1741 Jesuit Map of the Orinoco River Valley in Venezuela and Colombia

This is an elegantly-engraved and scarce 1741 Jesuit map of Venezuela and Colombia, produced by a longtime Jesuit missionary active in the region. The author, Joseph Gumilla, had been born in Spain but spent most of his life in the Orinoco river valley in New Granada, now modern-day Columbia and parts of Venezuela.

The Scope of the Map

The region covered encompasses South America north of the equator: from Cartagena and Antioquia in Colombia in the west, to Cayenne in the east. Barring a portion of the Amazon appearing to the bottom of the map, all detail disappears south of the equator and in general, the regions south of the immediate vicinity of the Orinoco are labeled Naciones no conocidas (Unknown nations). Lake Parima, long sought as the location of El Dorado, is shown - but with no hoped-for 'El Dorado'. The coastline is reasonably well-depicted, showing the Laguna de Maracaibo, the complicated Orinoco delta, and the island of Trinidad.

Regional Divisions

Indigenous nations are labeled throughout the map, some very considerable. Almost twenty individual nations are shown. With this as the background, the map is then divided between spheres of influence of European missionary and political power. The coast is marked with royal Presidios - three at Cartagena alone. The region of modern-day Guyana is marked as a Dutch colony; beyond that, the region around Cayenne is dedicated to missions of French Jesuits. Near the center, the lower Orinoco is marked generally with Capuchin and Franciscan missions. The western reaches of the map, well into modern-day Colombia, appear more established: marked with cities, many with Jesuit colleges.

The Jesuit Missions

The north shore of the Upper Orinoco, as demonstrated on the map, was the heart of Jesuit missionary activity in the region; indeed, the whole of this area is labeled as such. Fourteen Jesuit missions are shown there, mainly between the Meta River and the Cinaruco River in what is now western Venezuela. Three missions appear south of this region; two others appear further downstream. But further west along the Orinoco, the Jesuits appeared unable to go: there, four crosses mark the places where missionary Fathers died.

Gumilla's Legacy

The map, necessarily, focuses on fixing the geographical places in which Gumilla lived and worked: thus the political and religious aspects of his work are foregrounded in the map. In the context of Gumilla's history of the region, the map would serve to frame his descriptions of plants, animals, and birds, in addition to the efforts to convert local people.

Publication History and Census

This map was engraved to accompany Gumilla's natural history of the Orinoco region, El Orinoco Ilustrado in 1741. The book is reasonably well represented in institutional collections. The separate map appears only in the Huntington, the Bibliotheque National, the Biblioteca Nacional de Espana, and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The map is rare on the market: We are aware of only one example appearing at auction in the past decade.