Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts, Including Americana

Engraved map, 333 x 470 mm. Numerous vignettes, including one to the north-west of Lake Superior, a crocodile eating a man. (Lower margin trimmed close, small wormhole at lower corner, corner also dampstained.)

ONE OF THE EARLIEST AND MOST IMPORTANT OBTAINABLE MAPS OF THE GREAT LAKES AND THE HEADWATERS OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

Drawing upon the reports of the fur-traders and the Jesuit Missionaries such as Joliet, Marquette, Hennepin, La Salle, and Allouez, Coronelli’s map shows the northern part of the French trans-Appalachian territory of Louisiana and a remarkably accurate outline of the Great Lakes which is considered “the best separate map of the five lakes published during the seventeenth century” (Goss). The map also draws upon earlier and important printed maps such as Jean Baptiste Louis Franquelin’s map of 1681 and the so-called “Jesuit Relation” map of 1672, which mapped Lake Superior in considerable detail (see lot X). Based on Coronelli’s and Jean Baptiste Nolin’s earlier Partie Occidentale du Canada ou de la Nouvelle France, first published in 1687 and being almost unobtainable, this map is a slightly reduced version, solely focusing on the Great Lakes–the first map to do so. The Coronelli–Nolin map was the first printed map devoted to the Great Lakes and upper Mississippi region and would remain “the definitive map of the region for over fifty years” (Burden) until the Charlevoix–Bellin map of 1744. Their map of this region is the finest portrayal since Nicolas Sanson’s Amerique Septentrionale in 1650, only requiring little improvement in Lakes Michigan and Huron. For the first time in print, the north shore of Lake Erie shows the three peninsulas. At its southern point is Chekagou R Portage, the first mention of the name on a printed map, which would later become present-day Chicago. The upper reaches of the Mississippi are here named as F. Colbert, ò Mechissipi, the name Mechissipi being derived from an Indian name used by Jacques Marquette in the text of his diaries of the explorations in 1672-1673. Burden 701; Goss 41; Kershaw 163; Karpinski XXVII; Kaufman 14; Phillips (Atlases) 521; Tooley 314.