LSC America Settentrionale colle nuoue scoperte fin al'anno 1688
DESCRIPTION
This important Coronelli work depicting California as an island is one of the best general maps of North America to be published in the late 17th century, and one of the most beautiful, embellished with a number of Coronelli’s masterful decorative elements. This example is in two sheets, unjoined.
The map is highly detailed with topographic information, including what must have been virtually all known place names for bays, ports, settlements, villages and small enclaves. Much of the detail is historical in nature, including names of explorers and dates when they made landfall in various places.
Coronelli spared little effort in depicting as much as possible in his work and the map is encyclopedic in the information it conveys. It covers territory primarily from southern Canada all the way south to regions of northern South America and features much newly gleaned information gathered by French explorers, such as the remarkably accurate depiction of the Great Lakes, which served as a model for cartographers for decades.
River systems are denoted and named and there are many mountainous and forested areas. The Chicago River is named ‘Chekagou’ from the native word for garlic, which grew locally. This name was already in use by Jesuits as the place name for a settlement as early as 1685, and this map is one of the first to use the name. In places, indigenous peoples are depicted much as they must have lived, hunting in groups, using canoes for transport and hunting. A number of large and well-organized tribal settlements are depicted in various regions, reflecting the findings of exploratory expeditions.
The map also includes information of a speculative nature, including depictions of indigenous peoples' practices, and a misplaced Mississippi River. Some vignettes are visibly biased by European ideas and beliefs of what life was like in the New World. Isolated reports of cannibalism in some tribes were circulated, though undocumented, but Coronelli includes a group of indigenous peoples near Hudson Bay roasting a fellow human and then consuming him.
While the Aztecs were notoriously cannibalistic, by their own account and European reports, most tribes of North America considered cannibalism to be anomalous conduct, perceiving it as sin, mental illness, or possession by evil spirits. In extreme cases no doubt it occurred, as it has with Europeans under duress throughout history, but it was not a culturally sanctioned practice. Other erroneous information includes the depiction of California as an island, and an alligator in Canada devouring a person.
The map reflects Coronelli’s rather unique position; an Italian cartographer privy to the reports of French explorers. Louis XIV became an ardent supporter and defender of Coronelli following the cartographer’s completion of two magnificent globes which were presented to the French potentate at court. In an era of intensive French exploration and hopeful expansionism, Coronelli’s privilege was rare, as he had direct access to the latest reports of French explorers as they returned from their expeditions.
CONDITION
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