire, Franklin, and Jefferson. Jefferson, in particular, admired Charlevoix's work, calling it 'a particularly useful species of reading' and no doubt influenced his decision to pursue the historic 1802 Louisiana Purchase, possibly the most significant event in the post-colonial history of North America.