This is the first map reporting the last two expeditions of La Salle which related La Salle’s celebrated Mississippi exploration and became the first accurate delineation of the river system of the vast French empire. In spite of the hardships of Joutel in making his way back to Canada after the tragic death of La Salle and the breakup of the ill-fated expedition, he produced a fine account and
This map and the atlas it which it appeared were based on the important map by John Mitchell, one of the earliest English mapmakers to give an accurate representation of the Missouri and the central river system of the mid continent. Mitchell’s maps were influential for a century and, as seen here, were appreciated by an international following of mapmakers.
An early printing of Marquette and Joliet’s travels in the Mississippi valley provided some of the first detailed maps and images of the region. This map from Marquette's book shows the various Native American tribes inhabiting the Mississippi River Valley region, from the Gulf of Mexico at the left-hand side of the map up the Mississippi River to Iroquois country.
With numerous botanical illustrations and splendid maps by hydrographer, Jacques-Nicholas Bellin, Charlevoix represents a culmination in the middle of the eighteenth century of what the French knew, or thought they knew, about North America and its rivers and varied lands drained by them. He was sent to North America to find a route to the Pacific and through years of travel and study recommended doing this by the ascent of the Missouri River or through the establishment of posts along traditional native trading routes in Canada, through strategic stepping stones. Charlevoix and Bellin set out to prove that the Missouri and the Mississippi had basically the same headwaters, and the maps in these volumes reflect that thinking in the supposed nearness of the sources of both rivers. The Great Lakes through a vast system not only were connected to the Atlantic but to the Pacific as well. the works of the French explorers and cartographers heavily interested Thomas Jefferson. Charlevoix considered the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers the finest in the world., Statement of Responsibility: Histoire et description generale de la Nouvelle France : avec le Journal historique d'un voyage fait par ordre du roi dans l'Amérique Septentrionnale / par le P. de Charlevoix.
Map from a work titled "A Description of the English Province of Carolana: by the Spaniards called Florida, and by the French La Louisane." The first English map of the Mississippi Valley. The whole of the territory this map comprises was claimed by the father of Daniel Coxe, the author, as the would-be proprietor of the area under the Crown. The author lived in the region for many years and
Based on surveys conducted only a few years after the Treaty of Paris ceded lands east of the Mississippi to England, Lieutenant Ross’s detailed map was a significant advance over such distinguished French cartographers as D’Anville. On a scale like few others for the length of river depicted, the Ross map was widely held to be the most reliable map of the river produced in the 18th century—it