Landscapes of conflict: cartography and empire in northeastern America, 1680-1713

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Content LANDSCAPES OF CONFLICT: CARTOGRAPHY AND EMPIRE IN
NORTHEASTERN AMERICA, 1680-1713

by

NICHOLAS GLISERMAN

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
the University of Southern California in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(HISTORY)

THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

August 2016
ii
Abbreviations iv
Note on Dates vii
Acknowledgments viii

Introduction 1

1. Origins: European and Indian Mapping Practices in Northeastern America to c.1680 15

A. The Environment 15
B. Indigenous Spatial Knowledge in Northeastern America 21
C. European Spatial Knowledge in Europe 24
D. The Emergence of a European Landscape Ideology 28
E. War, Cartography, and Landscape in Europe 38
F. Colonization and Landscape 42
G. Political Cartography in Northeastern America 59
H. War and Cartography in Northeastern America 70

2. Misdirection: Iroquoia, 1683 77

A. The Limits of Knowledge and Cartographic Recycling 77
B. Knowledge and Negotiation 80
C. New Roles for Maps in Transatlantic Political Networks 93

3. Reassembling: New France, 1685-1688 100

A. Mapping the St. Lawrence River 100
B. War, Peace, and Planning 111
C. A Geographical Census 130
D. Maps and Interpersonal Conflict 140
E. Boundaries 145

4. Land: New England, 1686-1689 158

A. Mapping Boston Harbor 158
B. Remaking Internal Boundaries 167
C. Land Policy in Maine 175
D. Cadastral Maps as Administrative Tools 183
E. Reasons for Petitioning 189
F. The Surveyor, Local Intermediaries, and Interpersonal Conflict 199
G. Land, War, and Revolution 205

5. Defense: Quebec, 1690-1711 213

A. The Built World of Quebec 213
B. Commemorating Victory 217
C. Aspirational Mapping and Requesting Funds 228
D. Affirming the Centrality of Quebec to Expanding the French Empire 239
E. Cartographic Labor as Substitute for on-the-Ground Progress 248

iii
6. Offense: Quebec, 1690-1711 262

A. Geographic Knowledge and a Failed Expedition 262
B. Maps as Evidence of Service to the Crown 265
C. Appeals to Landscape and Geography in Lobbying for a Second Expedition 274
D. Mapmaking in the Second Expedition 281
E. Cartographic Memory 287

7. Between: The Champlain Valley, 1687-1697 300

A. The Making of an Interstitial Space and Residual Native Knowledge 300
B. French Dependence upon Native Geographic Knowledge 307
C. Sending Maps and Mapmakers to Chart a Different Course 314
D. The Lag Time from Acquiring Geographic Knowledge to Cartographic Production 319

8. Center: Whitehall, 1696-7 325

A. The Making of a Metropolitan Landscape and Landscape Ideology 325
B. Reorganizing Colonial Administration 329
C. Masking Native Knowledge at Whitehall 330
D. Rethinking Boundaries 342

9. Periphery: New York and New England, 1698-1702 346

A. Placing Native People 346
B. Mapping Colonial Politics 349
C. Establishing Expertise 359
D. Illustrating the Need for Metropolitan Intervention 363
E. Landscapes of Abundance 384
F. Projecting Royal Authority 397
G. The Exotic at the Edge of Empire 401

Conclusion 416

Bibliography 428
iv
ABBREVIATIONS
ANOM Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer. Aix-en-Provence, France.
DFC Dépôt des Fortifications des Colonies
FM Fonds Ministerial

BHCM Bibliothèque Historique Centrale de la Marine. Paris, France.
SH Service Hydrographique de la Marine

BL British Library. London, UK.
AM Additional Manuscript
K.Mar King George III Maritime Collection
K.Top King George III Topographical Collection

BM British Museum. London, UK.

BNF Bibliothèque Nationales de France. Paris, France.
CPL Cartes et Plans
SH Service Hydrographique de la Marine
PF Portefeuille
DIV Division
P Pièce

BRH Bulletin des Recherches Historiques. 70 vols. 1895-1968.

CMARS A. J. F. Van Laer, Court Minutes of Albany, Rennselaerswyck, and
Schenectady. Albany, NY: The University of the State of New York, 1926-
1932.

CMHS Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 73 vols. 1792-1904.

CMNF Collection de Manuscrits, Contenant Lettres, Mémoires, et Autres
Documents Historiques Relatifs à La Nouvelle-France. 4 vols. Québec: A.
Côté, 1883.

CVRC Dechêne, Louise, ed. La Correspondance de Vauban Relative au Canada.
Quebec: Ministère des Affaires Culturelles, 1968.

DCB Dictionary of Canadian Biography. 15 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1966-2005. Available Online: http://www.biographi.ca/en/index.php

DHSM James Phinney Baxter, ed. Documentary History of the State of Maine. 24
vols. 2nd Series. Portland, ME: Maine Historical Society, 1869.

DHSNY E. B. O’Callaghan, ed. The Documentary History of the State of New-York. 4
vols. Albany, NY: Weed, Parsons & co Public Printers, 1849-1851.

DCHNY E. B. O’Callaghan, ed. Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the
State of New York. 11 vols. Albany: Weed, Parsons Printers, 1853-1887.

v
ER A. T. S. Goodrick and Robert Noxon Toppan, eds. Edward Randolph;
Including His Letters and Official Papers for the New England, Middle, and
Southern Colonies in America, with Others Documents Relating Chiefly to
the Vacating of the Royal Charter of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1676-
1703. 7 vols. Boston: Prince Society, 1898-1909.

GDMNH Sybil I. Noyes, Charles Thornton Libby, and Walter Goodwin Davis.
Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire. Baltimore:
Genealogical Pub. Co, 1972.

GLI Gilder Lehrman Institute. New York, New York.
GLC Gilder Lehrman Collection
LP Livingston Papers (GLC 03107)

HOC J. B. Harley and David Woodward, eds., The History of Cartography, 6 vols.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987-Present.

HL Huntington Library. San Marino, California.
BP Blathwayt Papers
SP Sunderland Papers

IM Imago Mundi, 1935-Present.

JCBL John Carter Brown Library. Providence, Rhode Island.

LIR Lawrence Leder, ed. The Livingston Indian Records, 1666-1723. Gettysburg:
The Pennsylvania Historical Association, 1956.

JR Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. 73
vols. Cleveland: Burrows, 1896-1901.

MEHS Maine Historical Society. Portland, Maine.

MA Massachusetts Archives. Boston, Massachusetts.
MAC Massachusetts Archives Collection
MP Maps and Plans
SC Special Collections

MHS Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston, Massachusetts.

NEQ New England Quarterly,

NYHS New York Historical Society. New York, New York.

NYSA New York State Archives. Albany, New York.
CD Colonial Documents

NYPL New York Public Library. New York, New York.
AMD Archives and Manuscript Division

vi
OED J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, eds. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd
ed. 20 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Available Online:
http://www.oed.com/

ODNB David Cannadine, ed. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 60 vols.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Available Online:
http://www.oxforddnb.com/

PA Samuel Hazard, ed. Pennsylvania Archives: Selected and Arranged from
Original Documents in the Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth,
Conformably to the Acts of the General Assembly February 15, 1851, &
March 1, 1852. 12 vols. Philadelphia: Joseph Severns & Co., 1852.

PWP Mary Maples Dunn, Richard Dunn, Edwin Bronner, and David Fraser, eds.
The Papers of William Penn. 5 vols. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1981.

PRCC Charles Jeremy Headly and James Hammond Trumbull, eds. The Public
Records of the Colony of Connecticut 1636-1776. 15 vols. Hartford: Press of
the Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, 1850.

RRIPP John Russell Bartlett, ed. Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and
Providence Plantations, in New England. 10 vols. Providence: A.C. Greene
and brother, state printers, 1856.

TNA The National Archives (Kew, UK)
CO Colonial Office

WMQ William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series. 1943-Present.
vii
NOTES ON DATES
During this period the English and French employed different calendars (Julian vs.
Gregorian, respectively). Effectively this meant that English and French sources are dated
with a difference of 10 days before 1700 and then 11 days after 1700 (e.g. an English source
dated October 5, 1685 would be dated October 15, 1685 if it was instead French). I have not
altered the dates of either French or English sources and leave it to interested readers to work
out the conversions. Although until 1752 the legal year in England commenced on March 25,
I treat January 1
st
as the start of the New Year to avoid confusion. While some historians, for
example, write March 1, 1696/7 to reflect both the old and new styles, I simply describe it as
March 1, 1697.

viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to first thank the University of Southern California for providing such a
wonderful intellectual home and for funding so much of my graduate education. An
institution is worth little without the people within it. In this regards, I have been incredibly
lucky to be part of such a vibrant community. It has been a pleasure to have the opportunity
to develop as a scholar while exchanging ideas with fellow students Annie Johnson, Sean
Nelson, Brendan McMahon, Pat Wyman, Stefan Alexander Smith, and Jeanne McDougall as
well as postdoctoral fellows and professors Lindsay O’Neil, Glenda Goodman, Phil
Ethington, Deb Harkness, Richard Fox, Bill Deverell, Lisa Bitel, Paul Lerner, and Karin
Halttunen. I want to especially thank my fellow early modernists Ellen Dooley and Keith
Pluymers who have read my work and provided invaluable feedback that helped me to hone
my ideas. I also owe a debt of serious gratitude to the History Department staff who always
had my back: Lori Rogers, Sandra Hopwood, LaVerne Hughes, Joe Styles, and Simone
Bessant. Finally, I owe an extraordinary debt of gratitude to my committee members Daniela
Bleichmar, Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, and Rebecca Lemon as well as my advisor Peter Mancall.
Together, they helped nurture this project and pointed me in research directions I never
expected I would go. It has been a real treat to have Peter as an advisor—he is the rare
mentor who knows how to give students the intellectual freedom to explore big questions
while at the same time, pointing them in productive directions and helping them focus their
approaches. I am incredibly grateful for his support and his constant encouragement.

One of the great things about USC is the large number of institutes, academies, and
other organizations that encourage collaboration across disciplines. I want to thank Amy
Braden who does a tremendous job administering both the USC-Huntington Early Modern
Studies Institute and the Digital Humanities Program. I am also grateful to Karin Huebner at
the Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study for creating and sustaining a truly
interdisciplinary conversation on campus. I would also like to thank the wonderful people at
the Spatial Sciences Institute, especially Jordan Hastings and Karen Kemp—not only for
giving me new digital tools for approaching my historic source base but more importantly,
for helping me think in new ways.

Outside of USC, I have benefited enormously from the support of outside institutions.
I am grateful to the American Historical Association helped cover my costs to travel to the
annual meeting so that I could present my work. I am also very grateful for the support of the
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, which funded a month of research in New
York City. I would not have been able to write my second chapter without their generosity. It
was a real pleasure to be able to talk with Nicole Seary, the Fellowship Coordinator, whose
enthusiasm about history and music was one of my favorite parts of my month of research
there. Finally, I am grateful beyond words to the McNeil Center for Early American Studies
at the University of Pennsylvania who supported my final year of dissertating. The Director
Daniel Richter set the tone for us, modeling warm collegiality and elevating the art of the
pun. I have learned so much from my fellow fellows and am grateful for their friendship
during my year in Philadelphia: Dee Andrews, Liz Ellis, Tommy Richards, Alex Manevitz,
Gabriel Rocha, Rachel Engl, Rachel Walker, Andrew Inchiosa, Laura Soderberg, Lauren
Kimball, Tony Perry, Don James McLaughlin, Sara Gronningsater, Alexandra Finley,
ix
Elizabeth Eager, Christopher Jones, Jessica Blake, Lori Daggar, Kevin Waite, and Daniel
Couch. Michael Zuckerman organized a thrilling series of salons in which it was a true
pleasure to participate. Finally, thank you to Barbara Natello and Amy Baxter-Bellamy who
do a wonderful job running the center.

I visited nearly twenty archives to research this project and am truly indebted to the
archivists and other staff members who pointed my attention to materials of interest and
made me feel welcome wherever I travelled. I am lucky to have started this project at
Huntington Library whose vibrant academic community inspired and motivated me as I
developed and refined my ideas. The Maine Historical Society was my first archival stop
after defending my prospectus and I am grateful the staff, especially Nick Noyes, for their
assistance. I was very fortunate to meet some fellow travelers in Portland, Maine— Ian
Saxine, Kelly Arehart, and Jura Avizienis—who provided a much-appreciated sounding
board for a project in its very early stages. I am also grateful to the staffs at the New York
Public Library, the New York Historical Society, the National Archives, the British Library
(especially Peter Barber who helped me to work out some rather vexing questions about
provenance), the Massachusetts Archives, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the
Huntington Library (especially Anne Blecksmith in Reader Services with whom I had the
unexpected fortune of being called to jury duty on the same day in December, 2014).

This dissertation also benefited from the thoughtful feedback and questions of
audience members at conferences. The Colonial Society of Massachusetts’ Graduate Student
Forum offered a kind first venue for presenting this work in progress. I would like to thank
Robert Allison for doing much of the organizing, Karin Kupperman who moderated and
offered some very helpful thoughts on the nature of “expertise” in the early modern period,
and Robert A. Gross whose question about historicizing landscape inspired much of my first
chapter. The American Origins Seminar Dissertation Workshop helped me to refine this
project. I am especially grateful to Carole Shammas for moderating, Stephen Aron who
offered thoughtful commentary, and Alison Games and Sharon Block who both asked
penetrating (and helpful) questions. Thank you to Alex Marr for organizing a wonderful
conference on “Ephemerality and Durability in Early-Modern Visual and Material Culture”
at Cambridge University and also to Katy Barrett for her thoughtful response to my paper. I
was extremely luck to meet an extraordinary group of scholars at the International Society for
the History of the Map conference on “Mapping Conflicts, Conflicts in Maps.” I have been
incredibly lucky to stay in touch with Camille Serchuk, Alex Zukas, and Jean-François
Palomino. Finally it was a pleasure to share the lecturne with Ian Saxine and Martin
Brückner at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians. Thank you
especially to Rob Harper who moderated and offered us a thoughtful series of questions in
his comments.

I would like to thank a handful of people who have shaped and nurtured me in very
deep ways. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Carol Lasser and Gary Kornblith who
mentored me as an undergraduate, igniting my love for history. My parents Martin Gliserman
and Marilyn Rye are a fount of love and wisdom. I could not have made it through the
dissertation process without their support. I dedicate this work to Christina Copland who
brings light to my life and makes the bad days good.
1
Introduction
In October 1690 a fleet of New England vessels sailed up the St. Lawrence River. After
bombarding the French city of Quebec for a week, the New Englanders hastily retreated. Nearly
two centuries later, the distinguished historian Francis Parkman devoted two chapters to this
event in his Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV, concluding with a curious
footnote: “In the Bibliothèque Nationale is the original draft of a remarkable map, by the
engineer [Robert de] Villeneuve, of which a fac-simile is before me. It represents in detail the
town and fortifications of Quebec, the surrounding country, and the positions of the English fleet
and land forces.” Parkman had acquired this facsimile (Fig. 0.1) more than twenty years earlier
from Pierre-Louis Morin, a Canadian architect and surveyor who Parkman wrote was “working
then for the Canadian government” to copy maps in French archives deemed important to its
colonial history. Parkman relied on Morin’s reproduction to describe Quebec’s military
geography from its favorable topography to the location of its palisades, batteries, and artillery.
But Parkman did not know the full story of the map: While Villeneuve did meticulously survey
Quebec and its environs during the mid-1680s, he had departed the colony before the city was
fortified or assaulted. The siege map, which Villeneuve drafted with a great deal of imagination,
was poor evidence for describing the military matchup in 1690.
1

1
Parkman to Pierre Margry (Boston: 16 Oct 1875) in Wilbur R. Jacobs, ed., Letters of Francis Parkman, 2 vols
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960), II:85-87, quote on 86; Parkman, Count Frontenac and New France
under Louis XIV (Boston: Little, Brown, & Company, 1877), 285. For Parkman’s general interest in maps, see
Mason Wade, ed., The Journals of Francis Parkman, 2 vols. (New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers,
1947).
2

Fig. 0.1: Pierre-Louis Morin, “Plan de Quebec en la nouvelle France assiegé par les Anglois” (c.1855), Harvard
College Library (Cambridge, MA), Harvard Map Collection, Francis Parkman Map Collection,
G3454_Q4R4_1690_V5_1855.

Subsequent historians did not rectify Parkman’s mistake. First in 1884, George Stewart
reproduced Parkman’s facsimile as a lithographic print in “Frontenac and his Times” in Justin
Winsor’s heavily illustrated Narrative and Critical History of America series. Stewart more or
less duplicated Parkman’s account of the 1690 attack but treated the map less as evidence and
more as an unproblematic depiction of the past. Parkman bequeathed his facsimile to Harvard
College where historians Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid recently discovered it,
reproducing it as black and white photographic print in their generally thorough and thoughtful
biography of William Phips. They devoted no attention to the map in their text, however. The
caption (“Map of the 1690 siege of Quebec. With permission of the Harvard Map Collection”)
failed to identify its title, its author, or even its status as a facsimile. Readers could easily have
mistaken it for a reproduction of the original. More recently the Harvard College Library
3
digitized the facsimile, making it freely available online as a jpeg file. They also georeferenced it
so that scholars working with a Geographic Information System (GIS) could import its data,
described as “roads, drainage, selected buildings with names of landowners, fortification,
English ships and lines-of-fire, ground cover, and more.” The logic, according to the online
catalog, was that “Historic paper maps can provide an excellent view of the changes that have
occurred in the cultural and physical landscape.” Here we have three approaches to the same
map. Parkman trusted the map could be translated into words; Stewart and, later, Baker and Reid
treated it as an image that could simply speak for itself; the Harvard librarians believed it
contained unproblematic information that could be incorporated into a scientific model for
delineating change over time. In all of these cases, the assumptions that scholars held about maps
prevented them from questioning whether the facsimile indeed offered the truthful representation
of reality to which it had purported.
2

The story of Parkman’s facsimile offers a cautionary tale to scholars who supply their
readers with cartographic images but do not treat or cite them with the care they accord to
written sources—an issue endemic within the discipline of history. For the century following
Parkman, the history of cartography consisted of a handful of bibliographical works and
teleological narratives about the progress of science and technology. Most historians treated
maps (and other visual evidence) as window dressing—as an easy way of lending a sense of
verisimilitude to their scholarship. Then in the 1980s historians, geographers, art historians, and
literary scholars began collaborating to develop new methods for reading maps critically to

2
George Stewart, Jr., “Frontenac and his Times” in Justin Winsor, ed., Narrative and Critical History of America
(Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1884), III:317-68, map between pages 354-5; Emerson
Baker and John Reid, The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651-1695 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1998), seventh inset located between pages 104-5; Harvard College Library, “Quebec, Canada, ca. 1690
(Raster Image)” in the Harvard Map Collection Digital Maps (accessed 7 September 2014) available:
http://vc.lib.harvard.edu/vc/deliver/~maps/G3454_Q4R4_1690_V5_1855.
4
understand the role that maps played in society. As these scholars began demonstrating the
importance of maps during the early modern period, colonial Americanists increasingly
embraced cartographic evidence. Two problems persist, however. First, knowing at one level that
maps require critical interrogation as representational documents has not necessarily led
historians to actually follow through on that knowledge. Emerson Baker, for example, had co-
edited a book on cartography in Maine to which John Reid contributed before they co-authored
the biography of Phips. Indeed, most early American historians continue to include cartographic
images in their work without treating them like other primary sources that require proper citation
and interrogation. Second, much of the existing scholarship on early American cartography
offers a series of isolated case studies rather than a broad framework for understanding the
significance of maps to historical development or within the societies that created them.
3

3
For another example of how scholars have mishandled cartographic evidence, see Matthew H. Edney, “A
Cautionary Historiography of John Smith’s New England” Cartographica: The International Journal for
Geographic Information and Geovisualization 46:1 (February, 2011): 1–27. For examples of cartographic
bibliographies, see Edward Luther, Maps Illustrating Early Discovery and Exploration in America, 1502-1530 (New
Brunswick, NJ: E. L. Stevenson, 1906); I.N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909, 6
vols (New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1915-28); R.V. Tooley, Maps and Map-Makers (London: B.T. Batsford Ltd,
1949); English Mapping of America, 1675-1715 (New York: The Mercator Society, 1986). For an example of a
scientific narrative, see Lloyd A. Brown, The Story of Maps (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1949). For
general histories of cartography see, J. B. Harley and David Woodward, eds., The History of Cartography (HOC), 6
vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987-2015); James R. Akerman and Robert W. Karrow, eds., Maps:
Finding Our Place in the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Jerry Brotton, A History of the World
in 12 Maps (New York: Viking Adult, 2013). For theoretical and technical overviews of early maps, see J. B.
Harley, “The Evaluation of Early Maps: Towards a Methodology,” IM (1968), 22:62–74, “Silences and Secrecy:
The Hidden Agenda of Cartography in Early Modern Europe” Imago Mundi 40 (January 1988): 57–76, and The
New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001);
David Woodward, ed., Five Centuries of Map Printing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975); Josef W.
Konvitz, Cartography in France, 1660-1848: Science, Engineering, and Statecraft (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1987); David Buisseret, ed. Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as a Tool of
Government in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); P. D. A. Harvey, Maps in
Tudor England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Denis E. Cosgrove, ed., Mappings (London: Reaktion
Books, 1999); Edward S. Casey, Representing Place: Landscape Painting and Maps (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2002); Christian Jacob, The Sovereign Map: Theoretical Approaches in Cartography Throughout
History, Translated by Tom Conley (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); James R. Akerman, ed.. The
Imperial Map: Cartography and the Mastery of Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Jordan
Branch, The Cartographic State: Maps, Territory and the Origins of Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2015). For conceptual and critical works on cartography, generally, see Mark S. Monmonier, How to Lie with
Maps (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Denis Wood, The Power of Maps (New York: Guilford Press,
1992); John Pickles, A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping, and the Geo-Coded World (London ;
5
In this dissertation, I argue that the production, exchange, reception, and use of maps
were central rather than incidental to colonial American history. The story I tell focuses on three
decades beginning in the 1680s during which time European mercantilist competition pushed the
various peoples of northeastern America towards war. Before these years, metropolitan officials
responsible for colonial policy did not actively solicit cartographic representations of the
northeastern colonies beyond perhaps visiting the nearby shop of a map copyist or printer.
Mostly they were content with whatever happened to cross their paths, even while knowing that
the people providing maps usually expected something in return. In the 1680s both French and
English imperial officials, wishing to centralize colonial affairs, began supplementing this
patronage model by sending mapmakers and cartographically sophisticated governors to
northeastern America and instructing them to send maps back to Whitehall or Versailles.
Consequently, this was a moment of boundary making and contestation, processes that played
out between empires, peoples, colonies, and even landholders. These policies also empowered a
wide range of geographic mediators—ranging from Iroquois delegates who navigated the
continental interior to local notables in English-occupied Maine who held sway over Boston

New York: Routledge, 2004); Denis Wood and John Fels, The Natures of Maps: Cartographic Constructions of the
Natural World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Martin Dodge, Rob Kitchin, and Chris Perkins, eds.,
Rethinking Maps: New Frontiers in Cartographic Theory (London: Routledge, 2009); Denis Wood, John Fels, and
John Krygier, Rethinking the Power of Maps (New York: Guilford Press, 2010). For notable examples of
scholarship on maps and mapping in early America, see Emerson Baker, Edwin Churchill, Richard D’Abate,
Kristine Jones, Victor Konrad, and Harold Prins, eds., American Beginnings: Exploration, Culture, and
Cartography in the Land of Norumbega (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994); Barbara E. Mundy, The
Mapping of New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of the Relaciones Geográficas (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1996); Benjamin Schmidt, “Mapping an Empire: Cartographic and Colonial Rivalry in
Seventeenth-Century Dutch and English North America” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 54, no. 3
(July 1, 1997): 549–78; Sara Stidstone Gronim, “Geography and Persuasion: Maps in British Colonial New York”
The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 58, no. 2 (April 1, 2001): 373–402; Matthew Edney and Susan
Cimburek, “Telling the Traumatic Truth: William Hubbard’s ‘Narrative’ of King Philip’s War and His ‘Map of
New-England’” William and Mary Quarterly, Third, 61, no. 2 (April 2004): 317–48; Martin Bruckner, The
Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, & National Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2006) and ed., Early American Cartographies (Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute of Early American
History & Culture, 2012); Peter Mancall, Hakluyt’s Promise: An Elizabethan Obsession for an English America
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Christian J. Koot, “The Merchant, the Map, and Empire: Augustine
Herrman's Chesapeake and Interimperial Trade, 1644–73,” The William and Mary Quarterly 67, no. 4 (October 1,
2010): 603–44.
6
surveyors—who had their own, frequently violent agendas. In other words, the attempt to
transplant state cartography prompted conflicts that resonated in many places and at many
different levels of society.
Rooted in a desire to order natural, social, and political environments, the European
imperialist impulse to map and thereby mark territory in northeastern America contributed to a
quarter century of warfare between English, French, Iroquois, and Wabanaki polities as well as
upheaval within each of these societies. These wars catalyzed the movement of people within
northeastern America, which created informal storehouses of geographic knowledge that could
be translated into cartographic formats. Spies, captives, and mapmakers travelling in enemy
territory used their observations to craft geographic narratives while military campaigns into
interstitial spaces fostered geographic exchanges between Natives and the European allies who
depended upon their knowledge. While some wars have united people within a given society
against a perceived external threat, these wars exaggerated fault lines already existing within
Native and European societies. Political officials in North America used maps as tools to frame
these internal conflicts for imperial audiences at Whitehall and Versailles.
“Northeastern America” is a fuzzy approximation born from the necessity that both
boundaries and patterns of movement were contingent throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. The Hudson and St. Lawrence Rivers framed the region for Europeans, providing
access from the Atlantic Ocean into the continental interior and linking together through the
Champlain Valley. Between these rivers rested New England, New York, Canada, Acadia,
Iroquoia, Ndakinna (“our land” to the western Abenaki), and Ketakamigwa (the Algonquian
word for “the big land on the seacoast”). Sometimes the region and its peoples were poised to
stretch westerly into the Great Lakes region or southerly into the Mississippi, Susquehanna, and
7
Delaware River Valleys. There was no one single social, cultural, religious, political, or
environmental point of continuity that defined this space; from 1688 to 1713 it was war that
bound the diverse peoples throughout these territories together.
4

The evidentiary heart of this dissertation is a trove of previously unconsidered
cartographic materials produced mostly (but not entirely) by Europeans: Nine hundred
manuscript maps along with five hundred engraved maps mostly residing in archives throughout
New England, New York, France, and Britain. Many of these maps had been miscataloged and
separated from the letters in which they had originally been enclosed, explaining why they have
eluded scholarly attention. Building upon the methodologies developed by historians of
cartography such as J. B. Harley and David Woodward, I treat maps as culturally constructed
documents created for both practical and rhetorical ends. To tell the Native side of the story, I
rely on but also read against the grain of European accounts of Iroquois and Wabanaki
geographic knowledge, recorded during moments of negotiation. Here scholars such as James
Merrell, G. Malcolm Lewis, Lisa Brooks, Jon Parmenter, and Juliana Barr have demonstrated
that even when surviving cartographic evidence is limited, we can still reconstruct the processes
and worldviews that undergirded Native mapmaking.
5

I champion a methodological approach rooted in the anthropology of art, which considers
the “lives” of objects and images, to think about what maps do and what people believe maps can

4
For these Native toponyms, see Colin Calloway, The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600-1800 (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 6; Harald E. L. Prins “Children of Gluskap: Wabanaki Indians on the Eve of
the European Invasion” in Baker, Churchill, d’Abate, Jones, Konrad, and Prins, eds., American Beginnings, 95-117.
5
James Merrell, The Indians’ New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era
of Removal (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1989) and Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the
Pennsylvania Frontier (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999); G. Malcolm Lewis, “Maps, Mapmaking, ad
the Map Use by Native North Americas” in HOC, 2:3, 51-182; Lisa Brooks, The Common Pot: The Recovery of
Native Space in the Northeast (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008); Jon Parmenter, The Edge of the
Woods: Iroquoia, 1534-1701 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010); Juliana Barr, “Geographies of
Power: Mapping Indian Borders in the ‘Borderlands’ of the Early Southwest” William and Mary Quarterly 68
(January 2011): 5–46. For methods in the history of cartography, refer to fn. 3.
8
do. Here Alfred Gell’s seminal Art and Agency is particularly helpful in elucidating the factors
involved in the production and exchange of art objects. Gell provides four categories for thinking
about artistic production: The artist who creates the art object; the recipient who receives it; the
prototype, which is the real-life thing being represented; and the index, which is the art object.
He then provides an exhaustive series of examples to explain how the things and people in these
categories can alternatively exert what he calls agency, meaning that they act as a causal source
for an action or event. While I do not take up these terms myself because they are a little clunky,
they transfer easily enough to this project: The mapmaker (artist) cartographically represents a
landscape (prototype) for an official (recipient), perhaps working from a previous cartographic or
non-cartographic representation(s) of that landscape (index). Historians of cartography have
often adapted one of these approaches to study mapmaking but rarely integrate them. We have
many studies, for examples, of individual mapmakers (artists), patrons and consumers
(recipients), mapmaking practices rooted in a particular genre or aesthetic (prototype), and places
in which the map is a (often teleological) barometer for knowledge about a landscape (index).
None of these approaches is inherently bad. But in isolation, they are usually inadequate to
explain a given map’s form, meaning, significance, or social utility.
6

6
For major theoretical articulations concerning art and anthropology, see Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of
Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988); Alfred Gell, Art and
Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Peter Mason, The Lives of Images
(London: Reaktion Books, 2001). For some applications of these theories by scholars of the early modern period,
see Michael Gaudio, Engraving the Savage: The New World and Techniques of Civilization (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2008); Daniela Bleichmar and Peter C. Mancall, eds., Collecting Across Cultures:
Material Exchanges in the Early Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); Sean E.
Roberts, Printing a Mediterranean World: Florence, Constantinople, and the Renaissance of Geography
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013); Alessandra Russo, Gerhard Wolf, and Diane Fane, eds., Images Take
Flight: Feather Art in Mexico and Europe 1400-1700 (München: Hirmer, 2015). For the biographical approach to
the history of cartography, see Dawson Nelson-Martin and Charles Vincent. L’Atelier Delisle: l’Amerique Du Nord
Sur La Table a Dessin (Sillery, Québec: Septentrion, 2000); John Noble Wilford, The Mapmakers Revised Edition
(New York: Vintage Books, 2001); Andrew Taylor, The World of Gerard Mercator: The Mapmaker Who
Revolutionized Geography (New York: Walker & Co, 2004). For approaches rooted in consumers and patrons, see
Mary Sponberg Pedley, The Commerce of Cartography: Making and Marketing Maps in Eighteenth-Century
France and England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Christine Marie Petto, When France Was King
9
To tease out the assumptions about what people believed maps could do, I pay particular
attention to these objects within the context of their exchange. People generally produced and
reproduced maps with others in mind, hoping they would perform a certain kind of work once
seen or possessed by the recipient(s)—perhaps illustrating the skill of a mapmaker to a superior,
a person’s devotion to their patron, or the necessity of a governor’s projects to a metropolitan
official. In some cases, the providers of maps explicitly stated what they wanted but this is the
exception rather than the rule. In most cases, we must look for clues in a broad variety of places:
the physical landscape being represented to assess absences and distortions in the maps; previous
representations, cartographic or otherwise, of that landscape to identify change and continuity
within the cartographic image; the presence of paratextual elements such as titles, keys,
cartouches; the material context of the map including the surface upon which and materials with
which it was drawn or imprinted as well as whether it stood alone or was part of an object such
as an atlas; the accompanying texts such as the letters in which maps were often enclosed; the
agendas articulated by the people giving, receiving, or commissioning the maps outside of the
exchange; and finally, the social networks through which the maps travelled.
Attentive readers will note the word “empire” in my title. During this period, the English
and French, even those at the heart of colonial bureaucracies, deployed the word infrequently—
and mostly to refer to other “empires” (e.g. the Roman Empire). In the period immediately

of Cartography: The Patronage and Production of Maps in Early Modern France (Lanham: Lexington Books,
2007). For the genre approach see, see J. B. Harley, Barbara Bartz Petchenik, and Lawrence W. Towner, Mapping
the American Revolutionary War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Catherine Bousquet-Bressolier, ed.
Le Paysage Des Cartes: Genèse D’une Codification (Paris: Musée des Plans-Reliefs, 1999); Alistair Simon Maeer,
“The Cartography of Commerce: The Thames School of Nautical Cartography and England’s Seventeenth Century
Overseas Expansion” (Dissertation, The University of Texas at Arlington, 2006). The map as barometer of
geographic knowledge approach has a long tradition within the discipline of American hsitory, stretching back to
Parkman. See for one example the appendix of French maps from the “Depot des Cartes of the Marine and Colonies,
at Paris” in his The Discovery of the Great West (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1869), 405-416. See more
recently, David Y. Allen, The Mapping of New York State: A Study in the History of Cartography (First Digital
Edition., 2011); Paul W. Mapp, The Elusive West and the Contest for Empire, 1713-1763 (Williamsburg, VA:
Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2011).
10
following 1713, however, the word flourished. One of the central contentions of this dissertation
is that the mercantilist cartographic practices from 1680 to 1713 created an intellectual
infrastructure for envisioning and imagining geographically dispersed communities. Since the
time of Parkman, historians have spilled a great deal of ink on the nature of empire, explaining
where, how, why, and by whom it was made. Parkman, for example, located it in the great
personalities, which he often embellished for narrative flair, of governors, generals, and other
officials. In the early twentieth century, historians such as Charles McLean Andrews and Viola
Florence Barnes looked towards to imperial figures in metropoles who created empires through
laws and bureaucracy. Historians in the second half of the twentieth century such as Jack Greene
pushed back against this model, showcasing local resistance to imperial decrees and emphasizing
the negotiated quality of empire in America. In more recent decades, scholars working within the
Atlantic world paradigm have broadened the focus of this discussion, introducing transnational
historical figures that crossed geopolitical boundaries. Historians like Richard White, Marcus
Rediker, Peter Linebaugh, James Pritchard, Brett Rushforth, and Eric Hinderaker have integrated
non-European people into the story of empires. Others like Ian K. Steele, Alison Games, and
David Hancock have advocated a “webbed” approach, in which the circulation of people,
objects, and knowledge outside of political networks accomplished the work empire making. In
this dissertation I read against the archive to reconcile these divergent interpretations, arguing
that figures along the periphery used visual documents such as maps to create the fiction of an
imperial center to advance their own schemes and agendas. In so doing they drew upon
knowledge that circulated along what they had portrayed as peripheries.
7

7
Parkman, Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV and Montaclm and Wolfe (Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 1884); Charles McLean Andrews, The Colonial Period (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1912);
Viola Florence Barnes, The Dominion of New England: A Study in British Colonial Policy (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1923); Jack P. Greene, Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended
11
My dissertation unfolds in two parts, which can be described simply as “mapping leads to
warfare” and “warfare leads to mapping.” The narrative arc begins in the 1680s with European
imperial attempts to transplant state cartographic practices across the Atlantic as a mode of
controlling subjects and environments. The story ends with the failure of that centralizing mode
of imperial vision, supplanted by hard-won smaller bureaucratic achievements such as the partial
fortification of Quebec and, more importantly, cartographic storehouses that would help define
the imperially imagined transatlantic communities of the eighteenth century. I have organized
my dissertation around a series of close readings of people, landscapes, and maps. Each chapter
focuses on a particular geographic location. I begin by describing the geological and natural
history of the particular region, which helps me elucidate the attitudes of mapmakers towards the
landscapes they represented. Then I examine a handful of individuals, usually some combination
of European mapmakers, Native geographic mediators, soldiers, printers, governors, and
metropolitan officials, and one or two cartographic genres such as cadastral maps, fortification
diagrams, or navigational charts.

Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607-1788 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986); Ian K.
Steele, The English Atlantic, 1675-1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986); Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes
Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Eric Hinderaker, “The ‘Four Indian Kings’ and
the Imaginative Construction of the First British Empire” WMQ (July 1996), 53:487–526; David Hancock, Citizens
of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735-1785 (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh, The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors,
Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000); James S.
Pritchard, In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670-1730 (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2004); Alison Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560-
1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Brett Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic
Slaveries in New France (Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute, 2012).

12
Chapter one surveys the distinct cartographic technologies of French, English, Dutch,
Iroquois, and Wabanaki peoples, comparing the ontological and epistemological differences that
undergirded European and Native conceptions of mapmaking. Here I provide an overview of the
European mapping of America across the seventeenth century, arguing that promotional mapping
dominated the first half of the century at which point maps began to acquire more value within
political networks, serving a mixture of evidentiary and patronage functions. The second chapter
offers a close reading of a 1683 map drafted with the assistance of three Iroquois delegates in
Albany, New York. On the one hand, I show how this cartographic exchange was stimulated by
new requests for geographic knowledge from the New York proprietor (and soon-to-be monarch)
James II, anticipating a new role for maps within the English empire. On the other hand, I argue
that these delegates employed this quite deceptive map to further their own personal and
geopolitical goals. My third and fourth chapters deal with French and English cases respectively.
I examine how imperial officials, attempting to enforce mercantilist trade policies in the 1680s,
used cartography to project external geopolitical boundaries and reconstitute the internal
contours of their imperial polities. Chapter three examines New France during the tenure of
Governor Jacques-Renee Brisay de Denonville and his use maps to argue for a dramatic
restructuring of French settlement in preparation for war with the Iroquois. Denonville allied
with provincial mapmakers whom he viewed as more pliable in creating the maps that would
support his agenda over the ones sent by metropolitan officials. Chapter four considers
governorship of Edmund Andros, who was appointed by James II to help consolidate New York
with the many colonies of New England. I closely examine how Andros attempted to institute
cadastral mapping in Maine and, in so doing, empowered local authorities that used the
proceedings to enrich themselves and then spark violent conflict with Wabanaki Indians. In both
13
chapters, I show that maps commissioned to simplify imperial administration often raised
questions about the location of political authority, the relationship between center and periphery,
the meanings of boundaries between peoples, the validity of different proofs offered both by
individuals and polities for possessing land, and the place of Native Peoples within or beyond
imperial polities.
The remaining chapters focus on the warfare between 1688 and 1713. Chapter five
investigates the mapping and fortification of Quebec City after a failed English siege of the city
in 1690 prompted fears about the city’s vulnerability. While the fortification of the city unfolded
slowly, ingénieurs du roi sent an unbelievable number of maps detailing their plans, making
Quebec the most mapped city in North America during these years. While governors and
engineers may have initially hoped the maps would help them secure the resources to fortify the
city, by the end of this period they used cartographic labor to obscure the grinding pace of on-
the-ground progress. Chapter six considers the role of maps as the English (British after the 1707
Acts of Union) colonists attempted to conquer Quebec, which they argued in letters to
metropolitan figures, would give them control of French America. Although one might expect
that such maps facilitated navigation, they mostly assisted self-promotion by individuals who
used them illustrate their service participating in the expeditions to the crown. Chapter seven
examines French mapping of the Champlain Valley, which served as the primary overland route
for French military campaigns (chapter eight touches upon English mapping of the same region).
While Europeans depended on Native knowledge to navigate this space, they silenced their
Native sources in the cartographic documents they sent to metropolitan officials across the
Atlantic. Meanwhile Native allies were careful about what they revealed to Europeans and used
their knowledge as leverage to subsume European military objectives to their own agendas such
14
as captive-taking (a demographic strategy). Chapter eight examines the reorganization of English
imperial affairs in 1696 and the attempts of the new Board of Trade tried to gather cartographic
information on the English colonies in America. The Board solicited maps from Anglo-
Americans in London and sent a military engineer to northeastern America, reviving the imperial
cartographic agenda that had faded with the deposition of James II during the Glorious
Revolution. My final chapter offers a case study of the governorship of Lord Bellomont who
attempted to put the English colonies into a defensive posture between 1697 and 1702. He sent a
remarkable number of maps to the new Board of Trade, using them to denigrate his predecessors,
frame his agenda, and plead for funding and physical materials to build new fortifications
throughout New York and New England. Bellomont and the military engineer William
Wolfgang Römer helped to craft a vision of a colonial landscape under royal authority for their
metropolitan audience, papering over the disputes over such authority that had defined the
Glorious Revolution in New England and New York.

15
1. Origins: European and Indian Mapping Practices in Northeastern America
to c.1680

This chapter provides necessary context for the dissertation. It introduces the ontologies and epistemologies
undergirding European and Native mapping practices to understand how geographic and cartographic information
flowed between European and Amerindian peoples in northeastern America. Here it examines the ways that warfare
and other kinds of conflict shaped these ontologies and epistemologies while encouraging cartographic exchange. It
reveals how so-called era of exploration generated cartographic discourses in Europe that were recycled throughout
the seventeenth century. It explores the roles that maps began playing within transatlantic political networks as
English and French sovereigns began attempting to assert control over America in the 1660s.

A. The Environment
The deepest origins of a map rest in the phenomena being mapped, in this case those
occurring along the Earth’s surface. Therefore, we must briefly account for the physical
environment of northeastern America. Our planet began as a nebulous cloud of debris orbiting
our proto sun, consolidating into a molten ball roughly 4.5 billion years ago. With no
atmosphere, heat oozed outwards into space. Gravity compelled the densest elements (namely
iron) downwards to the center, which in turn pushed the less dense elements upwards. Earth’s
first dense peridotite crust sank, replaced by a black rock, the less-dense basalt. Volcanoes
belched forth an atmosphere of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, sulfur, and water vapor—which would
cool into oceans—as the lower rungs of basalt melted, infusing new elements and becoming the
less dense rock granite. Like icebergs peaking out of the oceans, the granite crust ascended
forming isolated landmasses. These granite islands drifted and collided into other landmasses,
gradually consolidating them into continents, then supercontinents, and then fragmenting apart
again.
1

1
Morris S. Petersen, J. Keith Rigby, and Lehi F. Hintze, Historical Geology of North America 2nd edition
(Dubuque, Iowa: W. C. Brown Co, 1980); Chet Raymo and Maureen E. Raymo, Written in Stone: A Geological
History of the Northeastern United States (Hensonville, N.Y: Black Dome Press Corp, 2001); David Christian,
Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Richard A. Fortey,
Earth: An Intimate History (New York: Knopf, 2004); Robert M. Hazen, The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion
Years, from Stardust to Living Planet (New York: Viking, 2012).
16
This tectonic dance, now in at least its sixth cycle, has shaped the face of the Earth. Three
hundred million years ago, continents consolidated into the supercontinent Pangaea. As the
landmasses that would become North America and Africa rubbed up against each other, the
Appalachian Mountains emerged, so massive at the time they would rival today’s Himalayas.
Then 100 million years later, subterranean forces viciously ripped Pangaea apart and set the
pieces adrift. Volcanic activity has continued to spew granite to the surface. The area today
called New England is relatively new (less than 200 million years old), a series of fragmentary
landmasses joined to North America by plate movement.
2

In the seas emerged an elementary broth of amino acids, lipids, and sugars, which slowly
organized themselves into cells and developed mechanisms to independently reproduce
themselves. Some cells began obtaining their energy from the sun. About 2.5 billion years ago,
these photosynthesizing organisms began releasing oxygen (O
2
) into the atmosphere. Plant life
emerged from the seas. Mosses begat stems and branches and eventually leaves. When forests
emerged about 360 million years ago, they gobbled up carbon dioxide and injected
unprecedented amounts of oxygen into the atmosphere. Oxygen and water eroded mountain rock
into soil—the reason the Appalachians no longer rival the Himalayas.
3

From geological disruption, glaciation, and flowing water emerged the creviced
landscape of northeastern America. Tectonic movements over the past two billion years brought
together various landmasses, but these plates never fully fused. They drifted or sunk slightly
apart with magma spewing upwards, partially filling the emerging gaps. Intensely heavy glaciers,

2
Charles Ogburn Jr. with William G. Melson, The Forging of Our Continent (New York: American Heritage
Publishing, 1968); Rigby and Hintze, Historical Geology of North America; Raymo and Raymo, Written in Stone;
Peterson, Antony R. Orme, “Tectonism, Climate, and Landscape” in The Physical Geography of North America ed.
by A. R. Orme (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) Christian, Maps of Time; Fortey, Earth; Hazen, The Story of
Earth.
3
Raymo and Raymo, Written in Stone; Roger G. Barry, “Dynamic and Synoptic Climatology” and John C. Dixon,
“Weathering and Soils” in A. R. Orne, ed., The Physical Geography of North America, 98-111 and 178-198,
respectively; Fortey, Earth; Hazen, The Story of Earth.
17
formed during four periods of extreme cold in the past two and a half million years, etched and
deepened pathways in the earth like massive ploughs. Ice filled and depressed the tectonic seams,
stretching them into the wide basins of present-day Lakes Superior, Ontario, Erie, Champlain,
and George. Glaciers also carved out new basins by scouring fractured rock formations. Smaller
lakes, such as the Finger Lakes of present-day upstate New York, emerged when glacial deposits
dammed melt water within narrow stream basins, which widened and deepened those basins.
Small but deep kettle lakes formed as glaciers drifted over large blocks of ice shed by other
glaciers and then submerged them in the Earth. Each round of glaciation exaggerated the area
and depth of these basins.
4

As the Earth warmed again, melting ice sheets filled these basins and submerged the
Maine coastline, which eventually resurfaced coated with oceanic silt. Gravity tugged at the
many deposits of water, which trickled downwards, slowly eroding and etching pathways into
the Earth—or finding the gouges that had existed before the glaciation. Since the most recent
cold period, water has coursed through these dips and rises in the Earth’s surface as part of the
ongoing hydrological cycle. First, sun heats the face of the ocean, exciting water molecules to
rise into the atmosphere and then condense as clouds. Then, wind circulates these clouds
throughout the skies until the water condenses further and returns to the Earth as precipitation.
Plants, soil, and bedrock absorb some of this. The rest, compelled downwards by gravity,

4
Frederic Van de Water, Lake Champlain and Lake George (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1946); O.
D. von Engeln, The Finger Lakes Region: Its Origin and Nature (Ithaca, New York, 1961); Stanley, W. Trimble,
“Recognizing Nature’s Bequest,” and Karl W. Butzer, “Retrieving American Indian Landscapes” in Michael P.
Conzen, ed., The Making of the American Landscape (New York: Routledge, 1994), 11-31, 32-57; Gordon G.
Whitney, From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain: A History of Environmental Change in Temperate North
America 1500 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 42-3, 46; Government of Canada and
United States Environmental Protection Agency, The Great Lakes: An Environmental Atlas and Resource Book
Third Edition (1995), Available: http://epa.gov/greatlakes/atlas/; Russell P. Bellico, Sails and Steam in the
Mountains: A Maritime and Military History of Lake George and Lake Champlain, Revised Edition (Fleischmanns,
N.Y: Purple Mountain Press, 2001); Raymo and Raymo, Written in Stone; Hazen, The Story of Earth; Wayne Grady,
The Great Lakes: The Natural History of a Changing Region (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2007); Jamie C.
Woodward, The Ice Age: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
18
coalesces into brooks, streams, and creeks. These drain into rivers, lakes, and oceans, carrying
minerals and nutrients that increase the fertility of the soil along their banks.
5

In the shadow of retreating ice sheets, mosses, grasses and other low tundra vegetation
colonized the muddy landscape of northeastern America. Trees quickly sprouted up and, within a
millennium, dominated the physical landscapes of the northeast: Southerly grew poplars, spruce,
pine, birch, elm, larch, ironwood, fir, and oak; northerly, poplars, spruce, and birch. Humans
arrived during this period as well, perhaps witnessing glacial melt pour over the earth as it settled
into a vast network of lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams that drained into the Atlantic Ocean.
6

This postglacial environment facilitated the movement of people. Early migrants to the
region searched these myriad bodies of water for food and eventually employed them as aquatic
highways for hunting, gathering, trading, and conducting diplomacy. Forests provided the raw
materials for sailing vessels. By 3000 B.C. Northeasterners had begun hollowing out the tree
innards to form heavy canoes that traversed lakes and sailed along coastlines. Eventually, they
began fabricating lighter canoes from bark (especially birch) and animal hides that allowed them
to traverse shallow rivers and could be carried on land, when necessary, from one waterway to
another or to avoid rapids and waterfalls. They connected these waterways by etching out narrow
pathways through forests where they carried their vessels, which they called “carrying places.”

5
Peter Farb, Face of North America: The Natural History of a Continent (New York: Harper & Row, 1963); Ogburn
Jr., with Melson, The Forging of Our Continent; Rigby, and Hintze, Historical Geology of North America; Raymo
and Raymo, Written in Stone; John Pitlick, “Surface Water Hydrology” and Ellen E. Wohl, “Rivers” in A. R. Orne,
ed., The Physical Geography of North America, 130-145 and 199-216, respectively; Ellen E. Wohl, Disconnected
Rivers: Linking Rivers to Landscapes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); Woodward, The Ice Age.
6
Helen Hornbeck Tanner and Adele Hast, Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1986); Matthew Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European Encounters in Seventeenth-
Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 19-20; Esther K. Braun and David P. Braun, The First
Peoples of the Northeast (Lincoln Center, Massachusetts: Lincoln Historical Society, 1994); Stanley, W. Trimble,
“Recognizing Nature’s Bequest,” and Karl W. Butzer, “Retrieving American Indian Landscapes” in Michael P.
Conzen, ed., The Making of the American Landscape, 11-31, 32-57; Whitney, From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited
Plain, 42-3, 46; Paul A. Delcourt and Hazel R. Delcourt, Prehistoric Native Americans and Ecological Change:
Human Ecosystems in Eastern North America Since the Pleistocene (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004).
19
This network of rivers and “carrying places” facilitated relatively quick travel throughout the
region. One could, for example, reach the St. Lawrence River from the Maine coast in about a
week—though in colder months rivers froze and travel into the continental interior halted. In
these ways, the waterways of the northeast served as essential landmarks in dividing, imagining,
and visualizing geographic space.
7

Northeastern America experienced dramatic seasonal change as humid air from the Gulf
of Mexico arrived during the summer and cold air from northern Canada visited during the
winter (along the coasts these extremes were somewhat moderated). This climate impeded the
spread of agricultural crops such as maize, squash, and beans, which Mesoamericans had begun
cultivating as early as 7000 BCE. Only between 900 and 1100 CE did the new varieties of these
crops, requiring fewer frost-free days, begin to take root in portions of northeastern America.
Many peoples became part time agriculturalists living in populous villages composed of semi-
permanent longhouses but still relied on hunting and gathering to supplement their diets.
Agriculture, as it had done in Eurasia, raised the carrying capacity of the land and transformed
fertile areas into a scarce, contested resource. Warfare embedded itself into the built
environment. Villages were increasingly palisaded and surrounded by moats and mounds.

7
Though Archaeologists have unearthed canoes carved from tree trunks that date to 3,000 B.C. throughout many
parts of eastern North America, they have found no bark or animal skin canoes—not surprising given that these
materials deteriorate fairly rapidly—which makes it difficult to determine the exact date Natives began crafting
them. See Tappan Adney and Howard Chapelle, The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America (Washington,
D.C.: The Smithsonian Instutition, 1964), 7; David S. Brose and Isaac Greber, “The Ringler Archaic Dugout from
Savannah Lake, Ashland County, Ohio: With Speculations on Trade and Transmission in the Prehistory of the
Eastern United States” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 7, no. 2 (January 1, 1982): 245–82; Elizabeth A.
Little, “Inland Waterways in the Northeast” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 12, no. 1 (January 1, 1987): 55–
76; Braun and Braun, The First Peoples of the Northeast; G. Malcolm Lewis, “Maps, Mapmaking, and Map Use by
Native North Americans” in HOC, II:3, 51-182; Bruce Bourque with contributions by Steven L. Cox and Ruth
Holmes Whitehead, Twelve Thousand Years: American Indians in Maine (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
2001); David S. Cook, Above the Gravel Bar: The Native Canoe Routes of Maine, Third Edition (Solon, Me: Polar
Bear & Co, 2007); Matthew Bahar, “‘The Sea of Trouble We Are Swimming in’: People of the Dawnland and the
Enduring Pursuit of a Native Atlantic World” (Dissertation: University of Oklahoma, 2012), 31-42. For earlier
examples of dugout canoes in other regions of America, see Ryan J. Wheeler, James J. Miller, Ray M. McGee,
Donna Ruhl, Brenda Swann, and Melissa Memory, “Archaic Period Canoes from Newnans Lake, Florida” American
Antiquity 68, no. 3 (July 1, 2003): 533–551.
20
Archaeologists have discovered many burnt sites, scattered with skeletal remains punctured by
arrows. Towns in upstate New York that had once rested along waterways, increasingly sat upon
secure hilltops within the forest. If European observations can serve as any guide to pre-contact
indigenous practices, we can suppose that war had shaped American landscapes in other ways as
well. Walking in the vicinity of a settlement, one might see pictorial narratives of war
expeditions etched onto large trees and the scalps of the defeated strewn about village entrances.
The peoples in the colder climes that did not experience a minimum of 120 frost-free days
continued persuing seasonal food opportunities. They did not fortify or entrench their
settlements. With food resources dispersed, these people had little incentive to devote significant
amounts of labor to protecting relatively small chunks of terrain. Their built environment
consisted mostly of light bark tepees that could easily be transported. Rivers, the Kennebec in
Maine and the St. Lawrence in Canada, bounded the part-time agriculturalists from the full-time
hunter-gatherers.
8

By 1500 CE, Indigenous peoples in northeast America fell under two main language
groupings—Iroquoian and Algonquian. The Iroquoian peoples settled around present-day Lakes
Erie, Ontario, and Huron (around the eastern edges). Their influence extended to the east,
branching up the St. Lawrence River, spreading downwards from the Finger Lakes past the New
York-Pennsylvania border, and to the upper Hudson River. Algonquian peoples bordered them in

8
Louis Armand, Baron de Lahontan, Nouveaux Voyages De Mr. Le Baron De Lahontan Dans L’amérique
Septentrionale (The Hague: Frères l’Honoré, 1703),190-1 or for the English version, New Voyages to North-
America, 2 vols. (London: Printed for H. Bonwicke, T. Goodwin, M. Wotton, B. Tooke, and S. Manship, 1703);
James A. Tuck, Onondaga Iroquois Prehistory: A Study in Settlement Archaeology (Syracuse: Syracuse University
Press, 1971) and “Northern Iroquoian Prehistory” in William C Sturtevant and Bruce G. Trigger, eds. Handbook of
North American Indians: Northeast (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 15:322-333; Daniel Richter,
The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 17; Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace; Braun and Braun,
The First Peoples of the Northeast; Jared M. Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
(New York: Norton, 1999); Bourque with Cox and Whitehead, Twelve Thousand Years; Delcourt and Delcourt,
Prehistoric Native Americans and Ecological Change; Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods; Karl Butzer, “Retrieving
American Indian Landscapes” in Conzen, ed., The Making of the American Landscape, 32-57.
21
all directions (further westward, along the edges of Lake Michigan lived the Algonkian and
Siouxan, both Missississippian cultures). Sharing a language, however, did not mean sharing
peace or a political structure. The northeast was a patchwork of competing and cooperating
bands, clans, tribes, and villages. In upstate New York the Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, Cayuga,
and Oneida peoples had confederated themselves into the Iroquois League during the sixteenth
century. A more tenuous arrangement between Wabanaki peoples of present day Maine, New
Hampshire, and Vermont would begin emerging in the late seventeenth century.
9

B. Indigenous Spatial Knowledge in Northeastern America
As have most human societies, these northeastern peoples organized space through myth
and metaphor. The peoples of the Iroquois League conceived of the world as the back of a great
turtle, cultivated into an environment by supernatural beings. Creation stories mapped through
narrative, explaining distinguishing features of landscapes such as unique rocks. The Penobscot
told of the Wabanaki hero Gluskabe as he slew a moose calf and its internal organs fell out: The
liver became a reddish-brown rock east of Cape Rosier, Maine while the entrails became a
sinewy white quartz embedded in the cliffs along the edges of Islesboro, Maine and visible
beneath the surrounding ocean. These rocks marked the calmer routes through Penobscot Bay,
which helped canoeists travel and disembark in the channel. Many native place names reflected
mythology as well. The Western Abenaki of Vermont, for example, named two sites in the
Champlain Valley after the mythological creator Odzihózo and his wife Odzihózoiskwá.
10

9
Kenneth Morrison, The Embattled Northeast: Elusive Ideal of Alliance in Abenaki-Euroamerican Relations
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Bruce J. Bourque, “Ethnicity on the Maritime Peninsula, 1600-
1759” Ethnohistory 36:3 (Summer 1989), 257–284 and with Cox and Whitehead, Twelve Thousand Years;
Calloway, The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600-1800; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse; Dennis, Cultivating a
Landscape of Peace; Braun and Braun, The First Peoples of the Northeast; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods.
10
Cook, Above the Gravel Bar; Kerry Hardy, Notes on a Lost Flute: A Field Guide to the Wabanaki (Camden, ME.:
Down East Books, 2009); Bahar, “‘The Sea of Trouble We Are Swimming in.’”
22
Algonquian and Iroquois words for villages often described topographical position. The
Iroquois words for Quebec (Tekyatoñtarí:koñ) and Albany (Skahnéhtati) respectively meant “the
coming together of two waterways” and “on the other side of the pines.” Wabanaki village
names like Norridgewock (in in Somerset County, ME), Penacook (in Merrimack County, NH),
and Pentagoet (present-day Castine, ME) translate to “where the swift river descends,” “at the
foothills,” and “at the falls.” Other toponyms described geomorphology of a landscape. The
Micmac, for example, referred to present-day Halifax Harbor as “kepek,” meaning “narrows or
strait” while the Mohawk called present-day Lake Champlain “kanyatarakwárotem,” which
translates as “the bulge in the waterway.” Tarrantines described the Camden Hills of Maine as
Bedabedec (“the place of the whale”) because from the ocean, one of the mountains resembled a
whale. Other place names were descriptive such as the Western Abenaki “olategw” (present-day
Saint John River, Maine) meaning “good river” or the Seneca “ohi yo” (present-day Allegheny-
Ohio River) meaning “good river.” Algonquian place names north of the Kennebec River
commented on food resources, reflecting the greater role of hunting, gathering, and seasonal
migration in local diets. Passagas-sa-waukeag at the head of Belfast Bay was the “place for
spearing sturgeon by torch light” at the head of Belfast Bay while Ammesokantis in present-day
Lincoln County signified an “abundance of alewives.”
11

Natives of the northeast mapped space through more than just language, employing
gesture, ritual, modeling, and drawing. Few actual maps survive but European navigators,

11
E.M. Ruttenber, Footprints of the Red Men: Indian Geographical Names in the Valley of Hudson’s River, the
Valley of the Mohawk, and on the Delaware (Newburgh: New York Historical Association, 1906); Floyd G.
Lounsbury, Iroquois Place-Names in the Champlain Valley (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1960);
Gordon M. Day, “The Name Contoocook” International Journal of American Linguistics 27, no. 2 (April 1, 1961):
168–71 and “Abenaki Place-Names in the Champlain Valley” International Journal of American Linguistics 47, no.
2 (April 1, 1981): 143–71; John C. Huden, comp., Indian Place Names of New England (New York: Museum of the
American Indian, 1962); Patricia O. Afable and Madison S. Beeler, “Place-Names” in Ives Goddard and William C.
Sturtevant eds., Handbook of North American Indians (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1996), 17:185-
199.
23
missionaries, and merchants who began describing their encounters with indigenous
Northeasterns in the sixteenth century witnessed and recorded their mapping practices. Four St.
Lawrence Iroquois lay sticks and branches upon the ground to explain the course of the river to
the French navigator Jacques Cartier while Oneidas did the same with corn and stones to explain
the location of their castles to Dutch traders. On several occasions Micmac chiefs sketched the
Maine coast with chalk for English and French explorers. Birch bark maps recorded rivers and
streams for canoe routes so that, as Chrétien Le Clercq commented, “an Indian who possesses
one makes long voyages without going astray.” Such maps graphically articulated travel times
rather than physical distance between landmarks or communities, which were arranged in vague,
relational terms.
12

The Europeans and Native Americans encountering each other in northeastern America
had developed different ways of recording, remembering, and transmitting geographic
information. As the above discussion indicates, indigenous Northeasterners understood territory
through toponyms, narratives, and ephemeral diagrams which often signaled on-the-ground
aspects of a place that European mapmakers missed or deemphasized. They acquired and
transmitted their geographic knowledge by travelling through and marking landscapes. In
contrast, Europeans preserved cartographic information on paper or vellum and understood
geographic relationships as a series of distances made coherent by Euclidian geometry. New
printing technologies provided for the reproduction and dissemination of maps but geographers
and publishers, possessing little or no firsthand experience of the terrain being mapped, mostly
synthesized the work of others. Undergirding these different material practices were radically

12
Chretien Le Clercq, New Relation of Gaspesia: With the Customs and Religion of the Gaspesian Indians ed. and
trans. William Francis Ganong (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1910), 136, as quoted in G. Malcolm Lewis, “Maps,
Mapmaking, and Map Use by Native North Americans” in HOC, II:3, 51-182, quote on 79-80.
24
divergent epistemological perspectives, environmental practices, and models of political
economy.
13

C. European Spatial Knowledge in Europe
We can trace the story of those European spatial epistemologies and cartographic
practices backwards millennia to the emergence of an agricultural political economy in Bronze
Age Afro-Eurasia. Whereas roaming limited possession to what one could physically carry,
sedentary agricultural settlement permitted people to accumulate greater amounts of material
goods. By 4000 BCE the Afro-Eurasian archaeological record speaks strongly to social
stratification within the agricultural world, a departure from the generally redistributive political
economies of tribes and bands. Around this time, a new form of centralized political organization
began infusing agrarian life. How it happened exactly is murky. In one possible scenario some
people began looting the fruits of other’s labors until they formalized the arrangement and
labeled it “taxation.” Perhaps some individuals acquired food surpluses, which they stored away
and used to secure loyalties in years of scarcity. Or possibly kinship networks proved inadequate
at managing resources within greater densities of people.
However it happened, groups of elites emerged, forming the embryo of new political
orders. Agriculturalists paid taxes and suffered coercion in exchange for laws and security. Laws
discouraged some forms interpersonal violence while codifying others. Mostly they helped create
a new relationship of people to things by declaring those things private property. Many things
persisted as communal resources, yet people began conceiving of certain goods produced or

13
Woodward, ed. Five Centuries of Map Printing; G. Malcolm Lewis, “Maps, Mapmaking, and map Use by Native
North Americans” in HOC, II:3, 51-182 and ed., Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American
Mapmaking and Map Use (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); William Cronon, Changes in the Land:
Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983); Gary J. Hunger,
“Understanding Semantics and Ontologies: They’re Quite Simple Really—If You Know What I Mean!”
Transactions in GIS (2002), 6:83-87; Branch, The Cartographic State, 36-67.
25
derived from the ground as belonging exclusively to them or their families; eventually they
would join political elites in viewing the land itself as something that could be possessed. As
agriculturalists slowly improved their yields and raised the carrying capacity of the land, they
also began supporting greater numbers of specialists living in urban centers devoted to material
and intellectual production, which in turn increased the capacity of political elites to subvert the
agriculturalists living at the geographical peripheries of the city. Rulers invested surpluses into
the things that would spatially expand their polity and power: Bureaucrats; armies; defensive
structures; infrastructure like irrigation systems or roads that could expand the scope of
settlement; and rudimentary maps to plan infrastructure projects, record the possession of land
for taxation purposes, and eventually create geographic identities for political and religious
communities.
14

As the size and number of these polities grew, political elites became increasingly aware
of and curious about the nature and size of the world. Philosophers, astronomers,
mathematicians, and other intellectuals living along the Mediterranean began developing one
framework in the first Millennium BCE, which found its fullest articulation and synthesis in the
writing of the astronomer Claudius Ptoloemaeus (or simply Ptolemy) around the year 150 CE.
These thinkers determined the Earth to be spherical and believed they could represent the

14
J. B. Harley and David Woodward, eds., Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the
Mediterranean (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Casey, Representing Place, 131-153; Christian, Maps
of Time; John Robert McNeill and William Hardy McNeill, The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of World History
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2003); Jacob, The Sovereign Map; Thomas R. Trautmann, Gillian Feeley-Harnik, and
John C. Mitani, “Deep Kinship” in Andrew Shryock and Daniel Smail, eds., Deep History: The Architecture of Past
and Present (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 160-90. For one example of individualistic land
possession, see Herodotus’s discussion of the Egyptian king Sesotris who “made a regular distribution of the lands
of Ægypt. He assigned to each Ægyptian a square piece of ground; and his revenues were drawn from the rent,
which every individual annually paid him. Whoever was a sufferer by the inundation of the Nile, was permitted to
make the king acquainted with his loss. Certain officers were appointed to inquire into the particulars of the injury,
that no man might be taxed beyond his ability. It may not be improbable to suppose that this was the origin of
geometry.” William Beloe, ed. and trans., Herodotus Translated from the Greek, with Notes, 4 vols. (London: Leigh
and S. Southeby, 1806), II:12. For an example of a similar cartographic development in Mesoamerica, see Mundy,
The Mapping of New Spain, 91-134.
26
phenomena occurring along its surface by using geometrical principles to project them onto a flat
surface defined by Euclidian coordinates. This was a mathematical and scientific vision of
geography in which graphic representation was intended to precisely mirror the actual
arrangement of phenomena in space.
15

This cartographic vision lay dormant in European thought for roughly a millennium,
however, displaced by a religious spatial epistemology. It was revived in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries CE as Italian merchants who grew wealthy mediating trade from Asia began
carrying texts and ideas from the East. It was further nurtured when the Ottoman Empire
conquered Constantinople (1453) and unleashed a wave of refugees who carried ancient texts
such as Ptolemy’s Geographia. Italian merchants used their newfound knowledge—some of
which was developed in antiquity and other parts, in the contemporary Middle East—to develop
better ships, better navigational techniques, better maps, and better accounting practices. They
ventured out of the calm Mediterranean into the tempestuous Atlantic, developing trade routes
with Northern European ports. As trade grew and expanded throughout Europe, cities acquired
special privileges from monarchs or cast off lords and foreign powers entirely. This served as the
basis for political economy largely based in urban trade and manufacture but in which cultural
capital still flowed from possessing land.
16

Urban merchants, particularly in Italy and the Low Countries, invested profits in the
surrounding countryside to translate wealth into status. The land improvement projects they
funded visibly molded the surface of the Earth, clearing fields, draining marshes and lakes, as

15
Brown, The Story of Maps, 2-149; Brotton, A History of the World in 12 Maps, 1-53; Branch, The Cartographic
State, 51-55.
16
Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994); Jerry Brotton, The Renaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road to Michelangelo (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002) and A History of the World in 12 Maps, 54-81; Sean E. Roberts, Printing a
Mediterranean World: Florence, Constantinople, and the Renaissance of Geography (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2013).
27
well as erecting fences, canals, mills, and harbors. Maps guided and landscape paintings
celebrated their capacity to do all of this. Both modes of representing the physical world became
signifiers of wealth and power, occupying prominent positions on the walls of the palaces and
villas belonging to political and economic elites. In these spaces, maps and landscapes frequently
offered political statements. The opulent Gallery of Maps at the Vatican Palace, for example,
offered the vision of an Italian peninsula unified by history and religion. Here in this lengthy
hallway was a series of forty grandiose maps of Italy along the walls and fifty-one landscape
views of significant religious events in Italian history, all painted under the direction of the
cosmographer, geographer, and mathematician Egnazio Danti in the late sixteenth century. As
this example suggests, contemporaries believed that maps and landscape artwork could work
together in representing place. Indeed, the connection between the two visual genres goes even
deeper: Both embodied a worldview that saw mathematical principles as the cornerstone for
representing, reforming, and ultimately mastering the physical world. Said differently,
cartography and landscape artwork evolved together, often at the hands of the same polymath
artists who conceived of them as two variations on one set of mathematical principles and
believed they would nurture new ways of seeing the world that would allow some people to exert
agency over natural environments.
17

17
Denis E. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble Books, 1985) and
The Palladian Landscape: Geographical Change and Its Cultural Representations in Sixteenth-Century Italy
(University Park: Penn State University Press, 1993); Samuel Y. Edgerton, The Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry: Art
and Science on the Eve of the Scientific Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); Loren Partridge, “The
Room of Maps at Caprarola, 1573-75” The Art Bulletin 77, no. 3 (1995): 413–44; Lucio Gambi and Paul Tucker,
The Gallery of Maps in the Vatican (New York: George Braziller, 1997); Casey, Representing Place; Alexander
Marr, Between Raphael and Galileo: Mutio Oddi and the Mathematical Culture of Late Renaissance Italy (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 2011); Antonio Paolucci, The Gallery of Maps (Livorno, Italy: Sillabe, 2011);
Ulrike Gehring and Peter Weibel, eds., Mapping Spaces: Networks of Knowledge in 17th Century Landscape
Painting (Karlsruhe, Germay: Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, 2014).
28
D. The Emergence of a European Landscape Ideology
This emerging European landscape ideology bears some fleshing out. Humans across the
planet had long represented the topographical, ecological, and natural features that surround
them but something was changing in the fifteenth century as Italian artists developed geometric
principles to imitate, on flat surfaces, the depth seen by a stationary human eye. Perspective, the
name of this visual technique, proportionally foreshortened and shrank objects to make them
appear distant. Artists and intellectuals (they often overlapped) described perspective as a truth,
not simply a device. They believed that understanding it would allow them to order and control
not just images on the canvass but the physical world itself. Florentine painters inspired by
humanist texts offered unbendingly perspectival views within cities, showing them as open,
rational, and well-ordered spaces (Fig. 1.1). The countryside merely peaked out beyond the city
gates, barely visible. As artists learned how to tame its unclean lines and fuzzy shapes, the
country increasingly dominated the canvass. By the sixteenth century landscape emerged as a
conscious genre (called “paesaggio” or “bel paesaggio” in Italy and “landschap” in the Low
Countries) that carefully arranged nature, the built world, and human bodies. Artists diminished
the telling presence of perspective. Venetian painters, enamored with the vision of pastoral life
offered in Jacopo Sanazzaro’s Arcadia (1502), played with lighting to endow the countryside
with mystical qualities while Flemish artists, working with oils that allowed for high levels of
detail, carefully delineated a world as it changed through the seasons (Figs. 1.2 and 1.3).
18

18
Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape; Ian Whyte, Landscape and History Since 1500 (London:
Reaktion, 2002); Nils Büttner, Landscape Painting: A History (New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 2006).
29

Fig. 1.1: Pietro Perugino, Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter (1481–1482), Sistine Chapel, Rome. An example of an
idealized cityscape painted with rigidly applied perspective.

Fig. 1.2: Peter Breughel the Elder, The Harvesters (c.1565) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

30

Fig. 1.3: Peter Breughel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow (c.1565), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Detail 1.3.1: Festivities on Ice

Early landscape paintings alternatively portrayed, legitimized, and obscured urban
domination of the country. Often they did all three simultaneously. Sometimes they offered
nostalgic visions of “untouched” nature. Other times they revealed human footprints on the
environment—the roads, canals, mills, fields, fences, buildings, and distant cities that often (but
not always) ordered nature. Artists often depicted scenes from a slightly elevated height,
revealing a variety of terrains and suggesting to the viewer a mastery over nature and other
humans. The people set in nature varied. Some artists offered views of “ordinary” individuals in
leisurely pursuit—sharing meals in front of fields or skating on frozen ponds. Others employed
nature as backdrop for biblical, mythical, or historical characters. Social harmony almost always
extended throughout these natural settings: Agriculturalists and pastoralists lived without thought
of droughts, plagues, or inadequate harvests in peaceful worlds of abundance. These
31
representations papered over hardship and violence: Rape, brawls, murders, duels, beatings,
theft, and wars were endemic in both city and country, and people everywhere suffered poverty,
sickness, hunger, childbirth, rotting teeth and many other discomforts. The landscape genre hid
as much as it revealed. It normalized, ordered, and idealized, surreptitiously.
19

Landscape artwork did not merely portray physical landscapes but cultivated particular
ways of seeing and thinking about space. A discerning eye that spectated from the right place
could see, oversee, and exert control over the environment. Elites increasingly developed faith in
the act of looking, believing it would endow them with new forms of agency over nature and
other people. These ways of thinking about vision and landscape became embedded in physical
landscape as architects and others emphasized the experience of spectating. Buildings, they
argued, should frame nature both within and beyond while gardens should carefully order plant
life, exemplifying the human capacity to control nature. Not by coincidence one of the earliest
theoreticians of perspective, the polymath Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), also expounded on
architectural ideals in his influential De Re Aedificatoria (“On the art of building” 1452).
Perspectival and geometric thinking penetrates his text. Villas, he suggested, should be placed at
an elevation to be spotted from cities while offering expansive views of the countryside. For
gardens, “circles, semicircles, and other geometric shapes . . . can be modeled out of laurel,
citrus, and juniper when their branches are bent back and intertwined” while “rows of trees
should be laid out . . . at equal intervals and with matching angles.” The Venetian architect
Andrea Palladio (1508-80) tightened the frame of vision and the lighting within as well as
beyond the villa, presenting a graceful, mystical, and productive view of nature. As with
painting, perspective and geometric organization increased in importance while also becoming

19
Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape; Whyte, Landscape and History; Büttner, Landscape
Painting.

32
less visibly discernable. The cultural work of representing and shaping landscape in early
modern Europe was deeply ideological. It cleverly disguised those intentions but “framing” a
field of vision entailed exclusion, especially of things inconvenient to the accumulation of
wealth. The ideology celebrated the fashioning of land as a pathway to fashioning the self.
Possessing a carefully delineated and cultivated chunk of the Earth allowed patriarchs to claim
mastery over those within their household and to project social prestige to those beyond it.
20

Maps also changed the ways Europeans understood and shaped physical landscapes.
Again, humans had been mapping since prehistory but the quality, rhetoric, and intensity of
cartographic production was changing rapidly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. New
instruments for observing and measuring space provided for new surveying techniques as
mapmakers strove to proportionally represent space on a Euclidian plane. As scientists came to
rely on images to record observations and disseminate truth claims, maps too acquired a similar
aura of truth—sometimes infallible, sometimes testable—and by the seventeenth century became
increasingly unmoored from a “painterly” past. Maps possessed practical value. Navigators
relied on maps as their ships increasingly left coasts for open oceans and travelled in territories
that others had already explored. Political regimes relied on maps to control peripheries,
coordinate logistics, and tax subjects. Engineers used maps to plan land improvements and
fortifications. Landowners commissioned surveys that visually—rather than simply verbally—
depicted the bounds of their sometimes misshapen estates. Survey maps, because they
legitimized ownership claims within a legal framework, helped transform land into an alienable
good that could be easily purchased or sold, and that had a market value beyond the things it

20
Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, 139-40 and The Palladian Landscape; Leon Battista
Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, Translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), 295-300, quote on 300; Anthony Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of
the Italian Renaissance (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), 261-292.
33
yielded. They also formed the basis for state taxation of land. Yet for their utility and truthful
veneer, maps remained rhetorical and symbolic documents that embodied the European
landscape ideology.
21

In the seventeenth century this landscape ideology figured increasingly into European
statecraft and the cultural construction of national identities as monarchs sought to revive the
Roman ideal of centralized political authority. Traditional visual justifications of political power
had focused on a ruler’s body and face. Newer portraits set rulers alongside maps, within the
recognizable places of their realm, or against fantastical, allegorical landscapes (Fig. 1.4).
Monarchs began building grandiose baroque estates with meticulously planned, expansive,
geometric gardens to justify and embody absolutist states. The most lavish example, Louis XIV’s
palace at Versailles, rested upon a theoretical knowledge of mathematics and science, the use of
a wide range of new instruments and machinery, a pervasive attention to detail, along with a
large budget and the labor of tens of thousands of artists, surveyors, engineers, botanists, and
construction workers. It illustrated first that through “good administration” the King could
“ensure peace and plenty wherever his authority extended” and second, “wherever the signs of
his political function and the reality of his person were apparent, opulence, order, and beauty had
to be created as if by magic.”
22

21
Roger J.P. Kain, “Maps and Rural Land Management in Early Modern Europe” in HOC, III: 705-718; Buisseret,
ed., Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps and Buisseret, “The Painterly Origins of Some European Mapping, 1420-1650”
in The Mapmaker’s Quest: Depicting New Worlds in Renaissance Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003),
29-48; Harvey, Maps in Tudor England.
22
Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Anthony Pagden, Lords of
All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c.1500-c.1800 (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1998); Helena Attlee, Italian Gardens: A Cultural History (London: Frances Lincoln Limited Publishers,
2006); Michel Baridon, A History of the Gardens of Versailles, trans. by Adrienne Mason (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 52; Kevin Sharpe, Selling the Tudor Monarchy: Authority and Image in Sixteenth-
Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
34

Fig 1.4: George Gower, “Armada Portrait” of Queen Elizabeth I of England (c. 1588), Bedford Estates. The
Painting links Elizabeth’s military administration to her geographic knowledge. It’s as though possessing a globe
gives her a window into distant events, in this case she oversees the English victory over the Spanish Armada.

Maps and landscapes, official or otherwise, increasingly collided together land, people,
and polity as they projected a sense of national identity. One point of genesis for this trend was
the diverse Dutch Republic, which lacked a strong monarch to represent the body politic. Formed
in 1581 after revolting from Spanish control, the Republic attracted a slew of cultural producers
and wealthy merchants from Hapsburg-occupied Antwerp. The latter infused the land with
capital while the former employed it as a cultural framework for a national identity. On the one
hand the mythology they crafted celebrated the tricky, treacherous terrain for repelling the
Spanish. On the other, landscape paintings cultivated a national community of viewers buttressed
by a shared sense of belonging to the land and proud of their collective capacity to change it.
War had effectively shaped the physical landscape by compelling the movement of people yet
ironically the flood of landscape representations mostly emphasized its peaceful qualities. Maps,
meanwhile, increasingly prominently featured bodies—sometimes allegorically and in other
cases, to represent actual people such as sovereigns or emblematize groups of people. John
Speed’s 1610/1611 atlas The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, for example, commenced
35
with a historical map of Britain lined with images of various Saxon rulers (Fig. 1.5).
Contemporary Maps of England (Fig. 1.6) and Scotland that followed included full body
portraits of individuals such as “A Noble man” or “A Citizen” who stood in for entire classes of
people.
23

Fig. 1.5. John Speed “BRITAIN AS IT WAS DEVIDED in the tyme of the Englishe Saxons especially during their
Heptarchy” in The theatre of the empire of Great Britaine: presenting an exact geography of the kingdomes of
England, Scotland, Ireland (1610/11), Cambridge University, Atlas.2.61.1

23
Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape; Ann Jensen Adams, “Competing Communities in the
‘Great Bog of Europe’: Identity and Seventeenth-Century Dutch Landscape Painting” in W. J. T. Mitchell, ed.,
Landscape and Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 35-76; Kenneth Olwig, Landscape, Nature,
and the Body Politic: From Britain’s Renaissance to America’s New World (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 2002); Valerie Traub, “Mapping the Global Body” in Peter Erickson and Clark Hulse, eds., Early Modern
Visual Culture: Representation, Race, Empire in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2000), 44-97.
36

Fig. 1.6. John Speed “THE KINDGOME OF ENGLAND” in The theatre of the empire of Great Britaine:
presenting an exact geography of the kingdomes of England, Scotland, Ireland (1610/11), Cambridge University,
Atlas.2.61.1

In the opening decade of the seventeenth century the Dutch “landschap,” German
“landshaft,” or Danish “Landtschap” entered the English language as “landskip” and later
“landscape.” Writers, patronized by state actors, increasingly deployed allegorical landscapes to
justify the monarch’s powers. The rural estate served as a metaphor for the health of the entire
English realm, suggesting that the all-powerful monarch could see and direct what others could
not. In this formulation, the social harmony of the polity rested “on its subordination to the care
and authority of one all powerful lord, as the harmony of its landscape depends on the lordship of
the eye.” James VI and I, whose reign wove together Scottish and English polities, and his wife
37
Anne mobilized masques to define “Britain as a nation, a state, and a people” through landscape
scenery. Dutch painter Peter Paul Rubens popularized landscape painting in the court of Charles
I when he allegorically depicted the King as St. George, the patron saint of England famous for
slaying a dragon (Fig. 1.7). In Rubens’ painting, shadow mutes the slain dragon, fallen horses,
and dead soldiers while sunlight peaking through parting clouds accentuates verdant forests and
hills in the distance, the King clad in iron armor, and five women and two babies that hint at the
regeneration of land and people.
24

Fig 1.7: Peter Paul Rubens, Landscape with St George and the Dragon (1635), Royal Collection Trust.

24
Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape; Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001); Olwig, Landscape, Nature, and the Body Politic, 65.
38
E. War, Cartography, and Landscape in Europe
European political regimes did not merely consolidate their power via symbolic displays
but also through active force. Here too they relied on these new ways of seeing and representing
the world. In the early 1490s the French King Charles VIII commissioned a mapmaker Jacques
Signot to scout the passes through the Alps in anticipation of invading Italy (wealth had made the
city-states attractive targets for conquest and plunder). The success of the campaign owed
something to Signot’s rudimentary map and much more to gunpowder—an old Chinese
technology then very new to Europe—that instantly rendered medieval fortifications obsolete.
These castles operated on the principle that one could drop heavy objects on foes or shower them
with arrows. Composed of brittle stone, they shattered when pelted with bullets and cannonball.
War quickly began reshaping Europe’s physical landscapes. A slew of artist-engineers (e.g.
Filippo Brunelleschi, Francesco di Giorgio, Mariano di Jacopo, Mutio Oddi, and Leonardo da
Vinci) well versed in mathematical principles designed these new fortifications, employing
materials like limestone that absorbed the shock of gunpowder weapons and following geometric
plans that allowed soldiers to shoot in all directions (Fig. 1.8).
25

Fig 1.8: “Comparison of (left) ground plan of a medieval castle with circular towers, and (right) a
bastioned plan, showing how the new design eliminated the dead ground (shaded) at the food of the tower.” Source:
Christopher Duffy, Fire and Stone, 10

25
David Buisseret, “Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps in France before the Accession of Louis XIV” in Buisseret, ed.,
Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps, 99-123; David Bjerklie, “The Art of Renaissance Engineering,” MIT Technology
Review (1 Jan 1998); Christopher Duffy, Fire and Stone: The Science of Fortress Warfare, 1660-1860 (Edison, NJ:
Castle Books, 2006); Marr, Between Raphael and Galileo.
39
The cost of warfare grew monumentally. Monarchs began directly employing
professional soldiers rather than rely on landed lords. Gunpowder weapons and new
fortifications cost more than swords, bows, and castles. Rapid advances in military technology
meant that European rulers were constantly replacing obsolete weapons and defenses. As polities
lavished money on their militaries, expanded the scale of their borrowing and invested in
bureaucracies charged with collecting taxes. The polities that did not raise and spend adequate
amounts on militaries found themselves vulnerable to invasion and predation. The
commercialization of warfare, the growth of bureaucracies, and a dramatic religious schism
within western Christendom all increased the intensity and pace of warfare. In the long term this
favored the territorially sovereign state over other models of political organization like the city-
state, the urban league, or the independent commune.
26

Armies grew. To coordinate them, commanders devoted more energy on logistical,
tactical, and topographical considerations. Niccolò Machiavelli, for example, urged princes to
train for war by hunting. This would teach “some practical geography: how the mountains slope,
how the valleys open, how the plains spread out.” Rulers, commanders, and others poured over
diagrammatic maps, often printed, to develop their capacity to think tactically. These maps
delineated terrain, indicated locations of ships and soldiers, and narrated battles by marking the
map with letters explained in a key. As knowledge of terrain dictated where to place
fortifications and how to direct supply lines, troop movement, and offenses, maps and
mapmakers grew essential to militaries. On campaigns, spies would advance ahead to scope out
terrain, sketching relational maps that indicated the general features of a landscape.

26
M.S. Anderson, War and Society in Europe of the Old Regime, 1618-1789 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988;
Bruce Porter, War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Modern Politics (New York: Free Press,
1994); Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors; Mary Wiesner-Hanks, Early Modern Europe, 1450-1789
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
40
Domestically, maps helped political elites assess the vulnerability of areas distant from the seat
of government while helping engineers plan and design increasingly complex fortifications
meant to defend specific types of terrain. State cartography advanced and declined with state
coffers. Henry VIII of England, for example, sporadically engaged mapmakers in his early reign.
After becoming flush with cash (by seizing and selling the lands of Catholic institutions), he
ordered the English coast mapped to plan fortification placement. When state resources again
declined, English sovereigns like Elizabeth I abandoned comprehensive surveying in favor of
indirect, sporadic patronage.
27

Rulers and military elites commissioned artisans to glorify their martial skills in portraits
and battle scenes. Before 1500, the fighting in these paintings seemed chaotic. Terrain—when
included—served as backdrop, seemingly detachable from the men fighting a stylized, close-
quarters combat on level ground (Fig. 1.9). Multiple segments of the same narrative unfolded on
the same canvass. As topography became a greater strategic consideration, it occupied a greater
place in the art of war. In seventeenth-century paintings of battle, perspective embedded the
bloodier action in the background while focusing a viewer’s attention on terrain and perhaps a
commanding figure. Indistinct bodies melted into the distant scenery. Light, smoke, and full
views of the sky above imbued the action below with an ethereal aura. The topographical
tradition that emerged in the Low Countries was refined at the French court of Louis XIV by
Adam Frans van der Meulen (1632-1690). With deadlier weapons, landscapes of war
paradoxically appeared more orderly and less gruesome. Leaders occupying an elevated ground
arranged the soldiers below as plants in the geometrical Renaissance garden (Fig. 1.10). These

27
Harvey, Maps in Tudor England; Richard L. Kagan and Benjamin Schmidt, “Maps and the Early Modern State:
Official Cartography” in HOC, III: 661-679; John Hale, “Warfare and Cartography ca. 1450-1640” in HOC, III:719-
737; Guy Wilson, “Military Science, History, and Art” in Pia Cuneo, ed., Artful Armies, Beautiful Battles: Art and
Warfare in Early Modern Europe (Boston: Brill, 2002), 13-33; Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, Reissued with
revisions (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 48.
41
paintings purported to evidence the vision, the lordship of the eye possessed by monarchs and
generals. They affirmed the legitimacy of a ruler’s sovereignty by showing them physically
occupying territory through organized violence.
28

Fig. 1.9: Anghiari Master, The Battle of Anghiari (c.1460) Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland.

28
Guy Wilson, “Military Science, History, and Art” and Julie Anne Plax, “Seventeenth-Century French Images of
Warfare,” in Cuneo, ed., Artful Armies, Beautiful Battles, 13-33, and 131-155, respectively; J. R. Hale, Artists and
Warfare in the Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

42

Fig 1.10: Adam Frans van der Meulen, Louis XIV, King of France, Crosses the Rhine at Lobith on 12 June 1672
(1680), Deutsches Historisches Museum.

F. Colonization and Landscape
Landscapes changed in other ways during the early modern period as Europeans and
Americans entered into sustained contact. European ships travelling throughout the Atlantic
basin transplanted microbes, plants, animals, and people into new environments. This
unprecedented movement of biomatter generally followed an eastward trajectory. Afro-Eurasian
animals, diseases, plants, peoples came to inhabit the Americas while American plants came to
Afro-Eurasia. There were, of course, many exceptions to these generalities. Some American
peoples, for example, travelled to Europe, abducted by Europeans interested in studying Native
languages, cultures, and geography for subsequent colonial ventures. Europeans also carried
43
technologies of literacy through which they recorded, exaggerated, and invented impressions of
lands and peoples. The lands proved easier to explain than the peoples but Europeans persistently
misrepresented both. After Spanish conquistadors discovered silver and gold, authors—most
without firsthand experience—represented this “terra incognita” as a golden land, the gateway to
a golden era. The landscape ideology was at play here. European intelligentsias insisted that with
the proper eye this wilderness could be cultivated, ordered, tamed, and the people there
“civilized.”
29

The printing press proved especially crucial to the emergence of European perceptions of
an uncultivated yet abundant America. To “imprint” literally means marking a figure upon
something by exerting pressure. Ancient Mesopotamians rolled engraved cylinders along wet
clay. Ancient Chinese and Egyptians stamped ink upon silk and papyrus, respectively. In the 11
th

century CE, the Chinese developed a movable type printing with porcelain and in the 13
th
century
CE, Koreans developed movable metal types. Yet to this point, imprinting had not dramatically
altered the trajectory of human history. The costs remained high for types and materials. The
multitude of Asian characters rendered imprinting terrific for decorating fabrics but
impracticable for spreading discourse. Then around 1450 German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg
further developed the technology in Europe. Scholars of print debate whether he knew of these
Asian technologies or independently developed them, but nevertheless he tweaked the processes

29
Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1972) and Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986); Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape; Karen Ordahl
Kupperman, Indians & English: Facing Off in Early America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000); Daniel
Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2001); Robert Marks, The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from the
Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007); Alden T.
Vaughan, “Sir Walter Ralegh’s Indian Interpreters, 1584-1618” The William and Mary Quarterly, 59:2 (April,
2002), 341–376 and Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500-1776 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006); Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed
Early America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Mancall, Hakluyt’s Promise.

44
enough to make them more cost efficient. Rather than make each type by hand, he invented a
mold that enabled their rapid production. He attached an assemblage of these types (called a
matrix) to the device used to press grapes for wine or olives for oil yielding the printing press.
One worker would roll a ball covered in ink along the typeset, then another would lower the
press against paper moistened to help it absorb the ink. The press would rise and the paper would
be hung to dry. Perhaps that would be enough and it would be sold as a broadside. Or perhaps it
would be folded, stitched, and bound together with other leaves into pamphlets or books. In
Europe during the 1470s, two methods for printing maps emerged, one relying on carving wood
and the other, incising lines on copperplates. In the first of these techniques, carvers removed
from the woodblock the areas they did not wish to ink. In contrast, copperplate engraving was an
intaglio technique in which ink filled the depression. This proved the more long-lasting
technique as it was easier to prepare a copperplate, which would produce more images with a
finer level of detail than a woodblock.
30

As happens with language, this literal process of imprinting acquired a figurative
meaning so that something can also be “imprinted” on the mind or in the memory. In 1493, a
Barcelona press printed the letter of a Genoan navigator, Christopher Columbus, announcing the
discovery of a maritime pathway to Asia. Other presses throughout Europe quickly followed suit,
reprinting the letter. Then in 1504 or 1505, another press printed the letter of another explorer,
Amerigo Vespucci, announcing the discovery of “new lands.” Of course we know today that
both men arrived in the Americas, which had already been “discovered” by the peoples already

30
David Woodward, “The Woodcut Technique” and Coolie Verner, “Copperplate Printing” in Woodward, ed., Five
Centuries of Map Printing, 25-50, 51-75; Michael Twyman, The British Library Guide to Printing: History and
Techniques (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Nicole Howard, The Book: The Life Story of a Technology
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). For various perspectives on the impact of print see Elizabeth
Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983);
Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1998); Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005).
45
living there. It was not the last time that print matter would promote a European perspective at
the expense of the peoples living in the Americas. Which, incidentally, were not called the
Americas at the time of Vespucci’s letter. For that we must thank the German cartographer
Martin Waldseemüller who named the landmass after Vespucci in his 1507 world map
Universalis Cosmographia. Waldseemüller would later retract the name when he realized that
Columbus and Vespucci had both in fact travelled to the same “terra incognita” (unknown land),
which is what he would rename the landmass in a later 1513 map. The name “America” persisted
anyway—so much so that in 2003 the Library of Congress purchased what it then believed to be
the 1507 map for ten million dollars, the highest amount paid for a map at that date, describing it
as “America’s birth certificate.” In other words, the literal act of imprinting contributed to the
figurative act of imprinting. Pressing ink to paper would long continue to “imprint” ideas of
places into the minds of people with access to print matter.
31

Fig. 1.11: Martin Waldseemüller, “Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii
alioru[m]que lustrationes” ([Saint Dié, France : s.n., 1507]), Library of Congress, G3200 1507 .W3

31
Mark Johnson, Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981);
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Seymour I.
Schwartz, “The Greatest Misnomer” in The Mismapping of America (Rochester: University of Rochester Press,
2003), 1-36; Brotton, A History of the World in 12 Maps, 146-185, quote on 150. Also see, Michael Gaudio,
Engraving the Savage: The New World and Techniques of Civilization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2008).
46

Detail 1.11.1: “AMERICA” toponym—responsible for renaming two continents.

Early European maps depicting the Americas served a variety of ideological, legal,
patronage, and promotional functions. Some sought to delineate possession, such as those
distinguishing Portuguese and Spanish claims along an imaginary north-south line “three
hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands” created at the 1494 negotiations in
Tordesillas in Castile. Others sought to pique interest in funding overseas ventures. Whether
drafted on vellum for royal eyes or printed on paper to attract investors in joint-stock companies,
these maps were filled with notes about and icons depicting commodities. Northeastern America
itself did not figure prominently into early English or French fantasies. Most sixteenth-century
English maps, for example, emphasized the area above the landmass, an oceanic passage that
English geographers believed existed and hoped would allow English vessels to participate in the
lucrative spice trade with Asia.
32

More significant interest in the land itself began developing in the late sixteenth century
as English cosmopolitan intellectuals and merchants began articulating a vision for settler-
colonial schemes in Ireland and North America focused around the agricultural metaphor of

32
Frank Lestringant and Monique Pelletier, “Maps and Descriptions of the World in Sixteenth-Century France” in
HOC, III:1463-1479; Robert C. D. Baldwin, “Colonial Cartography under the Tudor and Early Stuart Monarchies,
ca. 1480-ca. 1640” in HOC, III:1754-1780; Peter C. Mancall, “The Raw and the Cold: Five English Sailors in
Sixteenth-Century Nunavut” The William and Mary Quarterly 70:1 (January 1, 2013): 3–40 and Hakluyt’s Promise;
Brotton, A History of the World in 12 Maps, 186-217, quote on 186-7; Robert K. Batchelor, London: The Selden
Map and the Making of a Global City, 1549-1689 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 27-63. For an
example of ornate promotional cartography, see Pierre Desceliers’ considerably large (roughly 40 square feet) map
of the world drawn on vellum in 1550 for either King Henri II of France or the Duc de Montmorency. At the British
Library, Additional Manuscript 24065. Also the Vallard Atlas, HM 29, [fol. 9] (Canada), Huntington Library.
47
“plantation.” This term, which evoked people naturally taking root in foreign lands, emerged
during a heightened period of “improvement” when land reforms raised agricultural output,
supporting a greater population but reducing demand for agricultural laborers. These trends
generated a population of unemployed youths who colonization proponents argued would
contribute to instability if they remained in England but could improve both themselves and
foreign landscapes.
33

Early proponents of American plantation developed both a verbal and visual language for
framing and legitimizing their schemes. After the navigator Thomas Hariot returned from an
early attempt to establish an English colony in present-day North Carolina, he published a 1588
pamphlet describing the site of the Roanoke colony—from the economic schemes the climate
could support (flax, hemp, silk) to the abundance of the environment (thick forests, fertile soils,
oceans and rivers overrun by fish, etc.). The Frankfurt publisher Theodor de Bry reprinted
Hariot’s text in 1690 and, at the request of the colonization proponent Richard Hakluyt, added a
postscript: A sequence of images, most of which were based on the drawings of John White who
had accompanied Harriot to Roanoke (Figs. 1.12 and 1.17). This sequence progressed as follows:
An image of Adam and Eve; a map of the “Virginia” coast (Fig. 1.13); an enlarged view of one
part of that map (Fig. 1.19); nine views of Native individuals set against verdant landscapes
(Figs. 1.14, 1.15, and 1.18); seven images of Native groups engaged in various activities against
both lush and sparse backdrops; two views of different towns encircled by palisades; two images
explaining religious practices; a depiction and explanation of Native tattoos; and five images of
the onetime savage Picts of the British isles (Fig. 1.18). This sequence of maps, landscape
images, ethnographic portraits, and other images suggested a primordial landscape filled with a

33
Peter Mancall, Hakluyt’s Promise, 128-155; Daniel Richter, Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2011), 88-117. For an etymology of “plantation” see the OED.
48
primitive people. The final images of the Picts, however, placed the American images within a
narrative of “cultural progression” for as the historian Peter Mancall has written about the
argument of this sequence, “Picts were more savage than Americans but became civilized; with
the proper instructions, Americans would as well.” The two maps early in the sequence
appropriated many of their symbols from the images that followed. Like an architectural
schematic paired with façade illustrations and profile views, the de Bry maps, images, and
Hariot’s text encouraged readers to move back and forth between each other. The visual and
textual narratives in Hariot, in other words, helped craft a cartographic symbology of abundance
and fecundity.
34

Fig. 1.12: John White “La Virginea Pars” (c.1585-1593), British Museum (London), 1906,0509.1.3

34
Thomas Hariot, A briefe and true Report of the new found land of Virginia of the commodities and of the nature
and manners of the naturall inhabitants (Frankfurt: Theodor de Bry, 1590); Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Roanoke:
The Abandoned Colony (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1984); Mancall, Hakluyt’s Promise,
195-207, quote on 206; Michael Gaudio, Engraving the Savage. The original White images are at the British
Museum.
49

Fig. 1.13: Thomas de Bry, “Americae pars, Nun Virginia” in Thomas Hariot, A briefe and true Report of the new
found land of Virginia of the commodities and of the nature and manners of the naturall inhabitants (Frankfurt:
Theodor de Bry, 1590), NYPL, Sloughter Collection, 352.

Detail 1.13.1

Fig. 1.14: de Bry, “A Weroan or great Lorde of Virginia” in Hariot, A briefe and true Report (1690), BL, Sloane MS
1622.

50

Detail 1.13.2

Fig. 1.15: de Bry, “A cheiff Ladye of Pomeiooc” in in Hariot, A briefe and true Report (1690), BL, Sloane MS
1622.

Fig. 1.16: de Bry, “The true Picture of a man Pict” in Hariot, A briefe and true Report (1690), BL, Sloane MS 1622.

51

Maps, images, and text in de Bry’s publication emphasized the untouched qualities of
land in deeply gendered ways. Sometimes it was the descriptions of people that supported this
virginal inflection of landscape. One image depicted a “younge gentill woeman doughter of
Secota” in front of tree-covered hills and Indians fishing along the coast. De Bry’s caption
identified her as a virgin of “good parentage” although White’s original drawing had described
her as “One of the wyues [wives] of Wyngyno” and not as a virgin. In other cases, maps hinted
at the virginal qualities of land. The large-scale one, for example, presented a chain of islands
with shallow sands between them as forming a protective veil. The caption emphasized the
difficulty of penetrating this outer layer for “The sea coasts of Virginia arre full of I[s]lands” that
obscured the mainland. Between the islands—“to our great perill”—were a series of “shallowe,
and . . . dangerous flatts” that they could “could neuer perce [i.e. pierce] . . . vntill wee made
trialls in many places with o[u]r small pinness.” The map evokes a sense of danger with five
sinking ships beyond the coastal veil. Within, however, lie calmer waters in which Indians catch
fish and, further back, verdant lands filled with trees, grasses, and grape vines. To emphasize the
fertility of the interior landscape, De Bry recast White’s images. He inserted the figures, which
White had originally set against blank backdrops, into rich landscapes. He similarly filled the
blank space of White’s smaller-scale map with trees, grasses, mountains, and the sea beyond the
coastal islands with waves. The visual language that de Bry, Hakluyt, and White created here
would be called upon again as colonial promoters continued employing maps, landscape artwork,
and other visuals could help attract state sponsorship, private investment, and people willing to
participate in the overseas ventures.
35

35
See for example John Smith’s 1612 map of Virginia, printed in London. Smith had published his map as the
centerpiece of a pamphlet, A Map of Virginia, which expanded upon his earlier 1608 pamphlet. The goal here was to
encourage investment and migrants from England. The crowded trees in Smith’s map reflected Smith’s description
52

Fig. 1.17: John White, “One of the wyues of Wyngyno” (1585-1593), British Museum, 1906,0509.1.17

Fig. 1.18: de Bry, “A younge gentill woeman doughter of Secota” in in Hariot, A briefe and true Report (1690), BL,
Sloane MS 1622. The caption below describes these figures as “VIrgins [sic] of good parentage” even as the White
image from which this was based (Fig. 1.17), described the figure as a wife.

of Virginia: “overgrowne with trees and weedes being a plaine wildernes as God first made it.” Indeed the
abundance of trees seemed calculated to make the Indian place names less visible and less legible. Though the soil
was “lusty and very rich,” Smith wrote, “The Land is not populous” for Natives made “smal . . . benefit of their
land.” [CITATION]. Smith, A Map of Virginia (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1612), quotes on 3.

53

Fig. 1.19: Thomas de Bry, “The arriual of the Englishemen in Virginia” in Hariot, A briefe and true Report, BL,
Sloane MS 1622.

The French and Dutch also began using maps for promotional purposes after 1600 as
rising European demand for felt tipped hats lined with the pelts from beavers, which were
abundant in northeastern America but rapidly declining in Eurasia, created an impetus for
European colonization schemes in northeastern America. During first decade of the seventeenth
century, French merchants sailed to the Canadian Maritimes each summer to acquire pelts from
Native trading partners. Initially pelts resold in Europe for roughly two hundred times their
original cost but as more ships made the transatlantic voyage, discerning Natives raised their
prices. The French King Henry IV granted a trade monopoly to reduce this competition,
requiring the monopoly holder to establish a permanent settlement in Canada. The cartographer
Samuel de Champlain participated in these early seventeenth-century corporate expeditions,
54
producing maps meant to survey natural resources, facilitate subsequent navigation, locate ideal
sites for a French settlement, establish French territorial claims, and attract settlers along with
capital for the nascent French colony (Fig. 1.20). When initial attempts to establish a colony
along the Acadian coast failed, Champlain recommended building a post up the St. Lawrence
River. When English privateers temporarily conquered the French colony in 1629, Champlain
drafted a map showing French claims for the negotiations in London. This non-extant manuscript
map likely informed his 1632 engraved map (Fig. 1.21) appearing in his pamphlet Les voyages
de la Novvelle France, which hoped to attract people and capital to resettle Canada by portraying
a land teeming with trees, agriculture, botanical specimens, and animals with valuable pelts.
Dutch fur traders also began visiting northeastern in the wake the 1609 voyage of the navigator
Henry Hudson to the region, creating at least two manuscript maps of the region during the
1610s (Fig. 1.22). As had Champlain with his own maps, the Dutch map printer Willem
Janszoon Blaeu transformed these into promotional documents during the 1630s, inserting
images of beavers, deer, and other wildlife (Fig. 1.23). Both French and Dutch promotional maps
catalogued potential sources of colonial wealth—essentially serving as visual versions of the
textual lists favored by Hakluyt and other English colonization proponents.
36

36
Samuel de Champlain, Les voyages de la Novvelle France occidentale, dicte Canada (Paris: Clavde Collet, 1632);
J. F. Crean, “Hats and the Fur Trade” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue
Canadienne d’Economique et de Science Politique 28:3 (August, 1962): 373–86; W. J. Eccles, The Canadian
Frontier, 1534-1760 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), 12-34; Kees Zandvliet, “Mapping the Dutch
World Overseas in the Seventeenth Century” in HOC, III:1433-1462; Conrad E. Heidenreich, “The Mapping of
Samuel de Champlain, 1603–1635” in HOC, III:1538-1549; Raymonde Litalien, Denis Vaugeois, and Jean-François
Palomino, Mapping a Continent: Historical Atlas of North America, 1492-1814 (Québec: Les éditions du
Septentrion, 2007), 83-88; David Hackett Fischer, Champlain’s Dream (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008);
David Y. Allen, The Mapping of New York State: A Study in the History of Cartography (First Digital Edition.,
2011), 10-27; Elizabeth A. Sutton, Capitalism and Cartography in the Dutch Golden Age (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 2015), 100-128.
55

Fig 1.20: Samuel de Champlain, “CARTE GEOGRAPHIQVE DE LA NOVVELLE FRANSE” (1612).

Fig 1.21: Champlain, “Carte de la nouvelle france” in LES VOYAGES DE LA NOVVELLE FRANCE
OCCIDENTALE, DICTE CANADA, FAITS PAR LE SR DE CHAMPLAIN Xainctongeois, Capitaine pour le Roy en
la Marine du Ponant, & toutes les Descouuertes qu’il a faites en ce pais depuis l’an 1603 jusques en l’an 1629
(Paris: Claude Collet, 1632).

56

Detail 1.21.1:

Detail 1.21.2: Champlain depicted animals with valuable pelts such as stags in this detail.

57
Fig. 1.22: [Adrian Block?] “Kaart van Nieuw-Nederland” (1614), Nationaal Archief (The Hague, Netherlands),
Kaartcollectie Buitenland Leupe, 4.VEL.

Fig. 1.23: Willem Janszoon Blaeu, “Nova Belgica et Anglia Nova” (1635), Boston Public Library, Norman
Leventhal Map Center.

Detail 1.23.1: Blaeu populated the map with various kinds of lucrative fauna, such as beavers.

58

Detail 1.23.2: Lake Champlain, called “Lacus Irocoisicasis” here, (mis)placed near the New England coast.

European mapmakers in North America depended upon indigenous knowledge. We
might reasonably suppose, however, based on some notable errors in European maps—placing
Lake Champlain east of the Connecticut River close to the New England coast, for example
(Detail 1.23.2)—Native peoples were not always forthcoming with or understood by Europeans.
In some recorded cases, indigenous Northeasterners expressed active displeasure when such as
when the Jesuit Priest Isaac Jogues told an Iroquois audience in the Mohawk town Oneugiouré in
1646 that the French knew three ways to reach Iroquoia. Maps printed in Europe, meanwhile,
frequently papered over Native claims to the land. The English soldier and colonial promoter
John Smith, for example, employed English rather than Native place-names (although he had
collected them) in his 1616 map of New England to encourage English migrants. As the historian
of cartography J. B. Harley has written: “Naming a place anew is a widely documented act of
political possession in settlement history. Equally, the taking away of a name is an act of
dispossession.” Although Smith’s pamphlet of the same year counted converting “poore
Saluages to know Christ” among the reasons for plantation, his text devoted much more attention
59
to crafting fantasies of material prosperity aimed at men with “small meanes” and “only his merit
to aduance his fortune.” While Smith referred to places in this text by their indigenous name, a
slip inserted into the pamphlet between the time of its printing and sale, announced that King
James had ordered these to be renamed. The map itself did nothing to acknowledge native
presence in this landscape.
37

G. Political Cartography in Northeastern America
The European colonies in northeastern America began as corporate or proprietary
enterprises sanctioned but not funded by monarchs. By the 1650s, the French, Dutch, and
English had established trade outposts, fishing villages, and agricultural settlements along the
northeastern American coast and up the St. Lawrence and Hudson Rivers (as far as European
sail-powered vessels could travel). Prospective tax revenue encouraged French and English
monarchies to begin asserting control over the American colonies beginning in the 1660s.
Sometimes, crises prompted royal intervention. Warfare with the Iroquois, for example,
bankrupted the Compagnie de la Nouvelle France so that in May 1663 the French King Louis
XIV revoked the charter, proclaiming Canada a royal colony. In other cases, royals obtained
influence through conquest. James Stuart, the Duke of York and younger brother of the English
monarch Charles II, sent four warships to seize New Netherlands from the Dutch in 1664 and,
with his brother, used it as a base for undermining the autonomy of the neighboring New

37
John Smith, “NEW ENGLAND The most remarqueable parts thus named” (London: 1616/1617) published in
conjunction with A DESCRIPTION of New England: OR THE OBSERVATIONS, AND discoueries, of Captain Iohn
Smith (Admirall of that Country) in the North of America, in the year of our Lord 1614 (London: Humfrey Lownes
for Robert Clerke, 1616); Heidenreich, “The Mapping of Samuel de Champlain, 1603–1635” HOC, III:1538-1549
(particularly see the “Analysis of Champlain’s Sources for the Incomplete Map of 1616” on 1546); J. B. Harley,
“New England Cartography and the Native Americans” in Baker, Churchill, D’Abate, Jones, Konrad, and Prins,
eds., American Beginnings, 287-313, quote on 296; Alden T. Vaughan, “Sir Walter Ralegh’s Indian Interpreters,
1584-1618” WMQ (2002), 59:341–76; Walter W. Woodward, “Captain John Smith and the Campaign for New
England: A Study in Early Modern Identity and Promotion” NEQ (2008), 81:91–125; Matthew H. Edney, “The
Irony of Imperial Mapping” in James R. Akerman, ed., The Imperial Map, 11-46 and “A Cautionary Historiography
of John Smith’s New England;” Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 67-68.
60
England colonies. The law also proved a powerful tool for controlling the colonies. Sometimes
this involved creating new laws as when the English Parliament passed Navigation Acts in 1660,
1663, and 1673 that mandated the taxation of colonial commodities, which could now only be
imported into England. Other times, this meant looking towards existing laws such as when the
Lords of Trade and Plantation endorsed Edward Randolph’s travels to New England to help
gather information about the colonies. His reports helped royal officials in England revoke the
New England charters, though this process unfolded over the course of a decade.
38

Whereas European maps of northeastern America to this point had mostly served
promotional, navigational, or commercial purposes, they now began playing political roles in the
halls of state. This reflected the development of a much broader faith in maps as tools of state.
For the French, imperial reorganization of Canada in the 1660s coincided with the invigoration
of state cartography, owing to Finance Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert who upon his appointment
in 1661 implemented domestically a state culture of intelligence gathering that privileged maps
for reporting and integrating economic, legal, demographic, natural, ecclesiastical, and military
information. In 1663 Colbert requested that officials throughout France send “accurate and
detailed maps of each province and généralité” and employed the geographer Nicolas Sanson to
process the information. At the decade’s end, Colbert hired the Italian mathematician Jean-
Dominique Cassini to conduct a national survey of France. The English sovereign Charles II and
his successor James II, meanwhile, learned of continental cartographic practices while exiles
after the English Civil War. During this same period in the 1650s, the English state conducted an

38
Michael Garibaldi Hall, Edward Randolph and the American Colonies, 1676-1703 (New York: Norton, 1960);
Eccles, The Canadian Frontier; Stephen Saunders Webb, 1676: The End of American Independence (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1985); Richter, Before the Revolution; Steve Pincus, “Rethinking Mercantilism: Political
Economy, the British Empire, and the Atlantic World in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” WMQ (2012),
69:3–34.
61
ambitious survey of Ireland, meant to undermine Catholic and Native Irish land ownership while
encouraging Protestant English settlement.
39

English and French officials did not actively deploy mapmakers to northeastern America
during the 1660s and 1670s, however, contenting themselves with whatever happened to cross
their paths or was available locally. In some cases, they looked to nearby mapmakers and
printers. When Charles II reconstituted the Board of Trade in 1674, for example, committee
members found there was “a want of maps.” Accordingly two clerks, Robert Southwell and
William Blathwayt, began visiting map sellers and copyists along the Thames River while also
instructing governors to send maps of their colonies. Over the next decade, they assembled the
roughly fifty printed and manuscript maps that they had received into an atlas.
40

Usually colonists and governors wanted something in return when they presented maps to
royals, aristocrats, administrators, and other influential figures. Parsing exact motivations can be
difficult when contextual information is missing from the historical record—i.e. who
commissioned, drafted, presented, or received a given map—but we can generally say that the
people who produced or gifted maps hoped they would serve a mixture of patronage and

39
Eileen Cassavetti, The Lion and the Lilies: The Stuarts and France (London: Macdonald and Jane’s, 1977); J. H.
Andrews, “Colonial Cartography in a European Setting: The Case of Tudor Ireland” in HOC, III:1670-1683;
Konvitz, Cartography in France, 1-8, quote on 2; John Miller, The Stuarts (London: Hambledon and London,
2004), 113-137; William James Smyth, Map-Making, Landscapes and Memory: A Geography of Colonial and Early
Modern Ireland, c. 1530-1750 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2006); Ted McCormick, William Petty and the
Ambitions of Political Arithmetic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 84-118; Steve Pincus, 1688: The First
Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Jacob Soll, The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste
Colbert’s Secret State Intelligence System (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 70-6, 99; Marcus
Gallo, “Imaginary Lines, Real Power: Surveyors and Land Speculation in the Mid-Atlantic Borderlands, 1681-
1800” Dissertation (University of California, Davis, 2012), 21-54; Brotton, A History of the World in 12 Maps, 294-
336.
40
Lords of Trade and Plantation Journal (11 July 1676), TNA, CO 391/1, pgs. 162-163; Jeannette Black, “The
Blathwayt Atlas: Maps Used by British Colonial Administrators in the Time of Charles II” Imago Mundi 22 (1968),
20–29, quote on 21 and ed., The Blathwayt Atlas; A Collection of 48 Manuscript and Printed Maps of the 17th
Century Relating to the British Overseas Empire in That Era, Brought Together About 1683 for the Use of the Lords
of Trade and Plantations 2 vols (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1970); Alistair Simon Maeer, “The
Cartography of Commerce: The Thames School of Nautical Cartography and England’s Seventeenth Century
Overseas Expansion” Dissertation (The University of Texas at Arlington, 2006).
62
evidentiary functions. It is necessary here to clarify the difference between intention and style:
The maps we might classify as patronage objects might have also served evidentiary purposes
and vice versa. A map with elaborate decorative elements and a dedication, for example, might
have been intended to show something about the landscape represented or the expertise of the
mapmaker. One mapmaker who signed as “I. S.”—perhaps the royal geographer John Scott or
London map seller John Seller—drafted a colorful, ornate 2’4”x1’6” map on vellum of
“Pascat[a]way River in New England” (Fig. 1.24) that included a doting acrostic poem spelling
out “IAMES DVKE OF YORK” and proclaiming “the Loyaltie/Your meanest Servant [i.e. the
mapmaker] offers to your Eye.” But patronage was not the only objective of I. S.. His poem
revealed that he wanted to “Declare (by Mapp) how Englands strength doth lye/Vnscene in
Rivers of the New Plantations.” To evidence the extent of Anglo-settlement, I. S. depicted more
than two hundred buildings lining the river and coastline and included a key describing fifteen
mills and two fortifications. Without knowing the identity of the mapmaker, it is impossible to
know his precise agenda though it probably related to the proprietary claims of Robert Mason
over New Hampshire. In 1678 the Massachusetts agents William Stoughton and Peter Blukeley
had a 1665 map copied for the Lords of Trade and Plantation, which illustrated a generous
northern boundary for the colony (Fig. 1.25). The following year, sensing an opportunity to
diminish the power of the Massachusetts Bay, the New York governor Edmund Andros sent
William Blathwayt a “Draught of a New Goverm[e]nt for the Province of New Hampshire
claimed by Mr. Mason wherein the Jurisdiction of the massachusetts is somewhat lessened.”
(Fig. 1.26)
41

41
Edmund Andros to William Blathwayt (15 July 1679), Colonial Williamsburg (Williamsburg, VA), Blathwayt
Papers, Vol. 3, Folder 1; Hall, Edward Randolph and the American Colonies; Black, ed., The Blathwayt Atlas;
Edney and Cimburek, “Telling the Traumatic Truth.’”
63

Fig. 1.24: I. S. “PASCAT[A]WAY RIVER in NEW ENGLAND” (1670-1680?), British Library, Kings
Topographical Collection, 120:27.

Detail 1.24.1:

64

Detail 1.24.2

Fig. 1.25: “[New England, showing Massachusetts boundaries]” (1678), John Carter Brown Library, Cabinet
Blathwayt, 8.

Detail 1.25.1

65

Fig. 1.26: “The Province of Mayne” (1678?), British Library, Additional Manuscript 13970A.

Detail 1.26: Detail of a “Lessened” Massachusetts

As patronage objects, maps and landscape views frequently accompanied colonial
transfers of power. One mapmaker, for example, drafted a well-decorated, gold-leafed copy of a
1661 Dutch map of Manhattan, which was presented to the Duke of York in 1664 to after the
66
conquest of New Netherlands (Fig. 1.27). Similarly, soon after Louis XIV declared Canada a
royal colony, the Canadian military engineer Jean Bourdon who was visiting France furnished
the King with a view of Quebec and environs (Fig. 1.28) that straddled the genres of map and
landscape painting. Bourdon rendered his view from a hill on the opposite side of the river,
foregrounding bushes and an empty cartouche and relegating rolling blue hills into the far
background. Beyond Quebec City, he depicted a smattering of houses and farms set within an
indistinct natural topography. The title and a royal emblem floated in the sky, pointedly evoking
a landscape now under the authority of the French King. Not by coincidence, Bourdon returned
to New France with an appointment as Procureur. When the governor Augustin de Saffray,
Chevalier de Mézy tried to deprive him of this office the following year, Bourdon again travelled
to France, providing another map. The King recalled Mézy, reinstated Bourdon, and dispatched
royal soldiers to fight the Iroquois who eventually agreed to peace in 1667.
42

42
Bourdon, “Le Véritable plan de Québec fait en 1663” (1663), BNF, SH18, PF127, DIV7, P3 and “Véritable plan
de Québec comme il est en l'an 1664 et les fortifications que lon y puis faire” (1664), ANOM, DFC, 342B; Burke-
Gaffney, “Canada’s First Engineer,” 91, 93; Jean Hamelin, “Bourdon, Jean” in DCB.
67

Fig. 1.27: “A Description of the Towne of Mannados or New Amsterdam” (1664), BL, K.Top, 121:35

Detail 1.27.1: Map title, with decorative elements and gold leafing.

68

Detail 1.27.2: The mapmaker distributed English flags throughout his map to emphasize English possession.

Fig. 1.28: Bourdon, “Le Véritable plan de Québec fait en 1663” (1663), BNF, Service hydrographique de la Marine
(SH) 18 Portefeuille (PF) 127, DIV7, P3.

Detail 1.28.1: In emphasizing this royal insignia with bold coloring, Bourdon suggested a landscape under the
authority of King Louis XIV.

Many other Canadians followed the example of Bourdon, who demonstrated that maps
could help secure royal goodwill and patronage. The intendant Jean Talon, for example, sent
maps of Quebec and Pentagoet (present-day Castine, Maine) in 1670 to illustrate the endpoints
69
of a proposed pathway, which would facilitate overland communication and trade between
Canada and Acadia during the colder months when the St. Lawrence froze.
43
Other maps
anticipated requests for economic privileges in these new territories. Louis de Baude de
Frontenac et Palluau (henceforth “Frontenac”), the Canadian governor between 1672 and 82,
forwarded to Colbert a “Map of the discoveries” of the merchant Louis Jolliet, including what we
today call the Mississippi River. Jolliet would later ask the minister to start a settlement with
exclusive trade rights there. To pique Colbert’s interest, Jolliet named the river after the minister
and claimed that one could reach “the Gulf of California” in “only twenty day by land” from one
of the western branches. The Intendant Jacques Duchesneau, who quarreled with Frontenac
enough to merit a scolding from Colbert, had the cartographer John-Baptiste Louis Franquelin
draft two maps of North America, one explicitly based on Jolliet’s expedition. Dedicated to
Colbert, this 1679 map served as Duchesneau’s apology, proclaiming him to be Colbert’s “very
humble, very obedient, and very faithful servant.”
44

43
[Anonymous] “Plan du fort de Pentagouet” (1670), ANOM, DFC, 36C; [Anonymous], “La Ville haute et basse de
Quebek en la Nouvelle France” (1670), ANOM, DFC, 343A; Jean Talon, “Addition au présent mémoire” (10 Nov
1670), ANOM, FM, C11A, 3:98-111; André Vachon, “Talon, Jean” in DCB.
44
Frontenac to [Colbert], (12 Nov 1674) ANOM, FM COL C11A 4/fol.61-84v; [Louis Jolliet?], “Carte de la
descouverte du Sr. Jolliet ou l'on voit la communication du Fleuue St Laurens avec les Lacs Frontenac, Erié, Lac des
Hurons et Ilinois...” (c.1674), BHCM, Le Recueil 67 nº 39 and another copy, Le Receuil 67 nº52; Franquelin, “Carte
pour servir à l'éclaircissement du papier terrier de la Nouvelle-France” (c.1678), BNF, CPL, SH, ARCH-23 (B);
Colbert to Ducheasneau (1678) ANOM, FM, C11A, 4:189-193; Ducheasneau to Colbert, (1 Oct 1679), ANOM, FM,
C11A, 5:21-30; Franquelin, “Carte G[e]ne[ra]le de la [Nouvelle] France Septentrionalle contenant la découverte du
pays de Ilinois Faite par le sieur Jolliet” ([1679]), BHCM, Le Recueil 66 nº 19; The Jesuits had gathered geographic
knowledge in the course of converting Natives while the colony operated under a corporate charter but their
activities greatly expanded after 1666. Early letters suggest that Jesuits drafted maps prior to 1660 but none of these
maps survive. Parisian map printers like Nicolas Sanson may have begun incorporating Jesuit textual accounts (i.e.
from Relations des Jésuites de la Nouvelle-France) into their maps of North America as early as 1650. See, for
example, Sanson’s “Amerique Septentrionale” (Paris: 1650); Nellis M. Crouse, “Contributions of the Canadian
Jesuits to the Geographical Knowledge of new France, 1632-1675” Dissertation, Cornell University (June, 1924);
W. J. Eccles, Canada under Louis XIV, 1663-1701, 59-76; Alaric Faulkner and Gretchen Fearon Faulkner, The
French at Pentagoet, 1635-1674: An Archaeological Portrait of the Acadian Frontier (Augusta, ME: Maine
Historic Preservation Commission, 1987), 23-29.
70
H. War and Cartography in Northeastern America
The fur trade cemented alliances between particular European and Native groups while
introducing deadlier weapons such as guns and metal-tipped arrows to Native peoples. Access to
European goods encouraged Native competition for hunting grounds to trap beavers and lands
proximate to European traders. Afro-Eurasian animals disrupted American ecologies and
imperiled native food security while Afro-Eurasian diseases also contributed to a demographic
collapse in Indian country. This in turn stimulated mourning wars in which tribes sought captives
to replenish flailing numbers. Wars waged with lethal weapons over food, land, pelts, and
captives fractured Native communities, scattered Native refugees across the region, and
increased the land available to European agriculturalists.
45

Europeans mostly watched this intensification of Native warring from the sidelines.
Conflicts in which they fought more directly (either against Natives or other Europeans) usually
ended quickly, produced few European casualties, and transpired across a limited geography.
The greatest exception pitted the Iroquois League against the French between 1608 and 1666
throughout the Great Lakes and St Lawrence River Valley. Yet for the sizeable chronological
and geographical scope, the Iroquois League only claimed 150 French lives—less than three
annually. Instead the Iroquois League targeted French-allied Indians. As historian Daniel Richter
has explained it, “the [French] toll was no higher because there was little incentive to eliminate
the French outposts that acted as a magnet for the Native trappers that Iroquois warriors

45
Daniel Richter, “War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience” in William and Mary Quarterly 40:4 (October 1983),
528–559; Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-
1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Virginia DeJohn Anderson, “King Philip’s Herds: Indians,
Colonists, and the Problem of Livestock in Early New England” William and Mary Quarterly 51, no. 4 (October
1994): 601–624 and Creatures of Empire; ; Ian K. Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1994); David S. Jones, “Virgin Soils Revisited” WMQ (2003), 60:703–742; Oliver A. Rink,
“Seafarers and Businessmen: The Growth of Dutch Commerce in the Lower Hudson River Valley” in Roger G.
Panetta, ed., Dutch New York: The Roots of Hudson Valley Culture (Yonkers: Hudson River Museum/Fordham
University Press, 2009), 7-34; Brett Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France
(Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute, 2012).
71
plundered and captured.” When Europeans in northeastern America waged war, they did so
brutally—a legacy of Europe’s grisly, extirpative religious wars (in which many English, Dutch,
and French colonists had fought). The English burned Native settlements and fields and killed
non-combatant women and children without hesitation. English-allied Narragansett and
Mohegan tribes could not comprehend the wanton disregard for life, for example, during the
English attack on the Pequot fort at Mystic River in 1636. English colonial promoters, however,
tempered the gruesomeness of their attacks with an orderly, geometrical, and perspectival visual
language (fig. 1.29 and 1.30).
46

Fig. 1.29: “The figure of the Indian Fort or Palizado in NEW ENGLAND And the maner of the destroying It by
Captayne Vnderhill And Captayne Mason” from John Underhill, Nevves from America; or, A New and
Experimentall Discoverie of New England: Containing, a True Relation of their War-like Proceedings these two
yeares last past, with a figure of the Indian fort, or Palizado (London: I. D[awson] for Peter Cole, 1638), John

46
Steele, Warpaths; Alfred A. Cave, The Pequot War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996); Ronald
Asch, The Thirty Years War: The Holy Roman Empire and Europe, 1618-48 (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1997);
Armstrong Starkey, European and Native American Warfare, 1675-1815 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1998); Patrick M. Malone, The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics Among the New England Indians
(Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 2000); Guy Chet, Conquering the American Wilderness: The Triumph of European
Warfare in the Colonial Northeast (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003); Fred Anderson and Andrew
Cayton, The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000 (New York: Viking, 2005); John
Grenier, The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607-1814 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005); Richter, Before the Revolution, quote on 149.
72
Carter Brown Library, Providence, RI. This diagrammatic map tempers the gruesomeness of the attack on the
Pequot fort at Mystic River with an orderly, geometrical visual language.

Fig. 1.30: “A Mapp of New ENGLAND” in John Seller, Atlas Maritimus or the Sea Atlas
(London: [1675-6]), Harvard University Map Collection, 009517431.

Detail 1.30.1: Seller tucked away by the upper reaches of the Connecticut River, a representation of warfare between
English and Native soldiers. He employed perspective here so that the Indian combatants appear to dissolve into the
landscape.

By the 1670s, Native cooperation with or acceptance of Europeans was smoldering into
resentment in many quarters. In Iroquoia many grew disenchanted with the French peace terms,
especially the one permitting Jesuits into their villages. Conversions were splintering the League
into Francophile, Anglophile, and neutral factions in ways that cut across traditional Iroquoian
73
political structures and impeded the established flow of authority within lineages and clans.
When disputes became unmanageable, Francophiles settled new communities in the shadow of
Montréal and Quebec while Anglophiles expelled the Jesuits, strengthened their ties to Albany,
and (much to the displeasure of French officials) renewed their assaults on western Indians.
Meanwhile, as New Englanders employed forceful tactics to acquire land, they aggrieved
neighboring Narraganset Nashaway, Nipmuck, Podunk, and Wampanoag peoples. In 1675 John
Sassamon, a Christian Indian, was killed under mysterious circumstances after warning the
Plymouth governor of a Native conspiracy to retake land. When English executed three
Wampanoag deemed responsible, other Wampanoags retaliated by attacking a Plymouth town.
War erupted. Over the following year, the Indian forces aligned against New England damaged
and destroyed dozens of English villages, claiming hundreds of English lives. The English, who
outnumbered natives in the region by a factor of about eight, exacted gruesome revenge. Native
casualties numbered in the thousands. Edmund Andros, having just strengthened New York’s
alliance with the Iroquois League, encouraged the Mohawk to intervene on behalf of the New
Englanders, effectively ending the war in southern New England. The war in northern New
England continued for, at the onset, the English had alienated the neutral Wabanaki of southern
Maine by demanding they surrender the gunpowder weapons they had come to depend upon for
hunting. The New Englanders could not subdue the Wabanaki and in 1678, after Andros
intervened a second time, signed a treaty theoretically reverting to the antebellum status quo. In
practice, when the English reoccupied Maine, however, they violated most of the peace terms.
The Wabanaki increasingly built ties with French merchants and missionaries, setting aside their
own internecine conflicts to collectively focus on the threat they believed the English posed.
Many left Maine and resettled near Quebec City.
47

47
Armstrong. European and Native American Warfare; Malone, The Skulking Way of War; Chet, Conquering the
74
For their strategies of shock and awe, Europeans were not initially well equipped to wage
war in northeastern America. The tactics developed in the open spaces of European battlefields
involved rows of soldiers simultaneously firing volleys of shots, precisely loading and handling
their matchlock rifles but paying little attention to directional accuracy. Forested theaters of war
provided too much cover for such maneuvers to work. Native soldiers who valued stealth,
surprise, mobility, accuracy, and individuality trounced European foes in battle. Europeans
adjusted—first French coureurs de bois during the 1660s and New Englander militiamen during
Metacom’s War—learning new ways of war making from their Native allies, especially how to
travel through unfamiliar wooded landscapes. They adopted Native provisioning methods and
technologies of movement like snow shoes and canoes while becoming slightly more familiar
with Indian Country. Yet this geographical knowledge rarely translated easily or perfectly into
cartographic formats. Map printers in Europe relied on old maps and had difficulty placing the
textual geographic accounts within graphic representations. The London map printer John Seller,
for example, produced a map of New England in 1675 or 1676 working from at least three
sources: One edition of a map, printed either by John Ogilby in London or Nicholaes Visscher in
Amsterdam, that traced its lineage back to the 1614 “Kaart van Nieuw-Nederland” (Fig. 1.22); a
1665 survey of the Massachusetts boundary by William Reeds, of which only a manuscript copy
exists (Fig. 1.25); and Nathaniel Saltonstall’s Present State of New-England with Respect to the
Indian War (1675) from which Seller derived nearly eighty toponyms. Seller’s map included
bewildering mistakes such as placing “Mohawks Country” to the east of the Connecticut River.
48

American Wilderness; Grenier, The First Way of War; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 117; Steele, Warpaths; Jill
Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Vintage Books,
1999); Anderson and Cayton, The Dominion of War.
48
“Novi Belgii Novaque Angliae” in Atlas Minor Sive Geographia Compendiosa Qua Orbis Terrarum (Amsterdam:
Nicholaes Visscher, c.1656); NOVI BELGII Quod nunc NOVI JORCK vocatur, NOVÆ ANGLIÆ & Partis
Virginiæ Accuratissima et Novissima Delineato” in John Ogilby, America Being the Latest and Most Accurate
Description (London: John Ogilby, 1671); Starkey, European and Native American Warfare; Malone, The Skulking
75

Detail 1.30.2: Seller misplaced “Mowhawks Country” to the east of the Connecticut River.

By 1680 tensions ran high in northeastern America. Rivalries within peoples and polities
destabilized the region as much as rivalries between them. The English colonies competed with
each other as theocrats and delegates of royal authority in New England disputed the source of
political authority. The French, English, Dutch, Wabanaki, and Iroquois were becoming
increasingly interlinked so that small conflicts could quickly reverberate throughout the region.
Demographic pressures, ecological transformation, and disease continued to create conditions of
scarcity, providing tinder to a volatile region. English and French competition over the fur trade
began manifesting itself violently in the Pays d’en Haut as Iroquois League and French-allied
Algonquian peoples began warring. One early hint of this conflict came in a 1683 letter from the
Canadian Governor Joseph Antoine le Febvre de la Barre to the Minister of the Marine Jean-
Baptiste Antoine Colbert, Marquis de Seignelay, laying out how this warfare was imperiling
French access to beaver pelts, the central staple of the Canadian economy. The Governor (and

Way of War; Chet, Conquering the American Wilderness; Matthew Edney and Susan Cimburek, “Telling the
Traumatic Truth;” Grenier, The First Way of War. The English adapted only snowshoes in the early eighteenth
century. See Thomas Wickman, “‘Winters Embittered with Hardships’: Severe Cold, Wabanaki Power, and English
Adjustments, 1690–1710” WMQ (2015), 72:57–98.
76
many other French colonists) believed the Iroquois, acting under English influence, would soon
begin targeting the French too. To explain the situation, la Barre sent a “map that I have had
made for you of the country [that] will give you a perfect knowledge of all things and the means
of interesting his Majesty.” La Barre’s rhetoric suggested that he intended the (non-extant) map
as an evidentiary document that would provide an exact, compelling, and self-explanatory
representation of the landscape. But as he framed his presentation of the map, la Barre also used
it to demonstrate his own ability to direct cartographic labor (the “map that I have had made”)
and also to secure royal patronage for the mapmaker, a “boy . . . named [John-Baptiste Louis]
franquelin, as clever with his hands as any they have in France, but he is extremely poor and . . .
needs a little aid from his Majesty as an engineer.” Colonists and provincial officials would
continue using maps to make arguments about warfare—but that was not the only reason for
sending them.
49

49
La Barre to Seignelay (4 November 1683), ANOM, FM, C11A, 6:134-144, quote on 138.
72
2. Misdirection: Iroquoia, 1683
This chapter closely reads a cartographic exchange that occurred in Albany, New York in 1683 to unpack
some of the early on-the-ground consequences of creeping metropolitan interventions. It shows how requests for
maps by metropolitan officials in Europe empowered geographic mediators in America as local agendas shaped the
production of colonial knowledge. Finally, it illustrates how boundary making between colonies (New York and
Pennsylvania) and peoples (the English and the Iroquois) occurred within empires as much as between them.

A. The Limits of Knowledge and Cartographic Recycling
Through narrow basins like streams and rivers, water flows quickly. In wide basins,
namely lakes and ponds, its hurried movement halts almost completely. Measured against the
timeframe of a human life, these terrestrial bodies of water seem permanent and unchanging.
Compared with other geological formations, however, they evolve constantly. For flowing rivers,
streams, and creeks this owes greatly to the potency of water, which, through its chemical
properties and constant movement, can erode the rock with which it comes in contact. First,
water transforms the minerals found in rocks into compounds that decay those same rocks. When
water freezes, its molecules arrange themselves into a crystalline structure so that unlike most
substances it expands as it transitions from liquid to solid state. Lodged in cracks and crevices,
water can fracture the sturdiest of solid matter as it transforms into ice. As it flows through rivers
and streams, water accumulates soil, rocks, and other debris that in turn pare down the land
against which it passes. The flow of water over time changes the shape of a basin from a “V” to a
wide “U”—the ideal shape for sail-powered vessels—by first cutting downwards and then
outwards. As it passes over different rock formations of varying resistance, water will eat away
the softer rock at a faster pace until its course changes or a waterfall emerges.
1

Creeks, streams, springs, and rivers appear in any land where the excess precipitation
exists to feed them. Natural lakes and ponds, in contrast, are rare and ephemeral phenomenon. If

1
Farb, Face of North America; Robert G. Wetzel, Limnology, Third Edition (San Diego: Academic Press, 2001);
Wohl, Disconnected Rivers; Woodward, The Ice Age.
73
lakes and ponds do not receive an equal or greater amount of water than they lose, then their
basins will empty. Even with adequate inflow of water, they are nevertheless fated to die.
Aquatic plants continually elevate the bottom of the basin while plants encircling the water
change the soil, increasing the basin’s rate of water seepage. Biomatter fills the depression until
lake or pond becomes bog. Northeastern America today boasts an unusually high concentration
of lakes and ponds, owing to the Quaternary ice sheets. Ice filled and depressed the tectonic
seams, stretching them into the wide basins of present-day Lakes Superior, Ontario, Erie,
Champlain, and George. Glaciers also carved out new basins by scouring fractured rock
formations. Smaller lakes, such as the Finger Lakes of present-day upstate New York, emerged
when glacial deposits dammed melt water within narrow stream basins, which widened and
deepened those basins. Small but deep kettle lakes formed as glaciers drifted over large blocks of
ice shed by other glaciers and then submerged them in the Earth. Each round of glaciation
exaggerated the area and depth of these basins.
2

Europeans encountered great difficulties accessing this extensive network of waterways.
Their large sail-based vessels could navigate along coastlines and into deep rivers but not beyond
waterfalls, rapids, or shallows. Throughout most of the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries,
European knowledge of the continental interior remained limited and uneven—informed and
misinformed by the people who already knew how to navigate this landscape. So acknowledged
Augustine Herrman, a navigationally-oriented Dutch mapmaker who also owned a plantation in
Maryland, in describing the Susquehanna River as “not Navigable but with great danger with
Indian Canoos by Indian Pilots.” Accordingly the exacting Herrman only depicted the river’s
mouth in his map of the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays. The roughly three hundred engraved

2
Van de Water, Lake Champlain and Lake George; von Engeln, The Finger Lakes Region; Farb, Face of North
America; Government of Canada and United States Environmental Protection Agency, The Great Lakes; Bellico,
Sails and Steam in the Mountains; Wetzel, Limnology; Wohl, Disconnected Rivers; Grady, The Great Lakes.
74
prints of this map exerted an outsize influence within English cosmopolitan circles. The London
map printers John Thornton and Robert Greene, for example, offered a less detailed but
nevertheless similar map for sale a few years later (c.1678/9). They extended the northerly and
easterly frame of the map and, in so doing, extended the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers. In
guessing at the courses of both rivers, they suggested the proximity of their tributaries to each
other.
3

Fig. 2.1: Augustin Herrman, “Virginia and Maryland As it is Planted and Inhabited this present year 1670 Surveyed
and Exactly Drawne by the Only Labour & Endeavour of Augustin Herrman” (London: W. Faithorne, 1673),
Library of Congress, G3880 1670 .H4.

3
Koot, “The Merchant, the Map, and Empire.”
75

Detail 2.1.1: Herrman’s depiction of the “Sassquahana River” and his note about the difficulty of navigating it.

76

Fig. 2.2: John Thornton and Robert Greene, “A Mapp of VIRGINIA[,] MARY=LAND, NEW=JARSEY,
NEW=YORK, & NEW ENGLAND” (London: c.1678/9), JCBL, Cabinet Blathwayt 10.

77

Detail 2.2.1: Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers. Thornton and Greene emphasize the proximity of the tributaries of
these rivers, though it seems this was fanciful guesswork.

This cartographic detail seems to have encouraged the English proprietor William Penn
to believe that it would be easy to travel by water between cities on the Delaware and
Susquehanna Rivers. Roughly a decade later, Penn would call attention to this belief in a
broadside stating that it would be easy to travel from Philadelphia to a proposed second
settlement “by the benefit of the River Scoalkill [Schuylkill], for a Branch of that River lies near
a Branch that runs into Susquehannagh River.” We can reasonably suppose the idea had taken
78
hold before Penn travelled to America because in 1681 he had repurposed the Thornton-Greene
map to promote his newly granted Pennsylvania colony (Fig. 2.3). Although he altered much
about their map, he retained the intermingling river tributaries. He also acknowledged
Hermann’s note, crowding the Susquehanna River with x’s and o’s to indicate the difficulty of
navigation. The most noticeable alteration from the earlier maps was the terrestrial focus of
Penn’s map, which depicted almost no ocean. The Susquehanna River lay at the center while the
Delaware occupied the easterly fringes of the map. Otherwise land, filled with hills and an
annotated sampling of well-spaced trees of ten different species meant to evoke the “sylvan”
quality referenced in the colony’s name, dominated the space of the map. Penn had it printed to
attract settlers, explaining both the graphic emphasis on land and the description in the text
below of its widespread availability at low cost.
4

4
Gary B. Nash, “The Quest for the Susquehanna Valley: New York, Pennsylvania, and the Seventeenth-Century
Fur Trade” New York History 48, no. 1 (January 1, 1967), 3–27; Peter C. Mancall, Valley of Opportunity: Economic
Culture Along the Upper Susquehanna, 1700-1800 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 49-50.
79

Fig. 2.3: “A Map of Some of the South and eastbounds of Pennsylvania” (London: John Thornton and John Seller,
[1681]), JCBL, Cabinet Blathwayt 15

Detail 2.3.1: The Difficulty of Navigating the Susquehanna River
80

Text below the 1681 map explained one rationale for its publication: “To correct the
Errors of those Maps that have taken in any part of this Country for finding each Map at
difference with itself, the scale with the Latitude, and one Map with another, it was thought
necessary to rectifie those mistakes, by a more exact Map, which hath been performed with as
much Truth, Care and Skill, as at present can be, leaving room for time, and better Experience to
correct, and compleat it.” In denigrating these earlier maps, Penn hoped to authoritatively
establish the details upon which his grant rested such as the location of latitude and longitude.
The colony’s boundaries were not explicitly drawn but rather the text below encouraged the
reader to project them onto the graphic space above: “The King has been favourably pleased to
Grant to William Penn . . . all that Tract of Land in America . . . bounded on the East by
Delaware River . . . to the three and fortieth degree of Northern Latitude, and extendeth
Westhward [sic] five degrees in Longitude.” For this rhetoric of exactitude—which may have
helped Penn’s election to the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge—Penn
had neither visited America nor sent a surveyor there at the time of the map’s publication.
5

B. Knowledge and Negotiation
Royal grants, colorful maps, and theoretical boundaries meant only so much, however,
without acquiescence or permission from existing inhabitants and neighbors. Upon arriving in
America in 1682, Penn began attempting to purchase lands from the Native occupants and
negotiate with the Maryland and New York governments establish the bounds of his colony in
practice—endeavors that met with mixed success. Seeking to involve his newly formed
Pennsylvania colony in the lucrative fur trade by establishing a trade outpost on the Susquehanna

5
Raymond Phineas Stearns, “Colonial Fellows of the Royal Society of London, 1661-1788” Osiris 8 (January 1,
1948), 73–121, see 86 for Penn; Marion Balderston, “The Mystery of William Penn, the Royal Society, and the First
Map of Pennsylvania” Quaker History 55, no. 2 (October 1, 1966), 79–87.

81
River, for example, Penn sent his agent William Paige to purchase large portions of the
Susquehanna Valley from the Iroquois League. Penn’s agent William Paige travelled to New
York City in summer 1683. First, he met with the recently arrived New York Governor Thomas
Dongan, requesting permission to treat with the Iroquois. At this point “there arose a strong
debate” over which colony would be obtaining the title to the river. Paige told Dongan that “the
Duke [of York] had already sold all his Interest [to Penn] of the Land I sought to buy” from the
Iroquois. This half-truth—for the on-the-ground locations of the fortieth and forty-third parallels
dictated in the Crown’s grant to Penn were still unknown—satisfied Dongan enough to let Paige
continue to Albany. He did not receive a warm welcome, however. The town’s merchants
wished to share neither their profits nor their diplomatic access to the Iroquois League, which
gave them political capital within the English imperial system. On September 3, the interpreter
Arnout Cornelisen Viele departed for Mohawk country to “desire the Indianes to come hither.”
Although a full gathering was not expected for weeks, Iroquois began trickling into Albany. Five
magistrates and town clerk, a Scottish immigrant named Robert Livingston, began collecting
information to undermine Penn’s agenda. Their first item of business involved determining “y
e

Situation of the Susquehannes River, and how near it Lyes to y
e
Severall nations off Indians
westerwards, that Live in his R: highnesse Territories, and from whence y
e
trade is brought to
these Parts.”
6

Four days after Viele departed, the Albany magistrates questioned “2 Cayauges called
aekentjaekon and kaejaegoohe and 1 susquehannes that Lives amongst ye onnondages,” asking
“about the situation of the Susquehanna river which Mr. Wm Haig and Mr James Graham,

6
See Paige to Penn (29 August 1683) and (4 Sept 1683) in PWP II:469-470, 479; Magistrates of Albany to Thomas
Dongan (24 Sept 1683) in Documentary History of the State of New York, I:395; John H. Kennedy, “Thomas
Dongan Governor of New York (1682-1688)” (Dissertation: Catholic University of America, 1930); Nash, “The
Quest for the Susquehanna Valley.”
82
agents of Governor Wm Penn, intend to purchase.” Given that these Iroquois were in Albany so
soon after Viele’s departure, we can reasonably surmise they were already in or en route to
Albany, probably to sell pelts. The magistrates ordered Livingston “to draw a draught of y
e

River, and how y
e
fores[ai]
d
five Nations of Indians Lie, as near as ye fores[ai]
d
Indians could
demonstrate.” The 1683 draught (Fig. 2.4) depicting travel times from the various Iroquois
settlements to the mouth of the Susquehanna River bears many stylistic similarities with a 1719
estate map (Fig. 2.5) in Livingston’s papers, which affirms that he was the one to actually
commit pen to paper. How exactly the Iroquois delegates “demonstrated” these geographic
relationships is unclear. Most likely, they employed physical gestures and traced ephemeral
diagrams, the techniques for communicating such information that early Europeans in
northeastern America had described in the course of their encounters with Amerindians.
Livingston kept one version of this draught—now held by the Gilder Lehrman Institute—and
sent the other to Thomas Dongan, the recently arrived governor of New York.
7

7
“Extraordinary session held in Albany” (7 Sept 1683) in CMARS, III:379-381; Lewis, “Maps, Mapmaking, and
Map Use by Native North Americans” in HOC, II:3, 51-182 and “Frontier Encounters in the Field: 1511-1925” in
Lewis, ed., Cartographic Encounters, 9-32.
83

Fig. 2.4: Robert Livingston with three Iroquois delegates, “[Settlements along the Susquehanna River],” (Albany,
NY: 1683), GLI, GLC, Livingston Papers, 01923.

84

Fig. 2.5: [Robert Livingston?], “[Livingston Manner?],” (8 Aug 1719), GLI, GLC, LP, 01088. Note the similarities
with Fig. 2.4—particularly the style of drawing waterways and the circles.

The geographical features of the map, namely settlements and waterways, encircled a
block of text that listed the travel times for each of the Iroquois nations to the Susquehanna River
via land routes and tributaries. This text also described the conversation between the Albany
magistrates and Iroquois delegates who indicated their enthusiasm for a new trading post along
the Susquehanna. First, “The Indians asked why so Exact an account of y
e
Susquehannes River
was demanded and whither any People would come and Live there.” The magistrates did not
answer this question, hoping to determine whether a Pennsylvanian trading post would threaten
their monopoly on the fur trade. They asked if such an arrangement “would be acceptable,” to
which the Iroquois responded affirmatively: The Susquehanna River was “nearer” than Albany
and “much Easier to transport themselves and Burthens by water, whereas they carry all to this
place upon the[i]r ba[c]ks.” The map visually confirmed this description, showing that only the
85
Mohawks and Oneidas had easy access to the Mohawk River, which flowed towards Albany. In
contrast, it appeared that four of the Iroquois nations could reach a tributary of the Susquehanna
within one and a half days. The Senecas would need to journey three days overland but this still
seemed an improvement, as they were the Iroquois nation most distant from Albany.
8

We should not automatically assume, however, that these three Iroquois delegates
provided a fully honest or accurate cartographic portrait of their homeland: After all, historians
of cartography have repeatedly illustrated that people across time and space have used maps to
deceive. The 1683 draught exaggerated the space between the Iroquois and New York
settlements while diminishing the length of the Susquehanna River—and this is true whether we
view space as a measure of either travel time or physical distance. Livingston did not record
travel times from the Iroquois settlements to Albany as he had done with the Susquehanna River.
The map omitted many waterways by which the western Iroquois nations could have travelled to
Albany while neglecting to mention that the upper Susquehanna River and its tributaries
frequently subsided into a non-navigable trickle at many points during the year.

Moreover, the
map omitted at least ten contemporary Iroquois settlements, which we know about from
archaeological evidence, including three in the Finger Lakes region and seven along the northern
banks of Lake Ontario—most of which would have had easier access to Albany than the
Susquehanna River. In sum, the 1683 draught gave the impression that most Iroquois nations
could more easily access the proposed Susquehanna River trading site than Albany—which was
not the case at all (Tables 1-3).
9

8
Robert Livingston with three Iroquois delegates, “[Settlements along the Susquehanna River],” (Albany, NY:
1683), GLI, LP, 01923.
9
Tanner, ed., Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, 29-35; Harley, “Silences and Secrecy;” Mancall, Valley of
Opportunity, 11-26; Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 127-179, 187.
86

Fig. 2.6: Iroquoia: Waterways and Settlements Depicted (Or Not) in the 1683 Livingston Papers Map. [x projection
to preserve accuracy of distances]. This map reveals how the 1683 “draught” omitted many waterways and
settlements in its depiction of Iroquois while also distorting distances. Travel to Albany from most of the Iroquois
settlements was quicker and involved less overland travel than the Iroquois delegates suggested.

Segment Nation Type
Distance
(Miles)
Travel Time
(Days)
Rate
(Miles/Day)
Mohawk to Lake Otswego Mohawk Overland 16 1 16
Lake Otswego to Susquehanna Castle Mohawk Canoe 373 10 37.3
Oneida to Unadilla R. Oneida Overland 23 1.5 15.3
Unadilla R. to Susquehanna R. Oneida Canoe 46 1 46
Susquehanna R. to Susquehanna Castle Oneida Canoe 325 7 46.4
Onondaga to Tioughnioga R. Onondaga Overland 12 0.5 24
Tioughnioga R. to Susquehanna R. Onondaga Canoe 60 1 60
Susquehanna R. to Susquehanna Castle Onondaga Canoe 269 6 44.8
Cayuga to Cayuga Cr.
Cayuga (Route
Given) Overland 38 1.5 25.3
Cayuga Cr. to Susquehanna R.
Cayuga (Route
Given) Canoe 26 1 26
Susquehanna R. to Susquehanna Castle
Cayuga (Route
Given) Canoe 231 5 46.2
Cayuga to Cayuga Lake
Cayuga (Route
Not Given) Canoe 30 (~.7) ?
Cayuga Creek to Cayuga Creek
Cayuga (Route
Not Given) Overland 16 (~.8) ?
Seneca to Chemung R. Seneca Overland 20 3 6.7
87
Chemung R. to Susquehanna R. Seneca Canoe 99 2 49.5
Susquehanna R. to Susquehanna Castle Seneca Canoe 226 5 45.2
Table 2.1: Travel Speed Based on Times Given in 1683 Map (Overland vs. Downstream Canoe)

Segment Nation Type
Distance
(Miles)
Assumed Rate
(Miles/Day)
Travel Time
(Days)
Mohawk to Schenectady Mohawk River 23
45
0.5
Schenectady to Albany Mohawk Overland 17
25
0.7
TOTAL:

1.2
Oneida to Mohawk R. Oneida Overland 18
25
0.7
Mohawk R. to Schenectady Oneida River 86
45
1.9
Schenectady to Albany Oneida Overland 17
25
0.7
TOTAL:

3.3
Onondaga to Mohawk R. Onondaga Overland 35
25
1.4
Mohawk R. to Schenectady Onondaga River 86
45
1.9
Schenectady to Albany Onondaga Overland 17
25
0.7
TOTAL:

4
Gayagaanh to Mohawk R. Cayuga Overland 68
25
2.7
Mohawk R. to Schenectady Cayuga River 86
45
1.9
Schenectady to Albany Cayuga Overland 17
25
0.7
TOTAL:

5.3
Gandougarae to Seneca R. Seneca Overland 25
25
1
Seneca R. to Seneca R. Seneca River 14
45
0.3
Seneca R. to Mohawk R. Seneca Overland 69
25
2.8
Mohawk R. to Schenectady Seneca River 86
45
1.9
Schenectady to Albany Seneca Overland 17
25
0.7
TOTAL:

6.7
Table 2.2: Projected Travel Times to Albany. In constructing paths of travel, I avoided canoe routes that relied on
lake or upstream river travel—for which the 1683 map offers no travel times. Probably if the Cayuga and Seneca
had taken such routes they would have been reach Albany a little quicker. I also set overland pathways through
terrain with minimal elevation change. While the rates of travel vary in Table 1, I set the rate of travel here at 25
miles/day overland and 45 miles/day for rivers flowing downstream—based on the numbers for the Onondaga and
Cayuga, given that the three delegates came from these villages.

For: To Susquehanna Castle To Albany
Mohawk 11 1.2
Oneida 9.5 3.3
Onondaga 7.5 4
Cayuga
7.5 (Route Given) or
6.5 (Route Not Given) 5.3
Seneca 10 6.7
Table 2.3: Comparison of Estimated Travel Times (Days)

88
While the map provided a vague sense of where some Iroquois settlements lay, it
provided no specifics on how to navigate to or within Iroquoia, depicting no pathways or
portages and omitting most lakes and waterways (Detail 2.4.1). In some cases, these omissions
were directly related to the geographic narrative about Iroquois trade to the Susquehanna River.
We know from archaeological evidence, for example, that the Cayuga settlement depicted in the
map rested along the upper eastern shore of Cayuga Lake. Cayuga traders could have easily
eliminated twenty-six miles of walking and reduced their overall journey time by a day if they
canoed on this lake. Yet the 1683 map makes no visual or textual reference to it. While
mentioning or depicting Lake Cayuga would have bolstered the delegate’s contention that it was
easy to reach the Susquehanna River, it would have provided the Albany magistrates with vital
details about their homeland. We must conclude that the Iroquois delegates wanted to guard their
geographic knowledge. We find evidence of this attitude elsewhere—such as when a Jesuit
missionary upset a group of Mohawks in 1646 by explaining that the French knew of three routes
into Iroquoia. In other words, the three Iroquois delegates in Albany did not fully trust their New
York trading partners.
10

10
Tanner, ed., Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, 29-35; Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, xiii-xiv, 67-68, 129,
281-287.
89

Detail 2.4.1: While the 1683 map depicted travel times between settlements and the Susquehanna tributes, it did not
provide any specific details that would have facilitated navigation to or within Iroquoia.

What might account for such omissions and distortions? Why would these delegates
suggest that a trading post along the Susquehanna River would be more convenient to reach than
Albany? Possibly these Iroquois trapped furs in the upper Susquehanna Valley so that bringing
their wares to Albany would have involved more land travel than their testimony suggested. This
would help explain the presence of the third delegate, likely an adopted captive or refugee, who
was described as a “susquehannes that Lives amongst ye onnondages.” That the Albany
magistrates did not record his name, as they had done with the Cayugas, hints at a status
imbalance between the delegates. His presence in this cartographic exchange, however, suggests
that he possessed or claimed to possess a level of knowledge about this territory that the two
Cayugas did not match. While they may have testified as to the travel times to reach tributaries,
this Susquehannock likely embellished the details along the main river such as the location of the
“Susquehannes Castle” and a “Riverfall,” likely the Conswego Falls. Presumably he was also the
one to declare all the land to be “good . . . on both sides of y
e
Susquehannes River above y
e
falls
90
and Easy to go w
t
Canoes.” (Detail 2.4.2) Why did this adoptee discuss the landscape in such
generous terms? Did he envision more than just Anglo-Iroquois trade outposts? Agricultural
settlements here would have allowed him to return to his homeland. Perhaps they would have
attracted other Susquehannocks who had been captured or scattered by the Iroquois League. If
also peopled by Cayugas and Onondagas, such a settlement would have given these nations
direct diplomatic and trade access to the English, elevating their status within the League. We
might be only able to guess at whether these three Iroquois delegates truly wanted to build
settlements proximate to Pennsylvania but the sentiment existed somewhere within the Iroquois
League: Four years later, Dongan was chastising Mohawk and Seneca leaders for giving “leave
[to other Iroquois] to live upon the Schoolkill [i.e. Schuylkill] and the Susquehanna” Rivers to
“bring Bever and peltry to Philadelphia.”
11

Detail 2.4.2: “all good Land on both sides of y
e
Susquehannes River above y
e
falls and Easy to go w
t
Canoes”

Geographic knowledge, the map suggests, did not always circulate perfectly throughout
Iroquois society. This becomes apparent in examining the discrepancies in the overland rate of

11
“Dongans Proposals” (25 April 1687) in LIR, 111-3. While Iroquois mourning war rituals may have helped
captives acculturate, they did not erase “first” lives. As Dan Richter has explained it, “despite their cultural
preparation for adoption, may captives resisted full assimilation, and few seem to have fully identified with their
captors.” In this light, the map reflected the same impulse by which Susquahannock adoptees had drawn the Iroquois
into campaigns in their old homelands where the adoptees sought “satisfaction against old . . . foes.” Adoptees
employed what they already knew to further their position within Iroquois society while maintaining existing
predispositions. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse, 71, 145.
91
travel for each Iroquois nation to the Susquehanna tributaries (Table 2.1) based on the travel
times provided by the map. The Cayuga and Onondaga both travelled at a rate of roughly
twenty-five miles each day—a pace matched by able-bodied hikers today—in contrast with the,
apparently, much slower Mohawk, Oneida, and Seneca. Nothing about the terrain of the
pathways, which all traversed mountains, explains this discrepancy. Perhaps these three
delegates simply lied. More likely, they knew their own travel times but guessed at the numbers
for the three other Iroquois nations. Mohawk, Oneida, and Seneca delegates might have provided
different answers or, if these peoples did not travel to the river often, might simply not have
known. In this scenario, we might consider geographical rhetoric circulating within Iroquoia. We
could imagine these three Iroquois delegates demonstrating a similar geographic narrative to
their compatriots as they had to the English, creating a sense of distance to Albany and
connection with Pennsylvania that had as much to do with psychology, cultural difference, and
politics as with actual travel time.
The map likely composed a broader Iroquois strategy to worry the Albany magistrates for
the purpose of acquiring leverage. The magistrates requested a map before they explained why
they wanted it yet the map text reveals that the Iroquois delegates had already teased out the
reason. People intelligent enough to so deftly parse motivations could have easily tailored a map
to exploit anxieties. What, exactly, did the Iroquois want? One prize was economic. If they could
convince the New Yorkers that it was easier to bring furs elsewhere, they might then obtain
better deals in Albany. Although trade does not show up explicitly as a topic of conversation
within the negotiation records, the English and Iroquois discussed it in more informal settings.
The Albany magistrates, for example, explained two weeks later that “If W
m
Penn buys said
River, it will tend to y
e
utter Ruine off y
e
Bev
r
Trade [i.e. in New York], as y
e
Indians themselfs
92
doe acknowlege.” The Iroquois understood the dynamics of intra-imperial economic competition
and did not hesitate to invoke their choices to their trading partners.
12

A second prize was political. When three Cayuga headmen later granted to Dongan what
Europeans would have described as suzerainty over the upper Susquehanna River, the Cayugas
explained they hoped the river “may be a branch of that great tree that grows here [i.e. in
Albany], Whose topp reaches to the Sunn, under whose branches we shall shelter our selves from
the French or any other people.” In implicating the Susquehanna River within the metaphorical
space of the “Tree of Peace,” the Cayuga speakers were enumerating protection from the French
as the price of their territorial gift. Why did they want such an alliance with the English? They
had been attacking French-allied Native trading partners in the Great Lakes region for reasons
the speakers hinted at in invoking the “Tree of Peace,” which carried more than just metaphorical
meaning. The Iroquois planted and inscribed trees to mark the boundaries of their territory, as
they conceived of it. In 1684 the Onondaga headmen Otreouti (called by the French “Grand
Grueule”) justified the assaults to the French governor by explaining that “the Illinese [i.e.
Illinois] and the Oumamis [i.e. Miami]” had “cut down the trees of Peace that serv’d for limits or
boundaries to our Frontiers.” Moreover, they “came to hunt Beavers upon our Lands; and
contrary to the custom of all the Savages, have carried off whole Stocks both Male and Female,”
upsetting the spiritual and natural ecology within the Iroquois landscape of peace. Otreouti’s
invocation of felled trees was perhaps not what Europeans would have described as a
cartographic document. Yet, as with the 1683 Livingston map, it shows that the Iroquois invoked

12
Magistrates of Albany to Thomas Dongan (24 Sept 1683), DHSNY, I:395.
93
their geographical knowledge in rhetorical ways to achieve their political goals in their
negotiations with Europeans.
13

C. New Roles for Maps in Transatlantic Political Networks
Why, exactly, did the Albany magistrates solicit a map from these three Iroquois
delegates? First, because the newly arrived governor of New York, Thomas Dongan had
requested “Informacon . . . concerning y
e
Situation of Susquehannes River, and how near it Lyes
to y
e
Severall nations off Indians westwards, that Live in his R[oyal]: highnesse[’s] Territories,
and from whence y
e
trade is brought to these Parts.” Dongan had not specifically requested in his
letter that this information be encoded within a cartographic format. Yet he probably signaled
elsewhere that he wanted a map because the New York proprietor, James Stuart, the Duke of
York, had instructed him “to send . . . true and exact Mapps of all my said Territoryes.”

Dongan
did not, however, quickly forward his copy of the map to the New York proprietor. Indeed, he
initially said nothing to his superior of the matter concerning Pennsylvania and the Susquehanna
River. The Duke of York only learned of Penn’s maneuvering a year later when he wrote to
Dongan inquiring about “some rumours . . . of yo
r
neighbors [who] und[e]
r
colour of grants from
my selfe . . . endeavour all they can to obstruct y
e
trade of New Yorke and Albany.”
14

The Albany magistrates might have also felt compelled to provide Dongan with both
textual and visual accounts of this geographic space because they figured that a list of travel
times was not an intuitive way to understand spatial relationships: That is, text alone would not

13
Lahontan, New Voyages to North-America, 42; “Proposition or Oration of the Onondagoes and Cayouges
Sachims” (2 August 1684), DHSNY, I:401-3; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 117; Dennis, Cultivating a
Landscape of Peace. On beavers and spiritual ecology in northeastern America see Calvin Martin, Keepers of the
Game: Indian-Animal Relationships and the Fur Trade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); Shepard
Krech, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York: Norton, 2000); Brooks, The Common Pot, 13-20.
Julianna Barr describes similar Amerindian strategies for occupying territory in the present-day US southwest in
“Geographies of Power.”
14
“Instructions to Governor Dongan” (Whitehall: 27 Jan 1683), TNA, CO 5/1112, pp. 41-45; Albany Magistrates to
Thomas Dongan (8 Sept 1683), CMARS, III:381; James Stuart to Thomas Dongan (26 Aug 1684), TNA, CO 5/1112,
p. 679.
94
convince Dongan that a Pennsylvanian trading post would siphon away Albany’s Iroquois
trading partners. Yet the Albany magistrates also understood that they would need to establish
the map’s relative accuracy for it to persuade Dongan, which required them to offer textual
explanation. The problem here was that Livingston and his compatriots did not possess the
requisite geographical knowledge base to verify the map: Few English or Dutch people had
travelled into Iroquoia during the seventeenth century—even fewer had journeyed beyond
Mohawk Country to see the Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, or Seneca settlements. In place of their
own observations, the Albany magistrates pointed to other Native accounts of the river: “Arnout
y
e
Interpreter says that he is also informed by diverse Indians, that ye Castles are situate as near
y
e
Susquehanne River as y
e
draught demonstrates, if not nearer; and in his Private discourse with
them, did Perceive there joy of People comeing to live there.” The efforts of the magistrates
succeeded. Dongan declared in a letter to them that “for good and weighty reasons” he thought it
“very Convenient and necessary to putt a Stopp to all proceedings in m
r
Penns Affaires with the
Indyans untill his bounds and limitts be adjusted.”
15

Cayuga headmen soon testified in Albany that they had already conveyed the
Susquehanna River to the previous New York governor Edmund Andros “four years ago . . . to
rule over it” but Dongan sensed that other Iroquois tribes did not agree on the matter. He
therefore instructed the Iroquois delegates “to make up the differences amongst themselves about
[the] Susquehanna River in a civil and peaceable way, that being don[e] to send word to the
Governo
r
” He quickly wrote to Penn, declaring that the Mohawks had “agreed to Give
Sesquehannah river to me and this Government; which I have under their hands to show for it.”

15
“Extraordinary Meeting holden in Albany” (7 Sept 1683), DHSNY, I:393-4; “Coppy of Col. Dongans letter to
Albany.—In W. Penn’s hand” (18 Sept 1683), PA, I:74-75, quote on 74; Nash, “The Quest for the Susquehanna
Valley;” Dean R. Snow, Charles T. Gehring, and William A. Starna, eds., In Mohawk Country: Early Narratives
About a Native People (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1996).
95
In a second letter, Dongan noted “the Sesquehannok River is given me by the Indians by a
second gift.”

News of the transaction travelled quickly through Iroquoia so that it had reached the
French by February. As the Jesuit priest Jean de Lamberville reported to the governor of New
France that the “English of Albany” had used “this Oreouahé . . . to prevent Sieur Penn
purchasing the land of the Andastogués, who were conquered by the Iroquois and the English of
Maryland.”
16

Dongan’s copy of the 1683 map may have remained in the colony but, if so, it seems to
have been quickly forgotten. In March 1687 Dongan sent a different manuscript map to the
Lords of Trade and Plantation so, in his words, they might “ see the severall governments &c:
how they ly, where the beaver hunting is, and where it will be necessary to erect our Country
forts for the securing of Beaver trade and keeping the Indyans in comunity with us.” The one
surviving copy of this 1686 map (Fig. 2.4) drafted by the surveyor Philip Wells in 1686
presented a very different assessment than the 1683 map of which Iroquois nations lay close to
the Susquehanna’s tributaries. In Wells’ rendering, the Mohawk, Oneida, and Onondaga
settlements rested much closer to the head of Delaware and Schuykill Rivers than the
Susquehanna tributaries (Detail 2.7.1). Did Wells simply not know about the earlier 1683 map?
The iconography of New York harbor and Long Island in his 1686 map (Detail 2.4.2) matched
the earlier work of surveyor Robert Ryder (Figs. 2.8 and 2.9), which strongly suggests that Wells
accessed to the colony’s cartographic stores to draft his map. It also seems unlikely that the
surveyor would simply ignore the earlier map unless he had access to other geographic accounts
of the region—but from where would such knowledge have come?

16
“Proposals Offered by the Cayuga and Onnondage Sachems to the Commissaries of Albany” (26 Sept 1683) in
DHSNY, I:396-397, quote on 397; “At a Council held at ffort james in New-York” (Oct 1683) in DHSNY, I:262-263,
quote on 263; Dongan to Penn (10 Oct 1683), PA, I: 76-7; (22 Oct 1683), PA, I: 76-7, and 80-1; Lamberville to de la
Barre (10 Feb 1684), DCHNY, IX:227.
96

Fig. 2.7: Philip Wells, “[Chart of American plantations in Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York]” (1686),
British Library, Additional Manuscripts 5414, Article 19.

Detail 2.7.1: Wells’ map does not replicate the 1683 map in depicting the relationship of the Iroquois to the
Susquehanna River. In this 1686 map, the Senecas, Cayugas, and Onondagas are the only nations near the
Susquehanna’s tributaries whereas in the 1683 map showed the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, and Cayugas as
close and the Senecas as distant. We can detect other discrepancies as well—such as two waterfalls along the
97
Susquehanna rather than just one along with the placement of the Susquehanna’s (renamed “Minquals” here) fort on
the other side of the river.

Detail 2.7.2: The similarity between the iconography of the New York harbor here and in Figs. 2.5 and 2.6, suggest
that Wells worked from the New York colony’s cartographic stores in drafting his 1686 map.

Fig. 2.8: Robartte Ryder, “Long Iland Siruaide” (c.1679?) John Carter Brown Library, Cabinet Blathwayt 14.

98

Fig. 2.9: Robert Ryder, “[Long Island, NY]” (1670), New York Historical Society, 2N X1.2.10.

Dongan suggested that knowledge had emanated from his policies as governor. He
explained that geographic knowledge had propelled French advantages in the beaver trade,
arguing that for the English to compete, they would need “to encourage young men to go a
beaver hunting as the french doo.” Dongan then boasted that, while before his appointment “no
man of our Government ever went beyond the Sinicas country,” he had sent English scouts to
accompany Iroquois trade missions with “the farr Indyans called the Ottowasse inhabiting about
three months journey to the west and W:N:W of Albany.” He sent the map to evidence the fruits
of his approach. Yet it was bad evidence: The expedition to which Dongan referred had not
actually returned to Albany when he wrote his letter (not that the Lords of Trade and Plantation
would know this). A likelier source of knowledge would have been French deserters and/or
Native go-betweens: Wells’ map described “The River O Hio” (which was actually the present-
day Mississippi River) as “The River Mounseir Lasall found out Run[n]ing in the Bay of
Maxico” and reflected contemporary French manuscript maps of the same region. Finally, we
might consider a more cynical interpretation of the map: Wells, acting under Dongan’s influence,
fudged the placement of the Iroquois settlements to minimize the appearance of intra-colonial
conflict between New York and Pennsylvania.
17

17
On the topic of French deserters, see the comments of a later French governor in 1687: “This profit attracts
[Native fur traders] towards the English, also, all our Bush rangers (Coureurs de bois) and French libertines who
99
While Wells’ map offered a different set of contentions than the 1683 map, the issue of
who possessed the Susquehanna River remained unresolved. Dongan recommended redrawing
Pennsylvania’s upper boundary from “41d and 40m in Delaware River to the Falls upon the
Susquehanna,” which Wells illustrated with a dotted line. This would have reduced the size of
Pennsylvania by more than half, eliminating almost all of Penn’s claims to the Susquehanna
River. Without this adjustment, the Susquehanna River lay almost entirely within Penn’s royal
grant—even Indian deed established New York suzerainty over this territory according to the
key, which stated that the Iroquois had given “their Land to the collony of New York in the Year
1654” and “Likewise . . . Granted the Suskahana River to the Falls.” Yet if Dongan wanted to
convey some urgency in regards to redrawing the Pennsylvania boundaries, he did not want to
suggest New York occupied a peripheral geographic status within the northeastern colonies.
Indeed his letter to James Stuart—now the King of England, James II—situated New York at the
center of many different geopolitical relationships, arguing it offered the best vantage point to
govern neighboring colonies, foil French interests, and maintain England’s relationship with the
Iroquois League. Probably Dongan ordered that Wells omit the geographic representations of the
1683 Livingston map because he felt this would have undermined his own leverage within the
English imperial system. James II may have believed that maps could fulfill evidentiary roles but
instructing governors to send “true and exact Mapps” did not mean they would indeed by “true
and exact.” Instead, the order invited a chain of deception and misdirection as a whole range of
individuals—in this case Iroquois fur traders, Albany merchants, political officials, and
surveyors—saw gain in misrepresenting colonial geography.
18

carry their peltries to them, deserting our Colony and establishing themselves in those of the English who take great
pains to attract them.” Memoir for the Marquis of Seignelay (Jan 1687) in DHSNY, I:228
18
Dongan to Commissioners of Albany (14 Sept 1683), PWP, II:487-8; Duke of York to Dongan (Windsor: 26 Aug
1684), TNA, CO 5/1112, p.48; Dongan to Lords of Trade and Plantation (March 1687), TNA, CO 1/61, No. 75.

100
3. Reassembling: New France, 1685-1688

In 1685 King Louis XIV and officials at Versailles renewed their interest in Canada when it became
apparent that warfare in the Great Lakes region was diminishing French access to the lucrative fur trade. They
appointed a cartographically sophisticated governor and sent two highly skilled mapmakers to prepare the colony for
war against the Iroquois. This would appear at first glance to be a repudiation of the passive model of cartographic
acquisition in which officials at Versailles were content with whatever maps happened to cross their desks but did
not directly fund or direct cartographic labor in Canada. However distance, erratic oversight, and a muddled
administrative hierarchy meant that maps continued to serve rhetorical and patronage functions within transatlantic
political networks for people along the imperial peripheries. Said differently, the French metropole did not simply
impose a mercantilist agenda. Rather, events and arguments emerging from the peripheries also helped to drive and
shape that agenda.

A. Mapping the St. Lawrence River

In the center of the North American continent, water gathers into streams and rivers that
drain into Lake Superior. Striding along cataracts from one Great Lake to the next, the water
eventually reaches an ancient geological depression. Here, where Canadian Shield pushes against
Appalachian rocks, sediment fills the valley between. Ice occupied the depression during the last
glacial period one hundred thousand years ago, smoothing the valley’s surface as it crept
downward then submerging the land as it melted. Tectonic uplift drained the valley, transforming
it from sea into river six thousand years ago years ago. So the water departs Lake Ontario,
joining one of North America’s largest rivers until it reaches the salty Atlantic. Relatives of the
Iroquois-speaking people who once lived along the river called it simply “the big waterway.” Its
European name does not reflect its geomorphology but rather the fact that in 1535 French
explorer Jacques Cartier arrived at the bay into which it drains on the feast day of a third century
martyr. Cartier observed that the mouth of what we now call the St. Lawrence River lay
“between high mountains of naked rock, without having thereon but little earth.” He added that,
“notwithstanding this[,] a great number of trees and of many sorts grow there.” Samuel

101
Champlain, when he visited in 1603, similarly found the land there “very high, barren, and
unproductive.”
1

The river proved tricky for European ships to navigate. Sailors contended with shoals,
heavy fogs, and unpredictable changing currents. Cartier described the tide as “very swift and
dangerous” for as it receded it revealed certain parts of the river to be surprisingly shallow,
“strewn with great rocks like tuns and pipes.” In other places, the river plunged so deep Cartier’s
crew “could not find the bottom” even “at a bow-shot from land.” After the French had
navigated it for decades, many still commented on the river’s challenges. Louis-Armand de Lom
d’Arce, the Baron of Lahontan, recalled first sailing into the river in 1683 as a seventeen year old
soldier; they passed through a channel “in which the Currents are apt to turn a Vessel on one
side,” then nearly “struck upon the Rocks” by an island of Coudres, and anchored against (the
aptly-named) Cape Tourmente, “a dangerous place to those who are unacquainted.” Arriving late
in the year meant Lahontan’s vessel contended with snow and “such floats of Ice” that they
almost turned back for France.
2

Perhaps Jacques-René de Brisay de Denonville, Marquis de Denonville also experienced
a rough passage as he first sailed up the river in summer 1685. Denonville, the recently
appointed governor of New France, lamented in his first letter to the minister in charge of
Canadian affairs, Jean-Baptiste Antoine Colbert, Marquis de Seignelay (hereafter “Seignelay”),

1
Samuel Champlain, “The Savages, or Voyage of Sieur de Champlain Made in the Year 1603” translated by
Charles Pomeroy Otis in Voyages of Samuel de Champlain (Boston: John Wilson and Son for Publications of the
Prince Society, 1880), 231-291, quote on 234; Samuel Edward Dawson, The Saint Lawrence, Its Basin & Border-
Lands: The Story of Their Discovery, Exploration, and Occupation (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company,
1905), xxiii-xl; James Phinney Baxter, ed., A Memoir of Jacques Cartier Sieur de Limoilou: His Voyages to the St.
Lawrence (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1906), 140; Blair A. Rudes, Tuscarora-English/English-Tuscarora
Dictionary (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Schwartz, The Mismapping of America, 173-214; Tim
McNeese, The St. Lawrence River (Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2005), 2-6; James H. Thorp, Gary A.
Lamberti, and Andrew F. Casper, “St. Lawrence River Basin” in Arthur C. Benke and Colbert E. Cushing, eds.,
Rivers of North America (Boston: Academic Press, 2005), 983-1030.
2
Lahontan, New Voyages to North-America, I:5-6; Cartier, A Memoir of Jacques Cartier, 141; James Stewart
Pritchard, “French Developments in Hydrography with Particular Reference to the St. Lawrence River During the
Reign of Louis XIV, 1665–1709” M.A. Thesis (The University of Western Ontario, 1965), 69-70.

102
that the “maps from Holland, which our navigators use . . . are worth nothing.” This often had
fatal consequences: In just the two years between the arrivals of Lahontan and Denonville, six
French pilots had died navigating the river. Denonville remedied the problem by engaging a
diverse group of men to map the river. Here he drew from abundant provincial and metropolitan
talent resident in the colony. One pair of men, Louis Jolliet and Jean-Baptiste Louis Franquelin,
had resided in the colony for decades. According to Denonville, Jolliet, a merchant with
landholdings on an island in the mouth of the St. Lawrence, had made forty-nine voyages in a
shallop “over several years” to collect “the necessary knowledge of” the river. Franquelin then
drafted two maps from Jolliet’s data. The less ornate version (Fig. 3.1) sketched the river from
Quebec to its mouth in ink over a series of latitude-longitude grids, drawn in pencil, which
Franquelin used to graphically project Jolliet’s on-the-ground measurements. The Parisian
mathematician and hydrographe du roi Jean Deshayes whom Seignelay had sent to Canada in
1685 may have inspired Franquelin here for Deshayes reviewed Jolliet’s measurements.
Franquelin’s larger and more colorful map (Fig. 3.2), relied on a single lightly penciled grid, but
this was to facilitate copying—not to determine or show the latitude and longitude. Instead this
version, drawn on vellum, employed the more traditional windrose lines common on older
portolan charts, which taken with a variety of decorative elements and a dedication to Seignelay
marked the map as a patronage object. Accordingly, Denonville requested remuneration for both
Jolliet and Franquelin in his letter to Seignelay enclosing their work.
3

3
Denonville to Seignelay (20 Aug 1685), ANOM, FM, C11A, 7:55-60, quote on 56; Denonville to Seignelay (13
Nov 1685), ANOM, COL C11A 7:86-106; Denonville to Seignelay (13 Nov 1685), ANOM, FM, C11A, 7:117-118,
quote on 117; Jolliet, “Observations de la navigation du fleuve Saint-Laurent sur lesquelles lacarte envoyée par M.
Denonville a été dessinée” (1685), ANOM, FM, C11E, 13:129-134; Pritchard, “French Developments in
Hydrography with Particular Reference to the St. Lawrence River,” 69-70; Konvitz, Cartography in France, 1660-
1848; Claude Boudreau, La Cartographie au Québec, 1760-1840 (Quebec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1994),
29-30; Soll, The Information Master, 70-6, 99; Jean-François Palomino, “Pratiques cartographiques en Nouvelle-
France: La prise en charge de l’État dans la description de son espace colonial à l’orée du xviii
e
siècle” Lumen:
Travaux Choisis de la Société Canadienne d'Étude du Dix-Huitième Siècle, Volume 31, (2012), 21-39; Brotton, A

103

Fig. 3.1 John-Baptiste Franquelin and Louis Jolliet, “Carte du fleuve St. Laurent” (1685), BNF, CPL, SH18, PF126,
DIV1, P3D.

Detail 3.1.1: Franquelin used these overlapping grids to project latitude and longitude onto a two dimensional
surface. Note the numbers along the top and left side.

History of the World in 12 Maps, 294-336. Denonville had first recommended Jacques Chaviteau to map the St.
Lawrence River and Bay as well as Acadia. Chaviteau had piloted the merchant vessel that carried Denonville to
New France and apparently had pointed out the inaccuracies of the maps. For his initial enthusiasm, however, the
new governor seemingly forgot the pilot, never mentioning him again. It is possible that Chaviteau mapped the Bay
for Denonville but his work was lost. Chaviteau did draft a map of the St. Lawrence Bay in 1698, detailing the banks
that might entrap vessels. It might have been a copy of an earlier work. See his “Carte de I’sle de Terre Nevue.
Coste de Labrador et isle de Cap Breton faite par jacq Caveteau pilote Entretenu a Rochefort . . . [et] Dessioné par
De Saccardi” (1698), BNF, CPL, SH18, PF128, DIV2, P2D.

104

Detail 3.1.2: Franquelin drew in ink the river coasts, place names, anchorage points, navigational obstacles, and a
suggested path of travel (the dotted line).

Fig. 3.2: Jean-Baptiste Franquelin with Louis Jolliet, “Carte du grand fleuve St Laurens dressee et dessignee sur les
memoires et observations que le Sr. Jolliet a tres exactement faites en barq: et en canot en 46 voyages pendant
plusieurs années” (1685) BNF, CPL, GESH 18E PF 126 DIV 1 P 3/1 RES. Jolliet dedicated this larger map (being
almost two human lengths wide at 81 x 328 cm) to Seignelay as he colored the river and included decorative
elements such as ships, animals, and cartouches.

105

Detail 3.2.1: Franquelin included windrose lines in lieu of latitude and longitude.

Detail 3.2.2: Jolliet dedicated the map to Seignelay, marking it as a patronage object.

Deshayes also mapped the river. In the late summer, Deshayes travelled to Lake Ontario
and began studying the river from canoe, drawing a map of the upper portion of the St. Lawrence
River (Fig. 3.3). Denonville also enclosed this map in his November 1685 dispatch, crediting
himself with directing this cartographic labor. As he explained it to Seignelay: “I had him trace
our River from here [i.e. Quebec] to Lake Ontario . . . [and] had all the inhabited places of the
colony marked.” (Detail 3.3.1) Despite the governor’s claims, Denonville’s authority over

106
Deshayes was in reality minimal. When Deshayes requested a bark and canoe to verify the work
of Jolliet, Denonville complained to Seignelay about the expense but also acknowledged that the
metropolitan mapmaker “was here by your orders” which “weren’t for me to interpret.” For this
interference, the governor seems not to have cared for the Parisian mathematician, preferring the
provincial mapmakers: “If I had dared, I would have sent back to you the said Sr. Deshayes
because I believe that Sr. Joliet could have this work for you as well.”
4

Fig. 3.3: [Jean Deshayes], “Carte du cours du fleuve de St Laurent, depuis Québec jusqu'au lac Ontario” ([1685]),
Bibliothèque Historique Centrale de la Marine (BHCM), Le Recueil 67:83.

4
Jacques de Meulles to Seignelay (24 Sept 1685), ANOM, FM, C11A, 7:138-141; Denonville to Seignelay (13 Nov
1685), ANOM, FM, C11A, 7:86-106, quote on 104; Denonville to Seignelay (13 Nov 1685), ANOM, FM, C11A,
7:117-118, quote on 117; Pritchard, “French Developments in Hydrography with Particular Reference to the St.
Lawrence River,” 82-92.

107
Detail 3.3.1: “Isle de Mont-real.” Dots along the banks of the river indicate settlement patterns.

The next year, Deshayes surveyed the lower portion of the St. Lawrence River, using a
bark that the Intendant Jacques de Meulles lent him. In a lengthy report, Dehsayes explained the
methods and tools he employed and the difficulties he encountered. His 1686 map lacked
aesthetic flair and topographical embellishment but hinted at the scientific knowledge and
expertise involved in its production. Deshayes included a note about the longitude of Quebec,
water depths, tidal records as they related to the moon, insets of two particularly difficult areas to
navigate, two proximate compasses with one pointing to magnetic north and the other to true
north, along with some more informal comments on wind and currents. At some point within the
next two decades, the Parisian map printer Nicolas De Fer became aware of and published
Deshayes’s surveys “to serve the Navigators of Canada.” De Fer attempted to pack as much
information with as much clarity into as little space as possible, placing insets of particularly
troublesome spots to navigate into the blank space around the main image of the river from
Quebec to its mouth. One inset showed the St. Lawrence River from Quebec to Lake Ontario at
the same scale as the background map. In theory French navigators might have no longer needed
the Dutch maps that Denonville had decried. Yet mapping the river did not necessarily mean
mastering it. Deshayes later commented that for all the “knowledge of the pass” by the Isle of
Orleans, the first rule for navigating it remained “waiting on the wind & tide.” Nor did mapping
render the river safe. Franquelin understood this better than most. In 1693 he lost his wife and
ten of his thirteen children when their vessel snagged itself on a reef downstream of Quebec.
5

5
Denonville to Seignelay (8 May 1686), ANOM, FM, C11A, 8:6-20; “Extrait des lettres et demandes concernant le
Canada” (1693) ANOM, FM, C11A, 12:339-361; “Carte marine de l'embouchure de la rivière de S. Laurens, levée
de cap en cap jusqu'à Québec” (Paris: Nicolas de Fer, [c.1686-1706]), BNF, CPL, Collection d’Anville (GE DD-
2987), 8658 B; Pritchard, “French Developments in Hydrography with Particular Reference to the St. Lawrence
River,” 92-113. The de Fer version of the map does not provide a date of publication. Catalogs and bibliographers
inconsistently report the date for the first state as early as 1685 (see the catalog entry at the BNF for GE BB-565

108

Fig. 3.4: Jean Deshayes, “Carte de la Riviere de St. Laurens levee sur les lieux” (1686), BNF, CPL, SH18, PF126,
DIV1, P4.

A14,90) and as late as 1715 (Kenneth Kershaw, Early Printed Maps of Canada 4 vols. (Hamilton, Ontario: Kershaw
Publishing, 1993), II:243-3). Most likely it was first printed between the time of Deshayes’ return to France in 1686
and his death in 1706. James Pritchard, in his DCB entry for Deshayes writes “was published around 1700 on the
recommendation of the Académie Royale des Sciences” although I have not found evidence confirming this in the
source he cites (Histoire de l’Académie royale des sciences, 1699 (Paris, 1702)). Text along the sides of one copy at
the BNF (CPL GE DD-2987 8658 B) notes that “this map is . . . reduced in size from several earlier [large] copies.”
De Fer prominently acknowledges Deshayes authorship in this copy, which he did not regularly do when publishing
manuscript maps, suggesting that Deshayes played some role in having it printed. If this is the case, de Fer printed
the map before 1702 when Deshayes returned to Canada, where he died before returning to France.

109
Detail 3.4.1:

Detail. 3.4.2: Inset showing one of the more difficult portions of the river to navigate.

Fig. 3.5: “Le Grande Riviere de Canada appellée par les Europeans de St. Laurens” (Paris: Nicolas De Fer, c.1686-
1706), BNF, GE BB-565 (A14,90)

110

Detail 3.5.1: Upper portion of the River from Lake Ontario to Quebec. Compare with Fig. 3.3

Detail 3.5.2: De Fer included Deshayes’ insets. Compare with Detail 3.4.1.

111

B. War, Peace, and Planning
Abundance—at least the perception of it—compensated for danger. Europeans sailing
upstream often commented that views of barren landscapes diminished while, as Champlain put
it, “the country grows finer and finer.” Lahontan celebrated the abundance of fertile land as an
opportunity for anybody willing to invest labor upfront: “The whole Country” was “a continued
Forrest of lofty Trees” and though “a troublesome and chargeable task” to remove them, “when
the Virgin ground is capable of receiving Seed, it yields an increase to the rate of an hundred
fold.” In theory, Lahontan explained, the King granted land to Seigneurs responsible for
improving and peopling it. In practice, Lahontan continued, nobody “pay’d any thing for the
grounds they possess” and military officers “mark’d out to themselves, certain portions of
unmanur’d and woody Lands.” Therefore even “the poorest” settlers had lots of one hundred
acres while the “Boors” of the manors “seated on the brink of the River . . . live with more ease
and conveniency, than an infinity of the Gentlemen in France.” While authors such as these may
have offered a cheery vision of Canadian agriculture, the limited growing-season did not make it
a lucrative endeavor. Profit rested instead in the fur trade. During the colder months of the year
merchants lived away from French towns as they acquired beaver pelts from Native trading
partners. Ships visiting the St. Lawrence in the warmer months connected the colony and its
peoples to a broader Atlantic world. They departed each year with tens of thousands of pelts in
tow.
6

6
Lahontan, New Voyages, I:6-8; Champlain, “The Savages” in Voyages, 254; Eccles, The Canadian Frontier, 1534-
1760, 60-82, 103-131; Crean, “Hats and the Fur Trade;” Allan Greer, The People of New France (Toronto ; Buffalo:
University of Toronto Press, 1997); Carolyn Podruchny, Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the
North American Fur Trade (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006); Claiborne A. Skinner, The Upper
Country: French Enterprise in the Colonial Great Lakes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).

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Colonial enterprise, most contemporaries agreed, fared best during peace. In Denonville’s
words: “Long discourses are not required to show that the principal interest for maintaining and
augmenting a colony is keeping it in peace with its neighbors, so that the people not being called
aside by the necessity of taking up arms . . . and protecting themselves . . . can give all of their
time to agriculture and establishing their habitations.” When peace fostered neither security nor
prosperity, however, war became necessary—so people convinced themselves. Seignelay and
Louis XIV had adopted this mentality upon learning that the previous Canadian governor Le
Febvre de la Barre accepted the embarrassing terms of a peace treaty dictated by the Iroquois
League after setting out to intimidate the Seneca who were attacking French-allied Native
trading partners. The King’s commission to Denonville echoed the paradoxical Roman proverb
“Si vis pacem, para bellum” (“If you want peace, prepare for war”); it instructed him to “secure
the quiet of Canada by a firm and solid peace” by humbling the “pride of the Iroquois.” Upon his
arrival, Denonville sensed the situation to be even more perilous than he had anticipated.
Iroquois raids on French trading partners and competition from English traders in Albany and
Hudson’s Bay reduced the French beaver trade by weight about 75% between 1683 and 1685. In
explaining the inevitability of war with the Iroquois to Seignelay, he warned: “If we don’t
declare it on them, they will declare it on us.” Nor should the French discount the English. As
Denonville clarified: “The situation of [their] convenient posts and good harbors on the sea coast
South of this country, gives them such an advantage over us.” The sporadic attacks of English
privateers on French posts in Acadia worried him. English merchants that underbid French
merchants worried him even more. They supplied the Iroquois with guns.
7

7
“Etat des castors venus du Canada en France” ([1685]), ANOM, FM, C11A, 7:131; Denonville to Seignelay (13
Nov 1685), ANOM, FM, C11A, 7:86-106, quote on 87; Louis XIV, “Instructions to M. de Denonville” (10 March
1685), DCHNY, IX:271-2, quote on 271; Denonville to Seignelay (25 Aug 1686), ANOM, FM, C11A, 7:178-186,
quote on 178; Skinner, The Upper Country, 25-65.

113
Denonville pondered how to proceed in his letters. Attacking the Iroquois would provoke
retribution so he would first need to put the colony into a defensive posture. As he saw it, the
problem rested in the way that French colonists were “establishing themselves beyond our most
remote habitations” to acquire a competitive advantage in obtaining “the most peltries.” He
reasoned, therefore, that to “tempt war before the proper time . . . would create much suffering”
for the people “being so dispersed and separated that, save a miracle of God, we would not be
able to guard against the insults of an enemy.” The French, Denonville proposed, would need to
“reassemble the Colony with great care to consolidate its forces” so that “each inhabitant could
be aided by his neighbor in case of need.” Only with this accomplished would the governor
begin recruiting Native soldiers to join with French forces in invading Iroquoia. His plan was
brutal: “We must not chastise them by halves but destroy them.”
8

Altering the settlement patterns of the colony was a more difficult proposition than
leading a military expedition. Nevertheless, Denonville confidently predicted that dispersed
colonists living apart from the main nodes of settlement would flock to the cities located upriver
of Quebec, namely Trois Rivières and Montéal, for the promise of profits, security, and
salvation. The colonial government (with ample financial assistance from the French metropole,
to be sure) would need to build churches, fortifications, palisades, and walls—quickly, lest the
Iroquois grow suspicious of French intentions and preemptively attack the dispersed French
settlers. He urged the King to declare Montréal the exclusive site of the fur trade so that
merchants pursuing beaver pelts in western lands would flock there en masse. Peopling the

8
Denonville, “Memoire concernant L’estat present du Canada” (12 Nov 1685), ANOM, FM, C11A, 7:178-186,
quotes on 178 and 182; Denonville to Seignelay (8 May 1685), FM, C11A, 8:6-20, quote on 9.

114
island and its environs would, in turn, guarantee that “no Indian enemy could penetrate [the large
number of habitants surrounding the island] without being discovered.”
9

Defending New France required planning. Seignelay had anticipated as much when he
reached out to Sébastian Le Prestre de Vauban, the master engineer of the French state, to find a
military engineer to accompany Denonville to Canada. Vauban recommended a young man
named Robert de Villeneuve for his skills as a draftsman, sending Seignelay examples of his
work. The minister acknowledged Villeneuve’s cartographic talent but did not find it sufficient.
In Canada, he argued, an engineer would need to “work on the ground . . . guide the masonry and
even give his opinions on the designs of works that will be proposed.” Seignelay later clarified
that the post did not require an “engineer of the first order” but one who could at least “properly
implement the designs sent to him.” Vauban, whose engineer corps was occupied building a
colossal aqueduct to carry water from the Eure River to Versailles, replied that it was
“impossible to provide a man such as you request.” Vauban promised that with Denonville’s
memoirs and Villeneuve’s maps of Canada in hand, he would design the defensive works suited
to the terrain and send “capable men” to build them. Seignelay agreed but stipulated that
Denonville would instruct the engineer on which places to map. In this way, the governor had
been granted more authority over Villeneuve than the other metropolitan mapmaker Deshayes
who reported directly to Seignelay.
10

Villeneuve, the first ingénieur du roi posted in Canada, accompanied the governor up the
St. Lawrence in 1685 to survey and improve the colony’s defensive posture. By November,
Villeneuve had drafted plans of Trois Rivières, Montréal, Quebec, and Fort Frontenac, and in

9
Denonville, “Memoire concernant L’estat present du Canada” (12 Nov 1685), ANOM, FM, C11A, 7:178-186,
quote on 179
10
Vauban to Seignelay (10 March 1685), CVRC, 9; Seignelay to Vauban (19 March 1685), CVRC, 9; Seignelay to
Vauban (26 March 1685), CVRC, 10; Vauban to Seignelay (29 March 1685) CVRC, 10.

115
conjunction with Deshayes, a chart of the St. Lawrence River from Quebec to Cap-au-Oies that,
Denonville explained, provided recommendations for where redoubts were “necessary for
stopping navies from coming here.” The governor offered little direct commentary on
Villeneuve’s other maps. In the letter in which he enclosed them, Denonville directly cited the
engineer’s work to bolster his argument in only instance: While faulting an earlier governor for
building Fort Frontenac on unsuitable terrain, Denonville stated that Villeneuve’s map “should
make known the bad state [of] where it [the fortification] lies and how it could be better
situated.” More commonly, Denonville described the landscape represented in the maps without
directly referencing the maps—in other words colliding together representation and landscape.
He lamented, for example, that although Trois Rivières was “enclosed by high palisades” it had
no “doors or barriers,” which left the post vulnerable. Villeneuve’s map portrayed the same:
Palisades guarding the upper settlement with two gaps, which probably became more noticeable
after reading Denonville’s description of the town. Here the governor may have hoped to
influence the way that Seignelay would read Villeneuve’s maps, particularly what details he
would notice, so that the maps would in turn corroborate Denonville’s assertions.
11

11
Denonville, “Memoire concernant L’estat present du Canada” (12 Nov 1685), ANOM, FM, C11A 7:178-186,
quote on 179; Denonville to Seignelay (13 Nov 1685), ANOM, FM, C11A, 7:86-106, quote on 86; Denonville to
Seignelay (8 May 1686), ANOM, FM, C11A, 8:27-30, quote on 28.

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Fig. 3.6: [Robert de Villeneuve and Jean Deshayes], “Partie du grand fleuve de St Laurens depuis Québec jusques au
cap aux Oyes” ([1685]), BNF, PF126 DIV2 P3

Detail 3.6.1: Deshayes and Villeneuve suggested placing redoubts (red x’s) proximate to the recommended path of
travel (dotted red lines) to regulate the movement of vessels.

Denonville declared Fort Frontenac “of such consequence to guard at all times, either for
war or commerce” because “three Iroquois villages pass in [its] range . . . to go hunting.”
Deshayes’ map (Detail 3.3.2) revealed the fortification’s location where Lake Ontario drained
into the St. Lawrence River, bolstering Denonville’s contention that it would help “the King

117
render himself the absolute master of this Lake.” Villeneuve’s map (Fig. 3.5) showed the post on
a peninsular neck, enclosed by moat, wooden palisades, and walls of lime and gravel. The fort
housed a magazine powder, a bakery, a mill, and a well, all of which spoke to the capacity to be
self-sufficient. An anchorage point above the fort hinted at the arrival and departure of vessels
carrying goods to be traded. Red circles below the fort denoted “Sauvages” and “habitans” while
a nearby Franciscan mission, identified by a cross on a mound, spoke to the site’s religious
exchanges. On the other side of the fort were a stable and barn. They sat at opposite ends of a
rectangular plot with neatly arranged gardens between them.
12

Detail 3.3.2: Seignelay and other imperial officials could have used Deshayes’ 1685 map to situate Villeneuve’s
schematic.

12
Denonville to Seignelay (13 Nov 1685), ANOM, FM, C11A 7:86-106, quotes on 86-7.

118

Fig. 3.7: Robert de Villeneuve, “Fort de Frontenac ou Katarakouy” (1685), ANOM, 3DFC, 522C.

119

Villeneuve’s map of Trois Rivières (Fig. 3.6) portrayed a limited settlement divided
between upper and lower districts. Ten loosely scattered buildings hugged the southwestern edge
of the hill while firmer geometric logic governed the approximately three-dozen in the upper
town. Only three merited labels. Palisades guarded the settlement, flanked by a row of seven
canons perched at the cliff’s edge. Montréal appeared more developed. Villeneuve’s map (Fig.
3.7) revealed more than a hundred buildings (including three churches and two windmills) neatly
arranged along roads, gardens, and lots. Seven canons fronted the river. There were no walls or
palisades, only a stream encircled the settlement. A westerly road out of town led to the
“Sauvages de la Montagne” (a mission) while a southerly road went to Lachine. Villeneuve
surrounded both Trois Rivières and Montréal with empty space, suggesting they were poised to
expand but also deeply vulnerable. Denonville particularly worried that as the “head of the entire
country,” Montréal offered access all the places a foe might “like to make a demonstration.”
13

13
Denonville, “Memoir” (12 Nov 1685), DCHNY, IX:280-6, quote on 281, also see ANOM, FM, C11A, 7:178-186;
Denonville to Seignelay (11 Nov 1686), DCHNY, IX:306-8, also see ANOM, FM, C11A, 8:168-171; Denonville
declared in 1687 that he would “not grant any new licenses this year” to force the traders “to return, all of them, next
season.” He continued, “Some order will have to be . . . introduced to put a stop to the debaucheries in the woods
which are corrupting our entire youth and ruining every body” Denonville to Seignelay (25 Aug 1687), DCHNY,
IX:336-344, quote on 343, also see ANOM, FM, C11A, 9:61-77; Denonville levied a census in 1685, which counted
people, buildings, and land under cultivation. It confirmed the numerical impressions offered by both maps,
“Recensement général du Canada” (1685), ANOM, FM, G1, 461:3.

120

Fig. 3.8: Villeneuve, “Les 3 rivieres” (1685), ANOM, FR 3DFC, 459C. Though perched on a hill, palisaded, and
defended with a battery of cannons, the settlement appears isolated and underdeveloped. Denonville argued it would
need to attract more settlers to ensure its security.

121

Fig. 3.9: Villeneuve, “Villemarie dans l’isle de Montreal” (1685) ANOM, 3DFC, 466C. Montréal appears more
developed than Trois Rivières but also more vulnerable at a low elevation without palisades. By not placing a border
around the map, Villeneuve makes the settlement seem open to external threats. Only two roads exit the settlement,
suggesting to a viewer its environs were poorly peopled.

Detail 3.9.1: The buildings, dwellings, and land plots are firmly ordered by geometric logic. Religious buildings
dominate the cityscape. Denonville argued that making Montréal the sole locus of the fur trade would attract the
colony’s merchants to settle here.

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Quebec, with more than two hundred buildings, appeared the most impressive settlement.
Villeneuve’s map (Fig. 3.10) appeared polished but also bore numerous pinholes used translate
abstract measurements into geometric shapes. It delineated projects that Denonville had planned
for the city, including palisades around Fort St. Louis, a powder house adjoined to the fort, a
warehouse for small vessels along the coast, and a few buildings in the lower city including a
church. Villeneuve colored these yellow to indicate they were projected, not real. He also drew
two dotted lines, marked “ABC” and “DBE” which intersected at point “B,” to situate a number
of schematic diagrams and profile views of the governor’s chateau. The views (Fig. 3.11)
emphasized the fort’s strategic elevation and command over the lower city. The schematics (Fig.
3.12) detailed the construction of the powder house. Denonville feared storing gunpowder
residentially posed such a “manifest peril” that he instructed Villeneuve to begin building in
August—before receiving Seignelay’s consent. The governor enclosed the schematics to
demonstrate both the soundness of engineering and location as he hoped to mollify any concerns
about his rush. Apparently, he was unaware that Villeneuve was not chosen for his capacity as an
engineer. Though Denonville had also instructed Villeneuve to plan additions to the lower city
(Fig. 3.11), he later insisted these could wait as the “security of the country is the [more]
important work.”
14

14
Denonville to Seignelay (20 Aug 1685), ANOM, FM, C11A 7:55-60, quote on 57; Denonville to Seignelay (13
Nov 1685), ANOM, FM, C11A 7:86-106, quote on 87; Denonville to Seignelay (8 May 1686) ANOM, FM, C11A
8:6-20, quote on 19; Marc Grignon, “Robert de Villeneuve and the Representation of Quebec City at the End of the
Seventeenth Century” Studies in the History of Art 66 (2005), 186–205.

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Fig 3.10: Villeneuve, “Plan De La Ville Et Chateau de Quebec, Fait En 1685, Mezvrée Exactement” (1685),
ANOM, 3DFC, 349B. Villeneuve depicted human interventions into the landscape extending beyond the city core.
Roads extend outwards as geometric parcels and wood clearings occupy the lower right hand corner of the map.

Detail 3.10.1: The lower city, sitting to the left, is filled with ongoing projects while gardens and religious buildings
dominate the upper city. Fort St. Louis, marked by a “2,” sits along the cliff with a battery of eight cannons
nearby—pointed directly at the sole anchorage point in the harbor. The dotted lines, intersecting each other at a right
angle above the fort, help situate profile views and schematics; the line “ABC” situates the profile view of Fig. 2.9.

124

Fig 3.11: Detail from Villeneuve, “Couppe sur la Ligne A, B, C marqué Sur Le plan de quebec” (1685), ANOM,
3DFC, 352C. Also see “Coupe sur la ligne D B E marqué sur le Plan de Québec” (1685), ANOM, 3DFC, 353C.

Detail 3.11.1: The letters “B” and “C” corresponded with locations Villeneuve’s map (Detail 3.10.1)

Detail 3.11.2: This profile view shows Fort St. Louis, which doubled as the Governor’s residence, and the lower
city. The drawing emphasizes the fort’s elevation, suggesting its command over the landscape below.

125

Fig. 3.12: Villeneuve, “Plan du chasteau Et for de Quebec” (1685), ANOM, 3DFC, 350C. These schematics show
the projected powder magazine in yellow. Denonville sent the document to justify his rush to build. Also see
Villeneuve, “Plan du Magasin à Poudre de Québec” (1685), ANOM, 3DFC, 351C.

Detail 3.10.2: Fort St. Louis. The yellow indicates the work to be done, including the powder house. Though
difficult to see in photographs, pinholes mark the vertices of the fort’s perimeter.

126

Fig. 3.13: Villeneuve “[Plan de la partie basse de la ville de Québec]” (1685), ANOM, 3DFC, COL/F3/290/68.

Detail 3.13.1: “Par ordre de Monsieur Le Marquis de denonville”—Villeneuve was certain to note that Denonville
had ordered him to plan the expansion.

127

The map served a comparative purpose. Quebec, in contrast with Montréal and Trois
Rivières, seemed the model of concentrated settlement envisioned by Denonville when he
discussed “reassembling” the colony. Dwellings, churches, windmills, roads, streams,
cemeteries, and trees crowded the city. The governor resided at Fort St. Louis, which sat on the
cliff overlooking the lower city. Lahontan later commented that the view from this castle
afforded “the noblest and most extensive Prospect in the World”—and though these words were
not published in 1685, the position of the fort might have evoked for a savvy reader of the map
and schematics an image of the governor viewing, evaluating, and supervising the landscape
below. Nearby the fort a battery of eight cannons was poised to fire upon the anchorage points in
the nearby harbor should enemy vessels harass the lower city (Detail 3.10.3). Villeneuve
emphasized the elevation of the upper city through two visual tricks: shading the cliffs upon
which it rested; and drawing a distant shadow beneath a nearby arrow that marked the direction
of the river’s flow. This elevation helped the city—which boasted no walls—appear somewhat
protected. The city’s numerous religious houses oversaw neatly patterned gardens, sometimes
lined by trees and bushes. Along Quebec’s western outskirts, Villeneuve sketched forest that the
French had begun to clear away in clean, geometrical chunks. Stumps remaining in one section
labeled “bois couppé” (Detail 3.10.4) suggested that the process was ongoing. Villeneuve’s map
presented the capital city as a landscape of ongoing social, economic, and religious
improvement.
15

15
Lahontan, New Voyages, I:12.

128

Detail 3.10.3: Cannons overlooking the harbor

Detail 3.10.4: By placing the Recollets beyond the map’s border, Villeneuve subtly reminds the viewer that,
although the map ends, French interventions into the landscape continue. Villeneuve also shows a plot of cleared
trees. By showing the remaining stumps, Villeneuve implied that clearing the forest was an ongoing process.

As the St. Lawrence River seemed ready to freeze, Denonville sent two copies of
Villeneuve’s maps, views, and diagrams to Seignelay and Vauban. Villeneuve had surveyed
other French settlements but had not yet drawn them. The governor attributed the delay to the
engineer being “dangerously sick for so long,” adding that if Villeneuve had been in better health

129
the maps of Trois Rivières, Montréal, and Cataraqui “would have been drawn a little more
exactly.” He did not elaborate. The only apparent error lay in minor corrections to the palisades
in the Trois Rivières map (Detail 2.6.1). Denonville may have been suggesting a discrepancy
between the map and the landscape it purported to represent. Or he may have simply been
offering an excuse for the absence of certain map elements like titles, neatlines, and embellished
compasses that contributed to an impression of accuracy. Our greatest evidence in favor of the
latter interpretation came months later when Denonville described a map of Quebec, which did
include these elements, as “a very accurate map of the environs here.” The comment anticipated
a later torrent of slangs directed against the engineer, perhaps hinting at a developing antagonism
between the two men.
16

Detail 3.8.1: Denonville critiqued the “exactness” of Villeneuve’s 1685 maps. The only apparent error involved the
palisades at Trois Rivières.

Vauban received Denonville’s correspondence with more enthusiasm than Seignelay. The
master engineer wrote to the minister in May 1686, affirming his faith in Denonville’s judgment:
“There has bever been a better subject than M. Denonville because and is extremely hardworking
man . . . disinterested . . . Moreover he has had more than 20 good campaigns . . . in a word he is
very capable of leading in peace and in war.” To this last point, Vauban added the caveat,
“provided that you assist him and that the King gives to him that which sustains.” He then

16
Denonville to Seignelay (13 Nov 1685), ANOM, FM, C11A 7:86-106, quote on 104; Denonville to Seignelay (8
May 1686), ANOM, FM, C11A, 8:6-20, quote on 14.
(c) Archives nationales d'outre-mer (ANOM, France) — 22 February 2012

130
proceeded to support Denonville’s recommendations for “reassembling” the habitations that
“have formed at random,” arguing that “nothing would be more easy than defeating scattered
habitations in the woods.” Vauban provided more than words of support but also forwarded
“fortification drawings around the three profiles . . . that he [Denonville] has sent to me.” He also
sent schematics for “redoubts for the small posts which could be applied in all the places that
could have need and at less cost.” Vauban then asked Seignelay to return the drawings to him
for, in order to execute them, he would need to send workers to Canada. As he explained it,
Denonville had informed him that “there are hardly any [capable workers] in this country and
that they are extraordinarily expensive and large idlers.” Seignelay approved of Vauban’s
designs but did not follow his instructions. Rather than returning the schematics to the master
engineer, he gave them to the “new Intendant that the King named for Canada [who] leaves . . .
in a few days.” Yet he furnished neither the funds nor the workers to actually build the
enclosures and redoubts. It was as though he had forgotten his earlier reservations about
Villeneuve’s capacities as an engineer.
17

C. A Geographical Census
Before that new Intendant Jean Bochart de Champigny arrived with Vauban’s plans,
Villeneuve had been working “throughout the great cold” to finish mapping Quebec’s environs.
His “Carte des Environs de Quebec en La Nouvelle France Mezuré sur le lieu très exactement en
1685 et 86” (Fig 3.11) depicted the city and its surroundings in extraordinary detail from Cap
Rouge to the western tip of the Isle d’Orleans. Denonville had hoped it would show this island
“in its entirety” but he “couldn’t spare [the several men necessary] for carrying the chains to
measure distances.” The map spoke loudly to the benefits of peace—to what settlers could
accomplish in the absence of danger. It detailed the topography, waterways, roads, forests,

17
Vauban to Seignelay (21 May 1686), CVRC, 11-12; Seignelay to Vauban (12 June 1686), CVRC, 12.

131
clearings, land plots, farms, and buildings in the area surrounding Quebec. A key matched
numbers throughout the map with the names and surnames of heads of households, rendering the
map a geographical census. Webs of roads and streams allowed French settlers to extend their
influence beyond the riverfront into the terrestrial interior, constructing roughly one thousand
buildings in the area portrayed. In settling this land, they had cleared a vast amount of forest—a
process Villeneuve implied would continue when he noted: “All that is drawn in green is woods
that haven’t been cleared yet [emphasis added].”
18

18
Denonville to Seignelay (8 May 1686), ANOM, FM, C11A 8:6-20, quote on 14. Age has discolored the green
sections of the map so they now appear brown. Villeneuve, “Carte des Environs de Quebec;” Also see Villeneuve’s
later copy of this map at a smaller size, “Carte des Environs de Quebec en La Nouvelle France Mesurée très
exactement” (1688), BNF, CPL, SH18, PF127, DIV7, P5D.

132

Fig. 3.14: Villeneuve, “Carte des Environs de Quebec en La Nouvelle France Mezuré sur le lieu très exactement en
1685 et 86” (1686), BNF, CPL, SH18, PF127, DIV7, P4.

133

Detail 3.14.1: The map evidenced French intervention into the natural landscape by showing an abundance of
settlements, a large area of forest cleared, and a comprehensive network of roads. French influence extends far back
from the St. Lawrence River. These settlements buffer Quebec from possible enemies on land. The map shows
Quebec and environs as a paragon of colonial settlement in terms both of its industry and security.

Detail 3.14.2: The map is composed of many settlements like this one. The church at the center occupies a square
plot that orders the nearly fifty proximate buildings. The inhabitants have cleared away a substantial amount of
forest, rendering the immediate surroundings open. Charlesbourg, according to this map, sits along the edge of
where the French had settled. This explains why the one road vanishes just outside the town. The town is not

134
remarkable by itself but coupled with the many other settlements around Quebec, it composed both a line of defense
and evidence of the significant impact of the French on the landscape.

Detail 2.12.3: The key (“Table Des Noms, Et Surnoms Des Habitans Contenües Dans Cette Carte” or “Table of the
Names and Surnames of the Habitants Contained in this Map”) was filled with so many entries it occupied about a
sixth of the map. The large number of names speaks to the wide-ranging extent of settlement in the area.

The map included gentle reminders of French efforts at converting Natives. Notre Dame
de Lorette sat along the river from which it derived its name. Twenty-one “Cabins” belonging to
the “Indians of several nations” were neatly arranged in a square around the chapel. On the
outskirts of the settlement lay a cross, probably indicating a cemetery. Villeneuve also identified
the “pious fort of the savages of Sillery” resting upstream of Quebec at the water’s edge. The
walls around the settlement compensated for its low elevation and weak defensive position. Ten
neatly arranged buildings rested within the walls and another six, including a windmill, beyond
them. For the many French—including King Louis XIV—that believed that Indians would first
need to live in a “civilized” fashion to comprehend Christian doctrine, the geometrical patterns
of settlement at Lorette and Sillery must have suggested progress.
19

19
Villeneuve, “Carte des Environs de Quebec.” King Louis XIV, for example, wrote to Denonville regarding the
conversion of Indians that “it is above all necessary . . . [that they] adopt our manners.” King Louis XIV to
Denonville (31 May 1686) in CMNF, I:362-3, quote on 363.

135

Detail 3.14.4: Sillery

Detail 3.14.5: The map detailed French progress in converting Natives by showing the meticulously ordered layout
of the missions. The church stands at the center of Lorette and the head of Sillery. A fortification sheltered Native
inhabitants at Sillery to compensate for its low elevation and proximity to the St. Lawrence. The pencil markings by
Lorette (“mission de Sauvages par le p. chaumonneau Jesuiste”) were probably not Villeneuve’s.

Villeneuve replicated his earlier 1685 city map in this larger work, including less visual
detail, labeling fewer buildings, and allowing it to recede into the larger patchwork of French
settlement. In the river along the city, two French warships casting shadows fired cannons in a
display of celebration or power as canoes paddled nearby. These canoes evoked movement
within the colony while the warships hinted at the connection to the distant metropole. Mostly
Villeneuve tucked away evidence of a militarized landscape. He drew no special attention to fort

136
St. Louis and omitted the battery of cannons perched along the edge of the upper city. Roads and
rivers facilitated movement between the many settlements, showing that Quebec would have
ample warning of hostile forces. As in his 1685 map of Quebec, Villeneuve refracted the St.
Lawrence valley around Quebec through the European landscape ideal, presenting it in peaceful
and orderly terms.

Detail 3.14.5: Villeneuve reproduced his earlier 1685 map of Quebec though at a smaller (i.e. less detailed) scale.

137

Detail 3.14.6: Warship firing canons near Quebec in displays of power or celebration. Flags mark the ships as
French, evoking ties between colony and France. Canoeists throughout the river transporting people and wares
suggest the movement within the colony.

Why might a military engineer so painstakingly detail aspects of French settlement that
bore little obvious connection to the city’s defensive posture? Seventeenth-century environs
maps as a genre rarely (if ever) included giant tables that comprehensively listed inhabitant
names; siege maps sometimes provided the names military units and their commanders but did
not delve into demographics. Villeneuve’s map could have helped the governor and military
officers in the colony plan for a siege—except that no copies seem to have remained in Canada.
It may have been in part left the colony so that Vauban could design defensive works suited to
the terrain. Yet Denonville did not indicate that this was the reason for sending it. Moreover, the
earlier map by Villeneuve and Deshayes had only recommended placing redoubts further
downstream of the area depicted in Villeneuve’s 1686 environs map. Here it might be useful to
consider some of the material aspects of the map. Pinholes in the corners of the map confirm that
at some point in its life it was hunt on a wall, which makes sense given its quite large size (158

138
by 170 centimeters). Villeneuve later made miniature copies, which further suggest that the large
size was an active choice by him or Denonville rather than the result of a constraint. The map
lacked much in the way of decorative elements—the ships alluded to earlier, Villeneuve’s usual
compass rose, and a lackluster cartouche for the title. However, close examination reveals lightly
drawn pencil tracings that if more fully visible would have hinted at royal authority. In other
words, we might think of this map as a display object—a way for sovereigns and bureaucrats to
celebrate French occupation and improvement of a foreign landscape.
The map also reflected some of the deepest ideals of French cartography in the era of
Vauban and the recently deceased “information master” Jean-Baptiste Colbert (not by
coincidence, Seignelay’s father). Colbert had implemented a bureaucratic culture of intelligence
gathering that privileged maps for integrating economic, demographic, and environmental
information. Vauban continued this legacy. Famous for designing structures of unprecedented
geometrical complexity suited to challenging terrains, he also revolutionized military matters by
incorporating the geographical bearings of political economy into defense planning. Vauban
relentlessly sought information about population and natural resources for, as geographer Jean
Gottman has explained it, “Vauban felt deeply the intimate link between the number of the
population and the economic power and military might of a nation.” In the same year Villeneuve
drafted this map, Vauban published a pamphlet that explained the utility of annual censuses and
outlined a methodology for counting people. Governors along frontiers for example, would know
the precise effects of war on the inhabitants, buildings, and industry while also having an easier
time ferretting out spies not counted in the records. Villeneuve’s map was essentially the
geographical realization of the 1685 Canadian census (Fig. 3.15) that Denonville had sent to
Vauban and Seignelay—explaining why the governor had wanted Deshayes to mark “all the

139
inhabited places of the colony.” He believed the maps of the St. Lawrence River could help
render that census geographically legible. In this way, Denonville was using numbers to
undergird his argument that dispersed French populations at the “head” of the colony increased
its vulnerability to Iroquois assaults.
20

Fig. 3.15: “Recensement général du Canada” (1685), ANOM, Recensements, Rôles Et États De Réfugiés, Fois Et
Hommages, Titres De Concessions, G1, 461:3.

20
Denonville to Seignelay (13 Nov 1685), ANOM, FM, C11A, 7:86-106, quote on 104; [Sébastien Le Prestre
Vauban], Méthode générale et facile pour faire le dénombrement des peuples (Paris: De l’Imprimerie de la Veuve
d’Antoine Chrestien, 1686). For insight into Vauban’s way of thinking about geography and state power, see his A
Project for a Royal Tythe: or, General Tax; which, By Supressing all the Ancient Funds and Later Projects for
Raising the Publick Revenues, and for ever abolishing all Exampetions, unequal Assessments, and all rigorous and
oppressive Distraining on the People, will furnish the Government a Fixt and Certain Revenue, sufficient for all its
Exigencies and Occasions, without oppressing the Subjects (London: John Matthews, 1708). Originally a
memorandum submitted to Louis XIV around 1700, this work was first printed in France in 1706. Also see Jean
Gottmann, “Vauban and Modern Geography” American Geographical Society 34:1 (January 1944), 120–128, quote
on 124; Jānis Langins, Conserving the Enlightenment: French Military Engineering from Vauban to the Revolution
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003); Michèle Virol, Vauban: De La Gloire Du Roi Au Service De L’etat (Epoques.
Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2003); Duffy, Fire and Stone; Jean-Denis Lepage, Vauban and the French Military Under
Louis XIV: An Illustrated History of Fortifications and Strategies (Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co, 2010); Soll,
The Information Master, 70-76. For discussion of later siege mapping, see J. B. Harley, Barbara Bartz Petchenik,
and Lawrence W. Towner, Mapping the American Revolutionary War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1978), 15-19.

140
D. Maps and Interpersonal Conflict
If Villeneuve’s map of Quebec and environs seemed void of conflict, the same could not
be said for the engineer’s tenure in New France: His relationship with Denonville began
deteriorating after his first few months in the colony. In May 1686, the governor sent the
engineer to map Niagara, admitting him to be “a very good and very faithful draughtsman.” Yet
Denonville would also need to visit for as he lamented in a letter to Seignelay, Villeneuve’s mind
was “deranged and too limited to be able to give views on establishing a post or to be in charge
of building it.” In November, Denonville wrote to Vauban, requesting a replacement engineer to
oversee “our works.” As he explained it, “Villeneufue [sic] is so much occupied with his maps . .
. that he cannot think of anything else.” Villeneuve, meanwhile, complained that “Denonville has
a great deal of contempt for him.” and while “he spared nothing to satisfy Sr. Denonville . . .
[Denonville] has not reimbursed the expenses that he [Villeneuve] made.” Villeneuve hinted at
the heart of his complaint when he requested “command of a company, which would give him
much more authority.” His desire for autonomy seems to have encouraged Villeneuve to ally
himself with Intendant Jacques de Meulles. One hint of such an alignment rested in Villeneuve’s
1685 map of Quebec city: As Marc Grignon has argued, Villeneuve rejected the traditional
orientation of the city in order to emphasize the intendant’s palace at the expense of the
governor’s château. If Villeneuve had indeed aligned himself with de Meulles, his strategy did
not bear fruit. In a 1685 letter to Seignelay, Denonville charged de Meulles with embezzling
money by overcharging fur traders for licenses (congés). Despite his family ties to Seignelay, de
Meulles was recalled from Canada in 1686.
21

21
Denonville to Seignelay (13 Nov 1685), ANOM, FM, C11A 7:110-111; “Résumé des lettres du Canada” (1686),
ANOM, FM, C11A 8:176-196, quote on 194; Denonville to Seignelay (8 May 1686), ANOM, FM, C11A, 8:6-20,
quote on 11; Denonville to Seignelay (16 Nov 1686), ANOM, FM, C11A 8:168-171, quote on 169; Eccles, Canada
Under Louis XIV, 140-141; Grignon, “Robert de Villeneuve and the Representation of Quebec City at the End of the

141
Denonville’s letters adopted an increasingly frantic tone at this time. In November 1686
he had received reports that New York Governor Thomas Dongan was encouraging the Iroquois
to march against the French. He wrote to Seignelay with plans to preemptively invade Iroquoia
in June 1687. As he explained, the expedition would proceed along the southern banks of Lake
Ontario, during which time the enemy would be “in a state of incertitude as regards the village to
which I mean to go.” To give Seignelay “some idea of our enterprise,” Denonville enclosed a
map by Villeneuve (Fig. 3.16) that showed the land route the French and allied-Native soldiers
would follow to reach two fortified Seneca villages after disembarking from their vessels.
However, the governor did not credit Villeneuve for drafting this map in his letter—not
surprising given the tenuous state of their relationship. Instead, Denonville legitimated the map
by thanking an unnamed Coureur de Bois whom he described as “most versant and who knows
the routes well” for having “given me place to have the Map made for you.”
22

Fig. 3.16: [Villeneuve], “Lac Ontario” (1687), BHCM, Le Recueil 67:68.

Seventeenth Century.” For de Meulles’ repudiation of the corruption charges, see “Lettre de l’intendant de Meulles à
M. Peuvret de Mesnu,” BRH, XXXV:179-180.
22
Denonville, “Memoire de L’estat Present des affaires de Canada et des necessité de faire La guerre L’an prochain
aux Iroquois” (8 Nov 1686), ANOM, FM, C11A, 8:116-128, quote on 121; Denonville to Seignelay, (8 June 1687),
ANOM, FM, C11A, 9:20-31, quote on 28.

142
As Denonville organized a campaign into Iroquoia, he also requested funds and soldiers
for a large post near Montréal. Here, Denonville understood the necessity of furnishing visual
evidence. However, as his relationship with Villeneuve soured, the engineer began working at a
snail’s pace. A full year after surveying the settlements around Montréal, he had still not finished
the counterpoint to his “Carte des Environs de Quebec.” Denonville, who described himself as
“very cross” with Villeneuve for not completing an “accurate map of the head of the colony,”
insisted that when ready this work would illustrate “the necessity of occupying the posts at these
heads with troops [from France] to assure the peace.” Instead Denonville sent an “inexact, rough
sketch” of the area around Montréal (Fig. 3.17) to illustrate the need for a fortification near
Montréal. The anonymous mapmaker outlined the map in pencil, quickly traced these lines in
pen, and colored the river. The map’s draft-like quality owed to the misalignment of pen, pencil,
and watercolor. It included a few place names, a road running from Chambly to Prairie de la
Magdelaine, and showed where Denonville hoped to build this “large post.” This post would
warn French settlements of approaching danger by monitoring Lake Champlain and Richelieu
River, “which the Iroquois continually visit.” The map, by including the road, suggested that
French soldiers could alert the settlements by Montréal if they spotted an enemy. Yet without the
subtle rhetorical effects of a skilled mapmaker like Villeneuve, Denonville could not illustrate
the vulnerability of this area. For cartographically literate French bureaucrats with access to the
period’s most sophisticated maps and mapmakers, the impression of detail, accuracy, and grace
mattered when evaluating visual evidence. This map did not convince them. Louis XIV agreed to
supply troops, ammunition, and authorize the expedition but declined to fund any fortifications,
redoubts, walls, and palisades.
23

23
Denonville to Seignelay (10 November 1686) ANOM, FM, C11A, 8:129-159, quote on 142; Denonville to
Seignelay (16 Nov 1686), ANOM, FM, C11A, 8:167. Deshayes had left the colony by this point and that

143

Fig. 3.17: “Isle du montreal” (1686), BNF, SH18, PF127, DIV8, P3.

Franquelin, very skilled at drafting regional and continental maps, did not match Villeneuve in mapping at small
scales. For one comparison, see Franquelin, “Plan géometrique de la Basseville de Quebec avec partie de la haute-
ville pour connoistre la disposition du lieu et faire voir l'augmentation qui s'en peut faire jusqu'à la basse marée,
comme il se distingue aisément par ces alignemens tirez en petits points vuides” (1683), ANOM, 3DFC, 346B.

144

Detail 3.17.1: Road from La Prairie-de-la-Magdelaine to Chambly

Detail 3.17.2: Fortification at Chambly

145
Denonville resented Villeneuve’s recalcitrance. On the eve of the French expedition to
Seneca country, Denonville charged Villeneuve with falsely signing the Provost of Quebec’s
name to make the Provost appear dishonest—Villeneuve’s revenge, the governor explained, for
being ordered to employ people he disliked to assist with mapping. Denonville’s language grew
sharper as he explicitly assaulted Villeneuve’s character: “Our little engineer . . . is a fool, a
libertine and a debauchee whom it is necessary to suffer because we have business . . . If I hadn’t
lodged and fed him in my home, I would have never been able to get him to draw anything.”
Villeneuve probably would have described the governor in equally brusque terms. Denonville,
anticipating as much, felt it necessary to warn Seignelay “not to attach any faith to anything he
will write.” Months later, Denonville and the new intendant Jean Bochart de Champigny
suggested the true source of their frustration lay in Villeneuve’s withholding of maps. On
November 6, 1687, Denonville wrote that the engineer had begun insisting on personally
delivering his maps across the Atlantic. Denonville, only too happy to be rid of the engineer,
concurred in that “it would be for the best to allow him to return.” The next day, however,
Villeneuve “changed his mind” and no longer wished “to return to france.” He did not, however,
relinquish the maps he had planned to carry. Though New France boasted many mapmakers, few
could draft settlements with comparable detail and clarity. Villeneuve’s tactic deprived
Denonville of an important rhetorical tool.
24

E. Boundaries
As the tenuous peace between the French and the Iroquois League gave way to war, the
English and French sovereigns seemed poised to resolve their disputes in North America. In
November 1686, James II and Louis XIV had signed a treaty asserting that if the two countries

24
Denonville to Seignelay (8 June 1687), ANOM, FM, C11A, 9:20-31, quotes on 29-30; Denonville and
Champigny to Seignelay (6 Nov 1687), ANOM, FM, C11A, 9:3-18, quote on 10; Denonville and Champigny to
Seignelay (7 Nov 1687), ANOM, FM, C11A, 9:177-179, quote on 179.

146
warred in Europe, their colonies would remain neutral. The treaty also appointed commissioners
to settle boundary disputes in Hudson’s Bay, Iroquoia, and Acadia. In March 1688, Louis XIV
commanded Denonville to furnish the titles proving French claims as well as “the most accurate
map possible” showing the correct boundary passing through the furthest “forts, passages, and
places occupied by” French subjects. The governor responded by tracing French rights in North
America from the St. Lawrence River through the Great Lakes and then down the Mississippi
River, citing French explorers, military campaigns, royal edicts, promotional pamphlets,
histories, international treaties, and land titles. He also announced his skepticism of the Treaty,
promising to observe it “religiously” but warning it would “be executed only as far as will suit”
the New Yorkers.
25

Despite the King’s order, Denonville sent no map delineating the Anglo-French
boundaries, explaining the “countries” he identified were “easily recognized on the general map
of North America.” The omission seems bizarre given the pace with which the governor had
been sending maps to Versailles. It reflected the absence of Jean-Baptiste Louis Franquelin, who
was, after Villeneuve the most talented mapmaker in the colony. With Denonville’s
encouragement, the impoverished Franquelin had sailed for France to plead for Villeneuve’s
lucrative job as a royal engineer. At Versailles he furnished the King with two large, very similar
decorative maps of North America. One marked the boundary of England’s colonies while the
other did not. We can surmise that Franquelin brought the one map from Quebec (Fig. 3.18) and
drafted the second one (Fig. 3.19) upon learning of the imminent treaty negotiations. The
boundary (Detail 3.19.1), which generally minimized English possession, was not his only

25
“Traité de Neutralité conclu a Londres le 16 Novembre, 1686, entre les Roys de France et d’Angleterre,
Touschant les Païs des Deux Roys en Amerique” (1686), CMNF, I:372-381; Louis XIV to Denonville (8 March
1688), ANOM, FM, C11A, 10:20-22, quote on 21; Denonville to Seignelay (25 Aug 1687), DCHNY, IX:336-343,
quote on 337, also ANOM, FM, C11A, 9:61-77; “Memoir of M. de Denonville on the French Limits in North
America” (8 March 1688) in DCHNY, IX:377-384.

147
revision, however. He also filled his second map with signs of French royal authority, most
noticeably a large crown, draped with French royal symbols, floating above a globe in the upper
left corner. The cartouche in the lower right offered a landscape view of Quebec, showing the
château, religious houses, windmills, and cleared fields in the upper city. In the lower city,
Franquelin included crowded houses, tiny figures, and, as he noted in the table “of the most
remarkable places” the royal square which boasted a statue of Louis XIV. It seems the mapmaker
had received valuable advice from somebody at court on how to influence the King and his
ministers. The cartographic gift secured for Franquelin the post he sought. Villeneuve, his
reputation damaged, returned to France in November 1689.
26

Fig. 3.18: Franquelin, “Carte du Amerique Septentrionnalle depuis le 25:jusq’au 65:deg de latt & environ
140:&235.deg.de longitude . . .” (1688), BHCM, Le Recueil 66:16-18.

26
“Memoir of M. de Denonville on the French Limits in North America” (8 March 1688), DCHNY, IX:377-384;
Champigny to Seignelay (16 Nov 1689) ANOM, FM, C11A, 10:244-250.

148

Fig. 3.19: Franquelin, “Carte du Amerique Septentrionnalle depuis le 25:jusq’au 65:deg de latt & environ
140:&235.deg.de longitude . . .” (1688), BHCM, Le Recueil 66:6bis.

Detail 3.19.1: Boundary of the English Colonies in Red

149

Detail 3.19.2: The (Faded) Northern Boundary. Franquelin indicated that English possession extended to the St.
George River.

150

Detail 3.19.3: Symbols of Royal Authority.

151

Detail 3.19.4: View of Quebec

Detail 3.19.5: Statue of Louis XIV in the Above View

As the French began invading Iroquoia, other conflicts were brewing in Acadia. The
French metropole had for decades largely left French Acadians to their own devices, tacitly
permitting trade with New England merchants. Tensions developed when a new company, La
Compagnie de pêche sédentaire de l’Acadie, backed by French imperialists, began to enforce a
trade monopoly in the early 1680s. The French seized English fishing and trading vessels that
had allegedly trespassed into French waters, which provoked retaliation from Massachusetts

152
privateers who claimed the boundary lay elsewhere. On paper, the 1686 Treaty of Neutrality
would temper hostilities by restoring freedom of navigation and determining the precise location
of the Anglo-French border. News of the treaty arrived in Acadia with a new Governor, Louis-
Alexandre Des Friches de Meneval. His official instructions—which encouraged him to prevent
trade with foreigners and to people the colony (particularly with agriculturalists) in order to
create a buffer against the English—suggested that the treaty would resolve little. After his first
year in Acadia, Meneval urged French officials to bolster the colony’s defenses. Consequently in
1688 they sent a military engineer, Pasquine (or Paquine), to determine which posts to fortify
“for the defense and conservation of the colony” in case of war with their English neighbors.
Pasquine accompanied Meneval to Port Royal, the floundering Acadian capital, to plan a new
fortification that would replace an old, “ruined” one. He also surveyed the Maine coast,
producing maps of the Kennebec, St. George, and Pentagoet (present-day Penobscot; Figs. 3.20-
22) Rivers. Seignelay had hoped that by sending Pasquine, his maps would strengthen French
claims and help fortify the colony’s border quickly once the commissioners ruled.
27

Fig. 3.20: [Pasquine], “[Carte de la riviere de Pentagouet]” (1688) BNF, CPL, SH18 PF135 DIV3 P2. The map, not
completed, seems empty without topographical information or a key. Pasquine drafted this and two other maps to

27
“Instructions données à M. de Menneval” (5 April 1687), ANOM, FM, C11D, 2:78-83; “Mémoire de Meneval”
(29 April 1687), ANOM, FM, C11A, 9:214; “Instruction au S
r
Pasquine” (28 April 1688), ANOM, FM, C11A,
10:41. Meneval was also charged with bolstering French claims for the boundary commissioners. See Seignelay to
Meneval (10 April 1688), ANOM, FM, C11A, 10:40; John Mack Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic
Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland (New York: W.W Norton & Co,
2005), 77-81.

153
help demonstrate French possession. Although the French had barely planted themselves along this portion of the
coast, the act of mapping was one of the rituals involved in possessing territory.

Detail 3.20.1: Pasquine’s maps only had a handful of crude icons, in this case red squares (by “L”) to represent the
habitation of Baron Jean-Vincent D'Abbadie de Saint-Castin or a pencil marking (by “M”) to indicate a rock in the
river. Pasquine had marked French dwellings, like Castin’s, to establish French rights. Castin was from France,
traded with the English, refused to pledge allegiance to them, and was most closely aligned with the Penobscot
Indians with whom he lived. The map, not surprisingly, did not explain any of this as it would have worked against
its agenda. In fact, Pasquine had omitted Natives and Native territorial claims from his maps. Also note the clearly
visible grid of pencil lines. This would help copyists replicate the map at different scales.

Detail 3.20.2: “F” shows a “ruined” fort and “G” is one of three potential sites to built a new fort if Pentagoet was
determined to be the Anglo-French border. Pasquine does not elaborate how the old fort was “ruined” but it might
have occurred only months earlier when Edmund Andros, the governor of New England, raided Castin’s trading
house. The raid was retribution for the Baron’s refusal to declare allegiance to the English.

154

Fig. 3.21: The key for the Pentagoet map was empty, instead written on a separate piece of paper. Perhaps, if the
holes along the side of this paper are indicative, it was once threaded to the physical map.

Fig. 3.22: [Pasquine], “[Plan du Port Royal et de son fort]” (1688), ANOM, CAOM 3DFC52A. Pasquine advanced
his map of Port Royal further than his others. Still, it was not finished.

(c) Archives nationales d'outre-mer (ANOM, France) — 23 February 2012

155

Detail 3.22.1: The grid, composed of folds, is partially visible here. Pasquine suggests topographical contours
through shading and coloring, but does not identify the types of terrain.

Denonville had argued that French territory extended to the Kennebec River. Pasquine’s
map of this river strongly evidenced French occupation, showing seven platforms for drying
codfish and five habitations, including one of a Frenchman “who has been living on this on this
River for 28 years.” It also showed a fort “ruined by the English nine years ago”

at the mouth of
the river. Pasquine’s map of the St. George River, further north, slightly complicated French
claims by including the “last English habitation” along the Maine coast. The map did not clarify
whether the dwelling was an outlier or indicative of Anglo-French cohabitation. Pasquine also
noted the site of “fallow ground where Mr D’aulnay
28
had once built a house.” This ambiguous
language did not establish that d’Aulnay or any other French person continued to occupy the

28
Perhaps the long dead Acadian governor Charles de Menou d’Aulnay (c. 1604–1650) or, more likely, one of his
relations.
(c) Archives nationales d'outre-mer (ANOM, France) — 23 February 2012

156
land. The map of Pentagoet showed the residence of the illustrious merchant Baron Jean-Vincent
D'Abbadie de Saint-Castin, a ruined fortification, and little else in terms of a French presence.
Pasquine’s maps, in total, could have built a stronger case for French territorial claims extending
to the Kennebec River. It seems Franquelin followed Pasquine’s lead in his map delineating the
English territorial possessions, marking the St. George River (northeast of the Kennebec River)
as the English border. Ultimately it mattered little. When Pasquine returned to Paris in December
1688, he would have learned that the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange had invaded
England while James II fled to France. With one of the primary signatories deposed, the 1686
treaty quickly became did irrelevant.
29

29
“Memoir of M. de Denonville on the French Limits in North America” (8 March 1688) in DCHNY, IX:377-384;
[Pasquine], “Carte de l'entrée de la riviere de Quinsbequi” (1688), BNL, CPL, SH18, PF135, DIV3, P6, “Carte de la
riviere St. George” (1688) BNL, CPL, SH18, PF135, DIV3, P8, and “Carte de la riviere de Pentagouet” (1688),
BNL, CPL, GESH18 PF135, DIV3, P2. It is possible, though very unlikely, that the maps analyzed here were not
originals but copies of Pasquine’s maps. The BNF, which holds the river maps listed Pasquine as the author while
somebody, probably archivists, wrote his name on the backs of these maps. Pasquine, however, only signed his
name on the fortification schematic and profile view of the proposed fort at Port Royal. That schematic (at ANOM,
3DFC, 50C; the view is 3DFC, 51C) shows the “ruined” fort in punctuated lines that match the fortification in the
Port Royal map (also at ANOM, CAOM 3DFC52A). This strongly suggests his authorship of this map. Because it
shares a common aesthetic with the river maps, Pasquine is likely the author of those as well. Irrespective of
authorship, these works offer rare insights into both map drafting and copying. Imperial archives generally inherited
polished maps, not preliminary versions. These maps, however, were all in progress, none of them completed.
Pasquine, assuming he is the author, penciled grids—which allowed copyists to easily change the size of a map—on
his paper and then, the contours of the land. He then inked the coastal lines and, with watercolors, quickly painted
earth and sea in brown and green monotones. Finally he penciled letters onto the landscape while leaving the key
blank. Instead he jotted explanations for the letters on a separate piece of paper. His map of Port Royal (Fig. 2.15),
which situated his fortification design, had advanced a little further. Rather than using a pencil, he folded the paper
to make a grid. Watercolor hid the resultant lines. He sketched houses and lots rather than just indicating their
whereabouts with letters. Finally, he evoked the topographical contours of the earth through coloring and shading,
though he did not clarify the terrain types. The key was still blank and the map is unfortunately without its
attachment. Two people copied the maps. One set of copies (all at the BNF, without titles: “[The Pentagoet River]”
(n.d.), BNL, CPL, SH18, PF135, DIV3, P3D; “[The St. George River]” (n.d.), BNL, CPL, SH18, PF135, DIV3,
P9D; there is no Kennebec River map copy) used a pencil grid to shrink the maps. Coloring only graced the
coastline. Instead of using a key, the anonymous copyist integrated and abbreviated labels directly into the map.
Another copyist, LeMoyne fis [i.e. son of LeMoyne] (perhaps a relation of the explorer Pierre le Moyne d'Iberville
et d'Ardillieres), reproduced Pasquine’s Kennebec River map (also at the BNF, “Carte de l’Entré de la Riviere de
Quinibequi en de son Environs et Plan de l’Isle et fort de Sakdeock” (n.d.), BNL, CPL, SH18, PF135, DIV3, P7). He
scaled it down to the size of a hand, increasing its portability—probably these maps would have been copied and
distributed for officials venturing to Acadia. Le Moyne fis also included environmental features no present in the
original: he transformed the nondescript earth into grassland. He copied another map, either made or sent by
Acadian governor Claude-Sebastien de Villieu in 1710. It’s likely he copied Pasquine’s map around the same time.
On the Glorious Revolution and consequent political realignment in Europe see Jonathan Israel, ed, The Anglo-
Dutch Moment: Essays on the Glorious Revolution and Its World Impact (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

157
By 1689 the French were war with both the Iroquois League and the English, the result of
a complicated patchwork of tensions in North America and Europe. Cartographic output from
New France—which had increased dramatically between 1685 and 1688 as French officials
actively began sending mapmakers to Canada—would not diminish with the commencement of
this warfare. It would continue to follow templates established during this so-called peacetime.
Villeneuve, Deshayes, Franquelin, and Pasquine had produced many kinds of maps suited to
different purposes including navigating rivers, supporting commerce, evidencing territorial
claims, facilitating urban and defense planning, conveying arguments, and promoting fantasies
about colonial enterprise. This last point helps to explain why, even though the process of
mapping anticipated warfare, the maps themselves projected peace as a normative state. Maps
rarely provided new information within French imperial correspondence, instead framing
existing information and giving it new rhetorical force. Bureaucrats at Versailles believed these
documents would help them overcome the challenges of distance while provincial officials like
Denonville believed they could bolster their credibility by supplying maps. Disconnect between
these postures contributed to political tensions within the provincial governance of New France.
These conflicts on the ground deeply shaped the perceptions and perspectives of mapmakers who
crafted abstracted views of the world from above.

1991); Tim Harris, Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685-1720 (New York: Penguin Group,
2006); Pincus, 1688.

158
4. Land: New England, 1686-1689
In 1686 James II revoked the charters of the New England governments and charged Edmund Andros with
consolidating them into a single administrative unit. Scholars, whatever their view of Andros, have viewed the
Dominion of New England as a brief era centralization undone by political events across the Atlantic. An
examination of Andros’ Land Policy in Maine, which involved using maps as administrative tools, suggests that
such centralization unfolded at a plodding pace. Moreover, it depended upon local intermediaries who used their
connections to the surveyor to acquire land and consolidate their own power in town politics.

A. Mapping Boston Harbor
Along the central Massachusetts coast, land now covered by ocean was once hilly terrain.
Glaciers melted, the sea rose, and hills became islands. Saltwater crashed against the rocky coast
and debris fell to the sea, forming beaches that tethered chains of islands to the nearby mainland.
Like huddled arms these sandy barriers formed a natural harbor, muting winds and waves from
open ocean. Freshwater travelling in jagged streams and rivers dumped mud and silt into the
harbor. Salt marshes grew outwards, sometimes fusing islands to the coast, becoming peninsular
necks. The Alogonquian-speaking Native inhabitants called one of these peninsulas “Shawmut,”
likely meaning “fountains of living water” for the springs of freshwater there. In 1630 that
freshwater attracted a straggling band of English Puritans who had landed twenty miles to the
north. First they called the peninsular neck “Trimountaine” after a prominent hill with three
summits. Ultimately they attached to the land the name of the Lincolnshire town from which
many of them, including the notable Reverend John Cotton, had originated. That town, Boston,
had been named after the ninth-century Saint Botolph.
1

1
Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston 3rd edition (Boston: Rockwell and
Churchill, City Printers, 1890); Irving B. Crosby, Boston Through the Ages: The Geological Story of Greater Boston
(Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1928); Walter Muir Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History (Cambridge:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1959); Darrett B. Rutman, Winthrop’s Boston: Portrait of a Puritan
Town, 1630-1649 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University
of North Carolina Press, 1965); Sam Bass Warner, Jr. “A Brief History of Boston,” in Alex Krieger, David Cobb,
with Amy Turner, eds., Mapping Boston (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999), 2-14 and “Today’s Boston: A History”
Massachusetts Historical Review (1999), I:1-19. “Shawmut” might have alternatively meant “where there is a going
by boat.” For this view see “Letter of Mr. [J. Hammond] Trumbull on Shawmut” in PMHS First Series, 9:376-79.

159
Narrow channels and wooded islands traversed the fifty square miles of Boston Harbor.
William Wood, in his 1633 promotional pamphlet New England Prospect, described the exterior
bay as “safe, spacious, and deepe, free from . . . cockling Seas” but had less favorable words for
the harbor itself: It “is made by a great company of Islands, whose high Cliffes shoulder out the
boistrous Seas, yet may easily deceive any unskillfull Pilote; presenting many faire openings and
broad sounds, which afford too shallow waters for any Ships, though navigable for Boates and
small pinnaces.” Despite these navigational challenges, Boston blossomed into a political and
economic center. Its location situated at the center of the other Massachusetts Bay settlements
helped it become the colony’s capital in 1636. When the English Civil War disrupted Atlantic
commerce, Boston merchants webbed together the economies of Spanish, Portuguese, and
English colonies in the Americas. Their transnational trade flourished after the Restoration, even
after Parliament passed mercantilist acts in 1660, 1663, and 1673 meant to curtail trade with non-
English partners. By the end of the seventeenth century, Boston boasted about six thousand
colonial inhabitants—more than any other city in northeastern America—along with fifteen
shipyards (second only to London in the English world). Dwellings, churches, stores, and
warehouses crowded close to sea as wharves extended outwards to meet ships. During the
Anglo-Dutch Wars inhabitants had periodically calculated that commerce, which attracted scores
of foreigners, necessitated shows of force. Following bouts of perceived danger in the 1630s and
1660s this commitment to fortification building waned. Ships sailing through the harbor to
Boston would pass the aptly named Castle Island and a lapsed fortification of brick and stone
that the traveler John Josselyn characterized in 1674 as neither a “stately Edifice, nor strong.”
From this vantage point one could spot “a Beacon, and great Guns” upon the highest summit of
the “trimountaine” and batteries of artillery upon the lower hills.
2

2
Both Wood and Josselyn wrote pamphlets to promote emigration to New England, which generally inflects the

160
When the fifty-gun vessel Kingfisher entered Boston Harbor in December 1686, its most
notable passenger, Sir Edmund Andros, likely peered out to survey the environs. Perhaps
Andros, recently appointed governor, set his eyes upon the many islands and thought of mapping
the harbor, as had his French counterpart Denonville. His commission from the recently-crowned
James II had obligated him to “cause a Survey to be taken of all the considerable Landing places
and Harbors in Our said Territory.” No map of Boston harbor had been printed. Manuscript
maps, of which only two survive, seem to have enjoyed only limited circulation. Sometime
during the next two years Andros tasked his chief surveyor, Philip Wells (or “Welles”), with the
job. The result, “This Harbour of Boston,” (Fig. 4.1) appears bare at first glance. Empty space
surrounds the harbor, outlined in red. A compass, a scale, and a box with eight brief lines of text
appear in three of the corners. At the extremity of the page is a simple border, two lines filled
with faded coloring, frayed in certain places by age. No icons, aside from a single tree, hinted at
the natural terrain. Nor did fancy cartouche illustrations dress the map. It would not have hung in
the halls of princes.
3

tone of their descriptions. Their commentary, however, often veers into criticism, which we can read as more
reliable. Contemporary descriptions and later cartographic representations affirm the truth of their most basic
geographical claims. William Wood, Nevv Englands Prospect: A true, lively, and experimentall description of that
part of America commonly called Nevv England: discovering the state of that Countrie, both as it stands to our new-
come English Planters; and to the old Native Inhabitants Laying downe that which may both enrich the knowledge
of the mind-travelling Reader or benefit the future Voyager (London: Thomas Cotes for John Bellamie, 1634); John
Josselyn, An Account of Two Voyages to new-England Wherein you have the setting out a Ship with the charges;
The prices of all necessaries for furnishing a Planter and his Family at his first coming; A Description of the
Countrey, Natives and creatures, with their Merchantil and Physical use; The Government of the Countrey as it is
now possessed by the English, &c. A large Chronological Table of the most remarkable passages, from the first
discovering of the Continent of America, to the year 1673 (London: Printed for Giles Widdows, 1674), 159 and 161;
Crosby, Boston Through the Ages; Bernard Bailyn, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955); Rutman, Winthrop’s Boston; David Lovejoy, The Glorious
Revolution in America (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1972), 1-31; Gary Nash, The Urban Crucible:
The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution, Abridged Edition (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1986), 1-19; Alan Taylor, American Colonies (New York: Viking Press, 2001), 159-186,
especially see 177; James D. Kornwolf with Georgiana Wallis Kornwolf, Architecture and Town Planning in
Colonial North America, 3 vols. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), II: 959-967; Nancy S.
Seasholes, Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003), 21-35.
3
Instructions of James II to Edmund Andros (3 June 1686) in Albert Stillman Batchellor, ed., Laws of New
Hampshire including Public and Private Acts and Resolves and the Royal Commissions and Instructions, with

161

Historical and Descriptive Notes, and an Appendix (Manchester, NH: The John B. Clarke Company, 1904), I:155-
170, quote on I:166. The earliest extant map of Boston Harbor is “[A chart of Boston and its vicinity, Massachusett's
Bay]” (c.1634), BL, AM, 5415.g.3; the second earliest extant manuscript map of the harbor, held at the BNF and
dated 1683, was by Augustine Fitzhugh. Fitzhugh belonged to a group of London mapmakers sharing a common
aesthetic, which scholars have retrospectively described as the “Thames School.” The map was in English, not
French, and it is unclear how exactly it ended up in French hands. Augustine Fitzhugh, [Baie de Boston] (London:
1683), BNF, CPL, SH18, PF135, DIV6, P3RES. Fitzhugh produced another copy of this same map eleven years
later, which also credited the ship captain Cyprian Southack who moved to Boston only in 1685 at the age of
twenty-three. It is possible Southack, whose father was a naval lieutenant, had visited Boston before that date as he
was sailing since the age of ten. He certainly had cartographic training as he drafted many other maps (none date as
early as 1683 but this might reflect a poor survival rate). Probably Southack drafted a rough map of Boston Harbor
early in the 1680s, which Fitzhugh cleaned up in subsequent copies. While English navigators relied on members of
the Thames School for maps, the vast majority of which do not survive, these mapmakers probably would have only
produced a handful of copies of the Southack/Fitzhugh map by the time Andros sailed for Boston in 1686. Cyprian
Southack and Augustine Fitzhugh, “A Draught of Boston Harbor” (1694), BL, AM, 5414 art. 17. The
Southack/Fitzhugh map was the basis for the first printed map of the harbor, “Boston Harbor in New=England,”
found in The English Pilot: the Fourth Book. Describing the Sea-Coasts, Capes, Head-lands, Rivers, Bays, Roads,
Havens, Harbours, Streights, Islands, Depths, Rocks, Shoals, Sands, Banks, and Dangers from Hudsons-Bay to the
River Amazones, with all the West-Indies Navigation, and all the islands therein as Jamaica, Cuba, Hispaniola,
Barbadoes, Porto Rico, and the rest of the Caribbes, and Bahama Islands with a New Description of Newfoundland,
New-England, New-York, Dellewar-Bay, Virginia, Mary-Land and Carrolina, &c. Shewing the Courses and
Distances from one Place to another, the Ebbing and Flowing of the Sea, the Setting of the Tides and Currents &c.
With many other things Necessary to be known in Navigation By the Information of divers Navigators of our own
and other Nations (London: Printed for John Thornton, 1698), map following pg. 20. A third, very rough manuscript
map, showing a small portion of Boston Harbor, can be found at the Massachusetts Archives. It is undated and
provides no information about who drafted it or why. The catalogue tentatively dates it at “1681?” but no evidence
supports this guess. [Ancient Plan of Boston Harbor] (1681?) MA, SC, MP, 3:2:25.

162
Fig. 4.1: M. Carroll, “This Harbour of Boston with soundings without & comings in are laid down as taken by
Captain John Fayrwether, Captn Thomins Smith, Captn Timothy Armitage, Capt. Joseph Eldrige Masters, and
Phillip Wells Imployed for the same by his Excellency Sr Edmund Andros Knight Captain General & Governor in
Chief of his Majesties Territory & Dominion of New England in America South and by East Mood makes high
water & flows ordi[rip] spring Tides 12 foot & 19 foot neptides at Boston” (nd; copied from the non-extant original
by Philip Wells, 1687-1689) Boston Public Library, Norman Leventhal Map Center, G3762.B65 1688 .W4

Wells fleshed out the world within the harbor with ink and earth tone watercolors. He
included soundings, anchorage points, rocks, shoals, islands, settlements, tidal lines, and place
names. He sketched some, but not all, of the settlements along the coast. Hull was drawn with
nine buildings while two other towns, Roxbury and Braintree (“Brantrey”), merited church icons.
The narrow Boston peninsula did not contain enough space to fully delineate its development.
Wells prioritized showing a fortification that Andros had built in 1687 and the city’s many docks
but omitted dwellings and churches. Nearby soundings indicated that approaching ships would
first pass Castle Island. The fortification there would guard, one might surmise, against hostile
ships and illicit trade. Yet on Long Island, far removed from Boston and Castle Island, Wells
sketched a house and dock, hinting that not all of the harbor’s trade went through Boston itself.
The island belonged to the merchant John Nelson who traded with the French in Acadia. Wells
did not note this. Viewers in Boston likely would have known while those in London might have
guessed at the illicit activity.
4

4
Richard Johnson, John Nelson, Merchant Adventurer: A Life Between Empires (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1991), 45.

163

Detail 4.1.1: The Harbor

164
Detail 4.1.2: View of Boston and immediate environs. Wells sketched the fortification Andros built and
acknowledged the extensive docks around the peninsula. The soundings suggest that ships would first need to pass
by Castle Island in order to approach the city.

Detail 4.1.3: View of Hull. It is unclear why Wells would have drawn this town with nine icons when he did not
embellish other settlements to the same degree.

Detail 4.1.4: Long Island. Here Wells drew the only tree on the map, along with a house and dock—both easy to
miss. The Island belonged to the merchant John Nelson and the inclusion of these icons might have gently hinted at
the subversion of the Trade and Navigation Acts.

We know relatively little about “This Harbour of Boston.” We can date the period of
mapping because a note at the bottom reports that Andros commissioned it when he was
“Governor in Chief of his Majesties Territory & Dominion of New England in America.” Andros

165
employed Wells and four ship captains (John Fayrwether, Thomas Smith, Timothy Armitage,
and Joseph Eldridge) to sound the harbor, which, along with the language of his commission,
suggests he intended the map to facilitate navigation. Andros might have hoped it would serve
rhetorical purposes in his transatlantic correspondence with Whitehall officials but, as his extant
writing does not mention the map, we cannot know. Wells, a figure of uncertain origins, had
served under Andros years earlier when the latter was the governor of New York (1674-83). He
appears regularly in the colony’s land records between 1680 and 1687, surveying land parcels
mostly in Staten Island and Ulster County. A handful of letters between Andros and his
Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brockholes briefly discuss a “Wells,” maybe Phillip, as about to
depart for England in 1681. Only four or five of his maps survive. In all likelihood, three of
these, including the one of Boston Harbor, were copies. The bore aesthetic similarities to maps
produced in the workshops of London map copyists. Possibly Wells had trained in one such
workshop. But, at least in the case of the Boston Harbor map, the absence of grids, pinholes, or
pencil lines and the presence of a tiny signature (“M. Carroll”) beneath the attribution to Wells
(“By Phillp [sic] Wells”) strengthen the case that it was a copy. The map’s provenance also
supports this conclusion. The nineteenth-century collector Francis Brinley acquired it, along with
another of Wells’ maps, from the antiquarian dealer Edward G. Allen as a parcel of the Penn
papers. We cannot know with certainty who in the Penn family acquired it, when, or where, but
we could reasonably suspect that Pennsylvania’s original proprietor, William Penn, procured a
copy from the Lords of Trade and Plantation, before which he appeared regularly, sometime
before printed maps of Boston Harbor became available in 1698.
5

5
For records of Wells’ work as a surveyor in New York, see Calendar of N. Y. Colonial Manuscripts: Indorsed
Land Papers in the Office of the Secretary of State of New York, 1643-1803 (Albany: Weed, Parsons & Co., 1864),
especially 20-45. These were mostly cartographic surveys but included a few textual ones as well. After the
publication of this calendar, a fire destroyed most of New York’s early land records. For one of Wells’ surviving

166
The map’s improbable survival hints at a few conclusions. First, that Andros did not
discuss maps in his generally brief correspondence with the Lords of Trade and Plantation, the
body that oversaw England’s colonial activities, does not mean he was not sending them maps—
indeed this chapter will establish that Andros valued maps as administrative tools. Because the
cartographic records of the Lords of Trade and Plantation vanished when the body was later
dissolved, we have no clear way of assessing how Andros might have employed maps for
rhetorical purposes. Second, we can reasonably establish that the politically well connected could
access and acquire copies of maps sent to the Lords of Trade and Plantation. Wells’ map of
Boston Harbor does not tell us, however, whether such maps found broad circulation. Unlike the
maps commissioned by Denonville, it was never printed. Nor did it influence later maps of the
harbor, at least those that survive. Finally, we can begin drawing comparisons between French
and English cartographic practices in northeastern America. Wells’ map was less visually
complex, contained fewer layers of geographic information, and appeared less precise than its
French counterparts. We know that the French made more maps than the English because they

land surveys, see “A survey and draft of land upon the Esopus Kill or River by Kingstowne in the County of Ulster”
(June 1685), NYHS, Maps, NS9, M29.2.4. For his two other maps, see “Chart of American plantations in Carolina,
Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York” BL, AM, 5414, art.19 and “A Sand Draught of New York Harbour”
Newberry Library, VAULT drawer Ayer MS map 55 (NLO). The catalogue lists the date for the New York Harbor
map as c. 1688 based on its similarity to Wells’ map of Boston Harbor. The map itself does not contain any hints at
its date, however, and like the map of Boston Harbor, it was most likely a copy. David Buisseret references in
passing another map (a 1683 “plan of the Harlem River”) in his notes on Wells’ “sand draught of New York
Harbour” in English Mapping of America, but I have not been able to locate it. For Andros and Brockhole’s letters,
see CMHS, 5:1-138, particularly 44, 47-8. For insights into the provenance of Wells’ harbor maps, see J. Hammond
Trumbull’s description in Justin Winsor, ed., The Memorial History of Boston, including Suffolk County,
Massachusetts, 1630-1880, 4 vols (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1881), II:l-li. Trumbull also provides
some biographical notes on the ship captains: “Captain John Fayerweather, who had served in the Indian war of
1675-76, and commanded one of the Boston train-bands, was a prominent man in Boston before and after the
Usurpation. At the Revoultion of April, 1689, he was appointed commander of the Castle. Capt. Thomas Smith
commanded the ‘Jersey’ frigate in the Expedition against the Eastern Indians, in 1704. Of Captains Armitage and
Eldridge I know little more than their names.” Also see Catalogue of the American library of the late Mr. George
Brinley, of Hartford, Conn, 5 vols (Hartford, CT: Press of the Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, 1893), V:144.
On the twisted history of the Penn collection see, Nicholas B. Wainwright, “The Penn Collection” The Pennsylvania
Magazine of History and Biography Vol. 87, No. 4 (Oct., 1963), 393-419. According to Wainwright, “the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania . . . purchased the entire contents of Allen’s catalogue.” Wainwright makes to specific
mention of Wells’ maps, but it seems they were among the items that “never arrived at the Historical Society,” quote
on 410.

167
had more mapmakers in North America during this period. Yet the apparent discrepancy in
cartographic activity has been exaggerated by the fact that the French were also better at
managing, organizing, and conserving their maps.
6

B. Remaking Internal Boundaries
Most importantly, the map bespoke a new approach to governance in New England.
Months before the Kingfisher sailed to Boston, the English King James II had ordered that
Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth Colony, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island be merged
into a new administrative unit called the Dominion of New England. He replaced the separate
elected assemblies with a single advisory Council composed of notable landowners, merchants,
and imperial administrators like Edward Randolph who had carried the new charter from
England in May 1686. James intended the Dominion as the first act in a more sweeping set of
reforms to centralize the administration of England’s overseas affairs, believing that grouping
colonies into larger geographic units would improve their defensive posture and help enforce
mercantilist policies. This program of centralization relied on mapping. James and his trusted
advisors, probably influenced by French administrative practices, believed that maps would
allow metropolitan officials to efficiently allocate state resources, direct military action,
document territorial claims, and regulate and tax commerce in overseas colonies. We can trace
James’s faith at least to his proprietorship of New York when he actively solicited maps from his
governors. It likely emerged earlier. Maps during this period contributed more to a perception of
centralization than to actual centralization. Andros, with the help of political allies like
Randolph, crafted fantasies about political centralization for themselves and imperial audiences
at Whitehall. We must be careful, however, not to automatically take them at their word (a trap

6
Soll, The Information Master, 94-119.

168
that many scholars of the colonial period have fallen into when reading imperial correspondence)
that they actually reoriented the spatial flow of power in the ways they suggested.
7

Andros disembarked, immediately laboring to visibly establish his authority throughout
the cityscape. Or at least this was the impression of himself he sought to convey to imperial
administrators at Whitehall. As historian Mary Lou Lustig has described it, the governor landed:
“splendidly arrayed in full dress uniform with a ‘scarlet coat laced, an accompanied by several
officers in their brilliant uniforms.’ Eight companies of the Massachusetts ‘militia in armes & a
great concourse of people,’ all of whom were ‘well disposed for His Majts Service, received
him.’ After Congregational minister, Increase Mather, invoked a blessing, Andros’s commission
was published, and the council, whose members would help him govern, was sworn. Throughout
the ceremony, Andros stood, not humbly with hat in hand, but boldly with his hat on his head to
underline his superior position in the colony.” In the months before Andros’s arrival

7
“Instructions for Governor Andros” (1 July 1674) and “Instructions for Governor Dongan” (27 Jan 1683*), TNA,
CO 5/1112, pp. 4-9, 41-45, also see DCHNY, III:216-219, 331-4; Maeer, “The Cartography of Commerce;” Pincus,
1688. King James II had intended to include Rhode Island in the Dominion but legal protocol delayed him from
doing so in time for Andros’ 1686 commission and instructions. James II provided Andros with additional
instructions when these legal issues were finally resolved and before Andros sailed for America. See RRIPP, III:218.
Contemporaries commented on an abundance of maps at Whitehall during the reigns of Charles II and James II.
These maps mostly perished in two fires at Whitehall in 1691 and 1698. See chapter 8. Historians have alternatively
portrayed the Dominion as a period of bureaucratic centralization and efficiency or as an unjust imposition of
imperial will. Seemingly positive and negative sides of the same coin, this debate reflects uncritical readings of the
available sources, which fall into two categories: First, those composed by Andros and his allies during his
governorship; and second, those complied by his political enemies soon after. Andros’s political enemies then
collected depositions and narratives to demonstrate his tyranny. But we must again be cautious here for they were
justifying their uprising against him, visited later in this chapter, in the context of shifting political landscapes. For
the historians positively presenting Andros as bringing efficiency to English colonial administration see especially
Viola Florence Barnes, The Dominion of New England: A Study in British Colonial Policy (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1923); Mary Lou Lustig, The Imperial Executive in America: Sir Edmund Andros, 1637-1714
(Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002). For the historiographical alternative see, John Gorham
Palfrey, History of New England (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1864), III:512-569; Lovejoy, The Glorious
Revolution in America; Richard Johnson, Adjustment to Empire: The New England Colonies, 1675-1715 (New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1981); James Truslow Adams is critical of the Stuarts but more sympathetic to
Andros, The Founding of New England (Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1921), 398-431. On seventeenth
century English political culture see Patricia Bonomi, Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1973) and The Lord Cornbury Scandal: The Politics of Reputation in
British America (Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute, 1998); Mark Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in
Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship and Political Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

169
councilmembers used their office to acquire land in much the same way that had characterized
provincial period. Merchants and moderate Puritans believed this new arrangement would
remedy financial problems dating back to Metacom’s War while religious outsiders celebrated
the potential for inclusion. Orthodox Puritans, especially of the Massachusetts Bay, sensed they
had lost political control over their province and lamented the changes. Two companies of foot
soldiers, roughly sixty men carrying bayonets and dressed in eye-grabbing red garbs, stood
nearby. Andros projected power to Boston’s inhabitants through these disciplined, visible
military bodies and would continue to do so through his administration by parading with them
through the city streets. He quickly began modifying the city’s architectural exoskeleton,
repairing crumbling fortifications and building new ones. He observed that the fortification upon
Castle Island was “a Little inconsiderable place” with “Walls in most places not ten foot high”
and a “stone battery . . . . ill contrived and out of repair.” He further noted that the city had “not
one Battery or Platform in good order” nor a “good Fortification” suitable “for his Maty’s
Service.”
8

Andros ordered his soldiers to repair the fortification on Castle Island. Its poor foundation
limited what could be done to bolster its sturdiness, but as the appearance of strength mattered as
much as actual strength, the soldiers built a parapet around the base so the fort “looks very well
from Sea.” They also built a new battery on the island. Andros boasted it would allow him to
“wholy command the Chanel.” In the city itself he added a battery and lodgings for his soldiers,
protected by temporary palisades until a more “fitting ffortification [could] be Built.” Andros

8
Andros to Blathwayt (23 Dec 1686), Blathwayt Papers, Colonial Williamsburg; Edmund Andros, “Extracts of
Letters relating to Fortifications” (30 March to 28 Nov, 1687), HL, BP, Box 3; Andros to Lords of Trade and
Plantation (30 March 1687), TNA, CO, 1/62, No. 16; Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province
of Massachusetts-Bay Edited by Lawrence Shaw Mayo, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), I:300;
Lustig, Imperial Executive in America, quote on 141; Randolph complained that that the council members “agree in
nothing but Sharing the Country amongst themselues and laying out Larg tracts of lands.” Randolph to William
Blathwayt (12 July 1686), ER, VI:187-189, quote on 188.

170
described the hill upon which the fortification was built as “a proper place for . . . seeing all the
town and commanding the Sea and Avenues by Land to it.” It is likely true, as the historian Ian
K. Steele has remarked, that the fort would help guard “against the rebellion which officer-
governors had always to expect.” Yet Andros’ comment, which made no specific mention of
quelling an unruly populace, emphasized to Whitehall officials his capacity to exercise a
discerning eye on the landscape he governed. “Seeing” in this case was intimately linked to
“commanding.”
9

As he established Boston as a base of power, Andros sought to extend his influence
outwards. In January he absorbed New Hampshire, Plymouth, and Rhode Island into the
Dominion by having his commission publicly read in their capitals. He also appointed Joseph
Dudley, the President of the Council, to examine manuscripts before their printing in order to
limit the circulation of ideas challenging his authority. In February he commissioned Nicholas
Manning and Francis Johnson officers, ordering them to travel to Pemaquid to receive into the
Dominion from New York. In March he pushed divisive tax policies through the Council in
order to pay the new costs of government, namely his salary and the royal troops. When
backcountry towns refused to appoint tax commissioners, Andros ordered the arrest of influential
dissenters such as Rev. John Wise and William Howlett who allegedly “Did particularly Excite
and stir up his Majesties subjects to Refractoryness and Disobedience.” In all of these tasks, he
found a particularly strong ally in Edward Randolph who had been laboring to end
Massachusetts’ political autonomy since visiting the Anglo-American colonies in 1676.

9
Edmund Andros, “Extracts of Letters relating to Fortifications” (30 March to 28 Nov, 1687), HL, BP, Box 3;
Stephen Saunders Webb, “The Strange Career of Francis Nicholson” WMQ (1966), 23:513–548, quote on 520;
Lustig, The Imperial Executive in America, quote on 141.

171
Randolph praised Andros’s in letters to officials in England while bullying provincials into going
along with his agenda.
10

Remaking internal boundaries was intimately related to projecting and protecting external
ones. New York Governor Thomas Dongan, understanding that royal plans for other colonies
remained uncertain, described the growing French threat as he lobbied Whitehall to incorporate
Connecticut, Rhode Island, East Jersey, and a portion of Pennsylvania into New York.
11
In an
astute letter, he tied together concerns of geography, security, trade, and taxation in explaining
why New York should anchor another enlarged government similar to the Dominion of New
England. To advance this agenda Dongan sent a map, no longer extant, that in his words showed
how the “severall governments . . . ly [sic: lie].” Presumably the map emphasized their proximity
to New York. In his letter Dongan argued that New York merchants easily skirted the Trade and
Navigation Acts by finding shelter in these nearby colonies whose governors were not loyal to
Whitehall. Dongan also fretted that French fortification building around the Great Lakes might
upset New York’s ability to conduct the fur trade. Whether the map showed New France is
unclear. It did show, however, “where the beaver hunting is, and where it will be necessary to
erect our Country forts for the securing of Beaver trade [i.e. from the French] and keeping the
Indyans in comunity with us.” The map also pointed out “where there’s a great river [i.e. the
Mississippi] discovered by one Lassall [René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle,] a frenchman

10
Andros to Rhode Island Officials (22 Dec 1686) , RRIPP, III:219; Andros to Walter Clarke (22 Dec 1686),
RRIPP, III:219; Order to Joseph Dudley (28 Jan 1687), MA, MAC, 126:220; Commissions to Francis Johnson and
Nicholas Manning (10 Feb 1687), MA, MAC, 126: 262-3; Warrant from the Apprehension of Rev. John Wise and
William Howlett (16 Sept 1687), MA, MAC,127:103-4; Edward Randolph to Lords of Trade and Plantation (25
March 1687), ER, IV:150-153; Edmund Andros to Lords of Trade and Plantation (30 March 1687), TNA, CO 1/62,
No. 16; Hall, Edward Randolph and the American Colonies, 1676-1703.
11
Dongan to Lords of Trade and Plantation (March 1687), TNA, CO 1/61, No. 75. Dongan had apparently not
learned that Rhode Island and Pemaquid had already been incorporated into the Dominion. Indeed he suggested
annexing Pemaquid “to Boston, [it] being very convenient for them in regard of its vicinity.” Charles II and
especially James II were influenced in their thinking by the administrative and bureaucratic reforms under Louis
XIV. For an understanding of those reforms, see James B. Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 100-151. On how these changes influenced the later Stuarts see Steve
Pincus, 1688.

172
from Cannada, who . . . brought two or three Vessells with people to settle there.” Dongan
warned French settlements along this river would prove “very inconvenient to us” because it
stretched “from our Lake by the back of Virginia and Carolina.” Here he anticipated the later
fear that French expansion would limit English trade and settlement opportunities to the west.
Dongan situated New York at the center of many different geopolitical relationships,
arguing in letter and map that it offered the best vantage point to govern neighboring colonies,
foil French interests, and maintain England’s relationship with the Iroquois League. In advancing
the annexation of neighboring colonies, however, he not only presented New York as the ideal
seat of political power but also portrayed himself as the most capable administrator of such an
expanded colonial unit. Here he emphasized his history of gathering geographic knowledge to
advance England’s position in America. Such knowledge, he argued, had propelled French
advantages in the beaver trade and that competing would require “us to encourage young men to
go a beaver hunting as the french doo” to understand the area’s geography. Dongan boasted that
before his appointment “no man of our Government ever went beyond the Sinicas country” but
that he had sent English scouts to accompany Iroquois trade missions with “the farr Indyans
called the Ottowasse inhabiting about three months journey to the west and W:N:W of Albany.”
The map he sent evidenced the fruits of this approach.
12

Unfortunately for Dongan, Randolph and Andros had already won this round of Anglo-
Atlantic politics. Earlier, Randolph had initiated the legal process of dissolving the corporate
governments of Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, and the Jerseys on the grounds they had
violated their royal charters. Randolph’s lists of misdemeanors served as the basis for the King’s
lawyers to issue writs of quo warranto, ordering proprietors and officials them to justify the
legitimacy of their governments. In May 1686 Randolph delivered these writs to the

12
Dongan to Lords of Trade and Plantation (March 1687), TNA, CO 1/61, No. 75.

173
governments of Rhode Island, which agreed to dissolution, and Connecticut, which pursued
dilatory tactics. Connecticut Governor Robert Treat reached out for advice to Dongan who
recommended “a downright humble submission [to the King] . . . to secure . . . liberty, property,
& . . . Religion.” Dongan further suggested that Connecticut officials request annexation to New
York, promising to “consent to ever thing that will be to y
r
Goverm
ts
advantage.” In contrast,
Randolph and Andros threatened Treat that with or without his consent, Connecticut would be
absorbed into the Dominion. Continued inaction would only mean annexation without “the
enjoyments and indulgencies which his Ma
ty
has been graciously pleased to grant to the
Colonyes of New Plymº and Road Island.” Treat pleaded with the King for the continuance of
the Connecticut government but pledged to “submit to his royal commands” and stated a
preference to join the Dominion. Dongan, upset with Treat, wrote the Connecticut General Court
in October, begging them to petition the King to instead join New York. Here he reasoned that
joining New York would improve the defensive posture of both colonies: “The secureing this
[New York] Goverm
t
from y
e
invasion of y
e
French will secure yours [Connecitcut].” Dongan’s
pleas were not timely, however. Days later Andros, receiving orders from the King to annex
Connecticut to the Dominion, marched to Hartford with sixty soldiers to publicly read his orders.
He then appointed Robert Treat and John Allen, both instrumental in effecting the annexation, to
the Dominion Council.
13

As Andros and Randolph expanded the bounds of the Dominion, they sought to redefine
the meanings of internal boundaries, namely those pertaining to the private occupation of land.

13
Edward Randolph to the Lords of Trade and Plantation (nd), PRCC, III:347; “Articles of Misdemeanour Against
Connecticut,” (nd), PRCC, III:345-349; Randolph to Connecticut Governor Robert Treat and Council (Boston: 27
May 1686), PRCC, III: 253-254; Treat to Dongan (3 July 1686), PRCC, 355-6; Dongan to Treat (13 Aug 1686),
PRCC, III:366-7, quote on 367; Randolph to Treat (23 Dec 1686), PRCC, III:375; Dongan to Connecticut General
Court (4 Oct 1687), PRCC, 386-7. Also see John Palmer and James Graham to Governor Dongan (New Have: 5
May 1687) TNA, CO 1/62, #39; and Andros to Governor Treat (22 Dec 1686), 376-7. Also see James II to Andros
(27 June 1687) TNA, CO 5/904, pp. 353, 354; Andros to Lords of Trade and Plantation (28 Nov 1687), TNA, CO
1/63, No. 75; Lustig, The Imperial Executive in America, 142-3.

174
Andros’s 1686 commission had charged him to “dispose of . . . Lands for a moderate Quit Rent”
when those lands were “yet undisposed of” or “for which Our Royall Confirmation may be
wanting.” The dry legalese here obscures the volatility of the clause. Most New England
landowners lacked royal confirmation for their titles. Sometimes this owed to the sloppy
bureaucratic processing. Many corporate bodies with royal grants had failed to affix the royal
seal when they subdivided and sold titles to portions of these grants. In other instances
individuals or corporations had drawn upon other English legal traditions to justify their
possession, easy enough given the minimal oversight that had heretofore defined the
metropolitan-colonial relationship. James II and the Lords of Trade and Plantation did not intend,
in giving Andros power to dispose of these unconfirmed lands, to actually dispossess English
settlers. They simply hoped to acquire a new stream of revenue. English tradition required the
consent of a legislative body for direct taxation on land but quitrents, a medieval holdover in
which lords granted tenants exclusive rights to the use of the land they occupied for an annual
rent, offered an exception. In Edmund Randolph’s estimation, quitrents in New England would
generate three thousand pounds annually. Requiring all lands to have royal confirmation would
have standardized what had been a patchwork system while, in the words of historian Viola
Florence Barnes, demanding “of the colonists recognition of their tenurial relationship to the
king.”
14

Andros neither published orders to confirm their titles nor advertised his willingness to
grant vacant lands to people who would pay quitrents. Many provincial landowners would have
perceived such a scheme as an assault on the social order. The English, whether or not they

14
Randolph to Blathwayt (19 June 1686) in ER, IV:176-8. Commission of James I to Edmund Andros (12 Sept
1686) in Batchellor, ed., Laws of New Hampshire, 159-160; Barnes, Dominion of New England, especially 184-187,
and quote on 176.

175
possessed it, widely perceived the private ownership of land as the basis for independence,
mastership, economic prosperity, and political subjecthood. Andros proceeded quietly, allowing
intermediary figures advance the process in private settings with scarce documentation. His only
public consideration to land titles concerned requests from Joseph Dudley, Richard Wharton, and
others for large tracts of land in New Hampshire, Maine, and the Narraganset Country (a portion
of Rhode Island), respectively. The Lords of Trade and Plantation had specifically asked for
Andros opinion in these matters, explaining why he “Did soone after my Arrivall here cause
publique Notice to be given” that he would help adjudicate these titles. He largely dismissed
Wharton’s claims in Maine, questioning the validity of his titles, complaining that in the seven
years of his possession he had not “Settled or Improved any more than a farme,” and noting that
“Several persons” had already “Settled and Improved” this claimed land. Andros despised large
grants for they hindered “the Settlement and Improvement of the Country” at the expense of
“many [of] his Majesties Subjects who are Desirous to plant and Improve the Same.” Perhaps
Andros’ hesitancy here reflected the poor track record of such men for paying taxes. Randolph
had earlier complained that despite their vast holdings, “tis very hard to gett 100
lb
: paid even by
the great proprietors.”
15

C. Land Policy in Maine
Andros adopted Maine as one testing grounds for this new land policy. The task, which
required sorting out the many disputed land claims that had emerged from discontinuities in
political authority and New England’s patchwork land system, proved vexing. Individuals
justified claims of possession through Indian deeds, continual habitation, improvement, as well
as grants from towns, colonies, companies, and Kings. In many cases different individuals with

15
Randolph to Blathwayt (19 June 1686), ER, VI:176-8, quote on 177; Reports of Sir Edmund Andros on Mr.
Richard Wharton's claim to lands at Pojebscot and the claims to the Narragansett Country, enclosed in his letter to
Lords of Trade and Plantation (31 Aug 1687), TNA, CO 5/904, pp. 10-12 and 5/905, pp. 3-8.

176
different forms of evidence claimed the same land. Problems in Maine dated back to 1629 when
the Plymouth Council for New England mistakenly granted overlapping patents to different
proprietors: Sir Ferdinando Gorges received the territory between Piscataqua and Kennebec
Rivers (King Charles I confirmed this title in 1639) while John Dy and others were granted lands
around Saco and Casco Bays. The grant to Dy, known as the Lygonia Patent, fell within Gorges’
claims. During the English Civil War and Interregnum, when Royal authority ceased to serve as
the basis for patents, the Massachusetts Bay Colony claimed the territory, arresting and
dispossessing opposition figures such as the Reverend Robert Jordan, a Royalist. When “by the
power of ye massachustts ye townships weare sett up,” one of Jordan’s tenants, Robert Elliot,
successfully petitioned Scarborough for some of Jordan’s land. The Restoration questioned the
legality of such a grant. Both Elliot and Jordan’s widow, Sarah, petitioned Andros to confirm
their claims but Andros, likely perplexed, rendered no verdict in the dispute.
16

Metacom’s War, which displaced most of the English settlers in Maine, further confused
property claims. Town records and deeds often perished during attacks while surviving deeds
textually described boundaries with landmarks that had disappeared. These absences complicated
resettlement, rendering it difficult to legally establish and prove possession. These conditions
bred greed and deceit. The Scarborough resident Roger Vicars, for example, reported that the
town selectman had confirmed to him 150 acres with some meadow as well as 6 or 7 acres of

16
In 1676 Gorges’ heirs sold their claim to the Massachusetts Bay. This, however, did not establish whether the
colony had legal authority in Maine during the Interregnum. Robert Elliot was one of the men who signed the letter
of July 30, 1686, protesting the removal of the records from New Hampshire. He was also one of the men appointed
in 1681 to renew the Saco-Scarborough boundary as it was being resettled in the wake of Metacom’s War. It seems
his early recalcitrance subsided as he petitioned for the confirmation of his lots. See “Scarborough Town Records”
(1681-1816) MEHS, Coll 1229, 2; Letter from Portsmouth (30 July 1686), MA, MAC, 126:38; Petition of Sarah
Jordan and John Hincks for Confirmation of Land (4 Oct 1687), MA, MAC, 127:183; Survey of land for John
Hincks (6 Oct 1687), MA, MAC, 127:192; Warrant to Survey Land of John Hincks and Sarah Jordan (6 Oct 1687),
MA, MAC, 127:196; Petition for Confirmation of Land of Robert Elliot (13 Jan 1688*), MA, MAC, 128:22a;
Petition of J. Hincks as a reply to R Eliot's Petition (6 Feb 1688*), MA, MAC, 128:40; Augustus Freedom Moulton,
The Settlement of Scarborough (Portland, ME: 1895).

177
marshland, “all w[hi]ch Land y[ou]r p[et]i[one]r injoyed by clearing it, w[i]th hard labour.”
When war drove him from the land, Vicars claimed that he was “hindred from his resetling” by
John Hincks “running his Line on ye sayd Land,” that is, fudging the boundary markings to
incorporate portions of Vicars’ parcels. Others had lost their deeds. John Maine explained that
during the “warr with the Indians . . . his Evidences for his houseing and Land were burnt.”
Though he returned, “some that were strangers there, before the Warr . . . have since settled . . .
sundry Lotts on yor Petitionrs upland . . . [and] Marsh Land.”
17

The earliest requests came from council members and reflected political calculation at the
provincial level. Bartholomew Gedney (or Gidney), a Salem merchant whose fortunes derived
more from commerce than landholding, petitioned Andros concerning a parcel “two miles in
bredth on Either Side of a Small River Called Wesgustogoe” (present-day Royal River) that he
had purchased in 1674 from one Thomas Stevens who had acquired it “of the Indian Sachems.”
Gedney acknowledged that the land had not been improved, but cast himself as blameless. First
Henry Sayward, his partner and agent, had failed in his obligation to “to Erect & build a saw mill
with dam & houseing suitable upon the sd River.” Then he sold the land to Walter Gendall,
taking “a mortgage . . . from him for sure performance of the paiments agreed on” but “Gendle . .
. forfeited his mortgage & Reinstated me.” Gedney promised to “indeavour forthwith to promote
plantation and setlement upon the place & frely give unto persons fit to be improved proportions
of Land that may invite & incourage them.” Gedney petitioned Andros not just to secure this
land but because he hoped Andros’s tax policy, which had yet to be decided, would target land

17
Petition of John Maine (10 June 1687), MA, MAC 126.347-8; Petition of Roger Vicars (5 Dec 1687), MA, MAC,
127:274; Charles E. Clark, The Eastern Frontier: The Settlement of Northern New England, 1610-1763 (New York:
Knopf, 1970). The wording of Vicars’ petition is slightly unclear. It might have been that Robert Jordan, the
previous owner of Hinck’s land, misrepresented the lots’ dimensions to Hincks.

178
more than commerce, the greater source of Gedney’s wealth. Gedney waited unusually long,
more than a year, before Andros ordered his land surveyed.
18

Edward Tyng, another council member, pleaded the opposite. A major landowner in
Maine, Tyng hoped Andros would affirm the Maine titles without quitrents. His petition
delineated the history of the English in Maine, emphasizing how quitrents had discouraged
settlement. Although “severall persons and their famalyes have satt downe in severall
Towneships, in & upon the said Province with great charge, trouble, and Expence,” Tyng
expressed his belief that “many more (in probabillity) would [have also settled in Maine], had
not the burthern of Quitt Rents discouraged [them].” He requested some “abatem:
t
” of the
quitrents that “lye heavy upon the Inhabtiants there.” Tyng likely hoped to attract more settlers
with this policy, believing that greater numbers would mean greater security. Andros saw the
calculus differently. Peopling the edges of English settlement buffered more populous areas from
hostilities and extended the bounds of English territorial claims but aggravated tensions with
neighboring Wabanaki tribes. Accordingly Andros followed a middle policy, instituteing taxes
on both land and trade. He did not consult the full Council.
19

Petitioners did not need to sit on the council to dress up self-interest in the clothing of
common good. Another early petition came from Walter Gendall, Simeon Stoddard, and
Jeremiah Dummer (Dummer had inherited claims to the Lygonia patent, which concerned this
area, but made no recourse to it here) requesting a grant of land in Casco Bay to accommodate
Huguenot refugees from Eleuthera, an island in the Bahamas. Gendall, Stoddard, and Dummer
had petitioned the Council in September 1686 and it promised to recommend their case. Richard
Wharton and Bartholomew Gedney, whose lands bordered the grant on both sides, had also

18
Bartholomew Gedney’s Petition for Confirmation of Land (4 Jan 1687), MA, MAC, 126:199.
19
Edward Tyng's Petition for Confirmation of Maine Town Titles (10 Jan 1687), MA, MAC, 126:201.

179
agreed to help accommodate these Huguenots. By July, however, four of these refugees
complained to Andros that “these gentlemen have not performed their obligation to us . . . to
supply us” the items necessary to “carry on ye plantation.” Andros granted no land Gendall,
Stoddard, and Dummer. A few more petitions arrived for the Governor’s consideration
throughout the spring and early summer, concerning comparatively trifling amounts of land.
James Stilson and John Maine wrote separately about their dispossession from Pemaquid and
North Yarmouth (respectively) during Metacom’s War while John Swarton asked for a grant in
North Yarmouth for his military service in Flanders under King Charles II. In June Andros
ordered Gendal, who had surveyed but not mapped lots in North Yarmouth, to investigate
Maine’s claims and lay out land for Swarton. More significantly, Andros granted confirmation of
twelve parcels in Falmouth to Sylvanus Davis, a justice of the peace, who along with Tyng later
proved instrumental in soliciting petitions.
20

The larger wave of petitioning began in summer 1687, instigated in part by the visit of
Francis Nicholson, an English officer commanding one of Andros’ regiments. Nicholson’s
voyage primarily involved diplomacy with the French to protect English fishing rights after a
recent incident in which a French Man-of-War seized two Salem Ketches near Cape Sable, along
the southern coast of Nova Scotia. Meeting with the French captain Barthélemy de Beauregard in
Port Royal, Nicholson emphasized that the “late Treaty” ensured that the English “might fish
anywhere So it were not in any of their Rivers, Creeks, Bayes, Havens, Ports and Shoars.” The
French captain promised (though Nicholson questioned his sincerity) to “strictly Observe the

20
“Respecting the Elutherians” (15 Sept 1686) in CMHS, Third Series, VII:158-160; Petition of Jeremiah Dummer
& Simeon Stoddard (6 Jan 1687), MA, MAC, 126:200; Petition of James Stilson (14 April 1687), DHSM, VI:262-3;
Petition of John Maine (10 June 1687), MA, MAC, 126:347-8; Petition of John Swarton (16 June 1687), MA, MAC,
126:358; Petition of the Elutherian People (12 July 1687), MA, MAC, 126:387. For the Council’s decision on
Swarton’s request for Land in North Yarmouth, see Massachusetts Sessional Papers (20 June 1687), TNA, CO
5/785, p. 127.

180
Treaty, and to assist and English Shipp or Vessell that desired his help.” The voyage also
involved reconnaissance. At Port Royal Nicholson observed “the ruine of an old Earthen
Fortification (formerly distroyed by the English)” and learned of plans to build a new one. He
supposed they would defer deciding where to place it until Louis-Alexandre Des Friches de
Meneval, the new governor, had surveyed all the harbors. Yet Nicholson “heard one Say . . . they
design’d it at Penobscot,” which would considerably lessen the distance between English and
French military fronts. As he returned to Boston, Nicholson assessed the defensive posture of
English occupied Maine, describing Pemaquid fort as “very much out of Order.” Mostly,
however, he dwelled on Maine’s potential, namely an abundance of fish and lumber, and
extolled the virtues of settlement. If peopled, he promised, it “would make one of the best
Countryes in New England.” Settlement, along with the trade it facilitated, would also strengthen
the bonds between English and Wabanaki. According to Nicholson, one sachem living along the
St. George’s River had implored him to encourage English settlement there. Nicholson also used
his time in Maine to urge English settlers to confirm their titles, emphasizing that the “King was
their great Landlord and . . . would be kindest to them.” He nevertheless worried that “it will be a
hard task to perswade them to it (They so Idollizeing Indian Purchase and General Court
Vote:).”
21

Whatever resistance Nicholson anticipated, he convinced at least five local notables to
petition for royal confirmation of their lands. Four—David Phippen, Richard Seacombe, Joshua
Scottow, and Col. Edward Tyng—lived in Saco and Casco Bays, the geographic center of
English-occupied Maine. The fifth, Rev. Shubael Dummer, lived further south in York. At the

21
Francis Nicholson to William Blathwayt (5 Sept 1687) in Bruce T. McCully, “The New England-Acadia Fishery
Dispute and the Nicholson Mission of August, 1687.” Essex Institute Historical Collections XCVI (1960), 277-290,
quote on 287. For more background on Nicholson see Bruce T. McCully, “From the North Riding to Morocco: The
Early Years of Governor Francis Nicholson, 1655-1686” WMQ (1962), 19:534–56; Webb, “The Strange Career of
Francis Nicholson.”

181
same time—though Andros had not publicly announced his land policy—word of a “Survey[o]
r

now goeing Eastward” (probably Walter Gendal) had begun to spread throughout the Boston
area. People living there, mostly merchants and land speculators, also began petitioning. Three
(Walter Barfoote, Joseph Shippen, Sr., and Vines Ellacot) requested confirmation of their titles
and another four (Ephraim Herrick, John Usher, Richard Adams, and Edward Ewster), grants of
land. A little more than a year later, petitioning halted as violent conflict between the English and
Wabanaki engulfed the region. In total 193 petitioners wrote to confirm their titles to Maine land
and/or acquire new lands there (Charts 3.1-). A close investigation of Andros’s land policy in
Maine—which tied together concerns over security, state power, taxation, the meaning of
possession, and the location of political authority—illustrates the problems the Governor
encountered in centralizing power.
22

Confirmation Grant Both Confirmation and Grant Totals
Petitions 87 38 44 169
Petitioners 84 47 62 193
Table 4.1: Petitions and Petitioners by What they Requested. Many petitions were signed by multiple people while
some people petitioned multiple times, explaining the numerical discrepancy between petitions and petitioners.

22
Undoubtedly the number of petitioners would have been higher had the process continued. These petitions and
orders to survey are almost exclusively at the Massachusetts Archives, mostly in the “usurpation” volumes
concerning the Dominion of New England. The very name of these volumes, which challenges the legitimacy of
Andros’ governorship, evidences the deeply political nature of record keeping. This memorial politics may help
explain some of the discrepancies described in the following paragraph. See MA, MAC, vols. 126-129. Also see
vols. 3 (“Colonial 1629-1720”) and 45 (“Lands 1622-1726”). For the maps, see MA, SC, MP, vols. 3, 15, 16, 32, 33,
35, and 37.

182

Chart 4.1: Petitioners for Confirmation, Grants, or Both by Month. Most asked for just confirmation. Peaks in
confirmation also coincided with those for grants. Some people petitioning for confirmation also asked for grants,
though these kinds of requests came in two spurts: March/April and July 1688.

The process moved sluggishly. Reading through petitions required time and the
governor’s presence in Boston. Petitioners offered as many proofs of possession as possible,
describing their deeds, the people who held the land previously, how the original title was
derived (e.g. from an Indian deed, a royal charter, or a town grant), their occupancy of the land,
and the ways they had “improved” it. The vast majority of applicants relied on this language of
improvement. Those requesting confirmation did so to demonstrate that they had invested time
and money into the land to help people it. Those seeking grants carefully documented the ways
they had transformed the land they rented, squatted on, or already possessed to evidence their
capacity to improve new lands. If Andros doubted the veracity of petitioner’s claims, he might
have asked a local notable to report on its accuracy. If everything seemed in order he would issue
a warrant to survey the land. Eighty petitioners (41%) for Maine lands received such a warrant.
This was, however, only the first step in confirming a title.
23

23
Ambros Bowdoin, for example, described how he “hath Settelled three tenniments” while Patrick Denmark, Jr.
emphasized how he had “fenced & planted [the land he inhabited] . . . at his great Charge.” Petition of Ambros
Bowdoin (16 July 1688), MA, MAC, 129.74; Petition of Patrick Denmark, Jr. (16 July 1688), MA, MAC, 129:74A.
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Petitioners for Both
Petitioners for Grants
Petitioners for Confirmation

183
D. Cadastral Maps as Administrative Tools
Andros, placing faith in maps as administrative documents, wanted parcels visually
represented as well as textually described. Textual deeds, heretofore the most dominant type of
landownership record in New England, narrated the bounds of a parcel by explaining how to
proceed through the physical landscape. They walked readers along various landmarks,
instructing how far and in what direction one would need to travel to go from one to the next.
Impermanent landmarks (e.g. trees that fell down or stones that were moved) and confusing
language often rendered these deeds unreliable, especially in hostile borderlands where people
had been and might again be displaced. Maps recorded the same data but allowed people to
bypass the complicated legalese, follow the parcel in either direction, and to visualize its general
shape from overhead. They did not replace but rather supplemented textual description.
24

In September 1687 Andros appointed Richard Clements, about whom little is known, as
deputy surveyor under Philip Wells. In October, before departing to annex Connecticut, Andros
ordered Clements to survey the lands of all of the Saco and Casco Bay petitioners while ignoring
the Reverend Shubael Dummer in York and most of the Bostonians. His instructions required
Clements to “survey and lay out the sd parcell and . . . to make a platt and draft thereof” and then
to return “the same . . . to the surveyors office att Boston That a Confirmacon may be thereupon
Granted to the Petitioner.” By November Clements had arrived in Scarborough, Maine. There he
“Layd out a Tract of Land And mash Containing two hundred Acrews [sic: Acres] for Josuah
[sic: Joshua] Scottow Esqr.” Scottow, a merchant and commander of the Scarborough fort, had
shown Clements the twenty-seven year old deed to these lands, seemingly hoping for immediate

24
For examples of textual deeds, see H. W. Richardson, William M. Sargent, Leonard Bond Chapman, and E. C.
Bowler, eds. York Deeds, 18 vols (Portland, ME: John T. Hull, 1887); The Maine towns with continuous histories
dating to the seventeenth century store their land records with these types of deeds at their town halls. See for
example the Kittery Town Records Volume A, kept at the Town Manager’s office (200 Rogers Road,
Kittery, ME 03904).

184
confirmation of the title. Clements, however, lacked such authority: As he wrote to his superior
Philip Wells, “I Cannot In Larg uppon itt Without an In Largment of my Warrt from his
Excelny,” Reading between the lines, it appears that Clements was asking for an expansion of his
powers in Maine. Scottow’s son, Thomas, delivered Clements’ return (i.e. the textual description
of the property’s bounds), his map (no longer extant), and his letter to the surveyor’s office in
Boston. Months passed. Neither Wells nor Andros confirmed the title. In February 1688,
Thomas, on behalf of his father, again requested confirmation. Surviving records points to only
four people who actually received confirmation. Suffice it to say, the process did not work very
well.
25

25
Andros, “Warrant to Richard Clements to be Deputy Surveyor” (16 Sept 1687), MA, MAC, 127:106; “Warrant to
Survey the Lands of Joshua Scottow” (8 Oct 1687), MA, MAC, 127:199. Inconsistencies mark this corpus of
petitions, orders to survey, and maps. Andros ordered land surveyed for five people (James Andrews, Sr., Sylvanus
Davis, Walter Gendal, Charles Lidget, and Edward Shippen) who either did not petition for land or whose petitions
are no longer extant. Other evidences indicate that many survey maps do not survive. If the surveyor Richard
Clements submitted the maps to the Council, the Attorney General, or Andros, we would expect them to be with the
other governmental documents at the Massachusetts Archives. Most of Clements’ surviving maps are here, yet one
pertaining to Walter Gendal’s land in North Yarmouth resides at the Maine Historical Society. We can only guess
how this unique map (i.e. not a copy of one at the Massachusetts Archives) ended up there and its separation from
the rest of the collection raises the possibility that other maps were not delivered or were subsequently scattered.
This prospect is confirmed by one petitioner, Nathaniel Wallis, who later described how his land in North Yarmouth
“was Surveyed and Returne made thereof by mr Richard Clements then Depty Surveyor as by the Reuturne &
platts.” The Massachusetts Archives, however, holds neither his return nor his plot. Such inconsistencies probably
resulted from uneven recordkeeping practices, political meddling following Andros’ governorship, poor archival
management over the centuries, and the general vulnerability of such documents. Clements himself acknowledged
this last possibility when he wrote that “Mr john browns[,] john smiths[,] & james Rosses [returns] are all in one
plot of Large paper if one be Lost they are all.” Indeed, their returns do not survive. Nor did those of Edmund Gale,
which Clements reported having “sent . . . four monthes agoe.” This all means we can only draw tentative
quantitative conclusions. The “11%” figure, for example, would be slightly higher if all of Clement’s maps had
survived but still pretty low. Richard Clements, “A Draft of a percell of land lying in North Yarmouth Casco Bay
Cont 239 [?]eves with Clabbard Island there unto belonging Conta 31 Acres the whole 270 Acres, Surveyed for Capt
Walter Gendall Esqr” (8 Dec 1687), MEHS, Map F 367; Richard Clements to Phillip Wells (15 Aug 1688), MA,
MAC 3:369-69a; Petition for Confirmation and Grant of Land of Nathaniel Wallis (5 March 1688), MA, MAC,
128:77. No records of Clements exist either before or after the Dominion of New England. GDMNH guesses that he
“came and went with” Andros but no evidence supports this claim. Andros appointed other deputy surveyors as
well, including John Smith and John Gore. Smith, perhaps the same as Captain John Smith buried in present-day
Revere, Massachusetts, drafted at least ten maps depicting various parcels throughout Massachusetts and Rhode
Island. Smith’s appointment and activity provide strong evidence that Andros ultimately intended to require that all
landholders confirm their land. See Massachusetts Archives Special Collections 3, Maps and Plans, 2:42; 3.2, 12,
14, 16, 19, 21, 22, 24; 112.421a.

185
Twenty-nine of Clements’ maps survive. They concern the lands of nine people, only
11% of the people whose land was ordered surveyed or, put another way, only 5% of the people
who had petitioned. These maps stand in clear contrast to those by Villeneuve depicting the St.
Lawrence Valley around Quebec. Rough, unpolished, unembellished sketches, Clements’ maps
were not meant to sway the opinions of bureaucrats across the Atlantic. He showed individual
parcels and little other context that would place them within a broad cartographic narrative of
English settlement. He showed how individuals had built upon land they possessed, not how over
the course of decades European communities had embedded themselves into American
landscapes.

The challenge for English mapmakers like Clements rested with the ways lots had
been “laid out,” that is, how a surveyor had altered the physical landscape, usually by etching
symbols into trees or planting stakes, to mark the property bounds. French surveyors abstractly
conceptualized lots as simple geometric shapes—usually long, narrow lots approximating
rectangles that offered access to the St. Lawrence River—before marking the physical
environment. The demands of mixed husbandry in New England made for a greater diversity of
parcel shapes and less geometric regularity. Though surveyors here often divided lands
according to geometric projections, they also often followed the natural and winding contours of
different terrain types. This generated many oddly shaped lots (Chart 4.2) that were difficult to
map, explaining Clements’ limited cartographic output. Eight of Clements’ maps showed square
or rectangle lots (Fig. 4.2). Another two would have been if not for an irregular side. In these
cases, oddly shaped streams bounded the remaining edge (Fig. 4.3). The remaining nineteen
(66%) lots were oddly shaped. Irregular lots inevitably contained marshland (or were islands).
Other lot shapes made little apparent sense, owing not to environmental features (at least not
ones described by the maps or returns) and did not easily lend themselves to be adjoined by other

186
lots. Clements’ maps of Falmouth constable John Skelling’s (also “Scelling” and “Skillion”)
lands illustrate the diversity of shapes and terrain types. A talented cartographer would have had
difficulty piecing together these various parcels while a middling one—like Clements—would
have little hope at drafting a town map showing land divisions (Detail 4.5.1). Such a map would
have clearly delineated the bounds between properties, minimizing the potential for disputes. It
would have also allowed Andros to claim knowledge and authority over New England lands,
necessary preconditions for universally imposing quitrents.
26

Fig. 4.2: Detail, Richard Clements, “A drafft of John Scellings house Lott wheare one he liveth Lyine one
ye Nw side Casco River neare ffort Loyall Contt 8 ½ Acre besides ye Allowance: for queen street” (18 Jan 1688*)
MaA, MaP, 3:37:3. This map, which would have been very easy to draft, reveals a rectangular house lot. Whoever
laid out the lot used two trees to mark opposing corners and set two stakes to complete the rectangle. The map
conveys basic information about what surrounds the lot (a vacant lot, “minister’s Lands,” George Burroughs, and
Casco River), how Scelling has “improved” it (building a house), and what runs through it (Queen Street). Clements
often filled his surveys with parallel lines as continuations of his compass, running in either east-west or north-south
(as is the case here) directions.

26
Charles Clark, Eastern Frontier, 184-8; Kent C. Ryden, Mapping the Invisible Landscape: Folklore, Writing, and
the Sense of Place (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993), 24-36; Brian Donahue, The Great Meadow:
Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).

187

Fig 4.3: Detail from Richard Clements, “A parrsell of Marsh: and upland Lyinge one the NE Side nonsuch River att
A place Called or knowne by the name of nonsuch Marshes Contt 284 Acres of Up Land & 11 Acres of Marsh
Lyinge within ye pricked lines & ffronting with the River Sirveyed for John Skellings” (18 Jan 1688*) MaA, MaP,
3:37:27. This irregularly shaped parcel of land and marsh—bordered by Sylvanus Davis, George Ingersoll, and
vacant Land—would have been rectangular if not for the one side bounded by the Nonsuch River. Marshland
occupied the space between the river and the dotted line, while Clements described the terrain above as “good
upLand,” “Bad Land,” and “pitch pine.”

Fig. 4.4: Detail from Richard Clements, “A drafft of A parrsell of marsh Lyinge one ye NW side Casco river neare
kepisick Contt 4 ½ Acrs Sirveyd for John Scealling” (18 Jan 1688*) MaA, MaP, 3:37:3. Unlike Scelling’s house lot,
this was an oddly shaped parcel. The property lines followed the natural shape of the marshland, perhaps explaining
why Clements only included one landmark, a pitch pine, to show the bounds of the parcel.

188

Fig. 4.5: Clements, “A drafft of A small Lott of Land belongin to john Scellings Lynge neare his house Contt one
Acre 1/5 part: & two Rod” (18 Jan 1688*), MaA, MaP, 3:32:7. This unembellished lot lying on Fleet street was
trapezoidal.

Fig. 4.6: Detail from Lieutenant Catalogne and Jean Baptiste Decouagne, “Carte du gouvernement de Québec”
(1709), BNF, Cartes et Plans, Service Hydrographique, PF127, DIV2, P2. A detail of the Isle d’Orleans from this
1709 French survey of the lands along the St. Lawrence River showed that parcels had been laid out into simple
geometric shapes, mostly quadrilaterals that approximated rectangles. Nearly all of these long narrow parcels
offered access to the St. Lawrence River. Depicting them was much easier than the New England lots.

Square Rectangle Trapezoid Parallelogram Irregular
Quadrilateral
Irregular
Pentagon
Irregular
Heptagon
Irregular Total
# House Lot 0 2 1 0 1 0 0 0 4
# Land 0 3 2 1 1 1 3 0 11
# Marsh 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 3 5
# Land and
Marsh
1 1 0 0 0 0 0 5 7
# Island 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
# Land and
Island
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
Total 2 6 3 1 3 1 3 10 29
Table 4.2: Clements’ Surveys by Parcel Shape and Parcel Type.

189
Saco Scarborough Falmouth North Yarmouth Total
SURVIVING
# People 1 1 6 1 9
# Maps 1 4 23 1 29
Who? Thomas
Sheppard*
Robert Elliot Sylvanus Davis,* Edward Tyng,*
John Skillion, Peter Bowdoin,
Richard Seacomb, David Phippen
Walter Gendal
NOT
SURVIVING

# People 1-2 4 5-6
Who? Joshua
Scottow,
John Hinckes
(?)
John Brown, Sr., James Ross, John
Smith, Nathaniel Wallis

Table 4.3: Clements’ Maps (Surviving and Not Surviving) by Location. Two thirds of the people with land mapped
by Clements had petitioned regarding Falmouth land. This was wildly disproportionate, given that only one third of
all petitioners had asked about Falmouth lands. Of course this might reflect surviving evidence, but this is one clue
that something curious was unfolding in Falmouth. Asterisks indicate people whose land was confirmed.

E. Reasons for Petitioning
Statistical analysis of these petitions helps us begin to address what Maine landholders
and inhabitants thought about Andros’ furtive and ultimately unsuccessful land policy. Did
landholders feel the need or desire to confirm their titles? Did others embrace the opportunity to
acquire new land? To assess the participation rate we would need to cross-reference a complete
list of landholders against those petitioning. Such records, however, do not always exist. As a
result, these questions call for more obtuse strategies. Dividing English-occupied Maine into
three regions (southwestern, central, and northeastern), we can draw some tentative conclusions.
The southwestern region boasted the province’s greatest demographic strength but accounted for
only 10% of petitioners. Most of these requested grants or discussed disputed claims. The
region’s towns (Kittery, York, Wells, Cape Porpoise) had persisted throughout Metacom’s war,
suggesting that people living in towns with continuous histories felt little need to participate in
this process. In contrast settlements in the central region (Saco, Scarborough, Falmouth, North
Yarmouth) were all destroyed during and restarted after Metacom’s War. 73% of petitioners
wrote regarding land in this central region with Falmouth receiving the lion’s share (34% of all

190
petitions). Finally 16% of petitioners wrote about lands in the northeastern region, containing the
territory formerly belonging to New York (or, in the case of the Kennebec River, disputed
between Massachusetts and New York). Many of the parcels here, because they had been under
the New York land system, already possessed royal confirmation. The great bulk (88%) of these
petitioners wrote after Andros visited the area in April 1688.
Town (South to
North)
# People
Petitioning
# Petitioners
Writing About
Disputed Land
# For
Confirmation
Only
# For
Grants
Only
# For
Confirmation
and Grants
# Known
Landholders
Landholder
Participation
Rate (%)
Southwestern
(10.3%)
21 12 16 1 3
Kittery 16 11 13 0 3 ? ?
York 2 0 2 0 0 ? ~0
Wells 1 0 0 1 0 ? 0
Cape Porpoise 2 1 1 1 0 ? ~0
Central
(73.3%)
149 33 59 36 55
Saco 21*** 6 12 4 4 ? ?
Scarborough 34 5 13 16 6 56/63 39/35>
Falmouth (incl.
Cape Elizabeth)
65 (34%) 14 24 10 32 ? ?
North Yarmouth 18 3 3 3 12 34 44>
“Casco Bay” 11 5 7 3 1 ? ?
Northeastern
(16.3%)
33 1 16 13 4
Kennebec River 15 0 4 8 3 ? ?
New Dartmouth
County
18 1 12 5 1 ? ?
TOTAL 193 45 88 50 60
Table 4.4: Maine Petitioners by Town. Many petitioners discussed land in “Casco Bay” without giving clues to
where. In other cases, they were referring to islands within the bay. A handful people petitioned for parcels in more
than one town, explaining why the totals are not the sum of towns.

191

Fig. 4.7: Maine Petitioners by Town and Month. The southwestern region is represented in shades of blue, the
central in red, and the northeastern in green. Most petitioners wrote about land in the central region with Falmouth
and Scarborough accounting for the lion’s share.

192
The maps and petitions, when they described neighboring lots, help us identify
landowners in Maine who did not petition to confirm their land. Together these documents
identify sixty-six neighbors as landowners, of which exactly half did not request confirmation for
the land they were described as owning. This would be a mild rate of landholder participation
except for the fact that the statistic deceives by predominantly sampling Falmouth landholders.
Petitions and maps regarding other towns mentioned landholding neighbors at much lower, often
negligible, rates. If we apply this same (admittedly flawed) methodology to just Falmouth, we
find that twenty-six of forty-one landowning neighbors sought confirmation, a high participation
rate of 63%. This estimate, however, might still be wildly off if Falmouth petitioners came held
land in particular geographical pockets. The numbers seem less enthusiastic elsewhere. One
metric comes from North Yarmouth, a settlement in Casco Bay north of Falmouth. We would
expect that ongoing tensions with local Wabanakis would have created additional incentive for
landowners there to confirm their land. Scattered records from the 1680s identify thirty-four
individuals with town grants of land. Only fifteen of these petitioned for confirmation, pointing
to 44% as the ceiling for participation there. Scarborough, which yielded the second greatest
number of petitions, offers another window into petitioning. Incomplete town records identify
fifty-six landowners. At first glance the seventeen people petitioning for confirmation would
suggest a participation rate of 30%. Yet the town records only described ten of these petitioners
as landholders. If we factor these additional landholders into our calculations, the participation
rate drops to 27%. If these records omit other landholders, as they assuredly do, the rate declines
further. Nicholson’s concern was justified. Except at Falmouth, Maine landholders hesitated to
participate.
27

27
Records of landholding in North Yarmouth during the 1680s come from two sources. First, the response of the
Massachusetts General Court in 1680 to a petition to grant a plantation there in “Legal Documents 1680, 1750, nd”

193
Name # Other Petitioners
Mentioning Them
# Maps/Returns
Mentioning Them
Identified as Landowner Where?
1 Atwater, Joshua 1 0 North Yarmouth
2 Bartlet, Nicholas 0 1 Falmouth
3 Bowdoin, Peter 3 3 Falmouth
4 Bremhall, George 0 1 Falmouth
5 Brown, John, Sr. 1 2 Falmouth
6 Burroughs, George 0 2 Falmouth
7 Cloyce, Thomas 2 1 Falmouth
8 Davis, Sylvanus 12 2 Falmouth
9 Ellicott, Vines 1 0 North Yarmouth
10 Gale, Edmund 1 0 Falmouth
11 Gendal, Walter 2 0 North Yarmouth
12 Harris, John 1 1 Falmouth
13 Ingersoll, George, Jr. 1 1 Falmouth
14 Ingersoll, John 0 1 Falmouth
15 Ingersoll, Joseph 1 1 Falmouth
16 Ingersoll, Samuel 0 1 Falmouth
17 Jordan, Sarah 2 0 Scarborough
18 Leane, Henry 1 0 North Yarmouth
19 Madiford, Joell, Sr. 2 0 Falmouth
20 Morrell, Robert 0 1 Falmouth
21 Nicholson, John 2 0 Falmouth
22 Nicholson, Robert 1 0 Falmouth
23 Palmer, John 0 2 Falmouth and Scarborough
24 Picke, Samuel 1 0 Falmouth
25 Powsley, Richard 1 1 Falmouth
26 Rosse, James 1 1 Falmouth
27 Sandford, Thomas 1 0 Falmouth
28 Seacom, Richard 1 1 Falmouth
29 Skelling, John 2 0 Falmouth
30 Scottow, Joshua 1 0 Scarborough
31 Smith, John 2 0 Falmouth
32 Turner, Ralph 1 1 Falmouth
33 Tyng, Edward 4 0 Falmouth
34 Wallis, John 2 0 Falmouth
35 Wallis, Nathaniel 3 0 Falmouth
36 Welding, John 0 1 Falmouth
37 White, Nathaniel 2 0 Falmouth
38 York, John 1 0 North Yarmouth
Table 4.5: Landowners who petitioned and were identified as Such in maps and by other petitioners. People
mentioned more than twice by other petitioners are highlighted in green.

Town (South to North) # (%)
Southwestern 0 (0%)
2. Central 33 (100%)
Scarborough 3 (9%)
Falmouth (incl. Cape
Elizabeth)
26 (79%)
North Yarmouth 5 (15%)

MEHS, Coll S-1735. The grant from the Massachusetts Council hinged on the proprietors settling “Twenty or Thirty
Familys with an Able Minister within two years”—suggesting that thirty-four might have accurately described the
number of landholders in 1687 and 1688. The second source consists of deeds and grants in the seventh volume of
“Records and papers of North Yarmouth, Maine” (1661-1898), MEHS, Coll. 1204. This is not the original town
record book but rather an assemblage created by the Reverend David Shepley between 1829 and 1849. It is unclear
where these records come from. They might have been copies held privately by descendants or pieces cut out of the
original book. It is impossible to know how comprehensive they were. See Charles Clark’s comments on the “North
Yarmouth Papers” in The Eastern Frontier, 328 fn.7.

194
Northeastern 0 (0%)
Table 4.6: Geographic breakdown of landowners who petitioned and were identified as such. As with Clements’
maps, Falmouth is wildly overrepresented proportionate to the overall petitioning. Note: The numbers do not quite
add up because John Palmer petitioned for and was described as holding land in two towns

Table 4.7: People who did not petition but were identified as landowners by maps and/or other petitioners.

Town (South to North) # (%)
Southwestern 0 (0%)
Central 29 (93%)
Saco 5 (%)
Scarborough 6 (%)
Falmouth (incl. Cape
Elizabeth)
14 (43%)
North Yarmouth 3 (%)
“Casco Bay” 2 (%)
Northeastern 2 (%)
Kennebec River 0 (%)
New Dartmouth County
(e.g. Pemaquid)
2 (%)
TOTAL 32
Table 4.8. Geographic breakdown of landowners who were identified as such but did not petition.

Name Number of Times
Mentioned by Petitioners
Number of Times
Mentioned in Maps
Landowner Where?
1 Burson, William 1 0 “Casco Bay”
2 Clark, Thaddeus 1 1 Falmouth
3 Cole, Joseph 0 1 Saco
4 Collins, Timothy 1 0 Scarborough
5 Crocker, Richard 0 1 Saco
6 Davis, Lawrence 1 0 Falmouth
7 Dustin, John 0 1 Scarborough
8 Dyer, Christopher 1 0 New Dartmouth
9 Dyer, William 1 0 Saco
10 Elliot, Thomas 1 0 Scarborough
11 Foxwell, Phillip 0 2 Scarborough
12 Gresson, Robert 1 0 Falmouth
13 Hammond, John 0 1 Saco
14 Hicks, Peter 1 0 North Yarmouth
15 Ingersoll, James 1 0 Falmouth
16 John, Agustian 1 0 Falmouth
17 Laud, Francis 1 0 “Casco Bay”
18 Law, James 1 0 North Yarmouth
19 Manning, Nicholas 0 1 Falmouth
20 Martin, [?] 1 0 Falmouth
21 Nicolls, John 2 0 Falmouth
22 Oliver, [Widow] 1 0 Falmouth
23 Ottis, Jonathan 0 1 Falmouth
24 Penly, Sampson 1 0 Falmouth
25 Skeward, Dunkin 1 1 Scarborough
26 Storer, John 1 0 Saco
27 Taylor, Edward 1 0 New Dartmouth
28 Watts, Henry 1 0 Scarborough
29 Webber, Samuel 0 1 Falmouth
30 Wessells, [?] 1 0 North Yarmouth
Name Number of Times
Mentioned by Petitioners
Number of Times
Mentioned in Maps
Described as
Landowner Where?
Petitioned Where?

195
Table 4.9: People who petitioned for land and but not the land they were described as owning by maps or other
petitioners. Isaac Davis sold his lot in Falmouth in early 1688, explaining why he did not request confirmation for it.
It is unclear why James Andrews, Sr., would request confirmation for his land on the Kennebec River but not in
Falmouth.

Why did some petition and others not? Explaining the former is slightly easier than the
latter. Participants may have very well have misrepresented their motivations in their petitions
but at least they described them. The most straightforward reason to petition involved acquiring
free land. Grants cost petitioners nothing upfront but would require they pay an annual quitrent.
Landless petitioners accentuated their destitution. In requesting “one hundred acres of vacant
Lands,” Patrick Denmarke, Sr. noted that he had lived in Saco “many yeares . . . but Could never
procure any land by reason of his o[w]ne povertye.” Impoverished petitioners like Denmarke
also emphasized the “great Charge of Children.” George Gray wrote that a land grant would help
support his children, for he was “Not owner of Aney Land for theire Mainetaineance.” A group
of fourteen Scarborough petitioners emphasized they would use the land and meadow to provide
“Corn & to Raise a Stocke of Cattell to maintaine our poore familyes.” These pleas were, of
course, rhetorical strategies as much as reasons for participation. Grants also offered powerful
incentive for landholders to confirm their land, contributing to the March and July 1688 peaks in
petitioning.
28

Forty-four petitioners (23%) referred to Metacom’s War. While war might have been, in
Andros’s mind, a reason to centralize the administration of land records, no evidence suggests
that memory of the war encouraged petitioning. Nobody explained that they petitioned because
they believed that if war again displaced them, housing deeds in Boston would better secure their
property than doing so locally. Rather these petitioners referenced the war for rhetorical effect.

28
Petition of: Scarborough Inhabitants (9 Nov 1687), MA, MAC, 127:228-9; George Gray (17 April 1688), MA,
MAC, 128:167; Patrick Denmarke, Sr. (16 July 1688), MA, MAC, 129:74A.
1 Andrews, James, Sr. 2 0 Falmouth Kennebec River
2 Davis/Davies, Isaac 1 1 Falmouth Kennebec River

196
They discussed their previous displacement, their military service, the improvements destroyed
by enemy combatants, and the problems of resettlement to explain their current predicaments.
Some, like Joseph Shippen, lamented that the “sad desolations the Indians made” had hindered
their efforts to improve their land. Many referenced their military service, hoping for land as
compensation. John Ball noted he had “served in the late Indian Warr, without any recompence
from ye Countrey where he now inhabiteth” in asking for confirmation of his twelve acres at
Kittery with an adjoining grant of twenty acres. The previously mentioned Thomas Walton who
owed back taxes hoped his service as a soldier might help get him confirmation along with
forgiveness of his debts.
29

A handful of participants viewed the process through the lens of politics. Some requested
confirmation hoping to supplant town governments. When Thomas Walton failed to pay taxes,
the town seized two of his cows. He requested confirmation hoping it would translate into the
forgiveness of his debts and the return of his cows. Fourteen Scarborough petitioners asking for
grants sought to bypass the local political structure, believing it favored landowners. Having
“Large ffamilyes & many poore Children” these petitioners lamented that without intervention
from Andros, would “bee kept poore by resen [sic: reason] of severell persons that laye claimes
to all the Land . . . in our Town.” Other petitioners were royalists, only too happy to
acknowledge the King’s authority over New England land. Jedediah Jordan wrote in his petition
that, although he possessed and improved a tract in Cape Elizabeth inherited from his father (the
aforementioned Reverend Robert Jordan), only “our Soveraign Lord the King” had “Just Right &
Title.”
30

29
Petition of David Phippen (11 Aug 1687), MA, MAC, 127:16; Petition of Thomas Walton (12 Jan 1688), DHSM,
VI:252-3; Petition of John Ball (11 July 1688), MA, MAC, 129:43.
30
Petition of Scarborough Inhabitants (9 Nov 1687), MA, MAC, 127:228-9; Petition of Jebediah Jordan (30 March
1688), MA, MAC, 128.137. Also see the subsequent plea by the Scarborough Inhabitants (13 Jan 1688), MA, MAC,

197
Only a handful of petitions explicitly displayed such political motivations, however. Most
petitioners wanted to secure their claims over the land they believed they possessed. William
Baker, employing a line used by many, wrote that he petitioned because he was “sensible of the
weakness of his title.” Without a strong title, individuals had little legal recourse when others
infringed on their lands. Thomas Sharpe was willing to pay “a verie deare [i.e. expensive] Reat
[sic. Rate]” because “In my absence my Neighbours cutt down my woods . . . for want of a
pattent.” Nothing quite exposed the weakness of a title as when a surveyor appeared at the
bounds of one’s land. John Teney learned that his Scarborough neighbor Walter Gendal had been
granted confirmation of 150 acres when a surveyor (perhaps Clements or Gendal himself) ran the
boundary line through Teney’s “house and Orchard thereby Seemeing to take away your
Peticon’s Labur and Improvement.” Teney worried that Gendall’s unscrupulous designs “would
be . . . the Ruine of him and his family.” John Hincks, a member of the Council of the Dominion
of New England, requested confirmation for land that he held jointly with Sarah Jordan (she had
inherited it from her dead husband, the previously mentioned Reverend Robert Jordan). When
Clements arrived to survey the land, however, he found himself impeded by Robert Elliot,
Hincks’s neighbor. Elliot justified his actions by explaining that Clements had “measured into”
his own “Tract of Upland & Marsh.” He quickly petitioned to confirm the lot.
31

In this way, contestation drove petitioning. At least one-third of petitioners sought titles
to disputed lands. Many petitioned once they learned that Andros had ordered (what they

128:22. Lieutenant Richard Hannowell appears on both lists with his name crossed out. He wrote a separate petition
for confirmation of two parcels and a grant of another, which Andros ordered surveyed in January. The other
petitioners were Thomas Baker, Thomas Bickford (also “Kidford”), Moses Durant, Daniel Fogg, Thomas Leatherby,
Daniel, David, Henry, and John Libbey, Anthony Row, John Slaughter, and Robert Tyde (also “Tidey”).
31
Petition of Sarah Jordan and John Hincks (4 Oct 1687), MA, MAC, 127:183; Survey of land for John Hincks (6
Oct 1687), MA, MAC, 127:192; Warrant to Survey Land of John Hincks and Sarah Jordan (6 Oct 1687), MA,
MAC, 127:196; Petition of Robert Elliot (13 Jan 1688), MA, MAC, 128:22a; Petition of John Teney (18 Jan 1688),
MA, MAC, 128:25; Petition of John Hincks (6 Feb 1688), MA, MAC, 128:40; Petition of Thomas Sharpe (7 June
1688), MA, MAC, 128:239; Petition of Patrick Denmark, Jr. (16 July 1688), MA, MAC, 129:74A; Petition of
William Baker (23 July 1688); MA, MAC, 129:100A.

198
believed was) their land surveyed for somebody else; indeed table 3.3 formally shows that
petitioning spiked in the wake of each batch of orders to survey. Sometimes disputes involved
only a portion of a parcel. Other petitioners feared they would lose the entirety of their
landholdings. Seven Kittery inhabitants protested when they learned that Andros had ordered
their land at “Broadboate Harbor” surveyed for Captain Walter Barefoot. They explained that
they had possessed the land “for a very considerable tyme and have beene att a vast charge and
Expence and made great improvemts thereon.” In contrast, Barefoot “hath noe title to itt neither
did he ever make any improvement or settlement on the same.” These petitioners acknowledged
royal authority as necessary for protecting their landholdings, but evidenced no apparent concern
over the political implications of their actions. The same logic led squatters to ask for grants of
the land they already inhabited. Patrick Denmark, Jr., for example, had without a title “planted”
on a “long vacant . . . peice of land” near the Saco River “by the encouragment of mr [George]
Turfry.” He petitioned because the same land was also “being claimed by mr Hutchinson in
Barbados.”
32

32
Petition of Walter Barefoot (4 July 1687), MA, MAC, 126:376; Warrant to Richard Clements to Survey Lots of
Walter Barefoot (6 Oct 1687), MA, MAC, 127:194; Petition of Patrick Denmark, Jr. (16 July 1688), MA, MAC,
129:74A; Petition of Inhabitants of Kittery (15 Aug 1688), MA, MAC, 129:127.
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Petitioners for Both
Petitioners for Grants
Petitioners for Confirmation
People with Lots Ordered Surveyed
People with Land Mapped

199
Chart 4.2: People with Land Ordered Surveyed or Mapped. Spikes in petitioning followed each sizeable batch of orders
to survey. Explaining the July peak in petitioning is more difficult but it might have had something to do with
Clements’ presence in June when he mapped a parcel for Thomas Shepard in Saco.

F. The Surveyor, Local Intermediaries, and Interpersonal Conflict
Petitioners perceived that their success hinged on more than just their language but also
on their connections. Small time landholders petitioned together so that they could access a
network of well-connected individuals to help deliver their message. When their November 1687
plea went unheeded, fourteen Scarborough petitioners, previously mentioned, asked Samuel
Walker, a Boston merchant and proprietor in Maine, to remind Andros of the petition. They also
asked Walker to “Entreate y
e
. . . Advice and assistance” of Francis Nicholson, the captain of a
royal regiment and one of Andros’ inner circle. Individuals also mustered social connections.
Lieutenant Pendleton Fletcher, who had received his military commission from Andros,
petitioned for the confirmation of two parcels of land in Saco. He conveyed his petition through
John West, Andros’ Secretary, writing that he had no “aquaintance in boston so sutable as
yourself to convay this inclosed to ye governor.” Thomas Sharpe similarly asked West to deliver
his petition, hoping he “will putt his Excellency in mynd off it.” When petitioners did not have
access to members of Andros’ inner circle, they namedropped. John Swarton mentioned one
Captain Kendall, a justice of the peace, who “shewed me A certain ten Acre Lot Adjoining to ye
Comon . . . [and] told me he was willing I should have it but yt I must first make my Adress unto
your Excellence.”
33

Such intermediary figures, local notables with commissions from Andros and/or seats on
the council, evaluated the veracity of petitioner claims. In a handful of cases Andros asked them

33
Petition of John Swarton (16 June 1687), MA, MAC, 126:358; Petition of Ephraim Herrick (21 July 1687), MA,
MAC, 126:397; Thomas Sharpe to John West (Albany: 7 June 1688), MA, MAC, 128:123; Pendleton Fletcher to
John West (28 July 1688), MA, MAC, 129:183A.

200
to investigate. Often they did so without prompting. Edward Tyng and Sylvanus Davis, the most
prolific of these intermediaries, together commented on twenty-three Falmouth-area petitions.
Mostly they jotted formulaic notations on the back of petitions to the effect of: “wee presume to
Informe ye Excelence that wee know of noe Claims upon the Lands with in Expresd & that the
pertitn
r
has made Improvements accordingley.” Occasionally they observed conflicts. They
expressed their reservations with double negative constructions meant to minimalize any sense of
conflict. Tyng wrote of Richard Powsley’s petition: “I know Noe Claime to the within
menshoned Land & ma[r]sh, only mr Georg Brimhall whoe Claimes it by vertu of A Deede.”
Tyng, originally a Boston merchant, had acquired substantial land in Falmouth by marrying
Elizabeth Clark. Davis built his estate by trading with the Wabanaki along the Kennebec River
and collaborating with a Boston merchant, James English, to purchase lands and build mills in
Maine.
34

Edward Tyng and Sylvanus Davis not only commented on other people’s petitions but
also requested both confirmations for land they already possessed and grants of land they wanted
to possess. We might expect that they would have opposed the confirmation process given that
both possessed substantial amounts of land. Tyng had even requested an abatement of all
quitrents in Maine. Nevertheless, both men understood that their commercial enterprises in
Maine would benefit from Andros’s favor. Davis took the lead, petitioning with James English
for the confirmation of thirteen Falmouth lots, containing just over 1,680 acres. Andros
confirmed these lots in April 1687 without quitrents. Months later Tyng followed suit. He also
requested authority to collect “all Mill Rents in the Province of Mayne . . . for his Care and

34
Confirmation of land on Casco River to Silvanus Davis & James English (29 April 1687), MA, MAC, 126.311-5;
Petition of Richard Powsley (28 Oct 1687), MA, MAC, 127:222-3; Petition of Robert Morrell (26 March 1688),
MA, MAC, 128:133. Walter Gendal, Benjamin Blackman, Francis Hooke, Charles Frost, Nicholas Manning, and
Elihu Gunnison were other notable locals upon whom Andros relied. For full biographies, see DCB and GDMNH.

201
Service in ffort Loyall att Cascoe bay.” Andros may or may not have granted Tyng this lucrative
position but, as with Davis, he did confirm the lands without quitrents. Richard Clements
surveyed their lands in November with eleven of his earliest thirteen maps concerning them.
Davis praised him to Andros as “very Diligen[t] abought his worke” and “Resolved to observe
his warrants to A tittell & faithfully Discharge his Duty.”
35

Sylvanus Davis zealously encouraged people to petition for their land, especially when he
had easy physical access to them. Tyng may have as well, but his footprint here is less
conspicuous. People mentioning Davis in their petitions provide some statistical evidence into
his active role in the process. Nine landholders described Sylvanus Davis as neighbor in their
petitions and another three seeking grants asked for lots adjacent to his. While Davis held many
parcels of land and consequently would have had many neighbors, other people with a similar
number of parcels were not described as neighbors (or, in the case of grants, would-be-
neighbors) at nearly such high frequency. Four people referenced Edward Tyng and three,
Nathaniel Wallis and Peter Bowdoin (Table 4.5). Nobody else was identified more than twice.
Davis’s return and his maps identified fourteen neighbors, only three of whom did not petition.
Davis’s neighbors, in other words, composed nearly a quarter of Falmouth’s petitioners.
36

Sometimes a quid pro quo was evident. Davis supported the claims of six of his
neighbors and one of his would-be neighbors, confirming for Andros the truthfulness of their

35
Confirmation of land on Casco River to Sylvanus Davis & James English (29 April 1687), MA, MAC, 126.311-
315; Petition of Edward Tyng (30 Aug 1687), MA, MAC, 127.58; Sylvanus Davis to Andros (16 Nov 1687), MA,
MAC, 127:237.
36
For the references to Sylvanus Davis, see Petitions of: Abraham Collings (30 Nov 1687), MA, MAC, 127.268-
269; John Whilden (5 Dec 1687), MA, MAC, 127.271; John Harris (5 Dec 1687), MA, MAC, 127.272-272; John
Spenser (5 Dec 1687), MA, MAC, 127.275; George Ingersoll, Jr. (10 Dec 1687 and 20 March 1688), MA, MAC,
127.278 and 128:117-8; Mary Webber (12 Dec 1687), MA, MAC, 127.281; Thomas Cloyce (12 Dec 1687), MA,
MAC, 127.285; Samuel Ingersoll (16 Dec 1687), MA, MAC, 127.293; George Bremhall (28 Dec 1687), MA, MAC,
127.301-2; Joseph Ingersoll (23 March 1688), 128:123; Robert Morrell (26 March 1688), 128.133; Phillip Horman
(8 June 1688), 128.246. Also see, Maps of Land for: David Phippen (2 Dec 1687), MA, SC, MP, 3:37:19; John
Skelling (18 Jan 1688), 3:37: 27. For references to Tyng, see Petitions of Matthew Pauling (29 Nov 1687), MA,
MAC, 127:259-60; Joseph Ingersoll (23 March 1688), MA, MAC, 128:123-4; George Ingersoll, Sr. (23 March
1688*), MA, MAC, 128.124A; John Horman (8 June 1688), MA, MAC, 128: 246.

202
petitions. George Bremhall requested confirmation for four hundred acres “adjoyning west to a
tract of Land belonging to Silvanus Davis” in November 1687. Seven months later Tyng
recommended Bremhall as Ensign for the new companies at Falmouth he hoped Andros would
establish. John Skillion—who did not identify himself as a neighbor in his own petition but was
revealed as such in one of Clements’ maps—had allied with Tyng and Davis when in his
capacity as Falmouth constable he tried to apprehend Lawrence. It seems he was rewarded.
Davis requested Andros “send a Returen of Jn Skillings petition” so that he was one of the nine
people with his land mapped by Clements.

Davis also capitalized on the presence of a surveyor.
Soon after Clements’s arrival, Davis informed the Governor to “Expect a poste with Returns &
sundrey petitionrs [for] in Generall all the people come in to make Applications for pattens [and]
their petitions shall be sent very speedily.” He also recommended that Clements be granted land
in Falmouth, reasoning it would be “useful for the inhabitance to have the survoyer settell
Amongst us.” Clements, it seems, figured into Davis’s larger plans to encourage petitioning.
37

In the same letter commending Clements, Davis also hinted at tension in Falmouth. He
cautioned against the “Grate pretenses” of Captain Robert Lawrence who would “bringe all the
towne to bee his tenents” by falsely claiming most of the land. Not only that, he continued,
Lawrence had insulted Andros by “saying you fill up blanks [i.e. blank lots] as you please.” The
governor’s authority, Davis concluded, should not “bee abused by scurelous To[u]ngs.” Davis’s
harsh words emerged out of a dispute the previous year when Lawrence allegedly stole “a parsell

37
The petition of Davis and English to Andros does not survive. We know that Andros charged no quitrents to them
because the official confirmation document does survive. We know that Tyng was charged no quitrents because he
thanked Andros’s secretary John West “for the abatment of the Sealle[.]” It is safe to assume that West did so with
Andros’s explicit approval. The Council of the Dominion of New England had granted Tyng the authority to collect
the mill taxes before Andros’s arrival but the matter seems to have also required the Governor’s approval.
Confirmation of land to Silvanus Davis and James English (29 April 1687), 126.311-5; Petition of Edward Tyng (30
Aug 1687), MA, MAC, 127:58-59; Survey of land for John Hincks (10 Oct 1687), MA, MAC 127.192; Richard
Clements to [Phillip Wells?] (13 Nov 1687), MA, MAC, 127.230; Sylvanus Davis to Andros (Falmouth: 16 Nov
1687), MA, MAC, 127: 237; Tyng to John West (Falmouth: 14 March 1688), MA, MAC, 128:97.

203
of thatch” from him. Tyng ordered a warrant for Lawerence to appear before him to answer the
charges but when the constable John Skelling (also “Skillion”) “went to secure ye sd thatch, ye
sd Lawrence opposed ye sd Authority with three others in his Company.” Did Davis report the
events truthfully? We cannot know. Perhaps Lawrence had publicly commented that Andros was
doling out land to fortify their political opponents. Or perhaps Davis invented the charges,
believing Andros would not lightly suffer slander. The Governor, after all, had just imprisoned
dissidents in western Massachusetts who sought to undermine his authority two months earlier.
38

Lawrence offered a different perspective on these events. In his telling, problems began
three years earlier when Davis, who had “continually been by all erregular means striving to
deprive” Lawrence of his land, erected a sawmill on Lawrence’s property. The mill was a ruse. It
rested “upon a small brook wch most part of ye sommer is dry without water” and had only “cut
twenty pounds worth of boards” in three years. Davis erected it “for no other end but to deprive
yr sd Petitioner of his marsh,” which knowledge, Lawrence added, was “well known to ye whole
town.” Another injustice came when Tyng built a house upon Lawrence’s land and then tried to
steal his deed from the clerk Edward Rishworth. Lawrence “found some difficulty” acquiring his
deed but Rishworth, “knowing yt Capt Ting had no right or Clayme to it[,] delivred it [to] mee.”
This “Unworthy dealing provoked” Lawrence “in a passion to speake [ill] off [sic: of]” Tyng,
calling him a “Hipocriticall Rogue.” Months later Sylvanus Davis had “Gott a trackt off [sic: of]
my land by Injustice for wch I often threatned to sue him” and “presumed . . . to mow some part
of my marsh.” Lawrence, believing his property stolen, “brought s
d
Grasse home.” Tyng issued a
warrant to search for the thatch and to apprehend the person “in whose custody” the constable
found it. When Lawrence resisted arrest by assembling three other men, Tyng along with Joshua

38
Warrant for Robert Lawrence (4 Sept 1686), MA, MAC, 126:76; Sylvanus Davis to Edmund Andros (Falmouth,
November 16, 1687), MA, MAC, 127:237.

204
Scottow issued another warrant with “a hundred pound bond” to answer for “Calling Capt Ting
Hipocriticall Rogue.” The harassment continued when Clements arrived in Falmouth for Davis—
before Lawrence knew of the surveyor’s arrival—had Clements “lay out a mile square of y
e
best
choysest” of Lawrence’s land and more than half of his marsh.” Had Davis championed
Clements to Andros to help squeeze people from their land?
39

These contradictory reports, while not clarifying what passed between Davis and
Lawrence, hint that the Falmouth inhabitants had factionalized when Skillion, Lawrence, and
their respective allies faced off in 1686 over the thatch. We see more evidence of this division in
1689 when sixty-six “Falmouth inhabitants” requested that the new governor Simon Bradstreet
replace Tyng, Davis, and Ensign Thaddeus Clarke with Anthony Bracket, Robert Lawrence, and
Samuel Pike as Falmouth’s military commanders. These “Falmouth inhabitants” complained that
Davis had persuaded residents to patent their lands while improperly charging “them sixty
shillings for Every petishon.” If true, these allegations would explain why Davis vigorously
encouraged petitioning and tried to orchestrate Clements’s settlement in Falmouth. Whether or
not Davis solicited kickbacks, the sixty-two identifiable signatories of this 1689 petition and the
sixty-six petitioners for Falmouth lands only shared twelve surnames.
40
Limited evidence makes
it difficult to embellish the circumstances of these 1689 petitioners such as whether they owned

39
Petitions of Robert Lawrence (26 July and 29 Nov 1687), MA, MAC, 127:264, 401-2; Lawrence to John West (10
April 1688), MA, MAC, 128:168.
40
Four others identified themselves only by their first names. Four signatories were the fathers of other signatories;
three of these fathers had petitioned for land so we could also say that 31% of signatories either petitioned or were
the children of petitioners. These fathers (and children in parenthesis) were: Anthony Bracket (Seth Bracket), John
Wallis* (James, Joseph, and Josiah Wallis), John Brown, Sr.* (John, Jr. and Thomas Brown), Joel Madiford, Sr.*
(Joel Madiford, Jr.). Seven of these requested confirmation while another five asked for both confirmation and
grants. The other forty-nine declined to participate. Asterisks denote those who petitioned for land. Davis/Davies
was the fifth most common surname in New England in the seventeenth century. See GDMNH, 183. The last scholar
examining Andros’s land policy in Maine described Tyng and Davis as “on the whole . . . fair-minded,” ignoring the
myriad complaints they provoked. Barnes, Dominion of New England, 191.

205
land, were rich or poor, lived at within or distant from the Falmouth town center, had pro- or
antiroyalist sympathies. Showing the divide is much easier than explaining it.
41

Name Described Davis as
Neighbor in their
Petition?
Described as
Davis’s Neighbor in
his Maps or Return
Petitioner
for
Land?
Did they Sign the 1689
petition against Davis,
Tyng, and Clarke?
1 Bremhall, George Y Y (Return) Y N
2 Brown, John, Sr. N Y (Map) Y Y
3 Collins, Abraham Would be Neighbor N Y N
4 Clark, Thaddeus N/A Y (Return) N N
5 Cloyce, Thomas Y N Y N
6 Davis, Isaac N/A N N N
7 Harris, John Y N Y N
8 Horman, Phillip Would be Neighbor N Y N
9 Ingersoll, George,
Jr.
Y Y (Map and Return) Y N
10 Ingersoll, John N Y (Return) Y N
11 Ingersoll, Joseph Y N Y Y
12 Ingersoll, Samuel Y Y (Return) Y N
13 Morrell, Robert Y Y (Map and Return) Y N
14 Orris, Jonathan N/A Y (Map and Return) N Y
15 Palmer, John N Y (Map and Return) Y Y
16 Powsley, Richard N Y (Map and Return) Y N
17 Seacomb, Richard N Y (Map) Y Y
18 Spencer, John Would be Neighbor N Y N
19 Webber, Mary Y N Y N
20 Webber, Samuel N/A Y (Map) N N
21 Welding, John Y Y (Map) Y N
Table 4.10: Sylvanus Davis’s Known Neighbors. Jonathan Orris was the only neighbor who did not petition for land
but did sign the 1689 petition against Davis.

G. Land, War, and Revolution
As Sylvanus Davis and Edward Tyng encouraged petitioning, they also sought to amplify
the English military presence in Maine. Both men had fought during Metacom’s War, which

41
Five of Davis’s neighbors signed the 1689 petition against him. Only one of them, Joseph Ingersoll, had described
himself as his neighbor even though four of these five had petitioned for land. One self-identified neighbor, Joseph
Ingersoll, signed the 1689 petition against Davis. Davis had substantiated Ingersoll’s petition. Other neighbors left
Falmouth. Isaac Davis (no relation to Sylvanus) sold his parcel adjacent Sylvanus Davis in early 1688. By May he
had relocated about twenty miles north to Newtown (present-day Georgetown Island), first appearing on a roll of
soldiers serving under Captain John Rowden at the Kennebec River and, four days later, petitioning Andros for a
grant of land along with his two sons, his son-in-law, and one John Grover. We can only speculate as to why he left.
It might have been related to the fact Robert Lawrence had employed him while he lived in Falmouth. Collings
requested a grant of sixty acres on the south side of Casco River “Adjoyning . . . to the Claimes of Isaac Davis.”
This same parcel also appears on the map of John Scelling’s parcel of 51½ acres. Isaac Davis did not request
confirmation for it, instead selling it within two months to Robert Morrell who noted the sale in his own petition.
1688.3.26 [128.133] Petition for Confirmation (3) and Grant (1) of Land of Robert Morrell. It is unclear where the
“Casco River” was. The GDMNH declares it is the present-day “Presumpscot [River], or by some claimed to be
Portland Harbor.” Clements’ maps suggest the latter.

206
explains why they interpreted a slew of slights in early 1688 as signs that the Wabanaki intended
to war again. In March Davis carried a letter to Boston from Tyng with the depositions of Ruth
York and her two sons, outlining recent events in North Yarmouth. York, like Tyng and Davis,
seemed intent on classifying interpersonal violence as acts of war. She narrated how one Indian
named “Gibbens” entered her house and struck her son Benjamin. When she intervened, “one of
the Indians squaes tooke hould of mee by the head Indevring to Bracke my Necke but by Healpe
off other squaes i got cleare soe thay went away.” Soon after, she heard two other Indians, “Sorre
Ned & peesanose . . . say that thay would kile John Rialle [sic: Royal] [and] John York by
shooting of them & said wifes & children by Cutting them with hatchetts.” Mostly likely these
Indians felt cheated by the two Johns, who seem to have been merchants.
42
Ruth York, however,
did not interpret the Indians’ words through the prism of commerce or revenge. Recounting the
incident to the Wabanaki sachem Hope Hood (also “Wohawa” or “Wayhamoo”), she reported
that she had heard “the Indians did intend to make war with the English.” Tyng, emphasizing that
the inhabitants would abandon the settlement if not for some intervention, urged that Walter
Gendal be given a commission to command a new company there. These rumors reflected
English anxiety more than actual Wabanaki plans. Nevertheless, they drew Andros to Maine in
spring 1688.
43

42
No sources explicitly describe John York and John Royal as merchants but it seems likely they were. Depositions
make clear that Indians frequently visited both of their houses. One “Joseph Indian” later alleged that York had
“sowld” him “Eight quarts of Rom [sic: Rum].” When York was later captured, he was redeemed by the French-
Acadian merchant Baron John-Vincent d’Abbadie de Saint-Castin. Probably the two men had established a
relationship as traders. “Examination of Joseph Indian before Edward Tyng” (27 July 1688), DHSM, VI:414; Cotton
Mather, Decennium Luctuosum: An History of Remarkable Occurrences in the Long WAR, Which New-England
Hath Had with the Indian Salvages, from the Year 1688 to the Year, 1698 (Boston: B. Green & J. Allen, for Samuel
Phillips, 1699), 24. For other examples of merchants in Maine and Acadia using business relationships to negotiate
captive exchange, see Johnson, John Nelson, Merchant Adventurer.
43
“Several depositions about the conduct of Indians at Casco Bay” (7 Feb 1688), MA, MAC, 128:41; Edward Tyng
to John West (14 March 1688), MA, MAC, 128:97.

207
English occupation of Maine remained tenuous in the wake of Metacom’s War.
Disbursed settlements, mostly guarded by wooden blockhouses, were poorly defended. Disputes
with the French over territory to the northeast of Pemaquid jeopardized an important buffer zone
while French incursions into Iroquoia, which the English claimed as their sovereign territory,
raised the possibility of new hostilities in Maine. Andros hoped to also bolster English claims to
northeastern territory, improve the defensive posture of the region, calm English and Wabanaki
tempers over perceived abuses, and mediate a number of contested land claims by English
settlers and speculators. These interrelated goals, Andros believed, would calm unrest both
within and beyond English borders. The Governor especially hoped to secure Wabanaki
loyalties. According to Randolph, he met with “all the Indian Sachems” at Pemaquid, giving
them “shirts, rumm and trucking cloath” and promising “them that they should not fear the
French . . . [for] he would defend them.” The assurance seems odd. Andros likely intended it
more for Whitehall than the Wabanaki who were not threatened by the French. Andros implied
that the Wabanaki fell within English sovereignty, a notion the Wabanaki would have sorely
resented. Andros trip was rife with such legal posturing intended for the boundary negotiations
dictated by 1686 Treaty of Neutrality. With the commissioners due to meet at the year’s end,
James II had instructed Andros to transmit “a Mapp with the exact description of all the whole
country as farr as any discovery shall be made thereof, and of the severall fortifications you shall
find or erect there.” Andros might have ordered such a map drafted but it does not survive. To
the King’s order for “an exact account and full information of the Boundaries and Limits”
Andros described the St. Croix River (the present Maine-Canada border) as the definitive limit to
English possession. His legal justification rested mostly upon King Charles II’s 1664 grant to the
Duke of York between Kennebec and St. Croix Rivers. It also invoked his diplomacy with

208
Wabanaki sachems, which dated to 1678 when as Governor of New York he negotiated the
treaty concluding northern theatre of Metacom’s War. Andros wrote of his more recent 1688
meeting, that the Wabanaki had “lately as well as formerly when und
r
New Yorke” submitted to
English authority.
44

Agreeing to boundaries on paper mattered little when hostilities on the ground prevented
the actual occupation of territory. Andros travelled to Maine with “carpenters and boards, nailes
and all necessary stores” to build a fortification on the Penobscot River intended to strengthen
the English position, demarcate the territory as definitively English, and intimidate potential
Wabanaki and French foes. He delayed the construction until winter because the requisite “stone
and turfe” could not be located onsite. The fort composed one element of a broader strategy to
contain unrest in Wabanaki Country. He mustered English settlers while working to curtail
French trade and influence. The French campaign in Iroquoia was heightening internal tensions
between the Wabanaki’s Anglophile and Francophile factions. Many Wabanaki soldiers,
convinced by the French merchant Baron Jean-Vincent D'Abbadie de Saint-Castin, had joined
Denonville. Hoping to discourage further bonds between the Wabanaki and New France, Andros
plundered Saint-Castin’s warehouse at the mouth of the Penobscot River while he offered
leniency to the young men fighting in Iroquoia if they returned to Maine.
45

44
Blathwayt to Randolph (10 March 1688) in Thomas Hutchinson, ed., A collection of original papers relative to
the history of the colony of Massachusetts-Bay (Boston: Thomas and John Fleet, 1769), 559-60; Andros to Lords of
Trade and Plantation (4 April 1688), TNA, CO 1/64, No. 44 (also see his similar comments in a letter of the same
date to Charles Spencer, TNA, CO 1/64, No. 45); Instructions to Andros (16 April 1688), TNA, CO 5/904, 381-91;
Randolph to John Povey (21 June 1688), in Hutchinson, Collection of Papers, 561-5, quote on 563; Andros to Lords
of Trade and Plantation (Boston: 7 July 1688), TNA, CO 1/65, No. 19; Andros to King James II (Boston: 9 July
1688), TNA, CO 1/65, No. 20. On Wabanaki sovereignty, see Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Subjects Unto the Same King:
Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2005) and “‘Dark Cloud Rising from the East’: Indian Sovereignty and the Coming of King William’s War in
New England” NEQ (2007), 80:588–613; Lustig, The Imperial Executive in America, 67-84.
45
Muster Roll of Captain John Rowden at Kennebec River (3 May 1688), MA, MAC, 128:196; Order to Captain
John George (14 May 1688), MA, MAC, 128:209; Edward Randolph to John Povey (21 June 1688), ER, IV:224-
228, quote on 225. Clause 55 in the instructions accompanying Andros’s first commission reads “And whereas Wee
have thought fit to annex Our Fort And Territory of Pemaquid to Our Colony of New England Our will and Pleasure

209
Andros also advanced his land policy. Many titles in this territory, being under New York
jurisdiction, already possessed royal confirmation. There were two important exceptions: First,
the area along the Kennebec River had ambiguously existed between New England and New
York governments so that many titles here were particularly weak; second, New York officials
had also failed to respond a large number of requests for confirmation in New Dartmouth, a town
that had been destroyed during Metacom’s War and was resettled beginning in 1683. No record
exists that explains what Andros or his accompanying officers might have told English settlers
but petitioning from these places spiked after his visit. Edward Randolph explained that
corruption had marred the English from settling Maine. “The poor,” he wrote, “have been very
much oppressed here.” In 1686 officers of the New York government, namely Captain John
Palmer, Secretary John West, and Attorney General James Graham, had presented to the
Pemaquid town clerk a commission from Governor Dongan “to dispose of all their land to
whoever would take leases at 5s. the hundred acres quitt rent.” The scheme “bred a great
mischiefe,” however. Palmer, West, and Graham apportioned thousands of acres to themselves
without paying the quitrents as “the people . . . were in haste and gott what they could” without
measuring or marking their land. The abuse and neglect extended to military matters, as Palmer,
West, and Graham let the “forte run all to ruin.” As the Governor and Randolph returned to
Boston, they “saw very good land at Winter harbor” at the mouth of the Saco River, “enough to
make large settlements for many people.” Andros resolved to “have it first measured and then
surveyed,” showing that he was committed to settling Maine.
46

is, that with the first Conveniency after your arrivall you take possession of the Same upon the delivery thereof by
Our Trusty and Wellbeloved Colonel Thomas Dungan Our Governor of New York pursuant to Our Instructions to
him in that behalf, and that you give Order for the Security of the Fort and Territory in the best manner that may be”
in Batchellor, ed., Laws of New Hampshire, I:155-170, quote on I:166.
46
In May 1688, for example nine New Dartmouth neighbors, petitioning together, requested confirmation of their
titles for a neck of land that they had surveyed, divided, cleared, fenced, and improved. They explained that New
York officials had authorized the resettlement but then never granted them patents. Petition of New Dartmouth

210
Andros failed to cool tempers and anxieties in Maine. While some Wabanaki saw
promise in allying and trading with the English, many others were upset by violations of the
1678 Casco Treaty including English failure to pay the annual tribute, their unauthorized
settlement of new lands, and disregard for Wabanaki access to crucial food resources. Many
English settlers, meanwhile, had not relinquished perceptions formed during Metacom’s War of
the Wabanaki as dangerous, scheming warmongers. French attacks on Iroquoia, which prompted
the movement of an unusual numbers Indian soldiers and refugees, contributed to their
suspicions. Letter writers throughout New England grew alarmed by the appearance of “strange”
Indians they believed allied with the French. Tyng, Davis, and their allies in Maine continued
pushing a path to war, describing the inevitability of conflict. As Tyng wrote, the Wabanaki “By
their discourse and all their actions . . . show that they Intend a warr with us.”
47

Tensions along the peripheries of New England did not halt the ambitions of James II and
Whitehall officials to centralize colonial affairs. James enlarged Andros commission in April,
instructing him to fully incorporate New York into the Dominion. In July Andros travelled to
Albany, leaving Maine in the hands of the Council in Boston and provincial military leaders like

Inhabitants (21 May 1688), MA, MAC, 128:123. Andros, though he had already reported on Richard Wharton’s
claims in Maine, visited the territory under the Pejepscot patent to confirm that Wharton had failed to improve his
lands or attract English settlers. Edward Randolph to John Povey (Boston: 21 June 1688), ER, VI:224-8. Andros also
ordered Clements along with military commanders Benjamin Blackman and Nicholas Manning to determine where
to settle “a Country Road or Highway” to run between the Maine towns. Warrants to survey land for Highways in
Maine (Falmouth: 30 April 1688; New Dartmouth 21 May, 1688), MA, MAC, 128:191; Randolph to Blathwayt (19
June 1686), ER, VI:176-8, quote on 177; Reports of Sir Edmund Andros on Mr. Richard Wharton's claim to lands at
Pojebscot and the claims to the Narragansett Country, enclosed in his letter to Andros to Lords of Trade and
Plantation (31 Aug 1687), TNA, CO 5/904, pp. 10-12 and CO 5/905, pp. 3-8.
47
John Wing to Francis Nicholson (17 Aug 1688), TNA, CO 1/65, No. 51iii; Information of Josiah Parker (17 Aug
1688), TNA, CO 1/65, No. 51iv; Edward Tyng to Andros (18 Aug 1688), MA, MAC, 129:128-9; John Pynchon to
Francis Nicholson (21 and 27 Aug 1688; 27 Aug 1688), TNA, CO 1/65, Nos. 51i and 51ii; Francis Nicholson to
[William Blathwayt?] (31 Aug 1688), TNA, CO 1/65, No. 51; Tyng to Thomas Treffry (9 Sept 1688), MA, MAC,
129:168; Tyng to [?] (18 Sept 1688), MA, MAC, 129:188. Davis later stated that they “at several times gave out
reports, that they would make war upon the English.” Declaration of Sylvanus Davis (29 Nov 1690), 101. On the
causes of tension between English and Wabanaki see Morrison, The Embattled Northeast; Andrew Miller,
“Abenakis and Colonists in Northern New England, 1675-1725” (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 2005);
Pulsipher, “‘Dark Cloud Rising from the East.’”

211
Tyng and Davis. While the physical occupation of territory tied together the interests of imperial
officials and Maine landowners, their different perspectives fostered divergent conclusions about
the utility of violence. Andros foremost viewed the specter of force as leverage within
diplomacy. With Andros absent, however, Tyng, Davis, and their allies were free to advance
their own agendas. In August, Saco Indians fired “up on some Cattle which got in to there Corne
. . . and thay gave verey threatening words to the English of Shooting them.” Captain Benjamin
Blackman—who, like Davis and Tyng, was an intermediary in enacting Andros’s land policy—
recognized that the “English ware much to blame in not keeping out their Creatures” but
nevertheless seized “several Indians that had been bloody, murderous rogues in the first Indian
war, being the chief ringleaders and most fittest and capable to do mischief.” The Wabanaki
retaliated by capturing eleven English settlers. Tyng quickly requested a “post” of soldiers from
Boston. He insisted that without one, “our numbers will be too small to mannage a warr & secure
our persons & estates.” These provincial military commanders resorted to violence so quickly
largely because displacement for them meant losing the land that composed a central component
of their economic worth and their patriarchal identities.
48

In Boston, councilmembers Joseph Dudley, John Usher, Samuel Shrimpton, and Thomas
Treffry dispatched forty soldiers and provisions to North Yarmouth so “that ye Indians may
know ye Goverm
t
here is [sensible] of ye Late Injurys.” Andros, learning about this escalation of
violence, raged to Tyng that “by yo[u]r seizing and Disturbing ye Indians . . . yo[u] have alarmed
all yo[u]r parts & putt them in a posture of warr.” Andros scolded Tyng. He had authorized the

48
Edward Tyng to Andros (18 Aug 1688), Thomas Treffry (9 Sept 1688), and [?] (18 Sept 1688); John Dudley,
Samuel Shrimpton, Thomas Treffry, and John Usher to Andros (11 Sept 1688), MaAC, 129:128-9, 168, 178-9, 188;
John Pynchon to Francis Nicholson (21 Aug 1688; 27 Aug 1688), John Wing to Francis Nicholson (17 Aug 1688),
Information of Josiah Parker (17 Aug 1688), Francis Nicholson to [William Blathwayt?] (31 Aug 1688), TNA, CO
1/65, Nos. 51, 51I-IV. Davis later stated that they “at several times gave out reports, that they would make war upon
the English.” Declaration of Sylvanus Davis (29 Nov 1690), 101.

212
councilmember to be “carefull & steady” in his post but “not make warr.” Such insubordination,
the Governor knew, would undermine the narrative that he was crafting of himself as
successfully centralizing colonial affairs. Consequently Andros adopted a calmer tone in writing
to the Lords of Trade, blaming the French rather than his own officers, in order to obscure the
seriousness of the situation: He had learned of “Mischeifes Done by Indians from Canada on
Connicticott River and Lately att Caskoe Bay . . . But [his knowledge] being very Imperfect[,]
shall not . . . give your Lordshipps the trouble” until returning to Boston. This violence, however,
led Richard Clements to return to Boston, which completely halted the petitioning.
49

Cartography and cadastral mapping, in particular, was part of Andros’ fantasy of
centralizing the affairs of New England. This process moved sluggishly, however, and was
ultimately not successful. In early 1689, word reached New England that the Dutch Stadtholder
William of Orange had deposed James II. Mobs of Bostonians followed suit, imprisoning Andros
and his inner circle. One way to read the escalation of Anglo-Wabanaki violence in 1688 is as
the result of the ambitions of men like Davis and Tyng. As Davis and Tyng shifted their
predominant economic interests from trade to agriculture and manufacturing, they hoped to seize
and inflate the value of their land, which rested on creating a broader perception of safety. To
these goals they were paradoxically willing to rekindle old conflicts to violently purge the
landscape of its Native inhabitants. Andros’ land policy rested on empowering figures such as
these to catalyze more petitioning—not only elevating them within the community but also
tacitly allowing them to easily and freely increase their landholdings.
50

49
Andros to Lords of Trade and Plantation (4 Oct 1688), TNA, CO 1/65, No. 62. 1688.8.15 [369-369a] Richard
Clements to Philip Wells from Blackpoint—Clements tantalizing signed off “will occation my Cominge to boston
before I cann finish my Genrll plott: & shall give you An account of Eurye pertiqular I hav bine thought fitt to be
intrusted with a greater Consirne then this Although now not & am veary sorrey your oppinion is No better of me. R
C:”
50
Ian K. Steele, “Origins of Boston’s Revolutionary Declaration of 18 April 1689” NEQ (March 1989), 69:75–81.
213
5. Defense: Quebec, 1690-1711
As the peoples of northeastern America plunged into war, Quebec increasingly occupied a central role in
both English and French visions of empire. French governors wanted to fortify it in the wake of a failed English
expedition in 1690 but had difficulty funding expensive masonry projects. They hoped that maps, as technical and
imaginative documents could help persuade the crown and officials at Versailles. The military engineers doing the
mapping had their own agendas, however, focused on their emoluments and honors. Frequently they hoped to
substitute their cartographic labor as evidence of their service when too many obstacles prevented them from
actually building the fortifications.

A. The Built World of Quebec
In 1608, the navigator Samuel Champlain led three ships up the St. Lawrence River with
the objective of establishing a French settlement. He chose a site “one league” upstream of the
Île d’Orléans. The Natives, he reported, called this spot the “point of Quebec,” which derives
from the Mi’kmac “Gepèg,” meaning “straight”—a reference to the way the St. Lawrence River
narrows. At approximately this location had once stood the sixteenth-century Iroquoian city
Stadacona, whose name—literally “great bluffs”—hinted at the elevated position overlooking the
river. Champlain declared in his promotional book Les Voyages Du Sieur De Champlain (1613)
that he could find no place “more suitable or better situated” for the habitation: As the Native
toponyms suggested, elevation made the site defendable while the strategic location where the
river narrowed would halt rivals from sailing further upriver.

In his own telling, Champlain
instructed his workmen clear the land, cut the trees into planks for residences and a storehouse,
dig cellars and ditches, and lay out gardens to “sow grains and seed.” Yet for this quick burst of
labor, French Quebec remained a largely undeveloped trade outpost of no more than seventy
people during its first twenty years.
1

1
Samuel de Champlain, Les Voyages Du Sieur De Champlain, Xaintongeois, capitaine ordinaire pour le Roy, en la
Marine (Paris: Chez Iean Berjon, 1613), reprinted and translated in H. P. Biggar,, ed. The Works of Samuel de
Champlain. 6 vols. (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1922), II:24, 35, 44; Gabriel Sagard, The Long Journey to the
Country of the Hurons ed. by G. M. Wrong (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1939), 52-53; Eccles, The Canadian
Frontier, 1534-1760, 12-34; Charles Martijn with José Mailhot, “Gepèg (Québec): Un Toponyme D’origine
Micmaque” Recherches Amérindiennes Au Québec 21, no. 3 (Autumn 1991): 51–64; Jean Glénisson, “Champlain’s
Voyage Accounts” in Champlain: The Birth of French America, ed. by Raymonde Litalien, Denis Vaugeois, and
214
The French only began seriously investing in the built world after 1628 when the
powerful minister Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duke of Richelieu and of Fronsac (Cardinal
Richelieu) organized the Compagnie des Cent-Associés to develop the colony. Richelieu and his
associates instituted a seigniorial system, granting large tracts of land to individuals who were
willing to clear and transport French agriculturalists to that land. After briefly losing Quebec to
Anglo-Scottish privateers in 1629, the Compagnie sent the Jesuit-educated engineer and
mapmaker Jean Bourdon to help reestablish the colony and lay out lots along the riverfront.
Migration increased very slightly—though not at the pace of two to three hundred annually
theoretically required by the Compagnie’s charter—so that by 1650 the entire colony numbered
around 675. When the colony began faltering financially in 1660, largely owing to warfare with
the Iroquois, Bourdon journeyed to France where he supplied a small-scale map of Quebec (Fig.
5.1). Lots (mostly empty), roads, a few buildings, a large church, and a fort inhabited the upper
city while a denser matrix of commercial buildings and residences hugged the river on the lower
ground.
2

Käthe Roth (Québec: Septentrion, 2004), 279–83; Serge Courville and Nicholas Howard, Quebec: A Historical
Geography trans. by Richard Howard (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008), 33-46; Fischer, Champlain’s Dream, 244.
2
Bourdon, “Rivière de St Laurens depuys Montréal jusqu'à Tadoussac” (1641), BNF, CPL, GE C-5185 (RES) and
“Carte depuis Kébec jusque au cap de Tourmente” (1641) BNF, CPL, GED-8070(RES); Burke-Gaffney, “Canada’s
First Engineer Jean Bourdon (1601-1668);” Jean Hamelin, “Bourdon, Jean” in DCB; Eccles, The Canadian
Frontier, 35-59; Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse, 50-104. On the geographical development of Quebec, see
Claude Boudreau, Serge Courville, and Normand Séguin, Le Territoire: Atlas Historique Du Québec (Québec:
Presses de l’Université Laval, 1997), 32; Courville and Howard, Quebec; Cole Harris, “Retracing French
Landscapes in North America” in Michael P. Conzen, ed., The Making of the American Landscape, 73-90.
215

Fig. 5.1: [Jean Bourdon], “Vray Plan du haut & bas de quebec comme il est en l[‘]an 1660” (c.1660) ANOM, DFC,
341C

In May 1663 Louis XIV revoked the charter of the bankrupt Compagnie, proclaiming
New France a royal colony. He immediately funded transport for large numbers of French
migrants to Canada so that the colony’s first census, taken in 1666, reported more than 2,500
inhabitants living in or around Quebec. Imperial reorganization coincided with the invigoration
of state cartography, owing to Finance Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert who upon his appointment
in 1661 implemented domestically a state culture of intelligence gathering that privileged maps
216
for reporting and integrating economic, legal, demographic, natural, ecclesiastical, and military
information. In this new context, Bourdon found a welcome audience. He again travelled to
France in 1664, providing a modified copy of his 1660 map of Quebec (Fig. 5.2). This version
projected walls, redoubts, and a fortified platform “to be made,” hinting at the ongoing security
problem posed by the Iroquois League. The King recalled Mézy, reinstated Bourdon, and
dispatched royal soldiers to contain the Iroquois who agreed to peace in 1667—yet the walls and
other defensive projects promised in Bourdon’s map did not soon materialize.
3

Fig. 5.2: Bourdon, “Véritable plan de Québec comme il est en l'an 1664 et les fortifications que lon y puis faire”
(1664), ANOM, DFC, 342B.

3
Bourdon, “Le Véritable plan de Québec fait en 1663” (1663), BNF, SH18, PF127, DIV7, P3; Burke-Gaffney,
“Canada’s First Engineer,” 91, 93; Hamelin, “Bourdon, Jean” in DCB; Konvitz, Cartography in France, 1-8, quote
on 2; Soll, The Information Master, 70-6, 99; Brotton, A History of the World in 12 Maps, 294-336.
217
The Quebec landscape only developed a militarized exoskeleton during the 1690s and
1700s in response to ongoing warfare with the English. In 1689 Louis XIV recalled Denonville
to serve in the European theater of this conflict, reappointing Frontenac as governor of New
France. Months after his return, Frontenac began enclosing Quebec with wooden palisades “cut
and brought in during the winter” of 1689-90. After snow melted, he “began a strong stone
redoubt to serve as a bastion.” Yet the city remained vulnerable and its fortifications temporary
for, as one observer commented, “the want of money prevented the construction of more solid
works.” In October, 1690 an Abenaki messenger arrived in the city with news that roughly thirty
ships had departed Boston “in order to take Quebec.” The French hastily reinforced the
palisades, dug retrenchments, barricaded the entrances “with heavy beams and hogsheads filled
with earth,”

and placed batteries in strategic locations. According to one English captive at
Quebec, “they wrought every day to fortify the town round.” When the Count de Frontenac
arrived and reviewed these temporary defenses, he expressed his disbelief that it “could be
achieved in four or five days.” Indeed, the makeshift fortifications withstood the assault of the
New Englanders who soon retreated owing to disease, insufficient ammunition, tactical setbacks,
and fears that the St. Lawrence would freeze over.
4

B. Commemorating Victory
The historian Jill Lepore has observed that “acts of war generate acts of narration.” In this
case, Frontenac’s clerk Charles de Monseignat quickly penned a heroic account of the governor
during the siege followed by a plea: “We hope . . . his Majesty . . . will not abandon this poor

4
Charles de Monseignat, “Narrative of the most remarkable Occurrences in Canada, 1689, 1690” in DCHNY, IX:
462-491, quotes on 477, 485 (for the original, see ANOM, FM, C11A, 11:5-40); “Declaration of Sylvanus Davis”
(29 Nov 1691) in CMHS Third Series, I:101-112, quote on 110; Mather, Decennium Luctuosum, 27-80; Lahontan,
Nouveaux Voyages, 198-218; Parkman, Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV, 235-285; Samuel
Green, ed. Two Narratives of the Expedition Against Quebec, A.D. 1690, Under Sir William Phips (Cambridge, MA:
John Wilson & Son, 1902); Eccles, Canada under Louis XIV, 174-84 and The Canadian Frontier, 1534-1760, 122;
Johnson, Adjustment to Empire, 192-216; Steele, Warpaths, 142-5; Baker and Reid, The New England Knight.
218
country” for “had the enemy . . . not been delayed by the winds, they would have arrived at
Quebec unawares and had infallibly overpowered it.” Monseignat’s description of a vulnerable
city would anticipate later, more explicit pleas from Canadian officials that invoked the siege in
asking for resources to fortify Quebec. Monseignat sent his account in November, most likely to
Anne de La Grange-Trianon, Frontenac’s wife and “advocate at . . . court” who would have used
it to advance Frontenac’s reputation and agenda at Versailles.
5

This campaign to commemorate the victory within the halls of state drew upon the talents
of the disgraced ingénieur du roi Villeneuve—who had missed both the transformation of the
Quebec landscape as well as the English assault. Unfamiliarity did not prevent Villeneuve from
drafting a cartographic diagram of the battle (Fig. 5.3). His “Plan de Quebec en la Nouvelle
France, Assiegé par les Anglois” (c.1691) utilized his earlier “Carte des Environs de Quebec”
(1686) as its basic template, replacing the two French Men of War with thirty-four English
vessels firing upon the city. It emphasized the city’s new defensive capacities, namely walls,
retrenchments, and six batteries with a total of twenty-six cannons whose trajectories were
outlined in red, traversing the St. Lawrence in a show of the peril that awaited hostile forces.
These details corresponded with Monseignat’s geographical descriptions, suggesting that
Villeneuve had read the letter soon after it arrived in France in early 1691 and had contact, direct
or indirect, with the letter’s recipient who may have encouraged Villeneuve to draft the map.
Villeneuve praised Frontenac’s role in defeating the English while presenting an ambiguous
match up of English and French forces. Rows of hostile ships and the smoke of cannon fire
physically dwarfed Quebec. The map seemed to comment that the French had repelled the

5
E. B. O’Callaghan believed that Monseignat sent the letter (addressed simply to “Madam”) to Françoise d'Aubigné,
Marquise de Maintenon, the second wife of Louis XIV, DCHNY, IX:462; historians W. J. Eccles and Peter Moogk
have more recently dismissed this interpretation, however. Eccles, Frontenac: The Courtier Governor (Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart, Ltd., 1959), 151, 153, and 228; Peter N. Moogk, “Monseignat, Charles de,” in DCB;
Lepore, The Name of War, x.
219
English this time but might not the next—as if to suggest that if war demanded the return of a
metropolitan engineer to the colony, there was nobody better than Villeneuve by whose hands
“this map had been surveyed very exactly.”

Fig. 5.3: Villeneuve, “Plan de Québec en la Nouvelle-France Assiegé par les Anglois le 16 d'Octobre 1690 jusqu'au
22 du dit mois qu'ils furent obligés de se retirer Chez eux, apprès avoir Esté bien batt[us] par Mr le Comte de
Frontenac Gouverneur general du Pays” (c.1691), ANOM, DFC, 394C.

Why did Villeneuve draft this siege map? It seems as part of a continuing strategy of
rehabilitating his reputation. In the summer of 1690 Vauban had written to Seignelay, describing
Villeneuve as making a “rough penitence” by drafting and copying maps. Indeed, at least one
map from this period, a miniature of his “Carte des Environs de Quebec,” (Fig. 5.4) bore the
marks of political patronage mostly absent from his earlier works, in this case, a woman—likely
Pallas Athena—holding a shield with the Colbert family crest (Detail 5.4.1). Vauban may have
recommended that Villeneuve depict the 1690 siege to gain favor with the new secretary of the
Navy, Louis de Pontchartrain (Seignelay had died in November, 1690), who was looking to
secure the allegiance of navy personal through patronage at this time. Vauban eagerly wanted his
220
subordinate occupied once again, worrying that without employment “hopelessness would oblige
him [Villeneuve] to desert and throw himself to our enemies.” Vauban’s fear that Villeneuve
would defect may have been well founded: Many other military engineers fled France following
the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). Here we might wonder if Villeneuve drafted the
siege map as a warning, along these lines. Near the city’s edges lay a series of oblong shapes,
revealed by the key to be canoes conducting reconnaissance “during the night.” This was a
curious detail: Monseignant’s account referenced no such spying. Perhaps Villeneuve sought to
gently remind Vauban that it was not merely territory but also knowledge of the territory that
required defending.
6

6
Vauban to Seignelay (12 Aug 1690), CVRC, 13-4; Virol, Vauban, 40; Sara E. Chapman, Private Ambition and
Political Alliances: The Phélypeaux De Pontchartrain Family and Louis XIV’s Government, 1650-1715 (Rochester,
NY: University of Rochester Press, 2004), 115-144; On Huguenot defectors, see Peter Barber, “Necessary and
Ornamental: Map Use in England Under the Later Stuarts, 1660-1714” Eighteenth-Century Life 14, no. 3 (1990): 1–
28, especially 19; Peter Barber and A. Stuart Mason, “‘Captain Thomas, the French Engineer’: And the Teaching of
Vauban to the English” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society 25 (Autumn 1991): 279–87; Michèle Virol, “Savoirs
d’ingénieur acquis auprès de Vauban, savoirs prisés par les Anglais?” Documents pour l'histoire des techniques
(2010) Accessed 19 Feb 2015. Available: http://dht.revues.org/1263. Regarding the maps Villeneuve copied or
drafted while he made his “rough penitence,” see Villeneuve, “CARTE De La Comté De St Laurens, En La
Nouvelle France Mezurée Tres Exactement En 1689” (c.1689-90), (Large) BNF, SH PF127 DIV6 P4 and (Small)
SH PF 127 DIV6 P5, and “Carte des Environs de Quebec en La Nouvelle France Mesurée très exactement en 1688”
(c.1689-90), BNF, SH PF127 DIV7 P5D. Denonville did not mention any of these maps in his correspondence,
leading us to the conclusion that Villeneuve either carried them to France to deliver personally or completed/copied
them upon his return. Although Villeneuve’s titles indicate that he conducted the survey in a particular year, he may
have very well drafted them at a later date.
221

Fig. 5.4: Villeneuve, “Carte des Environs de Quebec En la Nouvelle France, Mezurée Tres-Exactement en 1688”
([c.1690]), Archives Nationale (Site de Paris), MARINE JJ/6/61 pièce 32.

Detail 5.4.1: Woman—likely Pallas Athena—Holding a Shield with the Colbert Family Crest
222

The siege map proved rather popular both within and beyond the cloistered halls of the
French state. We know this from the large number of extant copies, which we can track by
paying attention to the slight differences between them. Villeneuve himself created a second
copy, probably before March 1691. The first state of his map depicting the English siege shows
that same coastline at low tide, while still marking high tide line. When Villeneuve copied the
map again (the second state, Fig. 5.5), he misinterpreted the high tide mark as a road—an error
introduced into later copies (Details 5.3.1 & 5.5.1). Other transmission errors arose because of
Villeneuve’s symbology. In his 1686 map (Fig. 3.14), for example, he employed shaded lines to
indicate forest while the first state of the siege map employed clusters of individually delineated
trees, which did not cleanly demarcate the edge of the woods. This explains why, when
Villeneuve sketched the forest in the second state using shaded lines, the contours of the forest
had changed from the 1686 template (Details 3.14.8, 5.3.1, & 5.5.1). An anonymous second
mapmaker drafted two more manuscript copies, likely before 1694 when the map was printed.
Attention to style helps identify this deviation: Villeneuve consistently employed the same
compass rose composed of eight thin arms with a fleur-de-lis to indicate north (Detail 5.3.1). The
third and fourth states (Fig. 5.6) employ a red compass rose (Detail 5.6.1) with eight thick arms
enclosed within a circle and a simple arrow to mark north.
7

7
The present-day location of these maps also gives us a few hints as to when and why these copies were made. The
Archives d’Outre Mer holds the earliest extant copy of this siege map in its Dépot des fortifications (3DFC 394C),
one of three divisions of a map collection originally assembled under Colbert. The Bibliothèque Nationale de France
possesses the second and fourth copies in its Fonds Général du Département (GE D-8053) and Collection d'Anville
(GE DD-2987 (8674)), respectively. The former collection contains a diverse assemblage of maps including many
contemporary duplicates of in the collection created by Colbert. The geographer Jean Baptiste Bourguignon
d'Anville (1697-1782) collected historical and contemporary maps throughout the eighteenth century, which were
transferred to Versailles upon his death, later becoming the Collection d’Anville. How he acquired it is not certain
but it likely passed through the hands of the Parisian geographer Nicolas de Fer who published the Villeneuve siege
image and was likely working from the manuscript in the Collection d’Anville (see the next paragraph). The French
Ministry of Culture provides overviews of all of these various collections online, see “Répertoire des ressources,”
Available: http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/nllefce/fr/index1.htm. Finally, the Huntington holds the third state of
the map, which occupies the pages of a composite atlas pertaining to French imperial ambitions (Rare Books
223

Fig. 5.5: Villeneuve, “Plan de Québec, Et de ses Environs, En la Nouvelle France Assiegé par les Anglois le 16
d'Octobre 1690 Jusqu'Au 22 dud
t
mois qu’ils S’en allerent, apprès avoir Esté bien battus, par Mr le Comte de
Frontenac Gouverneur general du Pays” (c.1691), Fonds Général du Département (GE D-8053).

Detail 3.14.8: Shoreline at High Tide and Trees in Villeneuve’s 1686 Map

109496). This atlas contains a mix of English, Dutch, French, and Portuguese manuscript and print maps produced
between c.1586 and 1717. The atlas’s other examples of French state cartography seem to be much earlier. The
provenance of the Atlas before 1881, when the American collector Charles Frederick Gunther acquired it in France,
is unclear. Regarding the atlas, see Charles Leclerc, Bibliotheca Americana: Histoire, Géographie, Voyages,
Archéologie et Linguistique des Deux Amériques, Supplement Nº1 (Paris: Maisonneuve & C
ie
, 1881), 8-10; Philip
Burden, “A dozen lost sixteenth-century maps of America found” Map Collector (Spring 1996), 30-32; Bruce
Lenman, “A Huntington Atlas and the Activities of Louis XIV and His Navy in America” Huntington Library
Quarterly 72, no. 3 (September 2009), 396–417. On inconsistent symbology in early modern maps, see Catherine
Delano-Smith, “Signs on Printed Topographical Maps, ca. 1470-1640,” HOC, III:528-588.
224

Detail 5.3.1: Shoreline at Low Tide and Trees in the First State of the Siege Map

Detail 5.5.1: Road and Trees in the Second State

Fig. 5.6: Villeneuve, “Québec, Et ses Environs, En La Nouvelle France Assiegé par les Anglois le 16 d'octobre 1690
Jusqu’au 22 dudit mois qu’ils S’en allerent, appres avoir esté bien Battus, par Mons
r
Le Comte de frontenac
Gouven
ur
gñal du Pays” (c.1691)
225

Detail 5.3.2: Villeneuve’s Typical Compass Rose.

Detail 5.6.1: Compass Rose in the Third and Fourth States of the Siege Map.

The map was then printed at least six times between 1694 and 1729, mostly to shape
public sentiment in France. The French geographer Nicolas de Fer, working with the engraver H.
V. Loon, was responsible for most of these, including the first. The copying errors that de Fer
reproduced suggest that he based his version on the fourth manuscript state of the map (or a
related, non-extant version). Probably he had acquired the map in his capacity as the official
geographer to the French Dauphin. De Fer mistakenly noted the year of the assault as “1670”
(Detail 5.6.1) indicating that he or Loon had misread the manuscript map and knew little about
the attack. Why, then, publish the map? Here context is crucial: De Fer included the image in his
recurrently-published atlas, Introduction à la Fortification (alternatively titled, Les Forces de
l’Europe), which celebrated French military accomplishments. Here the individual map mattered
less than the progression of images, which employed military victories and representations of a
well-defended kingdom to sell the reign of Louis XIV as a success. De Fer republished the Atlas
226
with the Quebec map three more times. The second of these (1696) employed a new engraving
plate with a handful of differences, namely a missing building, changed contours to a patch of
forest, and some alterations in the trajectories of French cannon shot. This version also created
an elaborate border between the map and key, consisting of items commonly identified with
North America such as corn, feathers, and a quiver of arrows. Curiously, de Fer returned to the
original engraving plate for his subsequent atlases. Nevertheless, the 1696 version also persisted
because the Amsterdam engraver Pierre Mortier copied it in 1702 and then another Dutch
engraver, Pierre van der Aa, reused Mortier’s plate twenty-two years later in his sixty-six volume
atlas La Galerie agreable du Monde, which in the words of historian Benjamin Schmidt was
based on “the conceit of a magisterial Europa receiving the treasures of the exotic world.”
8

8
Pierre van der Aa, La Galerie Agreable Du Monde: Où L’on Voit En Un Grand Nombre De Cartes Tres-Exactes
Et De Belles Tailles-Douces, Les Principaux Empires, Roïaumes, Republiques, Provinces, Villes, Bourgs Et
Fortresses . . . Dans Les Quatre Parties De L’univers 66 vols (Leiden, 1729), LXIV: 67; Mireille Pastoureau, “Les
Atlas Imprimés En France Avant 1700” Imago Mundi 32 (January 1, 1980): 45–72; Mary Sponberg Pedley, “The
Map Trade in Paris, 1650-1825” Imago Mundi 33 (1981): 33–45 and The Commerce of Cartography: Making and
Marketing Maps in Eighteenth-Century France and England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 181-2;
Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV; Kershaw, Early Printed Maps of Canada, I:247- 250; Benjamin Schmidt,
Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 1-5, quote on 1.
227

Fig. 5.6: H. V. Loon, “QUEBEC, Ville de l’Amerique Septentrionale dans la Nouvelle France avec Titre d’Eveché
de St. Laurent a 310. Degrez 17. minutes de Longitudes et 46. Degr 55. Minutes de Latitudes elle fut assiegé par les
Anglois sur les François par qui elle est encore possedée l’an 1670 depuis le 16
e
octobre Jusqu’a 22. du meme mois.
Mons
r
de Frontenac Gouverneur du Paÿs qui leur fit honteusement lever le Siege” (Paris: Nicolas de Fer, 1694),
BNF, GE D-8072.

Detail 5.6.1: The Siege of “1670”

228

C. Aspirational Mapping and Requesting Funds
The English siege provided Frontenac and other officials in Canada with rhetorical
ammunition that Denonville had lacked. Memoirs frequently recalled the 1690 attack before
warning of new attacks: “The English . . . having been unsuccessful in the expedition they set on
foot in the year 1690 . . . it is confidently reported that they are preparing to renew the attack
with a greater force, both by sea and land.” William III—whose legitimacy as the English
sovereign the French did not recognize—had appointed the captain of the 1690 assault William
Phipps governor of Massachusetts and furnished “two or three warships and soldiers” for a new
expedition to Quebec. Frontenac argued that “to mount even just a simple defense,” the King
would to replace the “nourishment, munitions, money and troops” lost during the 1690 assault.
The Intendant Jean Bochart de Champigny invoked the 1690 attack before stating that Quebec
must be “fortified with a good wall . . . in consequence of the attacks from the sea to which it is
open . . . [with the] simple picket inclosures such as they have, being insufficient and of no
duration.” He argued it would be “absolutely necessary to achieve the enclosure of Quebec, to
make retrenchments, cover the redoubts, mend the batteries, and make new ones [batteries].”
References to the siege only diminished after 1694 when Louis XIV forcefully rejected the
premise of Canadian requests, writing to Frontenac and Champigny that the information they
“have pretended to have had” of a new English design “to besiege Quebec” appeared baseless
given the English seemed in no “condition to prosecute the attack.”
9

9
Frontenac to Seignelay (12 Nov 1690) in Ernest Myrand, ed., Sir William Phips Devant Québec: Histoire d’un
Siège, (Quebec, L. J. Demers & Frere, 1893), 7-19, quote on 15 (For the original, ANOM, C11A, 11:86-101);
Champigny to Pontchartrain (10 May 1691), DCHNY, IX: 500-502, quote on 500; “Memoir on the state of Canada”
(1691), DCHNY, IX:508-510, quote on 508; “Mémoire sur le Canada” ([1692]), ANOM, C11A, 12:133-136, quote
on 133; Louis XIV to Frontenac and Champigny (8 May 1694), DCHNY, IX:573.
229
In early 1691, Louis XIV agreed to send 20,000 livres (in context, the per annum income
of the French nobility ranged between 4,000 to 50,000 livres) to prepare palisades and materials
necessary for fortifications in Montreal and Quebec. He also ordered Villeneuve’s return to
Quebec. Here, Villeneuve drafted another map of the city (Fig. 5.8) that delineated the palisades
erected under Frontenac as well the walls and fortifications Villeneuve planned to build.
10
He
noted in red works already made; in yellow, projected works; and with dotted lines, works “to
demolish.” Villeneuve proposed removing the wooden palisades (Detail 5.8.1) that ran along the
back of the upper city, replacing them with stone works that would completely encircle the upper
city (Detail 5.8.2; he embedded side profiles of this wall within the map, Detail 5.8.3) and
establishing a fortification on the Cap aux Diamants. He also extended a portion of the lower
city outwards, recommending two new platforms and walls to help protect Quebec’s commercial
and residential district (Detail 5.8.4). Finally, Villeneuve included a new design for the château
perched along the edge of the upper city, which recommended demolishing more or less
everything save the front wall and powder magazine. Scarcely a year after travelling to Quebec,
Villeneuve had returned to France. Frontenac promised Vauban that Villeneuve would find him
and “show you the plan he levied of the city of Quebec by which you will see the fortifications
that we have started and what he plans to do later if the Court continues funds for this work.”
11

10
The map Villeneuve drafted while in Quebec helps us trace the lineage of his siege map. Because there is no
textual document that tells us when Villeneuve drafted the siege map, it is possible that he drafted it during or after
his travels in 1691-2 to Quebec. However, the fortifications depicted in the siege map do not match those (either old,
proposed, or slated for demolition) in his “Plan de la Ville de Quebec en la Nouvelle France Ou Sont Marquées les
Ouvrages faits a faire pour la Fortification” (Fig. 5.8), affirming that Villeneuve had drafted the siege map before
viewing the fortifications constructed under Frontenac.
11
“Ordre du roi ordonnant au sieur de Villeneuve de se rendre à Rochefort pour passer au Canada” (16 March 1691),
ANOM, FM, B16:33; Louis XIV to Frontenac and Champigny (7 April 1691), DCHNY, IX:494; Frontenac to
Vauban (Quebec: 20 Sept 1692), CVRC, 14. For French currency, see Pedley, The Commerce of Cartography, 162.
230

Fig. 5.8: Villeneuve, “Plan de la Ville de Quebec en la Nouvelle France Ou Sont Marquées les Ouvrages faits a faire
pour la Fortification” ([1691-1692]), BNF, 3DFC, 439A.

Detail 5.8.1: Palisades to Demolish

Detail 5.8.1: Mason Walls to Build

231

Detail 5.8.2: Profile Views of the Projected Mason Wall

Detail 5.8.3: The Lower City

Villeneuve’s was just the first of many aspirational maps after the 1690 siege, which
plotted ambitious projects to extend and defend the city. In Villeneuve’s case, political
entanglements from the 1680s continued to harm him and may have even hastened his departure
from the colony. Denonville’s lingering ally, the Intendant Champigny, described him in 1692 as
having a “character that is very difficult and without conduct,” charging him with financial
232
improprieties: “He received his salary in France . . . and was paid doubly in this country . . .
which did not stop him from taking two hundred ninety two livres for returning to France.”
Given the opportunity, Villeneuve would continue wasting “the little [money] we have to spend
on fortifications.” Frontenac commented in a letter to Vauban that “poor Villeneuve needs your
protections” for in Quebec, “there are men who scarcely like him and who don’t accommodate
him well as I do, scolding him when he deserves it and telling me after.” Yet Frontenac also
found fault with Villeneuve, which he more readily expressed to Pontchartrain than Vauban:
“We would be less confused here if we hadn’t had to adjust to conduct our work which Sr
Villeneuve draws better in the cabin than he executes in the field.” The message seemed clear
enough: send us a different engineer to direct the building. Vauban declined to return Villeneuve
to New France and, believing the engineer would desert, decided in May 1693 to “try to have
him killed at the first siege” (i.e. by sending him into harm’s way).
12

Funding also proved an obstacle to fully fortifying the city in the way Villeneuve had
envisioned, his untimely demise aside. Quebec enjoyed natural defensive advantages as a city on
a hill but mountainous sites were among the most difficult for building fortifications: Rapid
elevation changes demanded non-standard geometric fortification designs while the uneven
ground made it difficult to create solid foundations. Building generally cost more in Canada than
in France, owing to shortages of material, labor, and expertise. As Frontenac expressed it, “the
Intendant takes care to draw the best contract for [defensive] works but they are more expensive
in this country than in France.” Frontenac argued that taxing the habitants would not begin to
cover the extensive projects. Either the Crown would need to provide more funding or an
engineer who could design less expensive fortifications. As he promised Pontchartrain, once

12
Frontenac to Vauban (20 Sept 1692), CVRC, 14; Champigny to Pontchartrain (10 Nov 1692), ANOM, FM, C11A,
12:87-92; Frontenac to Pontchartrain (25 Oct 1693), ANOM, FM, C11A, 12:225-238, quote on 231.
233
Vauban had seen and amended Villeneuve’s plans, “we will work incessantly [i.e. to realize
them] in proportion to the funds it pleases you to send us.”
13

Before receiving a response or instructions from France, Frontenac and Champigny
began enclosing the upper city, claiming an English attack on Quebec was imminent. In August
1692 the merchant John Nelson, held captive in Quebec, had bribed two French soldiers to carry
to New England a letter describing French plans to attack English settlements. Frontenac and
Champigny believed Nelson had also “furnished the enemy full information as to the condition
of Quebec.” They decided “to begin works without waiting for further orders,” reasoning that
“our city . . . was not in a condition to resist a . . . considerable force acquainted with our
weakness.” The governor and intendant may have truly perceived this threat; they may have also
been trying to circumvent metropolitan authority, generally, and Villeneuve’s plans in particular.
Frontenac justified the haste of the construction to Pontchartrain, writing sarcastically that he
“could not design to make such great works as Sr. Villeneuve projects in his maps” but as an
earthen wall along the back of the city “would only consume part of the funds that you have
marked for our fortifications, I believed that I was able to begin works without waiting for
further orders.”
14

When Villeneuve’s replacement the ingénieur du roi Jacques Levasseur de Neré did not
arrive in Canada as promised in 1693, Frontenac instead employed a recent émigré to Canada to
enclose the city. Captain Josué Dubois Berthelot de Beaucours “commenced drawing plans of his
fortification” during the winter and once the snow had melted, “staked out . . . [the] principal

13
Frontenac to Pontchartrain (15 Sept 1692), ANOM, FM, C11A, 12:233-42, quote on 28; Duffy, Fire & Stone;
Peter N. Moogk, Building a House in New France: An Account of the Perplexities of Client and Craftsmen in Early
Canada (Markham, Ontario: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2002).
14
Frontenac to Pontchartrain (25 Oct 1693), ANOM, FM, C11A 12:225-238, quote on 231; “Relation de ce qui s'est
passé au Canada depuis le mois de septembre 1692 jusqu'au départ des vaisseaux en 1693” (1693), ANOM, FM,
C11A 12:182-205, quote on 191; Johnson, John Nelson, Merchant Adventurer, 70-77.
234
works.” In April he began directing the construction. Frontenac lavished the engineer with
praise: “One could scarcely have more intelligence for building fortifications than he has. He is a
man of quality and who has served a longtime . . . with distinction.” Moreover, he reported,
Beaucours orchestrated the building process quickly and effectively: We should not have
completed in six months without him, what we have effected in three . . . at a very reasonable
rate for Canada.” Here, Frontenac was positioning Beaucours as a second choice for
Villeneuve’s appointment. The governor explained that “if you do not send Sr. Levasseur de
Neré here, it would be useless to search for another” as “it would be difficult for you to find a
better one for us” than Beaucours.
15

In promoting Beaucours, Frontenac also enclosed his map (Fig. 5.9) in the annual
Relation so the “Court will see . . . the works we have constructed.” This relatively simple map,
drawn with pen, did little to rhetorically emulate earlier plans of the city: Beaucours neither
made recourse to a language of exactitude as did Villeneuve nor included much in the way of
decorative or dedicatory elements as did Franquelin to mark the map as a patronage object.
Beaucours included no future projects, either, only depicting work he had completed: a new
redoubt atop the Cap-aux-Diamonts and earthen ramparts along the back of the upper city. These
were less complicated than what Villeneuve had proposed and followed a different trajectory.
Beaucours had also ignored Villeneuve’s design to replace the wooden palisades lining the upper

15
Frontenac to Pontchartrain (25 Oct 1693), ANOM, FM, C11A, 12:225-238, quote on 232. Jean-Baptiste Louis
Franquelin had also sought Villeneuve’s appointment. While in Paris Franquelin addressed his request to
Pontchartrain, arguing that he had already “acted in that capacity” during the 1690 siege when he “directed all the
necessary defense work to the satisfaction of the men in power in the colony and of all the officers.” “Memoire de
Jean Baptiste Louis Franquelin hydrographe pour le Roy a Quebec en Canada,” BNF, Clairambault, 879:278-279 as
quoted in Jean Delanglez, “Franquelin: Mapmaker” Mid-America: A Historical Review, 2nd Series, 14, no. 1
(January 1943): 29–74, quote on 43. Neré had served under Vauban for two years while his brother clerked at the
Ministry of the Marine. Though Neré received this appointment in 1693, he did not arrive in the colony until the
following year. See James S. Pritchard, “Levasseur de Neré, Jacques” in DCB.
235
city’s bluffs with walls and extend the lower city. The map seemed drafted as a contrast to
Villeneuve, radiating competency rather than ambition.
16

Fig. 5.9: [Beaucours], “Plan de la ville de Quebec capitalle de la Nouvelle France Levé au mois de Septem. 1693”
(1693), ANOM, 3DFC, 356B.

16
“Relation de ce qui s'est passé au Canada depuis le mois de septembre 1692 jusqu'au départ des vaisseaux en
1693” (1693), ANOM, FM, C11A, 12:182-205.
236
Beaucours would have to wait. Neré arrived in 1694, quickly winning praise from
Champigny who admired that his “observations” have “made me conclude advantageously as to
his experience, which I hope will be very useful here to his Majesty.” Neré immediately began
“working . . . to levy a plan [i.e. map] for the fortification of Quebec.” This new plan (Fig. 5.10)
drawn with watercolor may have been more aesthetically compelling than Beaucours’ 1693 map.
However, it revealed little progress in strengthening Quebec’s defenses—only a new wall that
ran along a limited stretch of the upper city’s bluffs (Details 5.9.1 and 5.10.1). Neré’s map the
subsequent year (Fig. 5.11) included no new works, only some tentative plans to extend a small
portion of Beaucours’ wall (Details 5.9.2, 5.10.2, and 5.11.1) and expand a bastion in the upper
city (Details 5.9.3 and 5.11.2). Instead, Neré focused his energy on repairing faults with the
fortifications, which Frontenac and Champigny described as having come “from not having an
experienced engineer” before Neré. The larger reason for inaction in these years, according to the
governor and intendant, involved inadequate financing. They had taxed the people of Quebec
“without any exemption . . . in proportion to their ability as appears by the role sent by Sr.
Champigny” but while “your Majesty . . . has ordered that all the expense of the fortification
should be taken on” by the habitants, Frontenac and Champigny felt “obligated to respectfully
represent” that it was not “possible to charge the habitants more.”
17

17
Champigny to Pontchartrain (24 Oct 1694), ANOM, C11A, 13:80-94, quotes on 85; Frontenac and Champigny to
Pontchartrain (10 Nov 1695), ANOM, C11A, 13:296-313, quote on 304-305; Louis-Hector de Callières to
Pontchartrain (20 Oct 1696), ANOM, FM, C11A, 14:216-236; “Relation de ce qui s'est passé de plus remarquable
au Canada depuis le départ des vaisseaux en 1695 jusqu'au début de novembre 1696” (Nov 1696), ANOM, FM,
C11A, 14:35-64.
237

Fig. 5.10: Jacques Levasseur de Neré, “Plan de l'enceinte de la ville et château de Québek” (1694), ANOM, 3DFC,
358B.

Detail 5.9.1: Upper City Bluffs in Beaucours’ 1693 Map (No Wall).

Detail 5.10.1: New Mason Wall (Red Line by “12” and “13”).
238

Fig. 5.11: Neré, “Plan de la Ville et ch[ate]au de Quebeck En la present Année 1695” (1695), ANOM, 3DFC, 359B.

Detail 5.9.2: Edge of the Earthen Wall

Detail 5.10.2: Modification of Earthen Wall (Gray) in 5.9.3

239

Detail 5.11.1: Planned Expansion (Light Yellow/Beige) of the Earthen Wall (Gray) Depicted in 5.9.3 &
5.10.2.

Detail 5.9.3: Bastion (“G”).

Detail 5.11.2: Planned Expansion (Light Yellow/Beige) of the Bastion (Red) Depicted in 5.9.3. Neré also
included a profile view of the expansion.

D. Illustrating the Centrality of Quebec to Expanding the French Empire
For years, the project of fortifying Quebec languished. Neré returned to France in 1697
“to search for some relief by bathing and other remedies” for his bad health. Frontenac had
hoped the engineer would “return the next year” but Neré did not depart France for Canada until
1700. During these three years, the English and French brokered a tenuous peace at Ryswick in
the Netherlands while administrative changes occurred on both sides of the French Atlantic. The
240
Montreal governor Louis-Hector de Callières replaced Frontenac, who died in 1698, as governor
of New France. In France, Jérôme de Pontchartrain, compte de Maurepas (addressed as both
Pontchartrain and Maurepas) succeeded his father as Minster of the Marine.
18

Vauban took it upon himself to interest the new minister Maurepas in “the affairs of
Canada,” which the elder Pontchartrain had not “taken to heart” during his tenure. In January
1699, the maréchal drafted a quite long letter to Maurepas, lamenting that “this colony which
should have produced more than 1.5 million souls” since its founding, was “still in its infancy
and . . . cannot subsist by itself.” Vauban proposed sending to Canada soldiers, skilled laborers
such as masons and carpenters, and women for these men to quickly marry. Once there, they
would undertake the clearing, farming, building, fortifying, and reproducing that had heretofore
progressed sluggishly. Maurepas thanked Vauban for his “thoughts on our colony,” but rejected
the majority of his proposals. As the minister explained it, Canada “produces nothing[,] whatever
infinite expenditures one makes there.” Vauban disagreed vehemently, sending a lengthy memoir
and a large wall map of America, which he implored Maurepas to “take the trouble of reading . .
. with a little attention.”
19

Jean-Baptiste Louis Franquelin, who had permanently left New France in 1693 and was
now a Geographe du Roi, drafted this map for Vauban (Fig. 5.12). Unlike most French maps to
that point, including those drafted by Franquelin, this map depicted the Caribbean Islands to the
south, the Mississippi River to the west, and the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence River, and Hudson’s
Bay to the north. The primary visual narrative—a wealth of waterways that promised to mend
together the disparate French interests on the American continent with their islands in the

18
Frontenac to Pontchartrain (15 Oct 1697), ANOM, FM, C11A, 15:91-102, quotes on 98; Eccles, Frontenac, 324-
327; Chapman, Private Ambition and Political Alliances, 115-144.
19
Vauban to Maurepas (Lille: 7 Jan 1699), CVRC, 23-30, quote on 26; Maurepas to Vauban (Versailles: 21 Jan
1699), CVRC, 30-36, quote on 31; Vauban to Maurepas (Paris: 7 May 1699) CVRC, 43-44, quote on 43.
241
Caribbean (Detail 5.12.1)—reflected the agenda of continental expansion previously rejected by
the Colbert clan but now nurtured by the Pontchartrain family. Meanwhile, Vauban seems to
have encouraged Franquelin to incorporate a secondary argument as well: Latitude markings and
a detailed inset of the of the St. Lawrence River (Detail 5.12.2) that ran along both sides of the
map reinforced Vauban’s defense of Canada as hospitable territory for the French colonial
project. As he had defended the colony to Maurepas, if “Canada does not produce . . . it is not at
all its fault[,] being situated in the same climate . . . [as] France” and having a large river that
should “render commerce very easy.” An elaborate cartouche offering a view of Quebec (Detail
5.12.3) elevated the city to a place of central importance within the realm of French imperial
ambitions. The mass of canoes and ships in the harbor suggested the city’s connection to the
American continental interior and Atlantic Ocean, respectively. However, the city appeared
unevenly defended. The governor’s fort overlooked the southern edge of the upper village while
only palisades guarded the rest. Two bastions marked the lower city, which lacked walls.
Franquelin depicted the city at low tide, showing masses of people disembarking from smaller
vessels that hugged the shoreline (Detail 5.12.4).
20

20
Vauban to Maurepas ([c. Feb 1699]), CVRC, 37-43, quote on 43.
242

Fig. 5.12: Franquelin, “Partie de l'Amerique septentrionalle ou est compris la Nouvelle France, Nouvelle Angleterre,
N. Albanie et la N. Yorc, la Pensilvanie, Virginie, Caroline, Floride et la Louisiane, le golfe Mexique et les isles qui
le bordent a l'orient &c.” (1699)

Detail 5.12.1: Waterways and an Integrated French Empire in North America

243

Detail 5.12.2: Right Inset with St. Lawrence River

Detail 5.12.3: “View of Quebec”

244

Detail 5.12.4: Quebec’s Harbor

Despite the disagreement between the minister and the maréchal over state-sponsored
projects to people the colony, both officials concurred on the need to enclose all of the “places of
Canada.” Maurepas pledged to apply himself to accomplishing this task during during the
“peacetime,” even asking Vauban for assistance. But Maurepas prioritized this defensive
planning more in word than deed. In March 1699 Vauban seems to have delivered a memoir and
plan (5.13), drafted by Neré, depicting the enclosure and expansion of the lower city. Yet more
than a full year later, dismayed by the minister’s inaction, Vauban promised Callières to “awaken
the Count of Pontchartrain [i.e. Maurepas] on . . . the fortification of Quebec,” declaring the
absence of a “place of cover” to be “shameful.”
21

21
Vauban to Callieres (Paris: 17 May 1700), CVRC, 45-6, quote on 46.
245

Fig. 5.13: [Neré], “Plan de Quebec” (1699), ANOM, 3DFC, 361B. On the back of this plan is the message “Voyez
les mémoires relatifs à la lettre de M. de Vauban, 30 mars 1699,” which the ANOM catalog describes as missing—
hence the conjecture that Neré drafted the map for Vauban who then gave it to Maurepas.

Champigny—acting independently of Vauban—also sent the new minister a large,
decorative map of America in 1699 (5.14), similar in many respects to the one drafted by
Franquelin: It depicted the continental interior as far as the Mississippi River and included both
an inset with a map of the St. Lawrence River as well as a cartouche witha view of Quebec. Yet
it also differed noticeably. The mapmaker drew fewer tributaries along the Mississippi River,
included fewer placenames outside of the St. Lawrence River valley, and ommitted most of the
Caribbean islands from the map’s frame. This map, in other words, did not offer a holistic view
of the French empire. The continental interior below the Great Lakes mostly appeared empty,
relying on what J. B. Harley referred to as “silences” to imagine a “free and apparently virgin
246
land—an empty space for Europeans to partition to fill” Champigny claimed that he sent the map
to satisfy Maurepas’ “desire . . . of knowning all that concerns the country,” which, on one level,
was true. Here Champigny was demonstrating, as had so many other Canadian officials before,
his diligence in procuring cartographic knowledge. He also had hoped to secure an appointment
for the mapmaker, Charles Bécart de Granville et de Fonville, as Quebec’s new procurer. In
other words, the map served as a patronage object, which becomes even clearer when we
consider the dedication to Maurepas by “your very humble and very obedient servant, de
Fonville” (the dedication also featured the Pontchartrain family crest).
22

Fig. 5.14: Charles Bécart de Granville et de Fonville, “Canada ou Nouvelle France” (Quebec: 1699), BHCM, Le
Receuil 66:12-15.

22
Champigny to Maurepas (20 Oct 1699), ANOM, FM, C11A, 17:66-75, quote on 66; Harley, “Silences and
Secrecy,” quote on 70.
247
What rhetorical purpose, if any, might the view of Quebec (Details 5.14.1 and 5.14.2)
served in this map? As with Franquelin’s landscape view of Quebec, it elevated the centrality of
Quebec to French plans in North America. The French royal coat of arms floated above,
suggesting a landscape under royal authority. Smoke clouds emanating from the redoubt in the
upper city and the bastion in the lower city, perhaps in reference to the city’s defensive
capacities. Unlike Franquelin, Fonville depicted the city at high tide with ships maintaining their
distance from the shore as if to suggest the difficulty of disembarking at the footsteps of the
lower city. But the city here did not necessarily appear more defended than in Franquelin’s
depiction: Fonville minimized the pallisades, which did not encircle the entire upper city.
Champigny had made no specific reference to the project of fortifying the city in the letter with
which he had sent the map, however, and it seems unlikely that, without an ingenieur du roi
present, he was trying to advance such an agenda through Fonville’s map at this particular
moment. However, he may have had a longer strategy in mind. When Neré returned to Quebec
the following year, Champigny, along with the new governor Callières, renewed lobbying for
royal funds to defend the city. The essence of their argument, visually born out in Fonville’s map
and cartouche, was that the “preservation” of the entire colony “depends on the city of
Quebec.”
23

23
Callière and Champigny to Pontchartrain (18 Oct 1700), ANOM, FM, C11A 18:3-21, quote on 17.
248

Detail 5.14.1: “Quebec veu de l’Est”

Detail 5.14.2: View of Quebec

E. Cartographic Labor as Substitute for on-the-Ground Progress
Once again, Neré devoted his attention to the project of fortifying Quebec, pushing to
expand and enclose the lower city. However, Champigny and Callières insisted “that the
inhabitants are in no state to pay [for] these plans” and judged it “more advantageous for the
security of this city” to first build “a masonry enclosure” along the back of the upper city. They
249
promised Maurepas that Neré would “levy a new, exact plan of the terrain” where this wall
would run, which he would “send to his majesty.” Callières and Champigny hoped this map
would convince the King to send twenty thousand livres for the work. Indeed, Neré sent his plans
along with a memoir the next month. The map projected this proposed wall along the upper city
and included a profile view of it in the key. Otherwise it was in form and substance, nearly
identical to his earlier 1699 map—also, for example, diagramming Neré’s proposed expansion to
the lower city. Both maps posed a significant problem for the new proposed masonry enclosure:
They depicted the enclosure built by Beaucours, which already barricaded the back of the upper
city. This explains, in part, why Neré also sent a memoir, denigrating the earlier work. He
reported that Beaucours had “pitched the fortification randomly and without regard to the heights
from which it could be commanded.” After listing the specific mistakes this “Capitaine
Reformé” had made in 1693, Neré continued that “Since I arrived in Canada, I did fully
reestablish the all these works the best I could . . . but some things I could not do,” which led him
to caution that “working to restore this bad enclosure would drive the King into an unfortunate
expense.” The governor and intendant added that because wooden poles could not “survive in
this country,” the cost of simply maintaining the existing works was “excessive.”
24

The only reasonable solution, Neré maintained, was this new wall, which he could build
within three or four years if Louis XIV would fund it. In 1699 Louis XIV had granted the
Canadian colony 100,000 livres to cover “War expenses” from the previous decade, including
those “incurred . . . for the fortifications of Quebec.” Two years later—as the French vigorously
attempted to convince the Iroquois to adopt a posture of neutrality in the Anglo-French rivalry at
a peace conference in Montreal—the King agreed to fund new fortification projects, explaining

24
Callière and Champigny to Pontchartrain (18 Oct 1700), ANOM, FM, C11A, 18:3-21, quote on 17; Memoire de
Levasseur de Neré (6 Nov 1700), ANOM, FM, C11A, 18:349-350.
250
that if the Iroquois saw “the French in a state of security,” they would “not rally to the English a
second time.” But funding, as it turned out, was not the only obstacle to completing the
projects.
25

First, labor shortages impeded the work. In 1701, Neré began constructing two bastions
near the southern edge of the cliff, inaugurating his attempts to build a masonry enclosure along
the back of the upper city. But, as the engineer lamented in a letter to Maurepas, “it seems a long
time that the works will be finished” because the Governor and Intendant were diverting money
and the statutory labor required of colonists into the Montréal peace conference with the Iroquois
and establishing an outpost at present-day Detroit. Nor did the funds designated by the King
reach Neré directly, which could further slow work. In 1702, Neré complained that François
Lefebvre Duplessis Faber, the clerk for the naval treasurer, was providing merchandise instead of
money to pay for the fortifications. Neré also found his responsibilities enlarged, which further
slowed his work in Quebec. In 1702, the road commissioner Pierre Robineau de Bécancour,
Baron de Portneuf, had “returned to France this year for familial affairs” and the Intendant
Beauharnois recommended that Neré for aligning the roads and “pave the low city of Quebec
when time permits it.”
26

If these challenges impeded Neré’s ability to realize his plans for Quebec, they did not
impede his desire to talk about and illustrate them. In 1701 he sent Maurepas a (non-extant) plan
and profile of the new bastions (discussed above) before explaining why the work proceeded
slowly. Again in 1702, he sent a plan and profile (Figs. 5.15 and 5.16) of the new bastions,
accompanied this time by a lengthy memoir on what he had yet to accomplish. As with the five

25
Louis XIV to Callieres and Champigny (1699), DCHNY, IX:699-701, quote on 700; Louis XIV to Callières and
Champigny (31 May 1701), DCHNY, IX:721.
26
Neré to Maurepas (6 Nov 1701), ANOM, FM, C11A, 19:256-257; Callière et François Beauharnois to Maurepas
(3 Nov 1702), FM, C11A, 20:56-78, quote on 72.
251
extant Quebec maps he had already drafted by 1700, these new plans depicted grand aspirations
but very little progress. Then in 1704, responding to a request from Maurepas, Neré furnished the
minister with seven maps of other settlements in the St. Lawrence Valley—Montreal, Trois
Rivières, Chambly (Fig. 5.17), Sorel, La Prairie de la Madeleine, and the Abenaki village of St.
François. On the plans of Montreal and Trois Rivières, which had not been mapped since 1685,
Neré indicated future projects to enclose these cities. His ambitions were much greater for the
remaining settlements, which had not been previously mapped. Neré projected geometrically
ordered streets in yellow (the color of work to be done) in four of these settlements that would
have required demolishing many or most of the existing buildings.
27

Fig. 5.15: [Neré], “Plan de Quebec” (1702), ANOM, 3DFC, 370C.

27
Neré to Maurepas (10 Oct 1701), ANOM, FM, C11A, 19:254-255; Neré to Maurepas (6 Nov 1702), ANOM, FM,
C11A, 20:205-208; Vaudreuil and Beauharnois to Maurepas (7 Nov 1704), ANOM, FM, C11A, 22:4-28; [Neré],
“Plan de la Prairie de la Madelaine” (1704), ANOM, 3DFC, 458B; [Neré], “Plan de la ville des 3 Rivières” (1704),
ANOM, 3DFC, 461B; [Neré], “Plan de la Ville de Montréal” (1704), ANOM, 3DFC, 468A; [Neré], “Plan du
Village des Sauvages de St.Francois des Abenakis” (1704), ANOM, 3DFC, 491B; [Neré], “Plan de Sorel” (1704),
ANOM, 3DFC, 494B.
252

Fig. 5.16: [Neré], “[Plan, Profil, élévation d'une Partie de la Fortification de Québec]” (1702), ANOM, 3DFC, 372C.

Fig. 5.17: Jacques Levasseur de Neré, “Plan de chambly LEvé [sic] en l’Année 1704” (1704), ANOM, 3DFC, 496C.

253

We have reason to doubt Neré’s intention to carry out these plans quickly if at all,
however: He provided these maps while simultaneously requesting leave to return to France
where “his affairs are calling him.” The Governor Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil (Callières
had died in 1703) and Intendant Beauharnois supported Neré’s request, reasoning they would
“not make any work next year on the fortifications, the funds not having come.” The broader
point here, however, is that Neré made a demonstration of his cartographic labor because he had
built few new fortifications during his tenure. While Neré’s maps bore none of the traditional
elements of patronage objects such as dedications or elaborate decorations, his behavior indicates
that he hoped they would function as such. Unlike the maps from his first stint in New France,
which primarily aimed to establish his authority and expertise at the expense of his predecessors,
the maps Neré drafted after returning to the colony accompanied specific requests such as the
aforementioned permission for leave. He had enclosed his maps of Quebec in letters that asked
that he be awarded the Cross of St. Louis (the highest decoration available for non-noble
officers) and pay for the years he was infirm in France. After receiving his honor and
emoluments in 1704, Neré would not send another map until 1709.
28

Controversy further impeded the construction of Neré’s fortifications. The problem began
in 1706 when, again sick, he returned to France. Beaucours temporarily assumed Neré’s duties
and decided to repair the old earthen ramparts that he had made in 1693. Neré was furious when
he returned the next year, fuming to Maurepas that Beaucours had disregarded his instructions to
continue the masonry wall. He complained that it seemed “a point of honor” for his replacement

28
Neré to Maurepas (10 Oct 1701), ANOM, FM, C11A, 19:254-255; Neré to Maurepas (6 Nov 1701), ANOM, FM,
C11A, 19:256-257; Neré to Maurepas (6 Nov 1702), ANOM, FM, C11A, 20:205-208; Neré to Maurepas (28 April
1703), ANOM, FM, C11A, 21:115-118; Governor Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil and Beauharnois to Maurepas (7
Nov 1704, ANOM, FM, C11A, 22:4-28; Aegidius Fauteux, Les Chevaliers de Saint-Louis en Canada (Montréal:
Les Éditions des Dix, 1940), 96.
254
“to reestablish this old and bad enclosure” though doing so was as much “an obnoxious
hindrance” to the city’s defense as when Beaucours first built it. Beaucours defended his
decision to the minister, arguing that rumors of an English assault had necessitated that he repair
“the old wall . . . because it sufficiently encloses the body of the place.” To demonstrate this
point, he enclosed a “plan of this place with a geometric elevation to give a correct idea of the
situation.”
29

Governor Vaudreuil and Intendant Jacques Raudot (who had received his commission in
1705) supported Beaucours in this argument, recommending that he be “accorded a cross of the
knight of St. Louis” for securing the defenses of Quebec during Neré’s absence. Moreover, they
questioned the wisdom of investing more labor and money on this masonry wall. After
discussing with Neré “means that he could have to achieve the fortifications of Quebec,” they
determined “these means are nothing more than taxing commodities consumed in the city” They
decided against such a tax because “this city is very poor.” Neré, meanwhile, perceived himself
to be the object of rumors. In a letter to Maurepas, he felt it necessary to denounce one that it was
his plan to levy taxes to pay for Quebec’s fortifications. He also feared he had been unjustly
implicated in a scheme by some “well-to-do men” to exempt themselves from the statutory labor

29
Neré to Pontchartrain (18 Oct 1705), ANOM, FM, C11A 22:348-349; Louis de la Porte de Louvigny to Maurepas
(21 Oct 1706), ANOM, FM, C11A 25:18-23, quote on 18; “Résumé d'une lettre de Beaucours” (29 Oct 1706),
ANOM, FM, C11A 24:163; Vaudreuil to Maurepas (4 Nov 1706), ANOM, FM, C11A 24:214-237; Vaudreuil and
Raudot to Maurepas (Nov 1707), ANOM, FM, C11G 3:134-151; “Résumé d'une lettre de Beaucours au sujet des
fortifications de Québec” (1707), ANOM, FM, C11A 27:237, quotes on 237. There is one map, without attribution
or date, at the Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer that generally matches Beaucours’ style and contains the elements
mentioned in his letter—but there is no way to be certain this was the particular map that he enclosed. If it was, we
can say it is unusual for orienting east on top (most earlier maps of Quebec oriented west on top). The author
included a profile view of Beaucours’ ramparts lined with palisades, probably to suggest the integrity of the work,
and omitted Neré’s wall from the map entirely. If Beaucours drafted this map, which seems likely, he would have
been implying there was no good alternative for defending the city other than his earthen ramparts. See “Plan et
Elévation de la Ville de Québec” (1707?), ANOM, 3DFC, 434B.
255
“made the habitants whisper of mutiny.” By the end of 1707, Neré had concluded that he would
need to defer further work on his wall enclosing the upper city.
30

The next year Vaudreuil and Raudot’s once harmonious relationship began deteriorating
unexpectedly. The divisive King’s Lieutenant of Quebec, Charles-Gaspard Piot de Langloiserie,
had told the reform-minded Raudot of “evil songs” that satirized the Intendant in the streets. He
also told Raudot that Vaudreuil, at Neré’s suggestion and without Raudot’s approval, had
appointed the obscene poet of those songs to be the inspector of fortifications. Whether
Langloiserie invented the story or truthfully communicated something he had overheard, Raudot
came to believe that Vaudreuil and Neré had encouraged public mockery at his expense. Neré,
meanwhile, had not fully retired his aspirations for Quebec, which the Governor and Intendant
still believed impossible to fund. The King agreed with them, declining “to commence new
works” and preferring to keep “in a state of defense those already constructed.” He suggested
waiting until peacetime to “examine the expedients proposed by Sieur le Vasseur for raising,
within the Country, the funds necessary for a portion of the new works to be built.” Neré,
however, seemed disinclined to remain in the colony. In October 1708 he requested permission
to return to France, ostensibly for his health but perhaps also so he could defend his reputation in
the metropole. In his request for leave, after all, he felt it necessary to preemptively dismiss a
series of complaints he believed Raudot was currently preparing against him.
31

Neré would indeed leave Canada in 1709 but not before rumors had reached Quebec of a
new English expedition (which ultimately did not materialize that year). Vaudreuil “resolved to

30
Neré to Maurepas (12 Nov 1707), ANOM, FM, C11A 27:22-26, quote on 24; Vaudreuil and Raudot to Maurepas,
(15 Nov 1707), ANOM, FM, C11A 26:9-49, quotes on 26 and 29.
31
Neré to Maurepas (24 Oct 1708), ANOM, FM, C11A 36:387-387; “Memoir sur la Proposition de sieur
Levasseur” (9 Nov 1708), ANOM, FM, C11A 28:65-66; Vaudreuil and Raudot to Maurepas (14 Nov 1708),
ANOM, FM, C11A 28:3-56; Louis XIV to Vaudreuil and Raudot (6 July 1709), DCHNY, IX:826 or for the original,
ANOM, FM, C11G 4:3-17; Raudot to Maurepas (20 Oct 1709), ANOM, FM, C11A 30:146-228, quote on 194.
256
construct at Quebec all the Works necessary” to “maintain a siege.” He reported that after Neré
quickly built “outworks to cover the old Wall which is good for nothing,” Quebec was now “in a
condition to sustain a siege of fifteen or twenty thousand men.” The Governor supported this
contention by enclosing Neré’s plan (Fig. 5.18) with his letter. Here Neré had traced dozens of
cannon trajectories emanating from seven redoubts (Detail 5.18.1). These lines blanketed the
back of the upper city, illustrating the challenge to any advancing land army. In consideration of
the “fatigues” that the engineer had “experienced in placing Quebec in a proper condition,”
Vaudreuil concluded that he “could not refuse” Neré’s request to return to France. We may
wonder if Neré’s map may have also helped him secure his leave for it was, in its details and
projects, the most elaborate that Neré had drafted. First, it depicted not just fortifications alone
but also the buildings, roads, and gardens that they contained (Detail 5.18.2). Second, although
Neré had not advanced the lower city’s expansion since proposing it a decade earlier, the plans to
do so had become even more grandiose. Whereas that projected expansion had previously
occupied the lower city’s eastern edge, which fronted the St. Lawrence River, it now also
encompassed the northern edge running along the St. Charles River (Detail 5.18.2). Finally, Neré
still projected his unfinished masonry wall across the portion of the upper city now occupied by
his new outworks (Detail 5.18.3). He probably had little intention of finishing the wall, however,
for upon returning to France he requested he never be sent to Canada, claiming the “harshness of
the climate” to be “contrary to his health.”
32

32
“Memoir on the Condition of Canada” (Nov 1709), DCHNY IX:841; “Résumé d'une lettre de l'ingénieur
Levasseur de Neré” (1711), ANOM, FM, C11A 32:159.
257

Fig. 5.18: [Neré], “[Plan de la ville de Québec]” (1709), ANOM, 3DFC, 375A.

Detail 5.18.1: Cannon Trajectories

258

Detail 5.18.2: Unlike Neré’s earlier maps of Quebec, this one depicted the roads, buildings, and gardens within the
city. Neré’s projected expansion to the lower city had grown in size and now stretched along the banks of the St.
Charles River.

Detail 5.18.3: Neré’s map depicted three walls, including Beaucours’ earthen ramparts (“l”), Neré’s new outworks
(“16”), and Neré’s projected masonry wall (“24”).

259
While Vaudreuil claimed that the map demonstrated Quebec’s ability to resist a siege,
Raudot—who had by 1709 begun loudly complaining about Vaudreuil and Neré—cited it in a
different letter as evidence of the engineer’s costly and ineffective scheme. According to Raudot,
“the works he [Neré] is having made to fortify this city following the plan . . . is by no means
proportionate to the number of those that we could put for the defense.” He claimed that Neré’s
fortifications “would require six thousand men for defending them” although “the inhabitants of
this government” number no “more than two thousand five hundred men.” Raudot also warned
against finishing the fortifications that Neré proposed “on the plan which has been sent to you”
for they would require “eight or nine years” to complete—if, he added, “this country” would
even “be in a state to produce them.” Raudot also employed Neré to illustrate how the Governor
could not contain his unruly subordinates. He told one story, for example, in which Neré behaved
rudely during Carnival by wearing a “very evil costume,” refusing to remove his mask at the
Governor’s house, and encouraging his friend to insult the Governor’s doorman. While “the
whole company . . . was very scandalized by this lack of respect,” the Governor “was the least
indignant” and “had the weakness to not let one word spoken.”
33

Raudot must have assumed that Neré planned to return to Canada, for he seemed intent
on replacing the engineer. He first recommended Beaucours to replace Neré, explaining that “a
country such as this one . . . requires an obedient man” as engineer “who would not be stubborn
like the one currently in the office.” In a second letter written the same day, he stated that “his
M[ajes]ty could not make a more useful expenditure than sending a good engineer who, knowing
by himself the inutility of all the works, brings the remedy.” Neré, of course, did not return. The
metropole would not send another ingenieur du roi until 1716, however, so that the task of

33
Raudot to Pontchartrain (15 Sept 1709), ANOM, FM, C11A 30:259-270v, quotes on 262-263; Raudot to
Pontchartrain (20 Sept 1709), ANOM, FM, C11A 30:146-229, quotes on 173-174 and 202.
260
fortifying the Canadian capital fell again to Beaucours. In 1710 he drafted a new map of Quebec
(Fig. 5.19) that abandoned expansions to the lower city, revived the wall he had begun in 1693,
and completed a series of redoubts and bastions begun by Neré. Notably diminished in this
cartographic representation, however, was Neré’s masonry wall, unacknowledged in the legend
and depicted faintly as a series of dotted lines (Detail 5.19.1). The committee of fortifications in
Quebec accepted Beaucours’ proposal, which cost slightly less than the ten thousand livres
provided by the King. When rumors of a new British expedition reached Canada the following
year, Beaucours prioritized finishing Quebec’s defenses. As Vaudreuil communicated to
Maurepas, “the fortifications were perceptibly advancing from day to day . . . I owe this justice,
My Lord, to Sieur de Beaucourt.” Vaudreuil did not mention, however, that Beaucours had made
little progress enclosing the upper city. It ultimately mattered little. While a sizeable British fleet
had indeed embarked on a mission to seize Quebec, it never reached its destination.
34

Fig. 5.19: [Beaucours], “[Plan de Quebec]” (30 Oct 1710), ANOM, 3DFC, 377B.

34
Raudot to Maurepas (15 Sept 1709), ANOM, FM, C11A 30:259-270, quote on 262; Raudot to Maurepas (15 Sept
1709), FM, C11A 30:321-328, quote on 326; “Mémoire sur les fortifications de Québec” (1710), ANOM, FM,
C11A 31:211-212; Vaureuil to Maurepas (25 Oct 1711), DCHNY, IX: 857-861, quote on 860, for the original see
ANOM, FM, C11A 32:41-64.
261

Detail 5.19.1: Beacours deemphasized Neré’s masonry wall by depicting it with dotted lines.
262
6. Offense: Quebec, 1690-1711
The English recorded many geographic details during their first expedition to Quebec but this yielded
surprisingly few maps initially. Some participants in the first expedition furnished maps to encapsulate of their
service to the crown but did not frame these maps as evidence of their geographic knowledge or to pique royal
interest in the Canadian landscapes. Only with the second expedition to Quebec decades later did the informal
storehouse of geographic knowledge become encoded within cartographic formats. After many of the British ships
ran aground downstream of Quebec during that second expedition, maps—as objects that could be rhetorically
invoked and as objects that recorded the event’s location—became crucial documents for negotiating reputation.

A. Geographic Knowledge and a Failed Expedition
Ultimately, the project of fortifying Quebec mattered little in these years. Anglo-
American difficulty in conducting expeditions easily matched French struggles in transatlantic
defensive planning. The early years of King William’s War (1689-1697) were not kind to the
English colonies. In 1689 and 1690 the French and French-allied Natives with knowledge of the
continental interior conducted numerous overland campaigns, destroying settlements in New
York (Schenectady), New Hampshire (Dover and Salmon Falls), Maine (Newichewanock and
Pemaquid) and severely damaging many others. New England writers frequently applied
metaphors of bodily harm to describe the landscape they inhabited. One letter-writer, for
example, discussed “the Troubles which this distressed and . . . perishing Land has for these two
or three last years been bleeding under.” Others regularly described towns as having been “cutt
off” as though war had mutilated the geobody of the colony. The city of Quebec figured into
English narratives of an ailing landscape as the main culprit—as shorthand for all of New
France. The widely held assumption was that the city held New France together and that if the
English could conquer it, the rest of New France would quickly surrender. A successful
expedition to Port Royal in the spring of 1690 led by Sir William Phips emboldened the New
York and New England colonies. The plan was simple enough. Connecticut Major-General Fitz-
John Winthrop would lead English, Dutch, and Iroquois soldiers on an overland expedition to
263
Montreal while Sir William Phips commanded thirty-four ships to Quebec. The two expeditions
would, organizers reasoned, place the French in an untenable defensive position.
1

Conquest required more than the application of force but strategic use of geographic
knowledge. Success required navigating foreign terrains and then during the confrontation,
placing military forces in tactically sound positions. Problems surmounting geographic
challenges began immediately. Phips could not locate a navigator. His earlier assault on Port
Royal had alienated merchants like John Nelson who regularly traded along Acadian coast and
up the St. Lawrence River. Organizers gathered what knowledge they could, mostly by
interrogating French captives taken at Port Royal who, unsurprisingly, presented “ye ffrench to
be strong at Canada.” The New England fleet continued collecting geographic knowledge after
departing Boston in early August 1690. The English kept a ship log noting the path of their
voyage, the directions of winds, distinct natural features, good places to anchor, the abundance of
fish along the Acadian coastline, and other information useful for future navigation. Possession
hinged on more than violence and knowledge, but also the project of legitimacy. To this end,
Phips stopped frequently to “set up English Colours upon the Coast, here and there, as he went
along.” Such rituals composed both a legal and cultural strategy of possession.
2

1
For the first quote, see [Anonymous], “Account of Sir William Phips’ 1690 Expedition Against Quebec City”
(1691), NYPL, AMD, MssCol 2414. For examples of “cut off” see [Charles Lidget?], “[Extract of a Letter from
Boston]” (11 April 1690); David Jefferies to John Usher, (Boston: 28 May 1690); and Benjamin Bullivant to John
Usher (10 July 1690), HL, BP; For overviews of King William’s War, see Mather, Decennium Luctuosum; Parkman,
Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV; Eccles, Canada under Louis XIV, 1663-1701, 169-206; Howard
Peckham, The Colonial Wars 1689-1762 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 25-76; Clark, The Eastern
Frontier, 63-77, 111-124; Calloway, The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600-1800, 90-112; Richter, The Ordeal of
the Longhouse, 162-189 and Before the Revolution, 295-324; Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem
Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2002); Ann Little, Abraham in Arms: War and Gender
in Colonial New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Parmenter, The Edge of the
Woods: Iroquoia, 1534-1701, 181-274; Steven C. Eames, Rustic Warriors: Warfare and the Provincial Soldier on
the New England Frontier, 1689-1748 (New York: New York University Press, 2011). For works on the “geobody”
of an imagined community, see Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997); Olwig, Landscape, Nature, and the Body Politic.
2
Benjamin Bullivant to John Usher (10 July 1690), HL, BP; [Anonymous], “Account of Sir William Phips’
Expedition against Quebec in 1690” (Boston: January 3, 1691), NYPL, AMD, MssCol 2414, 14; Cotton Mather,
264
Travel to the mouth of the St. Lawrence River proceeded at a sluggish pace “for want of
Pilots.” The English relied on capturing French people who could provide information about the
St. Lawrence and Quebec. On September 5 the English fleet seized “a Bark come from Quebeck
to lade fish at ye Isle of Perse.” The four French captives related that “ye Inhabitants of Quebeck
w[e]r[e] in a low Condition for want of Provision.” On September 26 the English seized nine
French captives six French men and three French women. One was a pilot who provided advice
on where to anchor in the St. Lawrence. The meandering route and the time spent locating and
interrogating captives meant that the New England fleet reached Quebec late in the year.
Although this did not in of itself cause the English defeat, it had shortened the potential window
of attack, drained the fleet’s provisions, enfeebled the soldiers on board, and given a Wabanaki
messenger ample time to notify the French. Within days of reaching Quebec, the New
Englanders left again for Boston—in large part because they believed the St. Lawrence about to
freeze. Encountering storms on the return voyage, roughly five vessels scattered away from the
main fleet. These ships, lacking pilots, did not return.
3

Pietas in Patriam: the Life of his Excellency Sir William Phips Knt (London: Samuel Bridges, 1697), quote on 34;
Baker and Reid, The New England Knight, 94-96; Johnson, John Nelson, Merchant Adventurer. The original ship
log was destroyed however an unknown author copied some selections, explaining “It wd perhaps bee tedious if
Every thing therein contained shd bee related. Neverthelesse, for yor Satisfaction I have caused ye particulars of
some dayes actions to bee transcribed & yy are yes wch follow.” According to this record, the English seemed to
travel deep into the Bay of Fundy and spent considerable number of days retracing their steps along the eastern coast
of Nova Scotia. The surviving copy of this letter resides at the New York Public Library (the first citation in this
footnote); it appears to be a draft as it is filled with insertions and strikethroughs, and lacks the traditional marks of a
letter such as a seal or a note from the receiver marking the date of arrival. A somewhat misleading transcription of
this letter was included in Samuel Green, ed., Two Narratives of the Expedition Against Quebec, A.D. 1690, Under
Sir William Phips (Cambridge, MA: John Wilson & Son, 1902). In the original letter, for example, the word “they”
is frequently crossed out and replaced with “we” suggesting the author was not actually present during the
expedition. The published edition—which was made from the same document at the New York Public Library—
makes no reference to these or other edits. Samuel Green, the editor, surmised that the letter was written to Reverend
Increase Mather (who was in London at the time) because certain published writings of his son, Reverend Cotton
Mather, contained some of the same exact language. This may also point to Cotton Mather as the author of the letter.
It is also possible that Cotton Mather was drawing from the original ship log rather than this letter. For an example
of some of these textual similarities (as well as the final quote of the paragraph), see Cotton Mather, Pietas in
Patriam, cited above.
3
[Anonymous], “Account of Sir William Phips’ Expedition against Quebec in 1690” (Boston: January 3, 1691),
NYPL, AMD, MssCol 2414; Joseph Dudley to William Blathwayt (5 Feb 1691), TNA, CO 5, 856, No. 140; Thomas
265
B. Maps as Evidence of Service to the Crown
In January 1691 Phips embarked on a ship for London to address his role in both the
defeat as well as other controversies. In explaining himself to the Lords of Trade and Plantation
in April, Phips minimized the English casualties, embellished upon his successes, and blamed
circumstances beyond his control such as winds, weather, and disease. With the help of his
patrons and allies in London, Phips had soon recast the expedition into “a great and a noble
undertaking.” Moreover, he proposed leading a new expedition to Quebec, suggesting that the
geographic knowledge gained from the first expedition would allow the English to better assault
Quebec. His requests for specific equipment, for example, illustrated both his lordship of the eye
as well his knowledge of the terrain. He asked for “One hundred Cannon to Plant upon an
Iseland one League and half of Quebeck and faire sight of it” so that he could “command” the
channel “that neither ship Boat or vessel can pass either in or out.” He similarly solicited “ffour
good Morter peeces and Grenadoes shells” to use on “a hill from which the enemy cannot hinder
us, and this will so annoy them that the conquest will be easy.”
4

Phips did not simply offer words to illustrate his geographic knowledge but also
“Humbly Dedicated and Presented” a map of the St. Lawrence River “to their Majesties KING
WILLIAM and QUEEN MARY.” While the particular copy of that map does not survive, two
other versions—one in manuscript and the other, printed (Figs. 6.1 & 6.2)—hint at the ways
maps circulated, served as evidence, and helped secure patronage in the new court of William
and Mary. Both print and manuscript versions depict the St. Lawrence River, the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, and Acadia. Both are very similar in their content and style, differing only in title,

Savage, An account of the late action of the New-Englanders (London: Thomas Jones, 1691), 6; Baker and Reid,
The New England Knight, 95-109.
4
Phips, “Proposal for the Conquest of Canada” (30 June 1691), TNA, CO 5/856, No. 171; Diary of Increase Mather
(28 April 1691), American Antiquarian Society as quoted by Baker and Reid, New England Knight, 117; Baker and
Reid, New England Knight, 105-133.
266
scale bar, and the placement of decorative ships. The manuscript copy belonged to the physician
Hans Sloane who bequeathed his extensive collections to the British state in 1759, forming the
basis of the British Museum. How or when he acquired it remains unclear though it may have
been through his perch at the Royal Society. The title, which references “Last years Expedition
to Quebeck,” suggests this particular map was drafted in 1691—although it may have simply
borrowed the language of the map from which it was copied. The other version, printed by map
publisher John Thornton and the engraver Francis Lamb, lacks any date. The title of this version
described the map as a gift from Phips to the English sovereigns.

Fig. 6.1: Geo[rge] Harwar, “A New & Exact Draught of the RIVER CANADA, aproved of by ye Hon:bl Sr. Will:
Phipps in his Last years Expedition to Quebeck” (1691?), British Library (BL), Additional Mss 5414, No. 14. A note
one the back of this map describes it as belonging “originally [to] MS Sloan 3243 Roll 22,” which is how we can
trace it to Hans Sloane.

267

Fig. 6.2: F[rancis] Lamb, “A New & Exact Draught of the River Canada Aproved by the Honbl. Sr. Will: Phipps, at
his Expedition to Quebeck. Humbly Dedicated and Presented to their majesties KING WILLIAM and QUEEN
MARY” (London: John Thornton, 1691-1696?), John Carter Brown Library, Cabinet Ca689/1. Only this one copy
survives of Thornton’s engraved map. The catalog data describes the publication date as c.1689, reasoning it was
part of the English Pilot—given the 1690 date of the expedition, this is clearly not accurate.

While Phips expedition to Quebec may have created a new, informal storehouse of
geographic information in New England, it does not seem that Phips actually drew heavily from
that knowledge to produce the map he presented. Although Harwar’s title described it as “A New
. . . Draught,” we can trace its origins to a 1684 manuscript map of the French and English
colonies by the copyist William Hack, which based on some of its place names may have had
origins in French maps. The Harwar and Thornton maps cropped the frame of the Hack map
while including fewer toponyms and geographic features such as waterways. They are not exact
copies by any means—and probably were copied from other maps produced during the 1680s
(Fig. 6.4) created from the same geographic body of knowledge circulating in London. One clue
268
here involves the language in Harwar and Thorton’s titles, which describe their maps as being
“aproved [sic.]” but not created by Phips. Probably Phips did not present the map himself, as
there is no record of him meeting with William and Mary. More likely, he submitted the map to
the Lords of Trade and Plantation in June along with a “humble Petition” and “proposalls for the
Conquest of Canada,” expecting they would convey these items to the King. Copyists probably
accessed the map here before it was likely pilfered or destroyed roughly five years later.
Somebody likely sanctioned and encouraged the printing of the map—perhaps a Phips ally—to
publicly announce Phips’ cartographic gift and patronage. Harwar’s manuscript version, in
contrast, did not reference a dedication to William and Mary.
5

5
Phips, “Proposal for the Conquest of Canada” (30 June 1691), TNA, CO 5/856, No. 171; “Petition of Sir William
Phips to the King” (30 June 1691), TNA, CO 5/856, No. 17. Also see Phips to Lords of Trade and Plantation (2 Sept
1691), TNA, CO 5/856, No. 184; Sir William Phips to Lords of Trade and Plantation (21 Sept 1691), TNA, CO
5/856, No. 196; “Petition of William Phips to Lords of Trade and Plantation” (23 Sept 1691), TNA, CO 5/856, No.
197; Baker and Reid, New England Knight, 122-123.
269

Fig. 6.3: William Hack “Novvelle France” mss. (London: 1684), BL, Additional MS 5414.g.2

270
Detail 6.3.1: Area Depicted in Figs. 6.1 & 6.2. Those maps were not exact copies of the 1684 Hack map but seem to
have drawn upon knowledge already in London—rather than knowledge acquired during the 1690 expedition.

Fig. 6.4: “A Chart of Kennebeck, Noua Scotia, Canso, St. Laurence, And Canada Riuer” (n.d.), BL, King George
III’s Topographical Collection, 119:9. This map lacks any kind of publication information. Most likely it was
printed before the Harwar or Thornton maps, given some of the discrepancies noted below.

Detail 6.4.1: St. Lawrence River. Note the icons by Quebec and St. Peters Lake; also the navigational information to
the east of the Isle d’Orleans. Also note the absence of a name for the river draining into the St. Lawrence by
Quebec.

271

Detail 6.1.1: Note the absence of an icon by St. Peter Lake and how the icons near Quebec differ from 6.4.1. The
river draining into the St. Lawrence by Quebec is called here “Walleys River”—a reference to Major John Walley
who unsuccessfully led the New England land forces in an attempt to cross this river.

Detail 6.2.1: Note the consistency between Harwar (6.1.1) and Thornton versions.

272

Detail 6.1.2: The Harwar version does not reference a dedication to William and Mary.

Detail 6.2.2: The Thornton version is dedicated to William and Mary.

273
Detail 6.2.3: The scale in the Thornton map (“40 English Leagues”) matches the one in the anonymous map (“A
Scale of 40 Leagues” see Detail 6.4.2)

Detail 6.4.2. The title for the anonymous version, which makes no reference to the siege.

Phips succeeded in accomplishing his agenda: The Lords of Trade furnished Phips with
the frigate he requested and William and Mary appointed him Governor of Massachusetts. It is
somewhat difficult, however, to disentangle the roots of that success. Said differently: Did the
map help him in ways that his textual proposals and allies’ lobbying could not? We can say two
things here. First, Phips must have believed the map would help his cause for him to have given
it. Second, we know William and Mary responded to maps as patronage objects. Three years
later, the pilot Cyprian Southack, who scouted the Acadian and New England coast for French
vessels, presented King William III with a map of the Acadian coastline and St. Lawrence River
for which he was given “fifty pounds to buy a gold chain and a medal.” In both the cases of
274
Southack and Phips, the map served as a visual encapsulation and material evidence of the
service they had provided to the crown.
6

C. Appeals to Landscape and Geography in Lobbying for a Second Expedition
Phips attempted to lead a second expedition to Quebec during his brief tenure as
Governor of Massachusetts, requesting additional resources to wage such an attack from
Secretary of State Daniel Finch, the 2
nd
Earl of Nottingham. His argument rested mostly on
vanity, citing the prestige that would flow to Nottingham from victory: “I beg leave once more to
represent of how great advantage the Conquest of Cannada will bee, not only to their Maj.
ties
and
to the English Nation but alsoe to your Lordship.” Phips also wrote to New York Governor
Benjamin Fletcher “what assistance wee may expect . . . for an attacque upon canada in the
Spring,” but found Fletcher “averse to such a correspondence.” Without assistance from either
metropole or neighbor, Phips—occupied by the colony’s witchcraft trials, monetary woes, and
factional politics—seems to have abandoned the scheme.
7

A handful of others attempted to rouse interest for a subsequent expedition within the
northeastern colonies. Sylvanus Davis, a captive at Quebec during the assault, declared that if
“the land army . . . had staid longer about Morial [Montreal], or our ships had come sooner, or
weather had been such that they might have staid longer, without doubt we should have been

6
“Commission to Sir William Phips” (27 Nov 1691), TNA, CO 5/905, No. 207; Cyprian Southack, “THE NEW
ENGLAND COASTING PILOT FROM SANDY POINT of NEW YORK unto Cape CANSO in Nova Scotia, and
Part of Island BRETON” ([1719-1733?]), Library of Congress, G1106.P5 S6 1734, quote on the second leaf; Clara
Egli LeGear, John Nickelis, and George Martin, “The New England Coasting Pilot of Cyprian Southack” Imago
Mundi 11 (1954), 137–44. In the same year Southack also provided somebody with a “A=Draught of Boston
Harbor.” Like Phips’ map of the St. Lawrence River, this “Draught” merely repurposed an existing cartographic
representation of Boston created before Southack had himself arrived in Boston. A second point of similarity is that
Sloane had collected Southack’s manuscript map. Thornton had also printed it—though in 1689 and without
crediting to Southack. Augustine Fitzhugh, “[Baie de Boston]” (London: 1683), BNF, CPL, SH18, PF135, DIV6,
P3RES; “BOSTON HARBOR in NEW=ENGLAND” in The English Pilot the Fourth Book (London: William
Fisher and John Thornton, 1689), British Library, Cartographic Items Maps C.22.d.18; Avgvstine Fitzhvgh,
“A=Draught of Boston Harbor By Capt:Cyprian Southack” (1694), BL, AM, 5414, No. 17.
7
Phips to Daniel Finch, 2
nd
Earl of Nottingham (Boston: 12 Oct 1692) and (Boston: 20 Feb 1693), TNA, CO 5/751,
Nos. 15 and 22.
275
masters of Canada.” He particularly observed the promise Canada held for English agriculture:
“Their land is very fertile, but they have not made such large improvements as our English have
in New England.” Matthew Cary, who travelled to Quebec in 1695 to conduct a prisoner
exchange, related to officials in New York and Massachusetts the “Desir” of “severall french
Protestant officers & soldiers at quebec . . . to be under the English protection.” Few and far
between, these voices gained little traction initially.
8

The establishment of a new Board of Trade in 1696 revitalized talk of a new expedition.
In large part this began indirectly with an early memorandum provided to the Board by the
colonial administrator Edward Randolph, discussing “how to render the Plantations more
beneficiall & Advantageous to this Kingdom.” As Randolph explained it, “The Wealth and
Security of this Kingdome has all along depended upon . . . Trade and Navigation,” which in turn
depended upon access to the naval stores (such as masts, timber, planks, hemp, flax, salt peter,
rosin, and various tars and ashes) used to build and maintain oceanic vessels. In his mercantilist
tract, Randolph lamented England’s dependence upon Sweden and Denmark for these naval
stores. Not only might war cause a “Suddan Rupture” with these countries but these foreign
merchants overcharged England and provided “Comodities . . . not . . . so good in Quality.”
Instead, England should look to northeastern America where naval stores could be found in
abundance. The crown would need to invest in the security of places such as Maine and New
Hampshire where warfare had prevented access, limited production, and in many cases, caused
the destruction of the valuable trees that could become ship masts.
9

8
“The Declaration of Sylvanus Davis” (29 Nov 1690) in CMHS, Third Series, I:101-112, quotes on 109, 112;
“Infirmation of Math
w
Cary” (November 1695), MA, MAC, Vol 38A “Journals 1695-1767,” 1; “The Information of
Mathew Carey” (25 Nov 1695), NYSA, CD, 40:100-1.
9
Edward Randolph, “A discourse how to render the Plantations more beneficial and advantageous to the Kingdom”
(24 July 1696), TNA, CO 323/2, No. 4; Ian K. Steele, Politics of Colonial Policy: The Board of Trade in Colonial
Administration, 1696-1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968).
276
Randolph had piqued the Board’s interest in northeastern America, illustrating its
potential importance for the rest of England’s global commercial enterprise. The Board soon
began talking with American colonists then in London. Two New Yorkers discussing the state of
their colony suggested the Board speak with a recently freed prisoner-of-war named John Nelson
for his knowledge of Canada and his views on attacking it. Nelson—a Boston merchant who
described himself to the Board as “continually conversant with the french in the Countries of
Nova Scotia, Acadie, and Canada . . . for the space of 26 years”—informally presented his ideas
to the Board in September. Conquering Canada, he argued, would protect the English colonies
and yield a “trafique in furrs and peltry” which he valued at more than “£200[,]000 p
r
annum.”
Moreover, the scheme Nelson proposed required little outlay from England, just “the Assistance
of some ships.”
10

Nelson elucidated his proposal in an addendum. First, he narrated passage up the St.
Lawrence River, identifying the major landmarks and hazards that mariners would observe. First
the river was “uninhabited, by reason of the Extreame Cold and Rockiness of the Countrie.”
Then it would gradually narrow, presenting a number of islands and difficult passages. The
landscape would slowly become inviting as small settlements began to appear after about eighty
leagues of travel. Yet the population was never very dense except around Quebec, Trois
Rivières, and Montreal: “Not above 2000 families” lived “in more then 100 leagues Space, on
both sides of the river, which in divers places is soe broad, and the tides soe Strong, as renders a

10
Journal of the Board of Trade (26 Aug 1696; 12 Sept 1696), TNA, CO 391/9, pgs. 70-73, 97-103; Journal of the
Board of Trade (16 Sept 1696), TNA, CO 391, No. 9; John Nelson to Board of Trade (London: 23 Sept 1696), CO
323/2, No. 10; Chidley Brook and William Nicolls, To their Excellencys, the Lords Justices of England the Humble
Memorial of Chidley Brook & William Nicolls ([New York]: [William Bradford] 1696); Johnson, John Nelson,
Merchant Adventurer, 87-106.
277
communication amongst them Very difficult.” Nelson framed French settlement, then, as limited,
dispersed, entirely dependent upon Atlantic commerce, and consequently vulnerable to attack.
11

Nelson provided the geographical description because it underpinned the strategy he
suggested. While his proposal rested upon the same pillars as “that Late foolish and unphapie
Expedition from New Eng
ld
by S
r
W
m
Phips”—namely a land force from Albany and a naval
force from Boston—it depended less on an outright assault and more on calculated attrition. The
land force would capture fort Chambly but then could “Either attack or beleager” subsequent
targets. The ships, if they arrived at Quebec before the land forces, would unload troops “to ruin
the Country by burning their houses, destroying their Cattle, and spoiling their harvest, which
is all they depend on for their subsistence.” The result, Nelson predicted, was that “where Ever
our forces Shall first Attack them, it will call theire whole Strength from one End of the river
unto the Assistance of the Other, Soe that Either the one or the other will be left naked.” He
continued that with “theire harvest Either destroyed, or in our possession” and without “any
Suply or Assitance from Other parts,” hunger would “in A fortnights time . . . Constraine the
Surender.”

The English would barely have to appear, it seemed, before the French gave up.
12

In a final rhetorical flourish, Nelson worried that his proposal might “not appear so
probable to those that are unacquainted” because he could not “discourse or make the thing so
plain as wch a Card [i.e. like the French “carte”] or Map, whereon I presume I might easily
Satisfy any Scruples or objections &c.”—as though maps revealed self-evident geographic truths
that textual description could not. We might read this comment in two ways. First, Nelson was

11
John Nelson, “A Scheame, or Method I propose for the Reduction of Canada, where I shall begin by Setting
downe the State, Circumstances, & Scituation fo that Countrey as precious unto what I shall propose &c.” (Received
23 Sept 1696), TNA, CO 323/2, No. 12. It is worth noting that Nelson’s proposal was disseminated in manuscript.
See for example Nelson, “A Scheme or methods for the reduction of Canada,” BL, Egmont Papers, Vol. CCXIII
(AM 47132), 58-65. Egmont notes “Copy'd out Mr Southwells Collection of M.S. sent me 1730,” indicating the
allure of the scheme thirty-four years later.
12
Nelson, “A Scheame . . . for the Reduction of Canada” (Received 23 Sept 1696), TNA, CO 323/2, No. 12.
278
announcing his own confidence in reading maps and landscapes. Second, he was appealing to the
authority of an object that nobody could consult to prevent them from contradicting his
argument.
13

Though Nelson’s proposals became moot the following year when the English and
French declared peace, they rapidly gained currency again when that peace subsided five years
later. After 1702, governors, lieutenant governors, colonial officials, military officers, merchants,
and others frequently proposed invading Canada in letters to the Board of Trade, Secretaries of
State, and Queen Anne. Mostly these letter writers echoed Nelson’s arguments. First, they
blamed the 1690 defeat (if they mentioned it all
14
) on Phips’ incompetence and instead
emphasized the ease of conquest. Second, they proclaimed the fertility of Canadian land and the
French inability to improve it. Third, they argued that without French aggressors in North
America to encourage Indian assaults, English colonists would devote less time, money, and
energy to war and more to agriculture, industry, and trade. Finally, they cited the fur trade as a
lucrative spoil of war. Proponents slowly added to Nelson’s claims as well. The merchant and
projector Samuel Vetch exalted the “white porpoise” in the St. Lawrence River for “the vast
profitt the oyle [one] of them affords” and for yielding “the finest upper leather for shooes
imaginable, far excelling any marokin.” Massachusetts Governor Dudley promised that after
conquest, “the whole Masting and Fishing, And all Naval Stores would be intirely in Her Matys
hands.” He also promised—in light of impending union of Scottish and English kingdoms—that

13
Nelson, “A Scheame . . . for the Reduction of Canada” (Received 23 Sept 1696), TNA, CO 323/2, No. 12.
14
For example, the Sunderland papers at the Huntington Library, which contain the correspondence of Charles
Spencer, 3
rd
Earl of Sunderland, contain 19 incoming letters that discuss invading Canada from the years when
Sunderland was the Secretary of State for the Southern Department. None of these, however, reference the earlier
1690 attack.
279
Canada would easily accommodate the Scottish who “would find [there] their own Scotch
Climate and health, and a Country for surpassing all Scotland for all sorts of Provisions.”
15

Efforts to secure imperial resources to conduct a new expedition moved through the
imperial bureaucracy at a snail’s pace. Many years could lapse from when the Board of Trade
received a letter to when it reported its contents to more empowered governing bodies. It waited
three years, for example, before reporting the 1704 Deerfield “massacre” to Parliament. The
Board usually adopted postures of deference, hinting at rather forcefully advocating particular
policies. Consequently, Parliament and the Crown wavered for years before committing
resources for a second Canadian expedition. Proponents eventually succeeded in 1710 as the
political winds in Parliament shifted, elevating politicians who favored elevating the navy and
reducing the army. It helped that proponents were also able, as historian Eric Hinderaker writes,
“to dramatize their case.” A cohort of British merchants, soldiers, and colonial officials travelled
to London with three Iroquois and one Mahican delegates who were misleadingly presented as
“Kings” at court and to the London public in order to appeal to an emerging vision of empire,
following the 1707 union of English and Scottish kingdoms. Queen Anne commissioned the
Dutch artist John Verelst to paint the four Indian delegates. Verelst depicted them “according to
the conventions of the state portrait” to reinforce their kingly identities while setting them against
a thickly forested landscape to suggest their American origins (Fig. 6.5). The Indian delegates

15
For examples, see New York Governor Edward Hyde (Lord Cornbury), “State of the Province of New York”
(1703), HL, BP, Box 6; Massachusetts Governor Joseph Dudley to [Board member Sir Charles Hedges?] (26 Nov
1704), TNA, CO 5/751 No. 59; Dudley to Board Secretary William Popple (27 Nov 1704), TNA, CO 5/863, No.
122; Dudley to the Board of Trade (Boston: 2 Oct 1706), TNA, CO 5/864, No. 114 ; Samuel Vetch, “Canada
Survey’d, or the French Dominions upon the Continent of America briefly considered” (27 July 1708) CO 323/6
Nos. 64, 64i; Joseph Dudley to Charles Spencer (Boston: 30 November 1708), HL, Sunderland Papers; Connecticut
Governor Gurdon Saltonstall to Secretary of State Charles Spencer (Earl of Sunderland) (12 May 1709), HL, SP;
Saltonstall to Queen Anne (12 May 1709), HL, SP; Cols. Francis Nicholson and Samuel Vetch to [Sunderland?] (28
June 1709), TNA, CO 5/9, No. 25; Thomas Cockerill to Board Secretary William Popple (2 July 1709), TNA, CO
5/1049, No. 109; New York Lieutenant Governor Richard Ingoldsby to Board of Trade (5 July 1709), TNA, CO
5/1049, No. 107; New York Governor Robert Hunter to Board of Trade (30 Nov 1709), CO 5/1049, No. 138.
280
returned with mezzotint copies of their portraits, which were distributed throughout Iroquoia to
attract soldiers for a new overland expedition the following year. As Art Historian Kevin Muller
writes, in Iroquoia “the portraits . . . conveyed the message that alliance with the English could
bring material prosperity and, potentially, enhanced personal status and power.”
16

Fig. 6.5: John Verelst, “[Tee Yee Neen, Emperor of the Six Nations]” (London: 1710), Library and
Archives of Canada, C-092415.

16
Joseph Dudley to William Popple (Boston: 27 November 1704) CO 5/863, No. 122; Board of Trade, “To the
Right Honorable Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament Assembled: A Representation of the State of the Trade
of this Kingdom” (1707), HL, mssHM 821; Steele, Politics of Colonial Policy; Eric Hinderaker, “The ‘Four Indian
Kings’ and the Imaginative Construction of the First British Empire” WMQ (1996), 53:487–526; Kevin Muller,
“From Palace to Longhouse: Portraits of the Four Indian Kings in a Transatlantic Context” American Art (2008),
22:26–49.
281

D. Mapmaking in the Second Expedition
In 1711, Queen Anne, advised by Chancellor of the Exchequer Robert Harley and
Secretary of State Henry St. John, authorized a sizeable British expedition to Quebec under the
command of Admiral Hovenden Walker and Brigadier General John Hill. The fleet arrived in
Boston in June, reviving much of the geographic knowledge acquired during the 1690
expedition. As Massachusetts Governor Joseph Dudley explained it months later in a letter to St.
John: “All the knowledge the people of this Country have” for navigating the St. Lawrence River
originated from “Draughts,” the “Expedition in the Year 1690,” and occasional voyages to
exchange prisoners under “Flags of Truce.” Dudley and Walker quickly assembled “Pilots and
Skilful seafareing men as have any knowledge of the River of Canada” and collecting “all the
maps and Charts of the Coast and River that Could be Obtained.” Under the guidance of Captain
Cyprian Southack, the pilots compared these “severall Charts and platts” in order “to make more
Exact Charts or plats of the said River.” After making “amendments and Reforms . . . a number
were Imprinted.” Southack presented “the most Correct and Exact Fifty. . . to the Admiral for the
Service of Her Majestys Ships of War” and “others [i.e. imprints] . . . to the Masters of the
Several Transports of this Province.”
17

The expedition also encouraged the production of manuscript maps although it is often
difficult to trace their lineage. The British Library, for example, holds “A CHART of the
COAST of NEWFOUNDLAND[,] NEW SCOTLAND [and] NEW ENGLAND &[et]c. 1711”
(Fig. 6.6) featuring water depths and a dotted line recommending a path of travel from Cape

17
“Copy of a Journal” (June-July 1711), TNA, CO 5/751, No. 81ii; “Proceedings by Governor Dudley etc. (v.
preceding) for obtaining pilots” (13 June-23 July 1711), TNA, CO 5/898, No. 16 (These ‘proceedings’ were
enclosed in the following Nov. 13 letter from Dudley); Joseph Dudley to Henry St. John (13 Nov 1711), TNA, CO
5/898, No. 19; Francis Parkman, France and England in North America (New York: Library of America, 1983), II:
440-457; Gerald Sandford Graham, ed., The Walker Expedition to Quebec, 1711 (London: Printed for the Navy
Records Society, 1953); Adam Lyons, 1711 Expedition to Quebec Politics and the Limitations of British Global
Strategy (London; New York: Bloomsbury, 2012).
282
Breton through the St. Lawrence Bay and River to Montreal. Here the date and path of travel
strongly suggests the map’s connection to the Quebec expedition. It contains a nineteenth-
century note stating that it had been “Handed over to Lieut[enan]
t
Monier Skinner . . . by his
father in 1872.” (Detail 6.6.1) It may have at one point belonged to “The collection of old maps,
plans, drawings, and manuscripts of Sir Martin Beckman, Talbot Edwards, and [Lieut] General
[William] Skinner, some as old as 1660” that Monier Skinner had given to the Royal Engineers
Institute at Chatham in 1875. William Skinner, the progenitor of this family of engineers, had
acquired these maps (i.e. those that he did not himself make) from his stepfather Captain Talbot
Edwards, a British military engineer active during the years of the Quebec expedition. The map
donated by Monier Skinner bears a striking resemblance to another undated manuscript map
(Fig. 6.7) in an atlas at the British Library, which had belonged to George III. In other cases,
manuscript maps were copied from printed ones. One copyist—potentially Cyprian Southack—
repurposed a “Suruey of the Harbour of Boston” first appearing in the 1707 edition of the
English Pilot, cropping it, removing all water depths, and adding thirty-eight British vessels and
the encampment on Noddle Island—in other words transforming a navigational chart into a
visual encapsulation of the expedition’s time in Boston (Fig. 6.8). George III had also possessed
this map though it is unclear whether he inherited or collected it. Southack seems to have also
drafted a chart of the St. Lawrence River, most likely for the Board of Trade if its present
location in the “Colonial Office” records at the British National Archives provides any hints
(6.9). Unfortunately, the wretched condition of this map presently prevents much analysis at
present.
18

18
“A New SURUEY of the Harbour of BOSTON in NEW ENGLAND Done by Order of the Principall Officers and
Comissioners of her Ma
ties
Navy” in The English Pilot: The Fourth Book (London: 1707, Printed for John Thornton
and Richard Mount), see the copy at the Boston Athenaem, Rare Atlas (LC), Lg G1106.P5 E5 1707 (There is also a
1706 edition of the English Pilot: The Fourth Book with this map of Boston harbor at Harvard University with the
283

Fig. 6.6: “A CHART of the COAST of NEWFOUNDLAND[,] NEW SCOTLAND [and] NEW ENGLAND &[et]c.
1711” (1711), British Library, Additional Mss 33231 HH

call number G1106.P5 E5 1706 f*. However, according to the Harvard catalog, this map was inserted into the atlas
after 1706—which one could easily miss if working with the scanned microfilm copy of Harvard’s atlas available on
“Eighteenth Century Collections Online”); Thomas Skinner, Fifty Years in Ceylon. An Autobiography (London: W.
H. Allen & Co., Limited, 1891), 316; Charles Andrews and Frances Davenport, Guide to the Manuscript Materials
for the History of the United States to 1783, in the British Museum, in Minor London Archives, and in the Libraries
of Oxford and Cambridge (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1908), 143; Paul Latcham,
“Skinner, William (1699/1700–1780)” in ODNB. I have found records showing that Captain Talbot Edwards served
as a military engineer at the Leeward Islands, Barbados, and Gibraltar. He must have either participated in the
Quebec expedition or had the map copied from someone who had. Council of Trade and Plantations to the President
and Council of Barbados (Whitehall: 11 Feb 1697), TNA, CO 153/6, p.55; Captain Talbot Edwards to Prince
George of Hesse (6 Feb 1705), TNA, SP 41/34/16; Captain Talbot Edwards to the Officers of Ordnance (9 Feb
1705), TNA, SP 41/34/17.
284

Detail 6.6.1: Path of Travel and Water Depths

Detail 6.6.2: “Handed over to Lieut. Monier Skinner . . . by his father in 1872”

285

Fig. 6.7: “A New Chart of y
e
Coast of New found Land, New scotland and New England &c.” (n.d.), British
Library, King George III Maritime Collection, K.Mar VII, No. 9

Fig. 6.8: “An Exact Draught of Bostone harbour, with a Survey of most of the Islands about it” (1711), British
Library, King George III Topographical Collection, K.Top 120:32
286

Fig. 6.9: [Cyprian Southack?], “[Chart of the Gulf and River St. Lawrence]” (“1710?” according to the catalog),
TNA, CO 700/Canada No. 1. Left side.

While the fleet was still anchored in Boston, maps facilitated conversations there. In
some cases, they guided strategic and tactical planning. Brigadier General Hill, who would
command the land troops in the Quebec assault, “sent for . . . a map of the River St. Lawrence
and Quebeck” before asking Major John Livingston, who had been a captive at Quebec, about
“the Scituation and works of Quebec.” In other cases, expedition leaders employed maps to
judge the mapmakers. Admiral Walker, for example, asked a French Huguenot pilot from
Plymouth “look upon” the “Draught Captain Southack had [made] of the Bay of St. Lawrence”
to assess his skill as a pilot. Finally, military officers sent maps to metropolitan officials to
demonstrate their plans. The quartermaster general Richard King sent a “Plan of Quebeck” that
287
he had “form’d from the advice that could be had here” to Secretary St. John in a letter
discussing where he planned to locate British canons and mortars. Without explaining why, King
also sent St. John “a Copy” of Southack’s map after “Having reduc’d” it “to a more moderate
size.” Probably he hoped to exemplify his diligence.
19

E. Cartographic Memory
Having done all of this geographic reconnaissance, the expedition never reached Quebec.
Eight transports, a store ship, and a sloop ran aground near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River
in August, their visibility having been obscured by night and a thick fog. Nearly 900 soldiers and
mariners died. Authors turned to accounts of the 1690 attack to make sense of the disaster and
mete out culpability. The agent for the Province of Massachusetts Jeremiah Dummer published a
1712 pamphlet to defend the enterprise (and perhaps lay the groundwork for a new expedition)
and assign blame to Admiral Hovenden Walker. Walker also made recourse to print to
rehabilitate his reputation. In his comprehensive A Journal: Or Full Account of the Late
Expedition to Canada (1720), Walker mounted a defense built upon geographic competency. He
wrote that he had resolved to use his “best Efforts to gain all Draughts and Accounts possible
concerning that Navigation, for which I was resolved to spare no Costs.” Accordingly he
described the process of interviewing mariners, pilots, merchants, former captives, and others
who had visited or were acquainted with Quebec and the St. Lawrence River.
20

19
“Copy of a Journal” (June-July 1711), TNA, CO 5/751, No. 81ii; Richard King to Secretary of State Henry St.
John, 1
st
Viscount Bolingbroke (14 Aug 1711),TNA, CO 5/751, No. 81; Sir Hovenden Walker, A Journal: Or Full
Account of the Late Expedition to Canada (London: Printed for D. Browne, W. Mears, and G. Strahan, 1720), 67.
20
[Jeremiah Dummer], A Letter to a Friend in the Country, on the Late Expedition to Canada (London: Printed for
A. Baldwin, 1712), 9-14; Walker, Full Account of the Late Expedition to Canada, 87. Also see, Parkman, France
and England in North America, II: 440-457; Graham, The Walker Expedition to Quebec, 1711. Dummer especially
drew upon Cotton Mather’s description of the 1690 expedition in his, Pietas in Patriam, 32-43, Decennium
Luctuosum, 59-61, and Magnalia Christi Americana: Or, the Ecclesiastical History of New-England, from Its First
Planting in the Year 1620 (London: T. Parkhurst, 1702), vii, 71-2.
288
Walker methodically prepared readers for the disaster, faulting the pilots and mariners of
Boston who willingly provided him information about the St. Lawrence River but evasively
demurred asked to serve in the expedition. Captain John Bonner, for example, possessed the
“general Character of the best Pilot” but “aimed at being excused going a Pilot, and declared
himself unwilling to take charge of any of the Men of War.” Another moment of pause came as
Walker discussed with Cyprian Southack the map the latter had printed of the St. Lawrence
River and Bay: “For till now I never imagined the Navigation of the River Quebec would have
prov’d so difficult.” Walker again foreshadowed the failure when discussing the ship log from
the earlier expedition, which—unfortunately for anybody who might have doubted Walker’s
narrative—was a casualty of the 1711 expedition: “Upon reading that Journal, the great Danger
and Difficulties of sailing up the River St. Laurence, appeared more plain to me than ever; for
Sir William met with many Disasters going up, and most of his Ships were lost, though small
Vessels, and several Sloops amongst them.” Notably absent from Walker’s self-defensive
Journal was any sort of map to illustrate his cartographic competency. Walker must have
consciously made this decision, believing the absence of an “ostentive” device would disorient
his readers in the same way navigating the river had disoriented the British fleet.
21

That Walker did not map the disaster did not stop others from doing the same. First,
Cyprian Southack noted with a pointing finger the “Point of Rocks and Sands where Part of
Admiral Walkers Fleet was Cast away” (Details 6.10.1 and 6.10.2) on a 1717 chart printed in
Boston showing “y
e
English that live in the plantations of North America.” (Fig. 6.10) In drafting
his map, published in Boston and dedicated to the Massachusetts Governor and General Court,
Southack borrowed most heavily from Robert Morden’s earlier A New Map of the English

21
Walker, Full Account of the Late Expedition to Canada, 68, 75, 87. On “ostentive” devices, see Michael
Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1985), 33-35.
289
Empire in America but by no means duplicated it (Fig. 6.11). The ocean framed the easterly
bounds of the British colonies while the French empire did the same for the western interior.
Here, a constellation of fortifications—absent in Morden’s map—ran along the Mississippi
River, through the Great Lakes, to the mouth of the St. Lawrence in the upper right corner. The
map spatially narrated many incidents in the history of the late wars, noting the many carrying
places that captives, emissaries, and Indian war parties had used while travelling between French
and English settlements. Essentially, the map portrayed northeastern America as an embattled
land in contrast with the southeast, which lacked much in the way of annotation. But—and this
was the crucial message of Southack’s map—the absence of warfare in the past did not guarantee
its absence in the future.
290

Fig. 6.10: Cyprian Southack, “[Map or chart of the northeastern coast of North America]” (Boston: Fra Denning,
1717), JCBL, Cabinet C717/1 Oversize; also see another copy at TNA, CO 700/North American Colonies General
No. 4.

Detail 6.10.1: Pointing Hand Icon

291

Detail 6.10.2: “Note [Pointing Hand Icon] Point of Rocks and Sands where Part of Admiral Walkers Fleet was Cast
away”

Fig. 6.11: Robert Morden, “A New Map of the English Empire in America” (London: c.1710), TNA, CO
700/America North and South No. 6.

Southack explained that he had made the map “to Shew ye English that live in the
plantations of North America what great preparation have been and are now makeing in France
For the new Settlements behind them along from the great River Missasippi to Cape Breton.” He
292
wrote he had been inspired by a speech of Governor Robert Hunter to the General Assembly of
New York in 1716 sounding alarm over “The Vast Preparations in France for Settlements behind
you a long the Messasipi.” Southack removed the Appalachian mountain range that lay between
the Mississippi River and the eastern coast, creating the impression that no natural boundary
separated the English colonies from the new French fortifications (Details 6.10.3, 6.11.1, and
6.10.4). If there is any doubt that contemporaries may have missed the map’s primary message,
we may point to the Boston customs officer Archibald Cumings who enclosed a copy in a letter
to the Board of Trade to show the “inconveniencies these Colonies may be exposed to by the
French settlements upon our backs (in case of another warr)”
22

Detail 6.10.4: Southack depicted a chain of “New” French fortifications extending into the Great Lakes and down
the Mississippi River.

22
Robert Hunter, His Excellency’s Speech to the General Assembly of his majetys colony of New-York in America,
the 5 June, 1716 (New York: William Bradford, 1716), 2; Archibald Cumings to Board of Trade (Boston: 17 Sept
1717), TNA, CO 5/866, No. 128. Cumings was also a subscriber for a subsequent map by Southack, “THE NEW
ENGLAND COASTING PILOT FROM SANDY POINT of NEW YORK, UNTO Cape CANSO in Nova Scotia
and Part of Island BRETON” (1719-1734), Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), G1106.P5 S6 1734. Also see D.
B. Quinn, “Cumings, Archibald” in DCB.
293

Detail 6.11.1. Morden included the Appalachian Mountains in his map.

Detail 6.10.4: Southack did not include the Appalachian Mountains, even though they appeared in the map upon
which he based his work (Detail 6.11.1).

The depiction of Walker’s expedition also played into the map’s secondary theme, which
involved self-promotion. Southack frequently publicized himself in his maps, tethering his
biography to the region’s geography and history. This one included a “Prick’t Line” that
delineated the trajectory of Southack’s “Cruising in the service of the CROWN OF GREAT
BRITAIN from ye Year 1690 to ye Year 1712.” (Detail 6.10.5) In depicting the trajectories of
his movement and in describing the length of his service, Southack claimed authority over
northeastern coastal geography. He also emphasized his hard won experience in promising to
draft another map “Fit to be Printed for the Use of My Brother Mariners” that would benefit
294
from his “twenty two years hard Labour and Pain.” Notably, the pricked line ran near the
location where the ten British vessels ran aground in 1711 and proceeded into the St. Lawrence
River all the way to Quebec (Detail 6.10.1). Southack symbolized the “Rocks and Sands” with a
cluster of finely drawn dots. The pricked line neither crossed this feature nor went around it,
which was unusual: In other places, Southack drew the pricked line over both the textual
elements of the map (e.g. place names, numbers and letters corresponding to the key) as well as
its geographic features (e.g. shoals, ledges, and banks). Southack was essentially proclaiming in
this detail that, unlike Walker, he knew where not to sail.

Detail 6.10.5: “As far as the Prick’t Line runs, I have been cruising in the service of the CROWN OF GREAT
BRITTAIN from ye year 1690 to ye year 1712. Which general Chart distinct from this will be Compleated with the
Maps of the Harbour in Six Months time Fit to be Printed for the Use of My Brother Mariners it being my twenty
two years hard Labour and Pain.”

A heavily altered copy of Southack’s map, entitled “A New Map of Part of His Majesty’s
EMPIRE in North America from Carolina to Newfoundland,” (Fig. 6.12) also points to the
“Rocks & Sands where part of Admiral Walkers fleet was Cast away.” (Detail 6.12.1) The
295
copyist had omitted Southack’s key, pricked line, and references to French expansion along the
Mississippi River. Indeed, the map was cropped, excluding Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, and the
Mississippi River. The origins of this map are, at first glance, obscure: It lacks a publication date
and location and, in terms of authorship, only acknowledges by name the engraver “S. Parker.”
Nevertheless we can tease out some details from the dedication “To The KING’S Most Excellent
Majesty,” which proclaimed “This MAP is humbly Dedicated & Presented by your Maj
tys

Dutifull Subjects & Petition
rs
for Settling Your Maj
tys
Wast Land Lying between Nova Scotia &
the Province of Main, in New England, in America.” The mapmaker depicted this “Wast Land”
on the map as resting within dotted lines, which were colored over, running allong the Kennebec
and St. Croix Rivers (Detail 6.12.3). Here the mapmaker noted “This Land from Kennebeck
River to St. Croix was Granted to James Duke of York by King Charles 2
d
in y
e
Year 1663”—in
other words, describing the legal framework the “Petition
rs
” who had the map printed believed
would permit the current King to grant land to them. Here they were arguing against
Massachusetts’s officials who asserted their colony held title to the land in Maine.
23

23
“A New Map of Part of His Majesty’s EMPIRE in North America from Carolina to Newfoundland” ([London?]:
Engraven by S. Parker, [1718?]), TNA, CO 700/North American Colonies General, No. 5.
296

Fig. 6.12

Detail 6.12.1: Pointing Hand Icon, identifying the spot where the ships in the British fleet ran aground

297

Detail 6.12.2: “Note a point of Rocks & Sands where part of Admiral Walkers fleet was Cast away”

Detail 6.12.3: “This Land from Kennebeck River to St. Croix was Granted to James Duke of York by King Charles
2
d
in y
e
Year 1663”

Unlocking the context of this map requires some attention to the debate over this
territory, which was ongoing at the Board of Trade from 1713, when France officially ceded the
territory to Britain at the Treaty of Utrecht, to 1737. It began when Captain Thomas Coram, who
had built and commanded merchant ships between 1694 and 1713, spearheaded a campaign to
298
relocate to Maine “those Poor Soldiers” whose units disbanded at the conclusion of the War of
Spanish Succession and “which are a begging about the streets of London and Westminster and
places adjacent.” Our first clue that Coram was involved in copying Southack’s map comes in a
1714 letter to the speechifying MP Robert Walpole, the 2
nd
Earl of Orford. Here Coram argued
settling former soldiers in Maine would strengthen “his Majesty’s Empire in America” by
contributing to “a Lasting Security . . . against the French and Frenchifyd [Indians?].” Here the
phrasing “his Majesty’s Empire in America” comes very close to the map’s title, which refers to
“His Majesty’s EMPIRE in North America.” A second clue in this letter comes when Coram
suggested his scheme “would open a way for the future . . . to Quebeck without the hazarding a
Fleet in the River of St. Laurent, where the late Misfortune befell . . . under Sr. hovend[e]n
Walker.” Southack depicted in his 1717 map a pathway to Quebec via the Penobscot River and
then a carrying place. Although Coram wrote his letter before Southack had published his map,
the pathway to Quebec and reference to the failed Walker expedition would have likely intrigued
the projector.
24

The catalyst for reprinting the modified version of Southack’s map likely emerged in
1717 when the Massachusetts agent Jeremiah Dummer—who had published the 1712 tract
against Hovenden Walker—began objecting to the Maine settlement scheme on the grounds that
“These Lands are given to the S
d
[Massachusetts Bay] Province.” In March 1718, he softened his
position, proposing that “the Land from Kennebeck to ye River of Penobscot shall be annext . . .
to the Province of the Massachusetts Bay” and the “remainder of the Land . . . between
Penobscot & Croix be given back to the Crown to dispose of it as His Majesty shall think fit.”

24
Thomas Coram et al to Council of Trade and Planations (10 July 1713), TNA, CO 5/866, No. 2; Thomas Coram to
Robert Walpole, 2
nd
Earl of Orford (16 oct 1714), TNA, CO 5/866, No. 29; Council of Trade and Plantations to
Committee of Privy Council (Whitehall: 22 April 1737), TNA, CO 218/2, pp. 337-341; Gillian Wagner, Thomas
Coram, Gent., 1668-1751 (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2004).

299
This did not suit five of Coram’s allies who signed their names to a pamphlet they submitted to
the Board of Trade in April. The pamphlet (like the map) lacks publication details and probably
involved Coram in some way. Although the author(s) spent the bulk of the pamphlet rejecting the
legal arguments Dummer had made, they concluded by asking how “the Crown may be Re-
imburs’d for . . . the great Loss sustain’d by the Kingdom in the last Expedition to Canada being
undertaken upon the continual and unweary’d Solicitations of the Massachusetts.” It seems
highly likely, then, that Coram and his fellow petitioners had the map printed in conjunction with
this pamphlet. This explains why they would strip away nearly all of Southack’s references from
the map except to the Walker expedition—they hoped to tie its failure to the lobbying of
Massachusetts officials. Their map was really the exception, however. Other eighteenth-century
maps of America printed in Britain avoided any reference to the Walker expedition. Either
British map publishers had forgotten the failed expedition or assumed it would undermine their
increasingly frequent invocations of a “British Empire.”
25

25
[Samuel Shute], “A Supplement to Mr. Agent Dummer’s Instructions” (3 Dec 1716), TNA, CO 5/866, No. 116;
Jeremiah Dummer to Council of Trade and Plantation (30 May 1717), TNA, CO 5/866, No. 120; Jeremiah Dummer
to William Popple (21 March 1718), TNA, CO 5/866, No. 143; “To the RIGHT HONOURABLE The LORDS
COMMISSIONERS of Trade and Plantations. An Humble Representation, Shewing His MAJESTY’S just Right and
Title to the Land unjustly claim’d by the Massachusetts, Lying, and Beig between the Province of Main in New
England, and Nova Scotia in America; which Land extends 190 Miles in Length and as much in Breadth: And if
settled under His MAJESTY’S Government, (as is propos’d to be) the Quit-Rent thereof will be worth to the Crown
more than 90000 l. Sterling per Annum, besides supplying His MAJESTY and His Kingdoms with Naval Stores of
every Kind, and all other Advantages ([London?]: [1718]), quote on 4. See the copy at TNA, CO 5/866, No. 145,
which is signed by “Le Marquis de Wignacourt Franconville, William Birkhead, J. de la Menardiere, Du Jary,
Daniel Pelisson.” For one particularly famous example of an invocation of “British Empire,” see Henry Popple, “A
MAP of the BRITISH EMPIRE in AMERICA with the FRENCH and SPANISH SETTLEMENTS adjacent thereto”
([London?]: W. H. Toms, sculp., 1733).
300
7. Between: The Champlain Valley, 1687-1697
The Champlain Valley served as the most important overland corridor for the English and French during
this quarter century of warfare. The French had more experience mapping and navigating this region than the
English or Dutch but all of these Europeans depended heavily upon Native guides whose ancestors had inhabited the
region before warfare and diseases depopulated it in the seventeenth century. Dependency frustrated French
geopolitical aims, subjugating them to Native goals, namely captive taking to compensate for Native demographic
loss. One French governor attempted to use maps to encourage metropolitan officials at Versailles to forgo such
overland campaigns. After his pleas fell on deaf ears, he and subsequent governors stopped sending maps of the
region. Only with the end of warfare did French colonists again find utility in translating the knowledge they had
acquired from frequent overland campaigns into cartographic formats.

A. The Making of an Interstitial Space and Residual Native Knowledge
Heat currents circulate molten rock throughout the Earth’s subterranean asthenosphere,
pushing magma upwards through protracted fractures in the solid lithosphere. As lava emerges
and cools into oceanic mountain ranges, it thrusts the sea floor apart. Continental and oceanic
crust drifts one or two centimeters annually as a consequence of this rifting. This crust does not
expand into empty space but rather into other crust. When oceanic crusts converge, one pushes
the other downwards, returning it to the place of its molten genesis. This act of geological
recycling, called subduction, creates cracks and gaps in the ocean floor through which magma
rises, cooling into volcanic islands. As drifting continents approach each other they accrete these
islands; when they finally collide, new and old rock uplifts into mountains—a process called
orogenesis. Landmasses rarely fuse, instead diverging when the tectonic drift reorients itself.
Mountains erode. Wind and water carry rock sediments downwards, depositing them in the
ocean where they fuse together with other sediments, forming new rocks. Mountains vanish,
flatlands appear. Eastern North America has lived through many rounds of collision and
divergence, mountain building and demolition. Roughly 1 billion years ago, the present-day New
York-Vermont border lay along the ocean. Four periods of orogenesis extended the continental
landmass outwards, creating most of what we now call New England. The repeated compressing
and stretching marked this onetime shoreline along the present-day New York-Vermont border,
301
however, causing it to sink slightly until it resembled a large ditch—a geological feature called a
“graben.”
1

Today, mountains front the edges of this graben so that it forms a valley. To the west lay
the Adirondacks, which owe their etymological derivation to the Mohawk word for “tree eaters”
and European cartographic mistakes incorrectly placing the lower Ottawa River Algonquian
bands to which the Mohawks were derisively referring. The geological derivation of these
mountains owed not to orogenesis but to a process of subterranean uplift: roughly sixty million
years ago thermal currents, still active today, began raising a colossal dome of continental crust.
Erosion has brushed away the younger sedimentary rocks, revealing ancient rocks created more
than one billion years ago. To the east lay mountains uplifted during the Acadian Orogeny
roughly 400 million years ago, described as monts verts (green mountains—which when inverted
provides the present name of the state) by the French because of the forest composed of hemlock
and oak at lower elevations, spruce and fir on the slopes and at higher elevations. This valley
connects to the St. Lawrence River Valley to the north and the Hudson River Valley to the
south—serving as a corridor, therefore, between the two great waterways that penetrate into the
northeastern American interior.
2

Quaternary ice sheets filled and depressed the graben during periods of glaciation, slowly
and repeatedly expanding it. Drifting glaciers at the end of these cold periods further carved the

1
A. W. Quinn, “Normal Faults of the Lake Champlain Region” The Journal of Geology 41, no. 2 (February 1,
1933), 113–43; Van de Water, Lake Champlain and Lake George, 18; Robert G. Wetzel, Limnology, 15-18;
Elizabeth H. Thompson and Eric R. Sorenson, Wetland, Woodland, Wildland: A Guide to the Natural Communities
of Vermont (Hanover, NH: Distributed by University Press of New England, 2000), 8-12; Raymo and Raymo,
Written in Stone, 11-68; Mike Winslow, Lake Champlain: A Natural History (Burlington, Vt: Lake Champlain
Committee, 2008), 6-8; Christopher McGrory Klyza and Stephen C. Trombulak, The Story of Vermont: A Natural
and Cultural History Second edition. (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2015), 1-13.
2
Esther M. Swift, Vermont Place-Names: Footprints of History (Brattleboro, VT: The Stephen Greene Press, 1977),
7; Barry Doolan, “The Geology of Vermont” Rocks & Minerals 71, no. 4 (1996): 218–26; Raymo and Raymo,
Written in Stone, 39-52; Stephen Sulavik, Adirondack: Of Indians and Mountains, 1535-1838 (Fleischmanns, NY :
Purple Mountain Press, 2005); Thompson and Sorenson, Wetland, Woodland, Wildland, 8-19, 36-43; Klyza and
Trombulak, The Story of Vermont, 5-17, 34-51.
302
valley and deposited silts, sands, sediments, and clays that would meld into nutrient rich soils. As
the Earth began warming 12,000 years ago, ice in the graben slowly began melting. Glaciers in
the northern part of the valley dammed the meltwater and precipitation, creating a vast lake. The
ice dam collapsed, releasing a flood of freshwater but the valley, which lay below sea level, soon
filled with salty ocean water. Glaciers continued melting, slowly weighing down continental
North America less and less. Finally the valley rose above sea level again. Ocean became lake as
precipitation, mostly channeled through the through the surrounding mountains, diluted the salt
content.
3

First grasses colonized the fertile soils of the valley. Then trees slowly returned,
transforming spartan tundra: First came white pine, birches, and oaks; then spruce and fir; and
eventually replaced by hemlock, birch, beech, maple, and chestnut. The emerging tree canopy
blocked the sunlight, reducing the amount of low growing vegetation. Atlantic fish had migrated
into the salty sea but adapted as salty waters turned merely brackish and then lost their salinity
entirely. Ducks, geese, mallards, bitterns, rails, wrens, owls, and turkeys made the lake and
environs a seasonal home along with land mammals, ranging upwards in size from rodents and
squirrels to deer and megafauna including elk and mastodon, who remained there year round.
Sun warms the water during the long days of summer by shining upon the lake surface, which
measures more than four hundred square miles. The lake only slowly relinquishes that heat in
autumn, which in turn keeps the surrounding landscape from frosting roughly one hundred fifty
days each year—much longer than the ninety frost-free days in the adjacent highlands.
4

3
Van de Water, Lake Champlain and Lake George, 19-23; Raymo and Raymo, Written in Stone, 127-144;
Thompson and Sorenson, Wetland, Woodland, Wildland, 14-16; Klyza and Trombulak, The Story of Vermont, 18-
24; Winslow, Lake Champlain, 4-6, 11.
4
Van de Water, Lake Champlain and Lake George, 23-26; Thompson and Sorenson, Wetland, Woodland, Wildland,
24-28; Klyza and Trombulak, The Story of Vermont, 24-27, 45-46; Winslow, Lake Champlain, 59-119.
303
Small bands of humans first appeared in the valley around 9300 BC to hunt the
megafauna—perhaps to extinction—that roamed the tundra. As forests emerged, they began
incorporating fish, birds, mammals, and plants into their diets as well. Population growth
increased dramatically in the Woodland Period as people created or adopted new weapons,
technologies, and forms of material culture. By 1400 AD, the valley’s inhabitants began taking
advantage of the rich soils around and moderating effects of the lake, cultivating the three-sisters
crops (corn, beans, and squash) originating from Mesoamerica. For centuries the lake served as a
natural boundary between Algonquian and Iroquoian cultures, with the Wabanaki dwelling on
the eastern side and the Iroquois on the western side. Perennial small-scale warfare marked this
borderland but nothing cataclysmic—until the sixteenth century when Afro-Eurasian diseases,
carried by European merchants and sailors, depopulated the region, igniting mourning wars in
which captive taking became a strategy of demographic survival.
5

By the end of the sixteenth century, disease and conflict had thoroughly depopulated the
valley. When the French mapmaker and navigator Samuel de Champlain visited in 1609 as part
of a Huron and Algonquian war party, the first European to see the lake, he noted the “many
beautiful low islands covered with very fine woods and meadows with much wild fowl and
animals to hunt.” However, he continued, this pleasant region was no longer “inhabited by
Indians, on account of their wars; for they withdraw from the rivers as far as they can into the
interior, in order not to be easily surprised.” So taken was Champlain that of the 330 place-names
he imparted on the American landscape, it was the lake that he gave his own name (Detail
1.20.1)—whose staying power owes to his 1612 “Carte Geographiqve de La Novvelle Franse,”
(Fig. 1.20) which incorrectly placed the lake just inland of present-day Boston—unaware of or

5
Van de Water, Lake Champlain and Lake George, 26-27; Daniel Richter, “War and Culture;” Tanner, Atlas of
Great Lakes Indian History, 13-35; Calloway, The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600-1800, 6-24; Bellico, Sails
and Steam in the Mountains, 8; Klyza and Trombulak, The Story of Vermont, 27-34.
304
unconcerned with the earlier Iroquois and Wabanki inhabitants who called the lake
Kanyatarakwá:roñte’ and Bitawbágw, respectively, and continued to visit it after uprooting
themselves. Bitaw- means both “between” and “double.” The second part of the name, bagw,
denotes a “body of resting water.” “Double” refers to the twin-structure of the northern end of
the lake, spliced by a series of large islands. “Between” alludes to the interstitial quality of the
lake after its depopulation, specifically the way that it facilitated foot and canoe traffic between
the Finger Lakes bioregion and the St. Lawrence River Valley. The Iroquois name translates as
“bulge in the waterway,” suggesting the lake is but one segment of a broader waterway.
6

Detail 1.20.1: In his 1612 map, Samuel de Champlain imparted his name on the lake that the Iroquois and Wabanaki
inhabitants had called Kanyatarakwá:roñte’ and Bitawbágw, respectively.

6
Samuel de Champlain, “Carte Geographe de la Novvelle Franse Faictte Par le Sievr de Champlain Saint Tongois
Cappitaine Ordinaire Povr le Roy en la Marine faict l’an 1612” (1612) and Les Voyages Du Sievr De Champlain,
Xaintongeois, capitaine ordinaire pour le Roy, en la Marine (A Paris, Chez Iean Berjon, 1613), in Biggar, ed., The
Works of Samuel de Champlain, II:82-100, quote on 90; Lounsbury, Iroquois Place-Names in the Champlain Valley,
35-41; Day, “Abenaki Place-Names in the Champlain Valley;” Conrad E. Heidenreich, “The Mapping of Samuel de
Champlain, 1603–1635” in HOC, III:1538-1549; Champlain as quoted by Calloway, Western Abenaki of Vermont,
59; Christian Morissonneau, “Champlain’s Place-Names” in Litalien, Vaugeois, and Roth, eds., Champlain, 218-
229; Anderson and Cayton, The Dominion of War, 1-38; Fischer, Champlain’s Dream, 254-280.
305
Wabanaki (and to a lesser extent, Iroquois) knowledge of the Champlain Valley has been
preserved in some small measure through toponyms (i.e. place names), which can tell us about
aspects of the landscape that Europeans often failed to notice or record. Frequently these referred
to mythological or historical events, food and other natural resources, animal habitats, and the
geomorphological features of the landscape. In many cases, a toponym in one place bore a
relation to a toponym elsewhere, helping the speakers of the language to narrate movement
through the landscape. For example, the Wabanaki called the bay near present-day Burlington,
Vermont “balitén,” meaning “wrong way current.” Heavy winds and changing currents made
these waters the most difficult part of the lake to canoe. Two islands bookend this passage. In
western Wabenaki mythology, the creator Odzíhozó (his name literally means “he makes himself
from something,” reflecting the way he had created himself) fashioned Lake Champlain as his
final “masterpiece,” climbed onto one of these islands, and transformed into stone. The second
island was named for Odzíhozó’s wife. Both islands possess distinct rock features, visible to
canoeists, whose shapes lend themselves to anthropomorphism. Wabanaki travelers would leave
offerings at these islands as part of rituals asking for safe passage. After embarking from one
island, sighting the other would signal the completion of this most difficult segment of the
journey. Here, Wabanaki voyagers employed mythological narrative to both explain the
landscape as well as navigate through it. Although fewer Iroquois toponyms with reliable
English translations have persisted in the Champlain valley, they similarly helped people to
locate particular places within a broader set of geographical relationships. Hurons called the
southern extremity of Lake George “Tsi' Yotenyá:taro'kte',” meaning “Where the waterway
comes to an end.”
7

7
Gordon M. Day, “Abenaki Place-Names in the Champlain Valley,” quotes on 162.
306

Fig. 7.1: Wabanaki Toponyms in the Champlain Valley
307
B. French Dependence upon Native Geographic Knowledge
Europeans depended upon Amerindians to navigate the Champlain Valley throughout the
seventeenth century—as they did many interstitial spaces. French colonists ventured into this
corridor much more than their Dutch or English counterparts, primarily owing to recurring
warfare with the Iroquois. In 1646, four Mohawks guided the Jesuit priest Isaac Jogues along the
lake to conduct peace negotiations in Mohawk country. The engineer Jean Bourdon accompanied
Jogues to “become acquainted with the country” and, upon returning, helped draft what Jogue
described as “a tolerably accurate map of these regions.” It is unclear whether this particular map
survives, although a few candidates or later copies exist (Fig. 7.2). Whatever knowledge the two
men had acquired, the broader results for mapping were mixed: While some French maps
correctly placed Lake Champlain between the St. Lawrence and Hudson Rivers, many others
continued misplacing and deforming the lake. A later military expedition to Mohawk country in
1666 exposed the discontinuity of French knowledge. A “delay of the Algonquin guides” had
caused the French to “try unknown routes” through the Champlain Valley by which they risked
“constantly going astray.” Two weeks after leaving fort Saint Therese on the Richelieu River, the
lost French soldiers stumbled into Schenectady but soon returned after learning the Mohawk had
abandoned their villages. A second French expedition in 1666 rested upon the knowledge of an
Alongquin woman who had been “a former Mohawk captive.” These expeditions seem to have
produced a number of manuscript and printed maps (Figs. 7.3-5), which came much closer to our
present-day understanding of both the lake’s shape and the broader relationships between the
waterways of the continental interior.
8

8
Rev. Isaac Jogues to Rev. André Castillon (12 Sept 1646) in JR, XXVIII:136-141, quote on 137; François le
Mercier, “Relation de ce qvi s’est passé . . . en la Novvelle France, aux années mil six cent soixante cinq, & mil six
cent soixante six” in JR, L:93-165, quote on 135; Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 67-70, 120-124, quote on 122;
Allen, The Mapping of New York State, 42-49. Much of the Jesuit contributions to the cartographic history of New
308

Fig. 7.2: Facsimile at the Huntington Library, Karpinski Collection, no. 97 from “Chemin des Iroqvois” (n.d.),
Archives Nationales (Paris), N.N. 173.6. The original manuscript map might be the “tolerably accurate map” of
Lake Champlain by Bourdon to which Jogues referred in 1646—although it is difficult to prove.

Fig. 7.3: “[Carte du fleuve St-Laurent, du lac Ontario, de la Nouvelle-Angleterre et du chemin menant aux
"Habitations des Iroquois que les troupes du Roy doivent attaquer”]” mss. ([c.1666]) BCHM, Le Recueil 67:56.

France have been lost, owing to discontinuities in French and Italian Jesuit archives—especially the confiscation and
destruction of Jesuit records by the French state in 1764 and Pope Clement XIV in 1773. One potential source for
reconstructing Jesuit cartographic knowledge is a collection of more than forty manuscript maps copied from
sixteenth and seventeenth-century originals by the French geographer Guillaume Delisle around the year 1700
(Marine 6/JJ/75) at the Archives Nationales (Paris). However, it is unlikely these are faithful reproductions of the
originals, especially if his copy (pièce 161) of Champlain’s “Carte Geographe de la Nouvelle France” (1612). See
Joseph P. Donnelly, Thwaites’ Jesuit Relations, Errata and Addenda (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1967), 1-
26; Nellis M. Crouse, “Contributions of the Canadian Jesuits to the Geographical Knowledge of New France, 1632-
1675” Dissertation (Cornell University, 1924), 7-30, 54-78; Nelson-Martin Dawson with Charles Vincent, L’Atelier
Delisle: l’Amérique du Nord sur la Table à dessin (Québec: Septentrion, 2000.), 95-116.
309

Detail 7.3.1: Lake Champlain. The map, which offers no hints at its authorship, references the departure of the
French troops from Fort St. Anne on October, 4 1666. The map, given its present-day location at the Bibliothèque
historique centrale de la Marine, was likely sent to Jean-Baptiste Colbert in 1666 or 1667 to illustrate the route of the
French. The Intendant Jean Talon (Canada had no governor during these years) did not mention such a map in his
correspondence.

310

Detail 7.3.2: The “Iroquois habitations that the King’s troops must attack.” The two sets of dotted lines that
converge near the head of the Hudson River seem to hint at the French confusion during the first expedition in 1666
when, without a native guide, they accidently travelled to Schenectady (marked here as “petit village holandois”).

Fig. 7.4: “Plans des Forts faiets par Le Regiment Carignan Salierey sur La Riviere de Richelieu [dicte] autrement
des Iroquois en La Nouvelle France” mss. ([1666?]), BNF, GE D-17177.

311

Fig. 7.5: “Plans des forts faiets par le Regiment Carignan Salieres sur la Riviere de Richelieu dicte autrement des
Iroquois en la Nouvelle france” engr. ([1666?]), ANOM, 3DFC, 493C. This printed map seems to have been based
on Fig. 7.4 (although the reverse is certainly also possible).

312

Detail 7.4.1: Lake Champlain and Pathway to Three Iroquois Villages.

Detail 7.5.1: Unlike the manuscript version, the print version depicts two pathways to the Mohawk villages, both
different than those in detail 7.3.2.
313

Although many French people possessed firsthand experience and knowledge of the
continental interior, the French still depended upon Native allies to guide their travel into
interstitial spaces as warfare began embroiling the peoples of northeastern America in the late
1680s. When the French Governor Jacques Brisay de Denonville invaded Iroquoia in summer
1687 by travelling up the St. Lawrence River and across Lake Ontario, he consulted with
soldiers, missionaries, merchants, and mapmakers. Nevertheless, he still relied on Indian allies
who, he reported, had “serve[d] as discoverers” and “facilitate[d] the passages.” When the
French in Canada broadened their theater of war to include the English colonies, the Champlain
Valley served as a primary French route for conducting overland expeditions, providing access to
Iroquois and English settlements along the Mohawk, Hudson, and Connecticut Rivers. In early
1690, for example, the French governor Louis de Baude, Comte de Frontenac organized an
expedition to Albany consisting of roughly two hundred soldiers, including eighty Iroquois who
had settled near Montreal and sixteen Algonquins under the command of two Lieutenants, Le
Moyne de Sainte Hélène and Dailleboust de Mantet. Upon learning the French wanted to attack
Albany, the Indians refused given the “feebleness of the party for an so hazardous an enterprise.”
The French commanders capitulated, acknowledging that the “Indians . . . have a perfect
knowledge of these places, and more experience than the french.” Instead the war party attacked
Schenectady, an Anglo-Dutch agricultural settlement proximate to Albany but less well
defended.
9

9
“Memoire Du Voyage Pour l’Entreprise de M le Marquis de Denonville Contre les Sonontouans Ennemis De la
Colonie Selon les ordres Du Roy” (Oct 1687), ANOM, FM, C11A 9:104-120, quote on 106; Charles de Monseignat,
“Narrative of the most remarkable Occurrences in Canada, 1689, 1690” (Nov 1689), ANOM, FM, C11A, 11:5-40,
quote on 10; Parkman, France and England in North America, II:154-172; Robert V. Wells, Facing the “King of
Terrors”: Death and Society in an American Community, 1750-1990 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2000), 28-29. On the other significant routes for French overland expeditions, see Bourque, Twelve Thousand Years,
147-181; Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 181-273.
314
C. Sending Maps and Mapmakers to Chart a Different Course
Overland expeditions were difficult to conduct regardless of how well those involved
knew the terrain. As Frontenac explained to the Minister of the Marine Louis de Pontchartrain
months after the expedition to Schenectady, assaulting the English by sea was preferable to
doing so by land: “The distance of these places, the uncertainty of the weather, the difficulty of
conducting necessary munitions and foodstuffs so far ... seem to me insurmountable obstacles.”
Even attacking Albany, Frontenac argued, would “require taking precautions, it not being so easy
as those who have proposed it had imagined as you see by the plan that I am sending you, to
which I have had added those of Manath [i.e. Manhattan] and Corlard [i.e. Schenectady].” These
maps, which don’t seem to survive, may have benefited

from the recent expedition. Presumably
Frontenac believed they would help his argument that if the French could seize Manhattan, “the
whole country of New York would fall as . . . all communication” for the colony passed through
Manhattan. Without English interference, moreover, the French “could without pain make the
Iroquois submit entirely.”
10

Louis XIV gently declined Frontenac’s early requests for naval assistance but did not
close the door completely, asking to learn more about “the means of effecting it.” During
Villeneuve’s second stint in Canada in 1691-2, the engineer drafted a map tightly delineating
Lake Champlain and the Hudson River with Montreal and New York City acting as bookends.
Villeneuve labeled the New York harbor as “Mer de la Nouvelle France,” perhaps to prematurely
suggest the geographic unity of what could become a French colony. Whether this was a brazen
attempt to foster imperial fantasies, it would have reinforced Frontenac’s argument that

10
Frontenac to Seignelay (12 Nov 1690), ANOM, FM, C11A, 11:86-101, quote on 94.

315
conquering the settlements at the mouth of the Hudson River would result in the submission of
those at its head. Villeneuve’s did not, however, provide any navigational details. In 1692
Pontchartrain lamented the dearth of knowledge about the New England and New York coast,
requesting Frontenac send the Acadian merchant Antoine de Lamothe Cadillac to Paris to furnish
more precise information. Frontenac, sensing opportunity, also sent the mapmaker Jean-Baptiste
Louis Franquelin to accompany Cadillac, believing that Franquelin’s maps would help sell a
naval expedition to Boston and New York to the hesitant King. The governor established
Franquelin’s authority by testifying that the mapmaker always worked with “the utmost care”
and “drew and re-drew each [map] . . . until those who had actually been in these places, whether
Frenchmen, Englishmen, or Indians, approved.” He further explained that Franquelin and
Cadillac “will be able to adjust these maps while sailing along the coast and give you an even
more exact account when they have the honor of saluting you.”
11

Fig. 7.6: [Robert de Villeneuve], “[Region from Montreal to New York]” (facsimile 1926-1928 from the original
c.1691-2), Huntington Library, Karpinski Collection, no. 83. Villeneuve’s original map has gone missing. We would
not know about it but the historian of mathematics Louis C. Karpinski had created a facsimile in the 1920s. Louis C.
Karpinski, “Manuscript Maps Relating to American History in French, Spanish, and Portuguese Archives” The

11
Louis XIV to Frontenac and Champigny (7 April 1691), DCHNY, IX:494; Pontchartrain to Frontenac (April
1692), DCHNY, 530-531; Frontenac to Pontchartrain (15 Sept 1692), ANOM, COL C11A 12:23-42, quote on 24;
“Memoire de Jean Baptiste Louis Franquelin, BNF, Clairambault 879:278-279 as quoted in Delanglez,
“Franquelin,” 45.
316
American Historical Review 33, no. 2 (1928), 328–30; Mary Sponberg Pedley, “Louis Charles Karpinski and the
Cartography of the Great Lakes” Michigan Historical Review 31, no. 1 (2005), 166–99.

The maps of New York and New England that Franquelin produced in France (Figs. 7.7
& 7.8) served both logistical and rhetorical functions. They sketched the best paths for
navigating the harbors and illuminated the potential hazards such as shoals and fortifications
(Detail 7.7.1). They also framed English settlement. By placing Boston and New York at the
extremities of his coastal map while including few hints of settlement between these cities,
Franquelin suggested that conquering Boston and New York would easily make the French
masters of the entire New England coast. Franquelin portrayed both Boston and New York as
prizes—well-planned cities surrounded by cleared and cultivated land. The King received these
maps very enthusiastically. Rather than endorse Frontenac’s plan, however, he requested more
maps. Franquelin, sensing an opportunity for a raise, volunteered to patrol the American
coastline in a small frigate. These plans came to naught, however. Franquelin learned the
majority of his family had died in a shipwreck in the St. Lawrence River and decided against
returning to the colony where he was heavily indebted. He found employment as a draftsman
under Vauban, instead.
12

12
Delanglez, “Franquelin.”
317

Fig. 7.7 Jean-Baptiste Louis Franquelin, “Carte de la Coste de la Nouvelle Anglet
re
depuis le Cap Anne jusqu’a la
Pointe Neuresing, ou est compris Le Chemin par Terre & par mer, de Baston a Manathes” (1693), BNF, PF135,
DIV4, P1.

Detail 7.7.1: New York Harbor. Here Franquelin included some navigational information such as depths, a path of
travel, and the location of shoals.

318

Detail 7.7.2: New England. By depicting the area between Boston and New York City to be sparsely inhabited,
Franquelin suggested that conquering the two cities would easily render the French masters of both colonies.

Fig. 7.8: Franquelin, “Plan de la Ville, Baye, et Environs de Baston dans la Nouvelle Angleterre” (1693), BNF,
CPL, SH18, PF135, DIV6, P7.

319

D. The Lag Time from Acquiring Geographic Knowledge to Cartographic Production
Metropolitan inaction meant that Frontenac continued sending soldiers into the
Champlain Valley to wage war—even though he believed a naval assault would have quickly
established French dominance over both the English and Iroquois. In 1693 he gathered roughly
six hundred soldiers, a third of them Laurentian Iroquois who lived near Montréal, for an
overland expedition to the Mohawk settlements west of Albany. French dependence on the
Laurentian Iroquois meant again tempering French methods and objectives—killing fewer
Mohawk combatants so as to take more captive and not assaulting Albany during the march
home. The pace of French expeditions through the Champlain Valley accelerated during Queen
Anne’s War as Governor Phillippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil sent dozens of expeditions via the
lake to English settlements along the upper Connecticut River. Geographic knowledge of
interstitial spaces not only facilitated overland expeditions but allowed small groups of French
scouts to guard against English expeditions. In 1692, for example, Frontenac wrote that sending
such detachments “caused more inconvenience to the enemy than . . . going . . . to their villages,”
citing as evidence a recent French rebuff of an Iroquois party on Lake Champlain. Upon hearing
of an English expedition eighteen years later, Vaudreuil sent two detachments of fifty soldiers to
Lake Champlain to give the impression he had sent “all the forces of the colony,” which he wrote
“precipitated . . . their [i.e. the English] retreat.”
13

Despite the frequent travel of French soldiers to the lake during this quarter-century of
warfare, however, Frontenac and subsequent French governors sent surprisingly few maps
depicting it after Villeneuve’s c.1691-1692 draft. On the one hand, nobody replaced Franquelin

13
Frontenac to Pontchartrain (15 Sept 1692), ANOM, COL C11A 12:23-42, quote on 25; Vaudreuil to Maurepas, (1
May 1710), ANOM, FM, C11A 31:216-218, quote on 216; Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney, Captors and
Captives: The 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfield (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006);
Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 219-230.
320
in annually drafting elaborate manuscript maps of North America. As we have already seen,
Charles Bécart de Granville et de Fonville drafted one such map (5.14) in 1699 that included but
did not emphasize the lake. In 1704 Vaudreuil sent a plan of Chambly (Fig. 5.17), an essential
outpost along the Richelieu River that helped provision French soldiers travelling to the lake.
Here the ingénieur du roi Jacques Levasseur de Neré projected a new fortification to replace an
existing one. However, the governor offered no commentary here about the landscape, only
noting that Neré “has levied the plans of cities and forts in this colony” before asking that Neré
be given the Cross of St. Louis. Some undated French maps of the lake (Fig. 7.10) may have
been drafted as early as 1709 but then again, they may have also been composed much later. So
why did such a well-traversed region receive so little cartographic attention? We can only
speculate here. The absence of maps accompanying imperial correspondence does not
necessarily mean they were not being produced. Probably once governors like Frontenac and
Vaudreuil believed no naval assault was forthcoming, they felt they had little to gain by sending
maps of foreign terrains. Nor did these officials need to prove their mastery of the landscape by
furnishing maps. The King wrote to Frontenac during his second term as governor of Canada,
writing that his “capability and experience prevent his Majesty giving him any particular
instructions as to what he has to do for the defence of the Colony against the threats of the
enemy.” Instead, the King was “entirely disposed to refer herein to what he shall deem proper.”
14

14
Vaudreuil and Beauharnois to Maurepas (7 Nov 1704), ANOM, FM, C11A 22:4-28, quote on 24-25; Louis XIV
to Frontenac and Champigny (28 March 1693), DCHNY, 9:549-550, quote on 549.
321

Fig 7.10: “Carte du Lac Champlain avec Les Rivieres depuis le Fort de Chambly dans La Nouvelle france jusque a
orange ville de la nouvelle Angleterre dressée sur divers memoires” (n.d.), BNF, CPL GE DD-2987 (8682). For a
different undated copy of this map with the same title, see ANOM, FM, C11A, 126:49.

Only with the conclusion of war did the French in Canada care again about encoding the
geographic knowledge of interstitial regions acquired during the course of war. Here, they
believed that demonstrating knowledge of territory could help them advance claims to
possession. We see this especially in one map by the Jesuit missionary Joseph Aubry and the
military engineer La Guer de Marville, sent in November 1713 by the Intendant Michel Bégon
de la Picardière. In signing the Treaty of Utrecht during the summer of 1713, the French formally
ceded Acadia to the English who had conquered the French city of Port Royal in 1710. The
problem as Aubry saw it rested in the ambiguous definition of “Acadia,” which he believed
encompassed the only the large peninsula (i.e. present-day Nova Scotia) but not the coastal area
south of where the peninsula rejoined the mainland (i.e. present-day Maine and New Brunswick).
322
Accordingly, his map envisioned the Anglo-French boundary as a straight line extending from
the head of the Hudson River to the mouth of the St. George River. In including the a multitude
of rivers, lakes, portages, waterfalls, toponyms, and French, English, and Native settlements
within the interior, Aubry was invoking his personal knowledge gained from “having gone
through all of these places.” The missionary wrote a memorial on these boundaries seven years
later when “the English brought several hundred families to inhabit the seacoast encompassing
the territory that has never been recognized as Acadia by any English, Dutch, [or] French
geographers, old or new.” Here, he explained he had originally sent the map to prevent such
encroachment, believing that if the French court tacitly ceded these lands, English settlers will
“soon . . . find ways to force the Missionaries” such as himself “to withdraw as they did those
who were with the Iroquois before the conclusion of peace.”
15

15
Vaudreuil to Maurepas (14 Nov 1713), ANOM, FM, C11A, 11:45-56; Joseph Aubry, “Limites de la nouvelle
france et de la nouvelle angleterre” (Jan 1720), ANOM, FM, C11E, 2:90-93, quotes on 91-91; George Chalmers,
ed., A Collection of Treaties between Great Britain and Other Powers (London: Printed for John Stockdale, 1790),
380. For another example of a French map delineating the Anglo-French border in a similar way, see “Carte du
Canada ou les Terres des François sont marquées de Bleu et celle des Anglois de Jaune 1712: d’apres le Sr. Couagne
en Decembre 1712” (1712), BHCM, Le Recueil 67:13.
323
Fig. 7.11: Joseph Aubry and La Guer de Marville, “Partie du Canada ou nouvelle France et de la Nouvelle
Angleterre, de l'Acadie &c. dressée par le P. Aubry jesuite depuis le traité de la paix d’Utrecht (du 21 Avril 1713)
dessinée par le Sr. de morville Sous Ingenieur en novembre 1713 ou sont marquées les limites suivant ce traité qui
separent les terres Angloises de cettes qui appartiennent aux François et depuis une ligne ponctuée qui passe par la
hauteur des terres entres les eaux qui tombent au Nord dans le fleuve St Laurent et cettes qui tombent au [?] Jusqu’a
la source de la Riv. d’Orange” (Nov 1713), BNF, SH18, PF124, DIV1, P5. British boundaries are in yellow, French
in purple.

Detail 7.11.1: The Anglo-French Boundary According to Aubry.

324

Detail 7.11.2: Lake Champlain.

325
8. Center: Whitehall, 1696-7
In 1696 the English reorganized the body responsible for colonial administration. Based at Whitehall, a
site that had been crucial to the formation of the English political vision of landscape, this new Board of Trade
began contemplating how to reorganize colonial affairs in northeastern America. One possibility was a return to
something akin to the Dominion of New England. Within this context, the Board began collecting maps to guide its
decision-making process. In at least one case, the provider of a map suggested it to be based on his personal
experience—while circumstantial evidence indicates it was derived from Native knowledge.

A. The Making of a Metropolitan Landscape and Landscape Ideology
Wherever ocean meets land, tides rise and fall. Gravity is the culprit. Sun and Moon tug
upon our oceans with the focus of their force changing as an orbital ballet realigns these three
celestial bodies and the Earth spins. The line where land meets sea extends and contracts
roughly twice each day. As the tide rises, the rivers draining into oceans receive injections of
salt water that widen and raise the lower segment of these flowing bodies of freshwater. The
shifting tide will only propel oceanic waters so far, however. At this point, assuming the river’s
source remains constant, its contours will not change with the tides. It was at such a point, along
the north side of the River Thames, that an invading army of 40,000 Roman troops encamped
themselves in 43 AD. Here they could ford the river without worrying about tidal fluctuations.
The winding river, perhaps named for its darkish color, runs roughly two hundred miles from
source to sea. Roughly halfway through its journey, water passes through the Goring Gap,
where it acquires bluish clay, redistributing it throughout the river valley. The site for the
Roman camp rested above the resulting subterranean clay deposits, which hindered water
drainage and rendered the land marshy. Ultimately the Romans established their more
permanent settlement, Londinium (etymology disputed), slightly further downstream where
they could harness the tide to sail upstream against the river current. Here, where salt and fresh
water met, developed a commercial outpost. Here, merchants exchanged goods from the
326
southwestern British hinterlands with those arriving from port cities in Northern Europe and
along the Rhine River, which extended deep into the European continent.
1

The first Roman site along the Thames would again acquire significance a millennium
later when, in the eleventh century, one of England’s last Anglo-Saxon kings built a remarkable
Romanesque church there. In the shadow of Westminster Abbey, people began to settle.
Thirteenth-century embankment projects downstream from the Abbey reclaimed land from the
river, around which time the See of York acquired a large holding of land there. The residence
built there housed the Archbishop of York for centuries until 1529 when Henry VIII seized it
from Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, anticipating the much broader commandeering of church lands
a decade later. Henry lavished money on construction projects, which included new buildings,
gardens, an ornate gateway, and a private stairway to the river. Under his tenure the palace
became known as “Whitehall,” which might have referred to the stone building material,
noticeably different than the surrounding brick and timber architecture, or to the structure’s
status as a festive hall. Subsequent Tudor monarchs showered Whitehall with uneven favor:
Edward VI spent little time there but Mary preferred it to the other royal palaces; Elizabeth
moved frequently between royal residences but signed many state documents at Whitehall.
2

James VI and I, whose ascendance to the English throne joined English and Scottish
kingdoms under a single crown, fully embraced the palatial complex as his official residence.
Moreover, he deployed it in his agenda of establishing Britain as a nation-state with coinciding

1
L. L. Rodwell Jones, The Geography of London River (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1931); A. P. Herbert, The
Thames (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966); Richard Coates, “A new explanation of the name of London”
Transactions of the Philological Society 96:2 (November 1998): 203–229; F. H. W. Sheppard, London: A History
(Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 7-24; David Bird, “The Events of A.D. 43: Further
Reflections” Britannia 33 (January 2002): 257–63; Christopher A. Snyder, The Britons (Malden, MA: Blackwell
Pub., 2003), 12.
2
W. J. Lofte, Whitehall: Historical and Architectural Notes (London: Seeley and Co. Limited, 1895); George
Dugdale, Whitehall Through the Centuries (London: Pheonix House Limited, 1950); Simon Thurley, Whitehall
Palace: An Architectural History of the Royal Apartments, 1240-1698 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
Richard Jenkyns, Westminster Abbey (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 1-46.
327
cultural and political borders. James commissioned the playwright Ben Jonson and the architect
Inigo Jones to respectively write and design dozens of masques for Whitehall’s banqueting
house. These plays with music and dancing initially portrayed a chaotic world but then invited
royal and noble participation in ways that suggested their presence created order and beauty.
Jones, most famous for introducing and naturalizing the Palladian aesthetic into Britain,
designed elaborate landscape backdrops that sought to establish Britain as a geographical
whole. By invoking Palladian architectural features, Jones linked the island’s Roman past to,
what James hoped would be, its imperialistic future. When the banqueting hall burned in 1619.
Jones, now the Surveyor to the Crown, modeled its replacement on Palladio’s Roman basilica.
Nine years later, the architect invited the diplomat and painter Peter Paul Rubens, then in
London negotiating a peace treaty, to paint the ceiling with a series of grandiose scenes
commemorating the reign of the recently deceased James. At this time, Rubens also began his
famous “Landscape with St. George and the Dragon,” discussed in chapter one for employing
landscape to buttress royal authority. Not only did Rubens draw St. George to look like Charles
I, he also portrayed Whitehall in the distance across the river, as he would have seen it from
York House where he resided during his visit.
3

Though Charles I might have admired this mythologized vision of himself, which he
acquired from Rubens around 1635, many of his subjects violently rejected the early Stuart
landscape rhetoric during the civil upheaval of the 1640s and 50s. Puritan mobs in London
defaced much of Inigo Jones’ architecture, which they suspected of possessing Catholic

3
Edward Croft-Murray, “The Landscape Background in Rubens’s St. George and the Dragon” The Burlington
Magazine for Connoisseurs Vol. 89 No. 529 (April 1947), 89–93; Dugdale, Whitehall Through the Centuries, 36-9;
John Harris, Stephen Orgel, and Roy C. Strong, The King’s Arcadia: Inigo Jones and the Stuart Court (London:
Arts Council of Great Britain, 1973); R. Malcolm Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in
Early Stuart England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987); John Peacock, The Stage Designs of
Inigo Jones: The European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Olwig, Landscape, Nature,
and the Body Politic; Vaughan Hart, Inigo Jones: The Architect of Kings (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2011)
328
influence. In the wake of the English Civil War, the Commonwealth government sold Rubens
painting and then, in January 1649, beheaded Charles I—pointedly in front of Inigo Jones’
Palladian banqueting house, which became a much-reprinted scene (Fig. 8.1). Looters and
zealots defaced much of Whitehall until the Parliamentarian Oliver Cromwell forcefully
established himself as the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth and settled himself at the
palace. Charles II, following the death of Cromwell and dissolution of the Protectorate, also
adopted Whitehall as his official residence—despite the execution of his father there—and spent
handsome sums on building projects. As Charles II began considering how to reorganize
colonial governance, Whitehall became the repository for royal maps so that in 1680, the diarist
John Evelyn, otherwise unimpressed by Whitehall’s library, praised the “abundance of maps
and sea charts” there. The coup d’état of 1688 again shifted the importance of Whitehall. The
new monarchs William and Mary eschewed the palace because the asthmatic King did not fare
well in the swampland upon which it rested, preferring the “drier atmosphere of Kensington.”
Instead, the buildings increasingly housed administrators. It was within this palatial complex, in
a room “adjoining the apartments,” that a newly established advisory council on foreign affairs
began meeting in summer 1696.
4

4
Dugdale, Whitehall Through the Centuries, 53-101, John Evelyn’s quote on 78; Hart, Inigo Jones, 227-239.
329

Fig. 8.1: “The Execution of King Charles I” (17
th
century), National Portrait Gallery (London), D26372.

B. Reorganizing Colonial Administration
Revolution and war had for several years distracted the attentions of the English
monarchy from the world beyond Europe. William and Mary sought to domestically establish
the legitimacy of their rule as the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantation—an on-again,
off-again advisory body of the Privy Council established in 1621—languished. Death had
claimed its most distinguished members leaving it without much in the way of “diligence or
knowledge.” As Ian K. Steele has observed “in the early eighteenth century connections were
bureaucracy” and this body had few connections left by the 1690s. The most knowledgeable
and well-connected member, William Blathwayt, devoted his attentions to his other post,
Secretary of War. By 1695, the English government was having difficulty funding its military
and paying its debts. War with France had strained English coffers while French privateers
attacked English vessels, diminishing oceanic trade and tax revenues. It seemed to many in
England time to look abroad for easy wealth. King, Parliament, and administrators scrambled to
encourage, protect, and—most importantly—tax trade. After months of discussion, drafting, and
dealing, King William III issued a royal warrant on May 15, 1696 to establish the Council on
330
Trade and Plantations (also known as the Board of Trade). While some hoped the council would
exert strong executive powers like the ability to appoint and command governors,
parliamentarians did not wish to relinquish their control over foreign affairs to the monarch.
Instead the compromise commission created a council of experts whose power would emanate
from advising the Privy Council, the office of the Secretary of State, and other empowered
governing bodies.
5

Members first gathered June 25 and quickly organized the affairs of this new board,
appointing a staff and processing a backlog of unread letters. They divvied up their geographic
responsibilities, charging the Royal Society member Abraham Hill with overseeing the affairs
of New England, New York, and Newfoundland. The Board of Trade also began gathering
information about the state of England’s overseas activities, requesting that colonial governors
send them detailed reports and summoning knowledgeable individuals to their chambers to offer
their assessments of colonial affairs. Following the royal commission, Board members began
transferring to their office the “Records, Grants and Papers remaining in the Plantation Office.”
An earlier draft of that commission would have empowered them to take the maps in the office
but it seems these earlier maps perished in a 1698 fire at Whitehall.
6

C. Masking Native Knowledge at Whitehall
The Board of Trade initiated its own cartographic collection—now the “Colonial Office
Maps and Plans” series (CO/700) at the National Archives (Kew, UK)—on September 18, 1696
with a deposit (Fig. 8.2 & Detail 8.2.1) from the Connecticut soldier Fitz-John Winthrop.

5
Gertrude Ann Jacobsen, William Blathwayt: A Late Seventeenth Century English Administrator (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1932), 241-295; Michael Garibaldi Hall, “The House of Lords, Edward Randolph, and the
Navigation Act of 1696” WMQ (1957), 14:494-515; Steele, Politics of Colonial Policy, 1-18, quote on xiii.
6
“Commission Establishing a Board of Trade” (15 May 1696), TNA, CO 391/9, pp. 1-6; Steele, Politics of
Colonial Policy, 19-41 and 180-181. The Board’s letters to governors generally included the same questions with
slight variations. See, as examples, Board of Trade to Francis Nicholson (25 Sept 1696), TNA, CO 5/1115, pp. 20-
23; Board of Trade to Benjamin Fletcher (25 Sept 1696), TNA, CO 5/1115, pp. 25-29.
331
Probably it was no coincidence that two days earlier, the merchant John Nelson had told the
Board that a “Map . . . [would] easily Satisfy any Scruples or objections” to his proposed
scheme to invade Canada (see Chapter 6). The unembellished map that Winthrop presented
depicted the Hudson, Mohawk, and St. Lawrence Rivers as well as Lakes Champlain, George,
and Ontario. A list of the “Several Distances from Albany to Cubeck [sic.]” (Detail 8.2.2)
narrated how an overland expedition would proceed through the Champlain Valley if it was to
create the pincer movement that Nelson had proposed in his scheme. Winthrop, who was in
London serving the agent for Connecticut, would seem a natural candidate at first glance for
providing this cartographic information: He had commanded the 1690 overland expedition from
Albany that had been intended to complement the naval expedition of William Phips. However,
the journal that Winthrop also submitted to the Board of Trade calls into question the degree to
which his own personal experience had informed his cartographic representation: He had only
reached Wood Creek, a southern tributary of Lake Champlain.
7

7
Journal of the Council of Trade and Plantations (16-18 Sept 1696), TNA, CO 391, 9:106-119; Nelson, “A
Scheame . . . for the Reduction of Canada,” (Received 23 Sept 1696), TNA, CO 323/2, No. 12; Johnson, John
Nelson, Merchant Adventurer, 87-106.
332

Fig. 8.2: “[Sketch of the Indian Country to the North of New York]” (1697), TNA, CO 700, New York 14.

Detail 8.2.1: “Presented to the Board by Maj
r
Gen
ll
Winthorp [sic.]”

333

Detail 8.2.2: “The Several Distances from Albany to Cubeck”

Winthrop, who was born in Boston and had resided in Connecticut since 1663, received
his 1690 commission from the Connecticut governor Robert Treat. He and his contingent of
Connecticut soldiers departed from Hartford in July, marching for a week “through the difficult,
and allmost unpassable parts of the wildernes” to arrive in Albany. There he found a colony in
which “all things [were] confused; and in noe readines, or Posture for martching the forces
towards Canada.” Here he was referencing the civil disorder that he perceived wrought by the
way the Glorious Revolution unfolded in New York, which had caused his ally Robert
Livingston, a merchant and secretary in Albany, to flee the colony. At the end of July, Winthrop
and the Connecticut, New York, and Indian soldiers departed Albany, reaching Wood Creek
one week later. At this point smallpox, deficient provisioning, and an inadequate number of
canoes halted their movement in the Champlain Valley. At this point, Winthrop also
encountered difficulty securing the cooperation of the Iroquois. Upon asking “their Advice for
the best way to prosecute the war against Canada . . . a cheif person of each nation” responded
by saying they “did leave it wholy to our selves to order about it.” Winthrop worried that “this
answere did not suffitiently engage them in the designe against Canada.” Recognizing that the
334
Iroquois would not aid him, Winthrop instead turned to Captain Johannes Schuyler, the brother
of Albany’s mayor, whom he described as being “of great vallew [sic. value] to the Indians.” He
ordered Schuyler “to take under his comand 40 christians such as he should think fit; and 100 of
the Maquas skataco, and River Indians; and enter into the enemyes country.” Winthrop returned
to Albany, joined by Schuyler in early September after attacking the Mohawk village of La
Prairie de Magdeleine where “they killed 12 men, and took 15 men and 4 women prisoners.”
Schuyler left no journal of this splinter expedition so that we cannot know what exactly
happened but probably it was not that different than with the French and French-allied Natives:
Mohawk soldiers leveraged their geographic knowledge to set the objectives of the expedition,
in this case capturing the Laurentian Iroquois to compensate for demographic loss.
8

How, exactly, did Winthrop acquire the map that he presented to the Board of Trade?
Before 1690 the Dutch and English—in contrast with the French—had little firsthand
knowledge of the Champlain Valley. The maps they had drafted generally reflected this dearth
of on-the-ground experience. Early Dutch manuscript maps, such as Adrian Block’s 1614
“Kaart van Nieuw-Nederland,” generally concerned themselves with documenting the claims of
merchants who wished to receive a patent to trade on the Hudson River; they generally
replicated the errors of Champlain’s 1612 map in their placement of the lake. Joahannes De
Laet produced a relatively accurate engraved map in 1630, perhaps informed by unrecorded
visits by Dutch fur traders, but it was overshadowed by the more ornate but less accurate Blaeu
map five years later—the former was not reprinted in the seventeenth century in contrast with

8
“Major Generall Winthrop’s Journal of his March from Albany towards Canada in 1690” (16 July to 5 Sept
1690), TNA, CO 5/1039, No. 61; Lawrence Leder, Robert Livingston, 1654-1728, and the Politics of Colonial New
York (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), 57-76; Lovejoy, The Glorious Revolution in
America, 251-257, 354-362; Bonomi, Factious People, 45-48; Richter, “War and Culture.” For a biography of
Winthrop, see James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, eds., Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography 6 vols.
(New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889), VI:575.
335
the latter, which was—and frequently. Even in the 1680s when the New York governor Thomas
Dongan commissioned a map of North America from Philip Wells, the details of how the
Hudson River, Lake Champlain, and the St. Lawrence River related to each other were curious
(Detail 2.7.3).
9

Fig. 8.3: [Adrian Block] “Kaart van Nieuw-Nederland” (1614), Nationaal Archief, Kaartcollectie Buitenland
Leupe, bekijk toegang 4.VEL

9
Willem Janszoon Blaeu, “Nova Belgica et Anglia Nova” (1635); Crouse, Contributions of the Canadian Jesuits to
the Geographical Knowledge of New France, 58; Allen, The Mapping of New York State, 10-15, 18-27.
336

Detail. 8.3.1: Note the distance between the Hudson River (left) and Lake Champlain (right).

Detail 2.7.3: In Philip Wells’ map from the 1680s, the head of the Hudson River rested near what we now would
describe as the western side of Lake Champlain (“Corlors Lake”).

One clue to the origins of the map that Winthrop gave to the Board of Trade comes from
a 1697 manuscript “Drafft of this Countrey” (Fig. 8.4) depicting roughly the same territory in
the Livingston Papers. Dated in a somewhat unclear manner (Detail 8.4.1), the map might have
been the “new map of the Indian country” that the New York Council had “ordered to be made”
337
on March 27, 1697. Or it may have been drafted by the Onondaga cheifs “Sadakanartady &
Decanasore” who were in Albany March 9, 1697 to give the New York governor Benjamin
Fletcher “an acc[oun]
t
of the Circumstances of our Country.” Whatever the specific context of
its creation, we can reasonably guess based on its location in the Livingston Papers, that Robert
Livingston was involved in its creation. Unlike the 1683 map of the Susquehanna River, which
Livingston had drawn himself, this 1697 map appears to have been drawn by Indian delegates
with a red crayon and then annotated in ink with place names by Livingston (Detail 8.4.2).
10

10
“Propositions Made to His Excell Coll: Benjamin ffletcher Capt. Genll and Governor in Cheife of his Majties
Province of New Yorke &c By Sadakanartady & Decanasore two Cheife men of the Onnondages Nation” (Albany:
9 March 1697), NYSA, CD, 41:38; Berthold Fernow, ed., Calendar of Council Minutes, 1668-1783, New York
State Library Bulletin 58 (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1902), quote on 120; Parmenter, The Edge
of the Woods, ix-x, 293.
338

Fig. 8.4: “Drafft of this Countrey” (1697), Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Livingston Papers,
GLC03107.02046

Detail 8.4.1: “Drafft of this Countrey” dated “alb: 2 m 1696/7”
339

Detail 8.4.2: Key of Place Names. The First half of the list numbers the place names (1-17), which if followed
sequentially narrates a path from Albany through Iroquoia to Lake Ontario and then down the St. Lawrence River
to Montreal. The second half letters the place names (a-s) from Half Moon, New York through the Champlain
Valley to the St. Lawrence River, downstream to Quebec and then to the Head of the Connecticut River.

Both Winthrop and Livingston maps share a number of similarities in what geographic
features they represent and how they structure those features within a relational space. Notably,
both maps describe (in different ways) Lake Ontario as being “100 Leagues in Length” (Details
8.2.2 & 8.4.3). Neither map is a direct copy of the other, however, with some deviations in what
they included in their depictions (Fig. 8.5). Livingston’s map depicted more waterways
(especially in Iroquoia) while Winthrop’s map included many more French place names in the
St. Lawrence River Valley. This suggests that while both maps benefited in some way from
Iroquois geographic knowledge, Winthrop’s map also drew upon French knowledge. As with
340
Livingston’s 1683 Map of the Susquehanna River, both maps offered vague depictions of
Iroquoia that would have not facilitated English navigation. The Iroquois were happy to share
the geographic knowledge when it advanced shared interests but closely guarded the details of
their homeland. Probably, Winthrop acquired or derived his map from Schuyler or one of the
Iroquois soldiers who accompanied his expedition. Whatever the source, the map seems to have
helped Winthrop advance his own personal interests by helping him, along with his expedition
journal, evidence his service to the crown: Winthrop left London with a gubernatorial
appointment.
11

Detail 8.2.3: “Lake Cadaraqua [i.e. Ontario] which is 100 Leagues in Length”

11
The London map copyist William Hack accessed Winthrop’s map (or a copy of it) in making a manuscript atlas
that was either for or acquired by Robert Walpole, 2
nd
Earl of Orford. See Hack, “New France Canada New
England [New York] New Jarsey Pennsilvania” in A Description of Coasts Islands & c. in the North Sea of
America ([1696-1723]), BL, K.Mar, 7 Tab 127 no.6; R. A. Skelton, “King George III’s Maritime Collection” The
British Museum Quarterly 18, no. 3 (1953), 63–64.
341

Detail 8.4.3: “14” corresponds in Livingston’s key with “Lake of Caderaquea [i.e. Ontario].” Note the
unembellished scale to the right of the lake.

Fig. 8.5: Comparison of Geographic Phenomena Depicted in 1696 Winthrop and 1697 Livingston Maps.

342
D. Rethinking Boundaries
Winthrop’s map was the first one acquired by the Board of Trade but certainly not the
last one. It seems likely that in early 1697 Winthrop provided a second map by the Thames
School copyist Maurice Carroll illustrating the “Boundings of New Cambridge County in New
England” to support Connecticut’s claim over the Narranganset Country, which Rhode Island
was disputing. Months later Col. Richard Ingoldsby, who had briefly served as the acting
governor of New York from 1691 to 1692, presented the Board with a (non-extant) map “of the
country above Albany, towards the Great Lake on one side and Quebec on the other.” By 1698
the Board had begun regularly requesting that colonial governors send them maps along with
the census data. It also began acquiring printed and manuscript maps from London’s map sellers
and copyists—and occasionally borrowing them from other committees. The greatest trove of
maps that they received in the earliest years of their existence came from the 1697 appointment
of a new, cartographically sophisticated governor of New York, Massachusetts, and New
Hampshire, Richard Coote, the Earl of Bellomont along with a royal engineer, William
Wolfgang Römer.
12

Richard Coote was an Irish peer who had left the British Isles in 1687 to serve William
of Orange, which bolstered his political fortunes in the wake of the Glorious Revolution,
securing his title in 1689 as the Earl of Bellomont. In 1695 the principal Secretary of State
Richard Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury appointed his fellow Whig as governor of Massachusetts
upon the death of William Phips. Bellomont, then occupied in Ireland, waited to take up the

12
M[aurice] C[arroll], “Boundings of New Cambridge County in New England” (1697), CO 700/Connecticut no.1;
Journal of Council of Trade and Plantations (4 Jan 1697), TNA, CO 391/9, pp. 320-326; “A New Map of Virginia,
Mayrland, Pensilvania, New Jersey, Part of New York and Carolina” (1698), CO 700/Virginia no.1c; Council of
Trade and Plantations to the Lords Justices of England (Whitehall: 23 Aug 1698), TNA, CO 5/1359, pp. 252-259;
“Instructions to Nathaniel Blakiston as Governor of Maryland” (Whitehall: 4 Oct 1698), TNA, CO 5/725, pp. 253-
289; Journal of Council of Trade and Plantations (15 April 1700), TNA, CO 391/13, pp. 2-9; Journal of Council of
Trade and Plantations (28 June 1700), TNA, CO 391/13 pp. 94-95.
343
post because of the insufficient salary. During this period, however, the Board of Trade began
reexamining the structure and methods of colonial governance, largely owing to the testimony
of John Nelson in September 1696. Nelson laid out a paradox regarding the Anglo-French
contest in North America: While the English colonies possessed advantages over the French in
terms of population, territory, and military strength, the French had bested the English during
the ongoing war by any reasonable account. In Nelson’s telling, political disunity and poor
relations with Indians had obliterated English advantages. To achieve geopolitical dominance in
the American northeast, the English would need to align the interests of the many English
colonies and adopt French methods for building alliances with Native peoples.
13

The French, Nelson explained, had strictly observed the maxim that “those who are
Masters of the Indians will consequently prevaile in all places where they are Neglected as we
have too much done.” They had forged economic bonds with Indians through presents,
patronage, and by paying for scalps. They had established social and linguistic bonds by
encouraging “the youth of the Country in accompanying the Indians in all theire Expeditions.”
This meant that they had developed a better knowledge of interstitial geographies than the
English. As Nelson wrote, the French had become “auquainted with the woods, rivers,
passages” and could “Equall the Natives, in Supporting all the incident fateagues of such
Enterprises.” Finally, the French understood the power of display. They had transported Indians
to France “for noe Other intent then to amaze and dazell them with the greatness & splendor of
the french Court and Armie.” As Nelson described the damages caused by these French-allied

13
Journal of Lords of Trade and Plantation (14 June 1695), TNA, CO 391/8, pp. 51-53; Memorial of the Lords
Justices of England (16 July 1695), TNA, CO 5/859 No. 3; Nelson to Board of Trade (London: 23 Sept 1696), CO
323/2, No. 10; Frederic de Peyster, The Life and Administration of Richard, Earl of Bellomont, Governor of the
Provinces of New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, from 1697 to 1701: An Address Delivered before the
New York Historical Society, at the Celebration of its Seventy-Fifth Anniversary, Tuesday, November 18
th
, 1879
(New York: Published for the Society, 1879); John D. Runcie, “The Problem of Anglo-American Politics in
Bellomont's New York” WMQ (1969), 26:191-217; Bonomi, Factious People, 77.
344
Indians, he cast the American landscape in economic terms. The “wofull Experience” in Maine
and New Hampshire had cost the English their ability to extract the region’s abundant natural
resources: “we have in a manor lost, our Mast, timber, and fishing trade &c.”
14

Beyond poor relations with Indigenous peoples Nelson contended the “principall and
greatest defect and mistake” in the English colonies was “number & independencie of soe
manie Small Goverm
ts
.” Surprising words from one who had lived through a failed era of
consolidation and ultimately helped undermine the Dominion of New England by unseating
Edmund Andros. Yet Nelson reasoned that governmental division had greatly weakened
English strength by exacerbating divisions. All of the English colonies “doe in a manner Esteem
each as foreigners the one unto the Other” so that the people of one colony resented and refused
to contribute to the defense of another. Nelson proposed joining the colonies together for
together, “we . . . should be att least neare 10 or 15 [i.e. people] for one, of those of the french in
Canada, and might reasonably propose that instead of a bare defence, are might be in a
Capacitie with the Assistance of some ships from Engld, to make an Entier Conquest of that
place [i.e. New France].” Nelson continued to push the issue in private meetings with other
colonists abroad and individuals knowledgeable in the realm of American affairs (especially
William Blathwayt, John Povey, and Edmund Randolph). In early February 1697 he joined
twenty-eight other “Inhabitants Traders, Proprietors &c in the North parts of America” in
signing a petition lamenting how arbitrary political boundaries had divided a people. War with
France, it began, had cost Newfoundland, New England, and New York their “Fishing, Firrs,
Mast, Timber, Peltry trade” ultimately to the detriment of “his Majestie’s honour and Revenue.”
While preserving the “Civil rights, properties and Customes” of the “diverse Seperated
Governments” in “the North parts of America,” this petition requested they all “be . . .

14
Nelson to Board of Trade (London: 23 Sept 1696), CO 323/2, No. 10.
345
Established under one Governour”—ideally “a person of worth and honour whose power and
Instructions may be under Such regulation as may render his government easy to all.” The
petitioners urged that the failed Dominion of New England not prejudice against such action for
those “great confusions” arose from Andros’s “Exorbitant and illegal Comissions.” The
proposal amounted to a compromise, in the words of historian Richard R. Johnson, “between
the autocracy of the Dominion and the fragmentation of charter rule.”
15

The Whigs on the Board welcomed both their suggestion and the opportunity to remove
the Tory governor of New York Benjamin Fletcher from office. They advocated Fletcher’s
recall to the King during the absence of the Board member William Blathwayt, Fletcher’s ally
whose forceful and credible voice could have halted the proceedings. The present Board
members then recommended expanding Bellomont’s commission to be the “Civil Governour of
New York and New hampshire and Generall of all the Forces of the Massachusetts[,] New
york[,] and New Hampshire[,] Connecticutt, Rhode Island[,] and the Jerseys.” They further
advised “that the cheif residence of such Governor or Captaine generall . . . be at New York,
that . . . Province being most in danger.” King William agreed. Bellomont received his finalized
commissions in June and his official instructions in August 1697. In preparing for his departure,
Bellomont made some personnel requests, which amounted to patronage for his allies. For
Lieutenant Governor, for example, Bellomont suggested his brother-in-law Captain John

15
Nelson to Board of Trade (London: 23 Sept 1696), CO 323/2, No. 10; Petition to the Board of Trade (1 Feb
1697) TNA, CO 5/859, No. 62; Johnson, Adjustment to Empire, quote on 260 and John Nelson, Merchant
Adventurer, 94-96. The full list of signatories on the included George Anderson, Henry Ashurst, John Blake,
Benjamin Bradly, George Brasren, Thomas Cooper, William Everton, John Foye, Edmund Harrison, Reginald
Hebes, Thomas Holme, Thomas Hutchinson, Jeremiah Johnson, Thomas Keene, Robert Maxwell, John Metcalfe,
Richard Mico, Walter Mico, John Nelson, Henry Newman, Thomas Newton, Samuel Penhallow, John Pitts,
Samuel Sparry, Gregory Sugers, William Wallis, David Waterhouse, Bernard White, and John Wightman. Two of
the above names were blotted out for an unexplained reason: Henry Ashurst and Edmund Harrison. Others
suggested different compromises. William Penn, for example, suggested that each province elect representatives to
attend a Congress, which a commissioner appointed by the King would preside over. The Congress would consider
inter-colonial commercial and military matters. William Penn, “A brief and plain Scheame how the English
Colonies in the North parts of America. . . may be made more useful to the Crown and one another's peace and
safety with an universal concurrence” (8 Feb 1697), TNA, CO 323/2, No. 30.
346
Nanfan. He seems to have also pulled some strings to acquire the services of the military
engineer Colonel William Wolfgang Römer whom he had commanded in the Mediterranean
during 1693. Born at The Hague in 1640 to a diplomat father of German extraction, Römer was
of a cosmopolitan cloth, equipped in many tongues (Dutch, German, French, English, Latin, and
perhaps others), and very well travelled. As a military engineer he had served William of
Orange in the Netherlands, following the Prince to England in 1688. Initially Römer hesitated to
travel to North America, believing he deserved a higher salary for serving abroad. The King
personally intervened, perhaps at Bellomont’s urging, raising the engineer’s per diem salary by
ten shillings.
16

16
Board of Trade to King William III (25 Feb 1697), HL, BP, Box 4; “Order of the King in Council” (Kensington:
25 Feb 1697), TNA, CO 5/859, No. 72; Duke of Shrewsbury to Board of Trade (16 March 1697), TNA, CO 5/859,
No. 75; Bellomont to Board of Trade (10 May 1697), TNA, CO 5/859, No. 101; Bellomont to William Popple (26
Aug 1697), TNA, CO 5/859, No. 121; “Instructions to Bellomont as Governor of Massachusetts” (Whitehall: 31
Aug 1697), TNA CO 5/907, pp. 260-72; “Instructions to Bellomont as Governor of New Hampshire” (Whitehall:
31 Aug 1697), TNA, CO 5/907, pp. 286-99; “Instructions to Bellomont as Captain General and Governor in Chief
of New York” (Whitehall: 31 Aug 1697), TNA, CO 5/1115, pp. 216-247; Whitworth Porter, History of the Corps
of Royal Engineers (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1889) I:136-137; Steele, Politics of Colonial Policy, 24;
Johnson, Adjustment to Empire, 257-264; R. L. Bradley, “Colonel Wolfgang William Romer, 1640–1713” in A
Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Maine, ed. E. G. Shettleworth, 4 No.3 (1987), 8 pp., unpaginated.

346
9. Periphery: New York and New England, 1698-1702
From New York and New England, Bellomont and Römer sent a large corpus of visual materials including
maps, landscape sketches, and schematic diagrams to the Board of Trade. In many cases the governor and the
engineer intended these documents to situate the letters and memorials that they also sent or to serve as evidence for
the claims they made about landscapes and the people within them. However, they also used these visual documents
to craft a vision of a peripheral landscape under royal authority.

A. Placing Native People
On the slopes of the Adirondack Mountains, brooks and streams coalesce into a series of
ponds and lakes, void of fish and other wildlife, mostly surrounded by dense veils of evergreen
trees. Rain and snowmelt nurture these basins at a steady pace throughout the year with the
excess pouring out into a river that dissects the mighty Appalachians. Here begins in this ancient
granitic mountain range, a riverine entryway into America’s eastern continental interior. The
New York Surveyor General Augustus (or Augustine) Graham recorded this riverhead as the site
of “The Schacthook or River Indians” (Detail 9.1.1) in his “Map of the Province of New Yorke
in America and the Terrotrys Adjacent,” (Fig. 9.1) drafted upon parchment in 1698. A spattering
of mountain icons hinted at but did not loudly proclaim the heights from which descended the
river that Graham’s map labeled “Hudsons” after the English navigator. The Iroquois had called
it Cahohatatea, meaning simply “the river.” Algonquian speakers had given it the appellations
Moheganittuck after the Mohegan and Muhheakunnuk, which translates as “Great waters or sea,
which are constantly in motion, either ebbing or flowing,” referencing the tidal movement of the
lower river. The Dutch gave it a multitude of names: Manhattes Rieviere referring to
“Manhattan” in the river’s mouth; Groote Rivier signifying “Great River;” Grootte Mouritse
Reviere after the Dutch Stadtholder Maurice of Orange; and most commonly, Noort-Rivier or
“North River (as opposed to “Zuydtriver” or South River, now called the Delaware).
1

1
William Martin Beauchamp, Aboriginal Place Names of New York (Albany: New York State Education
Department, 1907), 19-21; Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (Leiden:
347

Fig. 9.1 Augustus Graham, “A Map of the Province of New Yorke in America and the Territorys Adjacent” (1698)
TNA CO 700/New York 8.

Brill, 2005), 9-10; Tom Lewis, The Hudson: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 10-21; Robert E.
Henshaw, “The Hudson River Watershed: An Abbreviated Geography” in Henshaw, ed., Environmental History of
the Hudson River: Human Uses That Changed the Ecology, Ecology That Changed Human Uses (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2011), xxi-xxvii. Augustus Graham served as surveyor general from 1691 to 1719.
For his surveying activities, see Calendar of N.Y. Colonial Manuscripts Indorsed Land Papers in the Office of the
Secretary of State of New York, 1643-1803. For biographical information, see Isaac Huntting, History of Little Nine
Partners of North East Precinct and Pine Plains, New York, Duchess County (Amenia, New York: Chas. Walsh &
Co., 1897), I:344-5.
348

Detail 9.1.1: “The Schacthook or River Indians”

This note at the head of the Hudson River is an easy one to overlook but it served a
purpose. In July 1698 Governor Bellomont met with the Schaghticoke Indians, an amalgamation
of Algonquian-speaking peoples displaced from various parts of present-day New England to
upstate New York during Metacom’s War, who grieved that war had again driven them from
their home and reduced their number: “we did live peaceably under the Tree of welfare, planted
at Skachkok, [i.e. the place indicated in the map] but that peaceable living was interrupted about
nine years ago, by a War that broke out by the French, but now that War being ended, we intend
to return again.” They begged for Bellomont’s “Fatherly Protection” so that “our peaceable
Settlement there may not be disturb’d by the savage and brutal Inroad of our Enemies, but that
the Paths leading thereunto may be kept clean and clear from the Rovings of any Persons that
may disturb us in the enjoyment of that Tranquility which will be the only means to invite other
Nations of Indians to come and cohabit with use, increase the Number of your Children, and
thereby enable us the more manfully to execute our Fathers Commands.” Bellomont sent the
proceedings of his meeting with the Schaghticoke delegates to the Board of Trade in September
and then Graham’s map a month later, describing it as “the Exactest I believe that has been yett
349
made” of “this province.” Reading the proceedings together with the map might have evoked for
Board of Trade members a sense of the interstitial space above New York (Detail 9.1.2), framed
by the St. Lawrence River and Lakes Champlain and Ontario, as the “brutal Inroad of our
Enemies.” We should read both documents with a degree of skepticism. The map, for example,
might have been the “Exactest . . . yett made” but it was still not very exact: Graham had
erroneously placed both Lake Ontario and the abandoned Schaghticoke settlement. Both
documents did, however, help Bellomont create a vision of an imperial periphery for officials at
Whitehall through the vexing issues of land policy and Native diplomacy.
2

Detail 9.1.2: Schaghticoke, Depicted as Between Lakes Ontario and Champlain

B. Mapping Colonial Politics
Months before Bellomont departed for America, France had signed a peace treaty in the
Dutch town Rijswijk with England, Spain, and the United Provinces that concluded the war in
Europe and the Americas, theoretically restoring an antebellum status quo. However in America
the Treaty of Ryswick neither resolved the tensions that originally provoked the war nor ended

2
Propositions made by the Five Nations of Indians (New York: William Bradford, 1698), Copy at TNA, CO
5/1041, No. 1i, quotes on 8-9; Calloway, The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600-1800, 82-83, 96-97.

350
the warfare. The English and French, remember, had never agreed upon the location of those
boundaries in the 1680s and as Native combatants had not sat at the peace table, war continued
between the English and Wabanaki until 1699 and the French and Iroquois until 1701. Peace,
such as it existed, did offer some limited breathing room for Europeans and Amerindians to
rebuild, resettle, redeem captives, map, negotiate, fortify, fantasize, survey, scout, and scheme.
3

In New York Bellomont discovered crippling political strife, in which he claimed to have
no stake, posturing himself as a reformer in his letters to the Board of Trade. In one early
missive, he wrote that he hoped to find “methods . . . for the quieting and uniteing the minds of
y
e
People who have been divided with great heats for these severall years” but encountered
resistance from the Council members, who having forgotten “their oaths and duty to his Maj
ty
,”
had still not “applyed to informe me of the state of the Province or . . . offered to me any
Assistance in y
e
Governm
tt
, although they know that I come . . . unbyassed as to their
animosities.” Instead, these members spent their time at “Caballs and Clubs . . . held dayly . . .
from whence . . . false reports and rumours are spread about the Citty and Province whereby
mens minds are disturb’d and an Odium cast upon y
e
Governm
tt
.” Bellomont explained that this
political division encumbered his ability to reduce rampant corruption, enforce the trade acts, or
adequately defend the vulnerable colony should war resume. He blamed this division on the
previous governor Benjamin Fletcher and particularly his land policy.
4

Here, Bellomont used Graham’s map to frame his arguments, enlisting Graham’s services
soon after arriving in New York. Fletcher had granted many sizeable tracts of land during his

3
Articles of peace between the Most Serene and Mighty Prince William the Third, King of Great Britain, and the
Most Serene and Mighty Prince Lewis the Fourteenth, the most Christian King concluded in the Royal Palace at
Ryswicke the 10/20 day of September, 1697 (London: Charles Bill, 1697); “Copy of the Treaty of Peace” (1 Jan
1698/9), TNA, CO 5/860, No. 50; Isaac Addington to William Popple (Boston: 7 Feb 1699), TNA, CO 5/860, No.
56; Gilles Havard, The Great Peace of Montreal of 1701: French-Native Diplomacy in the Seventeenth Century
Translated by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001).
4
Bellomont to Board of Trade (New York: 18 May 1698), TNA, CO 5/1040, No. 64; Knights, Representation and
Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain.
351
administration, along the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers, for what Bellomont perceived to be
trivial sums with even more trivial quit rents. This was not entirely unusual. Governors granted
land because they depended upon colonial legislatures for their salaries: The practice secured the
allegiance of men of influence and transformed middling allies into affluent ones. Yet it also
undercut Whitehall’s influence and leverage in provincial affairs by concentrating political
power into the hands of a few wealthy landowners. Bellomont believed that attracting farmers to
New York with available, small plots of land would mitigate political factionalism and establish
acquiescence to royal authority.
5

Graham filled his map with boundaries whose once vivid colors have diminished owing
to time and use. The lower Hudson River is one of the straightest rivers on our planet yet in
Graham’s map it seems twisting and serpentine in contrast with the unbending boundaries
imposed by fiat, unmoored from the natural phenomenon depicted within the map. At the head of
the Delaware River, for example, emerge two straight lines to demarcate East and West Jersey,
ending only when they reach the water’s edge. Other boundaries coincided with natural
phenomenon such as the Delaware River, blue on its western shore and faded yellow on its
eastern, to separate Pennsylvania from the Jerseys. Here and in sketching the coastline, Graham
had borrowed from other maps in circulation (Figs. 2.1, 2.5, and Detail 2.7.1). Novelty lay
further in the interior. Here Graham highlighted the land grants along the Hudson River (Detail
9.1.2), colorfully outlining the geometric parcels and identifying the date and recipient of each
grant, for example: “The land contained between the Hills on the East and West sides of this
River from the head thereof to the Maquas [i.e. Mohawk’s] River was Granted to Coll. Nich

5
The Council of New York paid Graham £20 for the map. If Graham spent a month drafting it, his salary would
have been comparable to the four military engineers and one master gunner posted in America and the West Indies,
who were paid £1,405 15s in 1698. See “Order of the King in Council” (Kensington: 13 Jan 1698), TNA, CO 323/2,
No. 86ii; Minutes of Council of New York (Oct 22, 1698), TNA, CO 5/1184, pp. 156-158.
352
Bayard by Governor Fletcher Anno 1695” or “The land Contained between the marks being two
miles in breadth on each side the Maquase River and fifty in Length was granted Godfrey Dellius
Anno 1697.” The general visual point was clear enough. More than half of the territory that
could be accessed by the Hudson River had been granted away to a small number of people or as
Bellomont wrote, explaining that he sent the map so that “yor Lordshipps will see that this whole
province is Given away to about 30 Persons in effect.”
6

Detail 9.1.3: Land Grants on the Hudson River

Revoking the grants was a complicated political maneuver, requiring action on both sides
of the Atlantic. First the New York Council needed to vote to vacate the grants and then, because

6
Bellmont to Board of Trade (21 Oct 1698), TNA, CO 5/1041, No. 12; Gronim, “Geography and Persuasion: Maps
in British Colonial New York.”
353
New York was a royal colony, the English sovereign would need to approve the legislation.
Bellomont’s earliest strategy focused on the legal basis of Fletcher’s grants, commissioning the
New York Attorney General James Graham (father of the aforementioned Augustus) to write a
report on them. James Graham, who had served Edmund Andros in Boston and was imprisoned
with him in 1689, condemned Fletcher’s administration. He first recited the history of land
granting in the colony, noting that under the Duke of York the law required land owners to
“Improve or Settle . . . in three yeares” from the date of acquisition. This encouraged “the
peopling [of] the province” and discouraged persons from acquiring Greate Tracts of Land to lay
them wast[e], and Interupt the Settlement of the Countrey.” Graham then mourned “the violence
Done to the Rules Established by the passing of Grants in the former [i.e. Fletcher’s] Governm
t

time.” In the beginning of his administration Fletcher had used his prerogative to grant land
sparingly and in accordance with precedent—i.e. which required him to consult with the
magistrate of the county where the grant lay as well as the province’s Attorney General in order
to ensure it was neither “p
r
judiciall to His Majties Interest nor the Inhabitants in the County.”
However, upon learning of Bellomont’s commission, Fletcher began granting land at a rapid
pace without such consultation for the ends of hindering the new administration. Bellomont
enclosed Graham’s report in a July 1698 letter to the Board of Trade that disparaged Fletcher for
having “no regard to rules but upon notice of his Majesties pleasure that I should be Governour
he granted away Every foot of land . . . in such extravagant quantitys that a grant to one man
contains Seventy miles in length & eight miles broad.” Bellomont suggested to William Popple,
the Board’s secretary, that prosecuting Fletcher for his misconduct as governor would make the
people in New York as “tame as lambs” so that their “ill-humour will vanish.” The New York
Council would then become “tractable” and more willing to vacate the grants.
7

7
Bellomont to CTaP (New York: 1 July 1698), TNA, CO 5/1040, No. 78; Bellomont to William Popple (New York:
354
The problem, as Bellomont explained it, was not just that Fletcher had “betrayed the trust
his majesty reposed in him” but also “made it almost Impossible to Settle the Country with
Inha[bitants]” for “men will not care to become base Tenants to proprietors of Land in this
province when they Can buy . . . Lands in the Jersies for five pounds p[er] hundred Acres and I
Believe as Cheaply in pennsylvannia.” Here Augustine Graham’s map portrayed the English
colonies to the east and west as empty space filled only by trees, as if waiting to be settled and
improved. These were not burdened by large grants for there were no parcels etched out on the
map. James Graham similarly lamented that for want of land “all our youth must Desert the
province, and Goe settle and strengthen our Neighbour Colonys” without whom “the province
will never be peopled.” This threatened the defense of the colony for without people it could not
“be a Nursery for Souldiers, if a war should happen againe.”
8

In this way, Augustine Graham’s map did more than just visually illuminate land grants,
which only occupied about five to ten percent of the map’s overall space and were limited in
their detail. In depicting the broader region around New York, including Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, New England, Iroquoia, and New France, the map placed those grants into a broader
context and suggested a relationship between land policy, Anglo-Iroquois diplomacy, and the
theater of war. In particular, Graham’s map doubly situated New York’s vulnerability to the
French and its strategic importance for the rest of the English colonies in America. It appeared
on the map that the French could access the upper Hudson River by two routes via Lakes Ontario
and Champlain. For example, Graham carefully delineated a “carrying place and creek” at the
top of the Hudson River that could serve as an artery between French and English waterways. In
contrast, he suggested no similar nexus for the Connecticut River, which in the map extended

7 July 1698) TNA, CO 5/1040, No. 84.
8
James Graham to Bellomont (30 June 1698) TNA, CO 5/1040, No. 78ii; Bellomont to Board of Trade (21 Oct
1698), TNA, CO 5/1041, No. 12.
355
almost as far northwards as the Hudson and in reality was proximate to many of Lake
Champlain’s tributaries. Here Fletcher’s neglect, Bellomont argued in November, had weakened
the English ability to resist a French invasion. The “little Care” that Fletcher took “of Albany and
Schenectady, the only ffrontier places, since he abandoned the halfe moone and Quaustigoane,”
resulted in their depopulation during Fletcher’s tenure. Reading Bellomont’s correspondence and
Graham’s map together provided the warning that if the French ever overcame the English
settlements along the upper Hudson, the other English colonies in America would be vulnerable
to French predation. Undoing Fletcher’s land policy could help repopulate the upper Hudson
Valley and thereby guard against the French.
9

According to Augustine Graham’s map, Fletcher had not just granted land along the
Hudson River but also gave two large parcels, one along the Mohawk River and the other, Lake
Champlain, to the Dutch Reformed missionary Godfrey Dellius. These grants had not simply
discouraged English settlement but, as James Graham expressed it, threatened to “Destroy the
Indian Trade of Albany.” In July Bellomont travelled to Albany to meet with Iroquois delegates,
during which time he collected more evidence against Fletcher. In a September letter, enclosing
the printed proceedings of the conference, Bellomont described being “strangly surprized and
Discouraged” upon his arrival for he found the Iroquois “soo sullen, and Cold in their Carriage,
that I thought we had quite lost their Affections.”

According to Bellomont, this behavior had
emanated from the “tampering” of the Dutch minister and Anglo-Iroquois translator Godfrey
Dellius whom Fletcher had entrusted along with Peter Schuyler, Dirick Wessels, and Evert
Banker with Indian affairs. Bellomont developed his case against Fletcher and his allies by
showing they had mislead and cheated the Mohawks out of land, threatening a rift in the Anglo-

9
Bellomont to Board of Trade (21 Oct 1698), TNA, CO 5/1041, No. 12; Bellomont to Board of Trade (New York:
12 Nov 1698), TNA, CO 5/1041 No. 23.
356
Iroquois alliance. The transcript of the Albany conference pointed to one Mohawk Sachem,
Sinnonquirese, who on the second day lamented the loss of land—“a matter of such
Consequence,” he declared, “that whatever affects us will affect the whole five Nations.”
Invoking the covenant chain, he requested that the paper upon which the “transfer” was recorded
“may be abolished and burnt” so that “we who are the right owners may be masters of our own
Land.” The following day Bellomont explained he did not yet know enough to “do you that
Justice” but vowed that if “the Brethren . . . be so plain as to express the truth of that matter”
Bellomont would “take care that right be done according to the Justice, and Equity of their
case.”
10

Days later Bellomont spoke with the concerned English, Dutch, and Mohawk parties. He
reported to the Board of Trade that Dellius (authorized by Fletcher to purchase the land and
acting on the behalf of himself, William Pinhorn, Peter Schuyler, Dirick Wessells, and Evert
Banker) had enacted a “fraudulent Bargain” with “six or eight of the Mo[h]awk Indians, wherein
. . . he made the Indians Believe the Land was only to be Conveyed by them to himselfe . . . in
Trust, for the use of them, and their posterity, and to hinder the said Land being Disposed of to
other hands.”
11
Bellomont did not simply rely on his own words to prove the point, but also
included the depositions of two Mohawks, referred to simply as Henry and Joseph, who had
along with six others signed the deed. Henry and Joseph claimed—using at times a legalistic
language that suggests the deposition was a highly mediated document—that “Wee never
Intended to Alienate the property of the soil” and had been deceived about the nature of the
contract. In their telling, Dellius et al had extracted Mohawk signatures “by p
r
tending that as it
was a time of Warr soe it would be our best and securest Way to Defend our selves from the

10
Propositions made by the Five Nations of Indians (1698), quotes on 3-4, 6; Bellomont to Board of Trade (14 Sept
1698), TNA, CO 5/1041, No. 1; Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse, 191-194.
11
Bellomont to Board of Trade (New York: 14 September 1698), TNA, CO5/1041, No. 1.
357
Enemy.”
12
They elaborated neither on Dellius’s explanation of the contract (how, for example, it
would protect the Mohawks during wartime) nor their discovery they had actually sold their
land. These omissions suggest their testimony might not have approximated the entire truth but
this was probably lost on Board members inclined anyway to support Bellomont.
Bellomont persuaded Peter Schuyler and Dirick Wessells to renounce their claims, which
he reported they “did so frankly and gentelly.” Others refused. Bellomont met privately with
Dellius on August 2 after James Graham had reported that Sinnonquirese’s public rebuke of the
purchase had caused Dellius to have a change of heart. According to Bellomont the meeting
began with silence, then descended into recriminations. Dellius allegedly said “that he did not
pray for the Prince of Orange” in 1689 because he did not think it “safe . . . till they had Certain
news he was Secure of the Throne.” Bellomont recounted, “it was such a slip”— signifying that
Dellius had no conviction and may have been loyal to James II—“I could not forbear Laughing.”
Dellius asserted that “he had no ill-design” in purchasing the land for “the Bishop of London was
upon a Project of Applying that Land to charitable uses.” Bellomont countered that the Bishop
“would not be Concerned in any such Project where poor people were to be deluded out of their
Lands.” Bellomont’s September letter thus portrayed the situation in New York as dire. If the
crown wished to project its power into North America, it would need to revoke the grants and
eliminate these parasitic, provincial middlemen who meddled in Anglo-Iroquois diplomacy.
13

Ultimately Graham’s map played a minimal role in revoking Fletcher’s grants. It had not
arrived when the Lords Justices instructed Bellomont to break the “exhorbitant irregular and
unconditional grants,” indicating that Bellomont’s earliest criticism of the land grants had
provoked their action. Bellomont, only too happy to comply with his orders, quickly presented

12
“Deposition of henry and Joseph two of the Maquase Nation” (31 May 1698), TNA, CO 5/1041, No. 1ii.
13
Bellomont, “An account of what passed between me and Mr Godfrey Dellius Dutch Minister at Albany the
Second Augst 1698” (14 Sept 1698), TNA, CO5/1041, No. 1iii.
358
the Council of New York with legislation. The Council split evenly, (with those opposed to the
bill holding the “largest grants in the Province, next to Mr. Dellius’s”) so Bellomont cast the
deciding vote. Yet the Anti-Leislerian agents in London successfully employed dilatory tactics,
so that it was years before the bill was confirmed or the grants actually vacated. Indeed
Bellomont would not live to see its realization.
14

Though designed to make a particular point about the “extravagancy” of Fletcher’s land
grants, the map was itself a versatile document. Bellomont certainly commissioned it with
longer-term objectives in mind. First, it helped visually establish his premise of the centrality of
New York to broader English geopolitical objectives—or as he wrote, that “this province which
by its Scituation is the Most Considerable of all the provinces on the Continent . . . ought to be
under the best Regulation.” Second, Graham’s map was a prelude to Bellomont’s eventual
request that the Board “send over a very skilfull surveyor to make Correct mapps of all these
plantations.” As he later warned, “the ffrench have mightily Impos’d the world in the mapps they
have made of this Continent, and our Geographers have been Led into grosse mistakes by the
ffrench mapps, to our very great prejudice.” Bellomont did not specify the nature of these
mistakes but he repeated invoked accuracy in his discussion of cartographic materials, which
relates to the final goal that Bellomont had in commissioning Graham’s map. He used it as a type
of patronage object, having Graham dedicate it both to him and the Board of Trade. It included
some of the other explicit trappings of a patronage object (it was drafted on parchment and
included some colorful decorative elements) but most significantly, Bellomont used it to present
himself as diligent imperial official working to create accurate colonial knowledge—hence why
he declared the New York map “the Exactest I believe that has been yett made.” The Board

14
The Lords Justices to Bellomont (10 November 1698) as quoted in Runcie, “The Problem of Anglo-American
Politics,” 213; Bellomont to the Board of Trade (27 April 1699), TNA CO5/1042 No. 23; Runcie, “The Problem of
Anglo-American Politics,” 212-4.
359
commended the map’s accuracy and promised it would see much use. If or how they used it
subsequently is unclear but it was never printed and no other copies are extant.
15

C. Establishing Expertise
Graham’s map was not the only one Bellomont sent to whet the appetites of Whitehall
officials: Accompanying him to America was the royal military engineer William Wolfgang
Römer who in a year three year period drafted nine maps, twelve schematic diagrams, two
landscape drawings, and possibly other non-extant visual materials. Bellomont praised Römer in
letters to the Board of Trade for he possessed “a great opinion of his honesty” and reckoned him
“a very good engineer.” Bellomont leaned upon Römer’s visual and textual output, which he
forwarded to the Board of Trade, to advance the second pillar of his agenda: Convincing
Whitehall to provide greater support for the English colonies. The broad rhetorical strategy of the
governor and engineer involved establishing the need for metropolitan intervention, illustrating
the abundance of American landscapes that would benefit the English empire, and then
imagining the royal presence within those landscapes. For these arguments to work, however,
Römer had to establish his own expertise and to define his maps as evidentiary objects.
16

Römer spent his first years in North America surveying the landscapes of New York and
New England in anticipation of building fortifications. First, in May 1698, Bellomont ordered
Römer to upstate New York before his own trip a month later. Römer’s early reporting supported
Bellomont’s description of the Fletcher administration as corrupt and inattentive to the colony’s
defense. Schenectady needed “to be taken in hand” according to Römer who added “it is a pity to
see, and such a disgrace that this frontier has been neglected.” In reference to the land grants, the
military engineer deployed even stronger language: If public interest reigned rather than the

15
Bellomont to Board of Trade (21 Oct 1698), TNA, CO 5/1041, No. 12; Board of Trade to Bellomont (5 Jan 1699),
TNA, CO 5/1079, No. 26; Bellomont to Board of Trade (New York: 28 Nov 1700), TNA, CO 5/1045, No. 18.
16
Bellomont to Board of Trade (14 Oct 1698), TNA, CO 5/1041, No. 14.
360
division of land “among a few men in a diabolical harvest, the enemy would never have
perniciously captured so many good inhabitants.” As Bellomont prepared to talk with the Five
Nations, Römer warned that it would be necessary but difficult to find a faithful interpreter
because of the lingering “division and extraordinary jealousy.” The female interpreter used
during the Fletcher administration would “abuse you and keep you in ignorance.”
17

Römer, as he would throughout his correspondence, explained his defensive strategy at a
very technical level to establish his expertise. He discussed: the types of structures would he
need to design; the building materials available locally and what would need to be imported; the
things provincials could do without his assistance and which projects he would need to manage;
and finally, the cost of the work and what Whitehall would need to provide. But he also talked
more broadly about his defensive strategy. He elucidated how specific places, in this case the
New York frontier, fit into a broader defensive whole. He expounded on their value to England
and its plantations. The loss New York’s frontier, Römer emphasized, would be disastrous: if it
“came at any time into the enemy's hands, the Provinces of York, Jersey, Pennsylvania and
Connecticut would be obliged in a short time to submit, and that forthwith Maryland, Virginia,
and New England would suffer severely, and as [New] York is the mart of all the islands for
corn, grain, and provisions, they would be much injured too.” The wooden fortifications would
ideally be replaced with stone ones, better constructed and actually “proportioned according to
their respective situations and importance.”

Together they would, he estimated, cost £9,000.
18

17
Bellomont to Board of Trade (New York: 18 May 1698), TNA, CO 5/1040, No. 64; “Copies of Coll. Romar’s
Letters to me [Bellomont] from Albany” (Albany: 17 May and 13 June, 1698), TNA, CO 5/1040, No. 78v;
Bellomont to Board of Trade (New York: 1 July 1698), TNA, CO 5/1040, No. 78; Bellomont to William Popple
(New York: 7 July 1698) TNA, CO 5/1040, No. 84.
18
Römer to Bellomont (26 Aug 1698), TNA, CO 5/1042, No. 11vi; Bellomont to Board of Trade (14 Oct 1698),
TNA, CO 5/1041, No. 14.
361
Römer also used images to establish his qualifications. First he demonstrated his
competency as a draftsman, supplying well-drawn maps and landscape sketches that revealed an
attention to detail. He suggested his geometrical and numerical mastery through clean lines,
clean angles, and a multitude of measurements such as water depths. The cartouche of one map
(Details 9.2.1 & 9.2.2) even emphasizes the tools used to achieve such accuracy by including an
angel holding a sounding device. He enclosed schematics to illustrate his knowledge of proper
construction practices as in one diagram demonstrating how to extract lime (Fig. 9.3). Drafting a
map or schematic and then explaining it demonstrated an eye for matters of defense. Römer’s
letters afforded him the opportunity to explain his visual documents and in this way, posture
himself as an astute reader of landscapes. Often his visual evidence required that the Board of
Trade members read multiple pieces together along with his text. Maps of harbors or fortification
schematics viewed separately might seem obtuse; together they suggested how fortifications
would regulate and control maritime movement. Across multiple mediums, Römer presented an
argument that he could see the things in a landscape that weren’t immediately apparent.

362
Detail 9.2.1: Cartouche from Römer, “A New Mappe of a part of Hudsons or North River Rareton River” (1700),
TNA, CO 700/New York 13B.

Detail 9.2.2: Sounding Device in Cartouche

Fig. 9.3 Römer, [Sketch of method of preparing lime] (12 Oct 1698), TNA, CO 5/1044 No. 11xiii. The Text Reads:
“This Figure denotes the Engine wherewith to flake the lime. A. is the sluce where the Lime runs through when it is
wholy flak’t into the pit B.”

Bracing settlements in the continental interior with walls and forts would not be enough
to continually occupy them during war. Römer emphasized that they must be connected to the
other settlements so that movement and communication were easy. He discussed, for example, a
363
destroyed small settlement north of Half-Moon: “A small fort . . . of palisades, with a small stone
tower” might encourage “planters to build and take up their residence there again” but land
would need to “cleared” and “timber cut down” to render the country “accessible” and facilitate
“an easy communication, so as to support said fort and the settlers, in case of need.” Otherwise
the garrison “would be . . . abandoned” when war recommenced.

Römer emphasized that
building the forts would be difficult because “the people here are ignorant and miserable, without
experience” in these matters; he would “be obliged . . . to do everything myself.” This
foreshadowed the way that Römer would continue to establish his own authority at the expense
of provincials and build a case that the periphery needed professional expertise from the center.
It seemed to work. The Board of Ordinance had ordered Römer to return from America but the
Board of Trade, having read his letters about fortifying the frontiers on the Hudson, successfully
pleaded with the Lords Justices to halt the recall. It probably helped that Bellomont had flatly
demanded that if the engineer departed, he “be sent over hither again.”
19

D. Illustrating the Need for Metropolitan Intervention
After assessing the defensive posture of upstate New York, Römer set to work mapping
and designing fortifications for the area. This work proceeded slowly. Römer fell ill and at one
point spilled “a bottle of ink on my papers, which will oblige me to remake several [maps] . . .
which will delay me several days.” He mapped Albany (Fig. 9.4), Schenectady (Fig. 9.5), and a
small stretch of the Mohawk River (Fig. 9.6) between the two towns. He also sketched two
schematics (Figs. 9.7-8) for the fortification at the head of Albany, one being wider than the
other and more capable of defending the mountainous terrain. During the August conference
with the Five Nations, Römer presented these documents to Bellomont who then waited more

19
William Römer to Bellomont (26 Aug 1698), TNA, CO 5/1042 No. 11vi; Board of Trade to the Lords Justices of
England (27 Oct 1698), TNA, CO 5/1116, pp. 45-46.
364
than a year before sending them to the Board of Trade. The maps of Albany and Schenectady
illustrated where people had settled, what they had built (houses, churches, mills, tanneries, brew
houses), how they had transformed the natural environment, and the roads and rivers by which
they travelled. There was little space unoccupied by Europeans or untouched by orderly,
geometric designs. His map of the area between Albany and Schenectady showed an old fort and
the place where it would be necessary to place a new redoubt. Though not thoroughly developed
like the in the other city maps, it also revealed agricultural improvement: Nestled against an
abundance of trees lay the neatly arranged farms of Marten Kiegers, Jan la Liberté, and Clas de
Brabanders.
20

20
Römer to Bellomont (Albany: 13 June, 1698), TNA, CO 5/1040, No. 78v; Bellomont to Board of Trade (21 Feb
1699), TNA, CO 5/1042, No. 11; Römer to Bellomont (26 Aug 1698), TNA, CO 5/1042, No. 11vi. The most
complete set of Römer’s visual output exists in Britain’s National Archives though we know from his writing he
produced other maps and schematics, no longer extant. At the National Archives these images exist in a state of
misclassification. Römer included his name on only two maps and did not always include dates in his titles. Those
without dates in the title have had incorrect dates penciled in by archivists, sometimes with question marks. Finding
these maps in a catalogue would lead a researcher to believe that somebody else must have authored them because
the dates do not match Römer’s time in North America. Maps of Albany and Schenectady, for example, include
penciled in “1677” and “1695?” respectively. We know they were by him, however, because of his particular
stylistic and linguistic signatures along with his references to enclosed visual work in correspondence. The British
Library also holds many copies, found in the King George III topographical collection. These were probably the
maps presented to King William, referenced in fn. 37 below.
365

Fig. 9.4: William Wolfgang Römer, [City of Albany] (1698), TNA, CO 700/New York 3

Detail 9.4.1: Fort and Mountainous Terrain. See also Figs. 3.5 and 3.6.
366

Detail 9.4.2: Houses, Lots, Roads, and Projected City Wall (Yellow)

Detail 9.4.3: City Interior and “The Protestant Church” (no. 9)

Detail 9.4.4: “The Old Dutch Fort” (no. 26)

367

Fig. 9.5: Römer, “Schenectady Town” (1698), TNA, CO 700/New York 6

Detail 9.5.1: The King’s Fort

368

Detail 9.5.2: “An old bornet littel Fort and Palissades maede by Collonel Dongans time” and “An new Projected
Fort of Stone”

Detail 9.5.3: “4. The Road to kanestegion and halfe=Moon,” “5. The Road to the Mohacks Contry,” “6. The
Church,” “7. The Myll,” and “8. The Brewhause.”

369

Fig. 9.6: Römer, [Stretch of Territory on Mohawk River between Albany and Schenectady] (1698), TNA, CO
700/New York 7

Detail 9.6.1: “Le vieux Fort” [The Old Fort] and “B. Une Nouvelle Redoute de Piere qu’on y doit faire” [A New
Redoubt of Stone that Should be Made there]

Detail 9.6.2: Fields
370

Fig. 9.7: Römer, [The First Design of a Stone Fort for the Plan of Albany] (1698), TNA, CO 700/New York 1

Detail 9.7.1: The Old Fort in Yellow and New in Red

371

Detail 9.7.2: “Profiel upon the prickt Line i.k of the old Fort called the Fort of Orange in the City of Albany”

Fig. 9.8: Römer, [The Second Design of a Stone Fort for the Plan of Albany] (1698), TNA, CO 700/New York 2

372

Detail 9.8.1: The Old Fort in Yellow and New in Red

Detail 9.8.2: “The Profile of the prikt Line a. b.”

These maps, especially the ones of Albany and Schenectady, revealed settlement patterns
shaped within a militarized exoskeleton. Yet they did not recall the actual violence that had
befallen these “frontiers.” In these ways Römer’s visual work was somewhat disconnected from
his textual output. These maps (and the ones that would follow) illuminated technical matters
and employed an unemotional rhetoric to convey the value of English plantation. They visually
bolstered his argument that sound defenses created healthful English settlements and
economically productive landscapes. In this light, Bellomont’s hesitance to speedily convey the
letters to the Board of Trade begins to make sense. He had originally resolved “to propose to the
assembly . . . the Charge of making” Römer’s forts. This grew doubtful in April 1699 when
Bellomont reported “thô our Treasury is very poor and much Indebted, I will pinch money any
373
manner of way from other uses, rather than this so necessary work shall be delay’d.” Finally by
June 1700, Bellomont’s promises to the Board had become pleas and Römer’s maps, evidence
that money from the King would be an investment.
21

In summer 1699 Bellomont turned his attentions from New York to New England,
travelling to Boston. His agenda included, among other things, sorting out the “eastern frontier”
and putting the New England coast into a better defensive posture, which would require building
and expanding fortifications. In regards to the first point, he seems to have asked Captain
Cyprian Southack, who had patrolled the New England coasts during King William’s War, to use
his connections with the Wabanaki to confirm the peace. Southack did this in May and
Bellomont more formally met with three delegates in early September. It seems from Southack’s
account the Wabanki had agreed to peace only because the French were withholding gunpowder.
Bellomont dismissed the Wabanaki as an easy enemy, explaining to the Board that “if the
Eastern Indians did Commit any hostilities . . . an easy way of subduing them . . . was, that I
would bring down the Mohack Indians to Cutt ‘em off.” But, as usual, provincials could not
bring themselves to an easy solution. Bellomont mocked their sensibility, writing that “I have
been told . . . they would not make use of the devill, to destroy the devill: such a nicety [and]
squeamishnesse as all the rest of the world will laught at.”
22

21
Bellomont to Board of Trade (1 July 1698), TNA, CO 5/1040, No. 78; Bellomont to Board of Trade (13 April
1699), TNA, CO 5/1042, No. 21.
22
“Our very good sagamor the Lord Bellomont” (16 May 1700), MHS, Cyprian Southack Letters, Ms. N-949;
Bellomont to Board of Trade (Boston: 29 May 1699), TNA, CO 5/1042, No. 32; “Memorial of his Excellency Earl
of Bellomont of my [?] Voyages [?] Kenneback River in the mounth of June & July 1700 of what Discours Passt
between the Eastern Indians & me [?] conserning their genll metting the 30 day of June att Noredgwak” (July 1700),
MHS, Cyprian Southack Letters, Ms. N-949; “A Memorial humbly presented by Tom Sabauoman otherwise called
Scanbeowyt, Sam, otherwise Sasuinick & Sampson otherwise Shadoock, Messengers from the Sagamores and
others the principal Indians belonging to the Several Forts and Plantations of Narridgewack Narauamegock and
Amasaconteog, with the Eastern parts of his Ma
tys
Province of the Massachusetts Bay abovesaid” (8 Sept 1699),
TNA, CO 5/860, No. 65xv; Bellomont to Board of Trade (Boston: 9 Sept 1699), TNA, CO 5/860, No. 66.
374
The story epitomized Bellomont’s broader case for Whitehall’s intervention in provincial
affairs. The problem resembled the one in New York: “the Governing men here have not a
publick spirit . . . and so long as they can sleep securely in this town of Boston, they [think nor]
look no further.” Their negligence and unwillingness to pay for adequate fortifications had cost
the province the lives of “1000 families this Last war.” If (and when) war resumed, these
tragedies would repeat themselves unless the Board could convince the King or Parliament to
fund fortifications. In these matters Bellomont again rested his pleas for funding upon the
Römer’s expertise.
23

First Bellomont and Römer focused the urban seaports of Boston and Portsmouth, New
Hampshire. Both were major population centers, trade hubs, and political seats of power. As
Römer would explain, they were particularly vulnerable to naval attacks or sieges and would be
the most devastating places to lose during a war. Römer began surveying the Boston harbor in
the early months of 1699. When Bellomont arrived in May, Römer presented him a map of
Castle Island (Fig. 9.9), depicting the fortification with “a projection of a Stronger and more
defensive worke.” Römer also provided a profile view (Fig. 9.10) of the architectural schematics
for the planned expansion. This stronger fortification, Römer explained, would adequately
protect Boston and “defend its selfe against a years seige.” However, he warned, other
settlements within the harbor would remain vulnerable as the Castle Island fortification would
not “hinder . . . that an Enemy might blockade, and commit all manner of outrages.” Here he was
following a principal that he would later articulate in a survey of the Hudson River mouth:
“reason and the Rules of War agree, that an enemy must always be kept as far off as can possibly
be done.” After all, a blockade could be nearly as harmful as an actual attack to cities that
depended upon trade. He recommended securing “the passages & Channels . . . by two well

23
Bellomont to Board of Trade (Boston: 28 Aug 1699), TNA, CO 5/860, No. 65.
375
placed and defensive Batteries each of Fifty Cannons.” Though he explained where these would
go in his memorandum, he seems not to have mapped the Boston harbor. Of course this work
would cost something. In an August letter Bellomont promised to request funding from the
Massachusetts assembly but worried it would not succeed for “there being now a peace” the
legislators “have no remembrance [of] the war.” Without directly asking the Board for money,
Bellomont articulated the need for the work: the “ffort on the island is the poorest I ever saw”
and not located at “a place of strength or security.” The subtext was clear. Massachusetts needed
more than money. It needed oversight because provincials could not be entrusted with their own
governance.
24

Fig. 9.9 Römer, “The Draught of Castle Island in y
e
Bay of Boston in America” (1699-1700), TNA, CO
700/Massachusetts 1.

24
Römer to Bellomont (20 June 1699), TNA, CO 5/860, No. 60A; Römer to Bellomont (13 Jan 1701), DCHNY, IV:
837-8 (for the original in Dutch, see TNA, CO 5/1046, No. 2viii).
376

Detail 9.9.1: The Old Fort at the Center in Yellow and Red; The Projected New in Red and Black and Dotted Lines

Detail 9.9.2: Example of Different Lines

Detail 9.9.3: “The Profile upon the prik’t Line E.F.”
377

Fig. 9.10 Römer, [Profiles belonging to the Castle Island Fortifications] (1699-1700), TNA, CO 700/Massachusetts
2

Bellomont next directed Römer to Portsmouth, New Hampshire where he spent July and
August surveying the defenses about the mouth of the Piscataqua River. The news was again
bad. The fort near Portsmouth on Castle Island was “incapable of defending the entrance into
that noble and important river, not being sufficient to endure three or four days’ attack of an
enemy.” As he had with the Boston defenses, Römer proposed strengthening the existing
fortifications and adding new ones along the peripheries of the harbor to block foreign vessels
from entering. He later drafted a map of the harbor about New Castle (Fig. 9.11) demonstrating
its porousness. Water depths hinted at paths of travel; while ships needed sail past the fort, they
could easily evade it. Adding a redoubt and battery across the way on Wood Island—which he
sketched separately (Fig. 9.12)—would address this problem. Römer also sketched two views of
the fort, the first (Fig. 9.13) offering a view as it was and the second as it would look (Fig. 9.14).
The former image (“Fort upon Great Island”) emphasized the abundant forests around the island
and only included one house; in contrast, the latter (“Prospect Draft”) emphasized the abundance
of human settlement and diminished the presence of trees. The two views seem to suggest that
378
replacing the old fort would bring prosperity—that improvement in a military sense would lead
to improvement in a social and economic sense as people would settle in the shadow of the fort
and appropriate the area’s abundant natural resources. It also helped that the prospect view
honored the sovereigns William and Mary by naming the fort after them.
25

Fig. 9.11: Römer, [New Castle Island in Piscataqua River] (1699-1700), TNA, CO 700/New Hampshire 4

25
Bellomont to Board of Trade (5 Jan 1700), TNA, CO 5/1043, No. 6; “Memorial of Col. Römer to Lord Bellomont
touching the Five Rivers” (Boston: 11 April 1700) TNA, CO 5/1044, No. 11ix; Bellomont to Board of Trade (22
June 1700), TNA, CO 5/1044, No. 11.
379

Detail 9.11.1: Lower Portion New Castle Island Including Fort, Town, and Lots

Detail 9.11.2: Area of Concern between Wood Island (12) and the Fort (3)

Detail 9.11.3: Fort and Ship with Flag of St. George.
380

Detail 9.11.4: The Town. Note the Projected Redoubt at the Left in Red.

Detail 9.11.5: “The horse Ferry” (4), “The Bridge” (5), and “The ruins of the old Bridge” (6)

381

Detail 9.11.6: Lots, Houses, and other Evidence of Improvement Including “7. Portsmouth Church”

Detail 9.11.7: Cartouche with Emphasis on Trees

382

Fig. 9.12: Römer, “Wood Island in the Mouth of the Piscataqua River in New England” (1699-1700), TNA, CO
700/New Hampshire 2.

Fig. 9.13 William Römer “The Fort upon Great Island in Piscataqua River, 1699” (1699-1700), TNA, CO 700/New
Hampshire 3/1.

Detail 9.13.1: Trees on Champernoons and Fryers Island

383

Fig. 9.14: William Römer “An Explanation on the Prospect Draft of Fort William & Mary on Piscataqua River in
the Province of New Hampshire on the Continent of America” (1699-1700), TNA, CO 700/New Hampshire 3/2.

Detail 9.14.1: Houses

Fig. 9.15: Römer, “The Fort at New Castle” (1699-1700), TNA, CO 700/New Hampshire 1
384

E. Landscapes of Abundance
While Römer labored in New Hampshire, Bellomont was conversing in Boston with Lt.
Governor William Stoughton, Massachusetts Secretary Isaac Addington, and the merchants
Benjamin Jackson and John Nelson. All four men had recently corresponded with Whitehall over
the Anglo-French border in Maine. The French governor of Acadia, Joseph Robineau, sieur de
Villebon, had (in their view, falsely) claimed that the Kennebec River—not the St. George’s
River further northeast—was the true antebellum Anglo-French boundary. As Stoughton put it, if
the English did not challenge these French claims, “many of his Majesties subjects would be
excluded from their ancient rights and Settlements acquired as well by Grants and Confirmation
(derived from the Crown of England) as by purchase from the Natives and having by their hard
Labour & great cost and charge, cleared & improved . . . & plant
d
Several Townes therein.”
Furthemore it would deprive “his majesties subjects of a cheif part of their Fishery” and if war
recommenced, French possession of the “many large commodious and safe harbours” would
allow them to “annoy if not wholly ruin the navigation of this Countrey.”
26

Bellomont looked to encourage English settlement in Maine to repel both French claims
and intrusions. In late August he travelled to Portsmouth where he instructed Römer to “view all
the Eastern Coast as far as the River of St. Georges” where (he noted in letters to the Board) lay
the “boundary between us and the ffrench Eastward” in order to create cartographic evidence to
bolster English claims. A second rational for the trip was demonstrating the value of Maine—to
reinforce Bellomont’s claim that Maine was of such “Consequence to England, as well as to

26
William Stoughton to Board of Trade (Boston: 24 October 1698), TNA, CO 5/860, No. 37; John Nelson to
William Blathwayt (Boston: 29 Oct 1698), TNA, CO 5/860, No. 39; Nelson to Board of Trade (Boston: 4 Nov
1698), TNA, CO 5/860, No. 40; Benjamin Jackson to Board of Trade (Boston: 11 Nov 1698), TNA, CO 5/860, No.
41; Isaac Addington to William Popple (7 Feb 1699), TNA, CO 5/860, No. 56.
385
these Provinces, for the whole Coast . . . 90 miles in length affords as good fishing as the banks
[of newfoundland] and the country the richest for soil of any part of the King’s dominion [on
this] Continent, and a great part of it cleard and taken in from woods, and was . . . well peopled,
till by the Late war they were destroy’d by the Indians.” Römer would also assess the “Capacity
and disposition” of the different harbors for “being fortified”—a necessary precondition for
resettlement for “unless there be fforts to secure and cover them from the ffrench and Indians, no
[one will] be so madd as to settle there.” Bellomont feared the French were taking “the same . . .
course . . . at this time, having lately sent an Engineer from ffrance to survey [the] ffort and River
of St. Johns and the Coast of Accadie or Nova Scotia” with intentions of “building fforts.”
27

Römer departed Portsmouth on September 1 aboard the Province Galley. Cyprian
Southack captained the vessel and almost certainly served as a fount of information for Römer.
The military engineer seems to have repaid the favor in his “Prospect Draft of Fort William and
Mary,” identifying one ship as “The Province Gally Cap
t
: Cyprian Sauthak Comander.” (Detail
9.14.1) The two men arrived at St. George’s River a week later and Römer reported that the area
provided “little timber . . . fit for building ships” though the “Coast adjoyning . . . is reckoned
extraordinary good for Fishing.” He added that about the “large Bays” (which, in his map, he
named after Bellomont) “we perceived good store of rich Land fit for habitation and
Improvement, but which was never inhabited by other than Indians.” The evidence for English
settlement came “On the out side of the largest of the islands [where] there are several
Plantations or Farmes, which by means of the late war were deserted by ye Inhabit
ts
.” When
Römer mapped the river (Fig. 9.16) and bay, he documented these abandoned plantations with
dotted lines representing laid out lots. His map, as would his others of the Maine coast, included

27
Bellomont to Board of Trade (Boston: 29 Aug 1699), TNA, CO 5/860, No. 65
386
an abundance of trees and water depths to illustrate the ease of navigability for ships. He also
outlined in red ink the fortifications he projected upon the landscape.
28

Detail 9.14.2: “The Province Gally Capt: Cyprian Sauthak Comander” (S)

Fig. 9.16: Römer, “St. Georges R.” (1699-1700), TNA, CO 700/Maine

28
Römer, “The Memorial of Col:
º
Wolfgang William Römer his Ma.
tys
Chief Engineer in America Touching the five
Rivers” (Boston: 11 April 1700), TNA, CO 5/1044, No. 11ix.
387

Detail 9.16.1: Islands with Abandoned English Plantations. Note the Faint Dotted Lines on the Top Islands and
Small Square on the Top Left.

Detail 9.16.2: Perhaps a Wabanaki Dwelling.

Detail 9.16.3: “Bellomont’s Bay” (3) and “The place of marking a redoubt & Battery” (5)

Next Southack and Römer sailed “nine Leagues to the Westward” to the “Spacious and
noble” Pemaquid River mouth. Römer reported favorably on the quality of the land and the
considerable extent “of its Frontier [i.e. that which fronted bodies of water], which covers and
shuts in the rivers of Damarascot, Sheepscott and Kennebeck.” He again detailed the extent of
388
English plantation, the “Village of 36 well built houses . . . [and]in the Neighbouring Country . . .
a great many Farmers.” Though Römer seemed not to have mapped the area, he did sketch the
old fort with plans for a new one (Fig. 9.17). As they had destroyed the village, the French and
Wabanaki had demolished the fort—not surprising in Römer’s view because “there was no order
or proportion observed in building it.” Nor were the building materials (“clay mixed with sand
brought from the sea-shore, rather than lime”) adequate for receiving canon fire: “When the
French besieged it . . . the wall of the Fort was so very much shaken . . . which was partly the
cause that the place was shamefully surrendred.” Römer seemed so disgusted that in his chart, he
projected the new fort without any regard to where the old one lay.
29

Fig. 9.17: Römer, “The old Fort at Pemaquid” (1699-1700), TNA, CO 700/Maine 4. The old fort in red and the
projected one in black. The new plans completely ignored the old fort.

29
Römer, “The Memorial of Col:
º
Wolfgang William Römer his Ma.
tys
Chief Engineer in America Touching the five
Rivers” (Boston: 11 April 1700), TNA, CO 5/1044, No. 11ix.
389
The next stop, the Kennebec River, was “a fine one and convenient for great Ships”
though certain stretches “higher up” were “somewhat hazardous by reason of the little Islands
and rocks.” He rated the soil “very good” with “several excellent Meadows.” This would be a
crucial site for controlling Anglo-Wabanaki relations. He advocated building a fort “not only for
the defense of the mouth of the river . . . because the Savages have two Forts at the head of the
River . . . [with] two Jesuits in each Fort, which do great hurt to the Kings Interest, and that of
the Publick because they instil into those people an aversion & hatred for his Ma
ty
& his
Subjects.” Römer suggested a posture of power downstream would help the English rid Maine of
this malignant Jesuit influence. Though he “marked on the Chart the places which ought to be
fortified” no such map seems extant.
30

Casco Bay, where Römer and Southack travelled next, was “cover’d from the Storms that
come from the Sea” and offered “the fertilest [country] that's in all New England.” The cartouche
of Römer’s map (Fig. 9.18) seems to reinforce this, showing the products of the land. The
“multitude of Islands, great and small” caused Römer to be “particularly careful” in depicting
“the situation of this Bay . . . the Islands, and also its Soundings.” Indeed these sounding
measurements crowd the water indicating the best paths of travel for larger vessels. Römer
described the town, which had once consisted of a fort, “46 houses and a good Church.” Its
environs included “180 farms, besides a great many fishermen's houses.” However, he
commented, the fort “was built of wood and very ill contrived, being so seated on a neck of land
that it could not be relieved. And as it was ill built, so it was ill kept in repair.” His map indicated
where the old fort and town stood and suggested a more sensible location (from a defensive

30
Römer, “The Memorial of Col:
º
Wolfgang William Römer his Ma.
tys
Chief Engineer in America Touching the five
Rivers” (Boston: 11 April 1700), TNA, CO 5/1044, No. 11ix.
390
standpoint) for the English to resettle. It also depicted a multitude of farm lots, which evidenced
English claims to the territory and begged to be peopled.
31

Fig. 9.18: Römer “Casco-Bay” (1699), TNA, CO 700/Maine 3

31
Römer, “The Memorial of Col:
º
Wolfgang William Römer his Ma.
tys
Chief Engineer in America Touching the five
Rivers” (Boston: 11 April 1700), TNA, CO 5/1044, No. 11ix.
391

Detail 9.18.1: Part of the Cartouche Hinting at Agricultural Abundance

Detail 9.18.2: “The place for Setling a new Town upon Perpodick” (2) Also Lots and a Projected Fortification in
Red Ink.

At Saco River and nearby Winter Harbor, the final stops, Römer characterized the land as
“very good & fertile & well stor’d w
th
woods for ship building & for houses.” Inhabitants had
once “enriched themselves by their [salmon] Fishing” and so Römer proposed building a redoubt
at Winter Harbor “to secure their Sloops and other Fishing boats.” Indeed if the English wanted
to develop the maritime economy in Maine they would need many redoubts along the coast—not
including the ones he detailed in his memorial—to shelter vessels from “Pirates or other
Enemies.” Römer travelled up the river in a pinnace to the waterfall (which “makes so great a
392
noise that one can scarce hear ones self speak”) and viewing the “small Fort . . . in the forme of
an irregular Pentagone . . . ready to fall, and in a word useless.” One could not really navigate the
river on a more substantial vessel so a fortification would serve one purpose. The “good redoubt .
. . and a Boom cross the river” that he proposed building would “hinder the Indians in their
Canoes from coming round about the Sd Falls, and so to the sea.” This would limit Wabanaki
mobility, preventing oceanic access to fishing and other rivers and increasing their dependence
on English merchants. A Wabanaki fort with two Jesuits at the riverhead had necessitated (as at
the Kennebec) becoming “Masters of the river.” His map (Fig. 9.19) indicated the position of
both forts and a schematic drawing of the Saco River fortification (Fig. 9.20) that included a
landscape view of the prospective fort. That landscape view—as with the one at Castle Island,
New Hampshire—emphasized a sense of prosperity. In the shadow of the fort lay an enclosed
field. Trees crowded the background but had been cleared away closer to the river.

The map too
emphasized improvements in the form of a bridge, a road, and lots.
32

32
Römer, “The Memorial of Col:
º
Wolfgang William Römer his Ma.
tys
Chief Engineer in America Touching the five
Rivers” (Boston: 11 April 1700), TNA, CO 5/1044, No. 11ix.
393

Fig. 9.19: Römer, “Saco-River” (1699), TNA, CO 700/Maine 1
394

Detail 9.19.1: Winter Harbor Including “9. A redout & Battery propos
d
to be built”

Detail 9.19.2: Saco River Including “1. The Fort,” “2. The Falls,” and “10. A redoubt & floating Barricade proposed
to be built.” Also Lots.

395

Detail 9.19.3: Lots on the Saco River. Also Water Depths, Bridge, and Road (Emanating from the Bridge)

9.20: Römer, “Saco Fort” (1699), TNA, CO 700/Maine 2.

396

Detail 9.20.1: “The Prospect of Saco Fort 1699”

Finally after more than a month of travel, Römer and Southack returned to Portsmouth in
early October. In his April 1700 memorial describing his expedition, Römer described the
previous occupation of these sites and the violence that had dislodged the English settlers. He
reported stories of French and Wabanaki cruelty such as when they “roasted” an “old
Englishman . . . alive on a spit in sight of the English in [a nearby] garrison.” His words
illuminated how destruction had become embedded on the landscape. At Falmouth in Casco Bay,
for example, Römer noted “all lies now in ruins. There are still to be seen the remains of houses
of two stories high, with stone walls and chimneys.” The French and Wabanaki soldiers had no
difficulty defeating a people with poorly placed, designed, and constructed fortifications. Yet
these past failures were no reason to abandon Maine. Yes, English settlers would be vulnerable
to attacks from land, rivers, and ocean but as Römer continually pointed out, he—unlike
provincials—knew what he was doing. He used maps and schematics to evidence this point.
Fortifications, he emphasized in narrating Maine’s history, underpinned settlement. Before the
war, “In confidence” of Fort Loyal “people were encouraged to build a pretty large Village” at
397
Falmouth. Conversely the loss of the fort at Pemaquid had disheartened the Inhabitants, causing
them to “desert the whole Eastern Countrey.”
33

The fortifications would be an investment. The Maine coast, as Römer presented it,
promised fertile land, plentiful fisheries, and rich forests. Profit was to be had in “trade with the
Indians . . . and from the productions of the country.” Fisheries and forests were plentiful, rivers
wide and deep, and the bays protected from the open ocean. These eastern lands, in other words,
offered an ideal setting for a maritime culture as it could build and accommodate all manner of
ships. It could easily connect to a broader Atlantic marketplace and would facilitate the security
of a maritime empire that needed sizeable masts and other naval stores. Römer’s maps amplified
this economic interpretation of these spaces as filled with great natural promise. Römer
populated his images with trees, which he had repeatedly emphasized in his text could be used
for shipbuilding, particular for sizeable masts. The maps also emphasized Maine as a space of
maritime connectivity. The presence of ships and inclusion of water depths illustrated the
navigability of bays while lots laid out along oceans and rivers illustrated the ease with which
individuals could access markets. The maps did not present the Maine frontier in the light of
danger. They did not show ruins or suggest a landscape haunted by violence. They presented
Maine as an empty space demanding to be filled by an English presence. Only small details
evidence previous occupation.
F. Projecting Royal Authority
While Bellomont’s pleas to the Board of Trade for funding focused on what fortifications
would do (i.e. protect lives, encourage settlement, facilitate industry), Römer’s visual documents
also projected a sense of their meaning within the Anglo-American landscape. This involved the

33
Southack to [Bellomont?] (10 Oct 1699) MHS, Southack Letters, Ms. N-949; Römer, “The Memorial of Col:
º
Wolfgang William Römer his Ma.
tys
Chief Engineer in America Touching the five Rivers” (Boston: 11 April 1700),
TNA, CO 5/1044, No. 11ix.
398
prominent view of the union jack, which saturated many of Römer’s prospective views
(including of fortifications in Saco, Maine, Boston, and Portsmouth—see the details below). This
icon deserves some background given its appearance before the 1707 Acts of Union. Conceived
of in 1606 as James VI and I ascended the English throne, the Union Jack merged the national
flags of England (St. George) and Scotland (St. Andrew). The flag was initially a marker of the
royal family and not the nation (or empire) at large. During the Restoration, the union jack grew
in popularity as one way to create distance from the Commonwealth, which had employed the
cross of St. George. Römer’s flags, then, did not explicitly signify “empire” but rather that the
fortifications belonged to the monarch—they were not-so-subtle hints at who should pick up the
tab. Yet the flags also fanned a fantasy. Fortifications would project royal authority onto the
landscapes of cities and frontier settlements and inhabitants would then link their sense of
security to the King or Queen. Colonies, long laboring under the auspices of cultural separatism,
would become governable. While the fantasy of bringing the periphery into the cultural and
political orbit of the center would have appealed to the Board of Trade, royal possession of the
forts provoked controversy in the colonies. When Römer began construction in 1701 he lamented
that he was “hated by the people because I call the Fortifications the Fortifications of the King,
of which they are very jealous.” Indeed, the flags depicted did not always seem to be on hand.
New Hampshire Lt Governor John Usher noted as much in 1703 when he visited Fort William
and Mary at Portsmouth and discovered “noe flagg.”
34

34
William Römer to CTaP (Boston: 16 Oct 1701) TNA, CO 5/862, Nos. 80; John Usher to Board of Trade (30
December 1703), TNA, CO 5/863, No. 70. Formal inventories for these fortifications also exist but they usually only
describe war stores and not items such as flags. Usher’s comment suggests but does not prove Römer portrayed a
flag that did not actually exist. The Board of Trade took an active interest the Union Jack in this period, ordering that
merchants and governors to fly no other flag. The Lords Justices in Council confirmed the order in July 1701. See
Order of the Lords Justices in Council (31 July 1701), TNA, CO 323/3, Nos. 102 and 102i. For a general history of
the Union Jack see Nick Groom, The Union Jack: The Story of the British Flag (London: Atlantic Books, 2006).
399

Detail 9.9.4: Union Jack

Detail 9.13.2: Fort with Union Jack

Detail 9.14.3: “The new mad[e] Block house & Dongeon” (D) and “The new flag staff” (L) i.e. the Union Jack

400

Detail 9.20.2: Union Jack

In June 1700 Bellomont sent to the Board of Trade all of the maps, schematics, and
landscape views that Römer had produced to that point (“tied up severally . . . being made up in a
box”). These were not the only copies of these documents. Römer kept a set and would twice
attempt to convey copies across the Atlantic—in both instances the documents were thrown
overboard as the ships carrying them were about to be captured by French vessels. Bellomont’s
decision in 1700 to send the documents all at once (instead of piece by piece) reflected a culture
of patronage in which requests were usually presaged by a gift to the benefactor. Bellomont used
the occasion to finally spell out the hefty £29,000 price tag of the fortifications. Once again he
emphatically explained: “if the King will keep these Plantations from the ffrench, I must take the
liberty to say, he must necessarily be at the charge of building severall Forts both on the Frontier
of N. york and to the Eastward of this province.”

Bellomont added that the King could “write to
all the severall governments to stir ‘em up to a Contribution for the building [of] such Forts,”
which “would defray a great part of the charge.”
35

The Board of Trade did in fact share the view of Bellomont and Römer for projecting
Royal authority into the colonies. Unfortunately, it did not quite seem eye to eye on the matter of

35
Bellomont to Board of Trade (22 June 1700), TNA, CO 5/1044, No. 11; Römer to Board of Trade (7-18 Dec
1706), TNA, CO 5/864, No. 162.
401
funding. In January 1701, the Board conveyed Römer’s memorials and some of Bellomont’s
ideas to King William III. In many cases, it appropriated their exact language. The Board
advocated requiring Massachusetts to build the fortifications but, contrary to Bellomont’s
wishes, argued that as long as the colony retained its own charter did not deserve financial
support from the King. At this time the Board sought to reorganize colonial governments,
making them royal colonies. They likely recommended withholding funding from Massachusetts
to apply pressure to the colonies to embrace such reorganization. They further suggested
mandating the other American colonies to contribute a total of £3,000 to New York’s
fortifications. They also presented Römer’s maps to the King. They received these maps
enthusiastically, describing them “to be very exact and more particular than any we have seen of
those parts.” They even requested, in a February 1701 letter to Bellomont, that Römer “joyn
them together and so make one continued draught of that whole coast from St. Croix to Cape
Cod.” Is it surprising they wanted to see these English domains? Mapping, after all, is one
avenue towards possession in both the imagination and legalistic posturing. They also requested
a “good map . . . of all the Indian countreys in the neighbourhood of H.M. Plantations . . . for our
better light into matters relating to those Indians.”
36

G. The Exotic at the Edge of Empire
Bellomont did not receive the Board’s request for a map of Indian country but he had
anticipated it. The governor had returned to New York in July 1700 after receiving frantic letters
announcing troubles in Indian country. What had been hints of trouble in the Anglo-Iroquois
alliance during Bellomont’s 1698 conference with the Five Nations had developed into clear
problems. Robert Livingston, having voyaged to Onandaga, warned that “ye Maquase [i.e.

36
Board of Trade to the King (10 January 1701), TNA, CO 5/1079, No. 60; Board of Trade to Bellomont (11 Feb
1701), TNA, CO 5/1079, No. 65. The copies presented to the King are likely those at the British Library in the King
George III Topographical Collection. See fn. 21 above.
402
Mohawk] nation are grown weake & much lessond by ye late war . . . [and] by ye french dayle
drawn . . . to Canada” so much so that “two thirds of sd nation is now actually at Canada.”
Livingston argued that they deserted because the French had destroyed their castles and the
English had not provided missionaries. The entire alliance was in jeopardy. Livingston insisted
“that it is morally impossible to secure ye 5 nations to ye English Interest any Longer without
building forts and securing Passes that Leads to their Castles.” Bellomont departed for Albany
August 10 and arrived three days later. The Iroquois made him “wait a fort night for their
coming, so that Truly I Concluded them entirely Lost to us.” The conference, when it finally
began, lasted about a week. Bellomont described it as “the greatest fatigue I ever underwent in
my whole life” for he sat “in a Close chamber w
th
50 Sachems who besides the stink of bear’s
grease w
th
which they plentifully dawb themselves, were continually either smoaking Tobacco or
drinking drams of Rum.” Though a challenge, Bellomont presented the conference in upbeat
terms. The Iroquois sachems “seem’d Sullen and out of humour at first, but by degrees I brought
‘em to perfect good Temper.” He could not have misread the situation more. The Five Nations
would soon sign a peace treaty with the French.
37

Bellomont reported that he had hammered out an agreement to build a fortification in
Iroquoia at “an Isthmus or neck of Land on a vast lake Lying northw
d
of the onondages”—this
more than anything else evidenced the success of his negotiations. Strategically, the fortification
would secure “some Rivers that run into that Lake” which the French had used “to passe when
they made war upon or Synek [i.e. Seneca] Nation.” In Bellomont’s mind the fortification would
also: Serve as a base soldiers to produce tar and pitch and for an English minister to instruct the

37
Robert Livingston to Lord Bellomont (April 1700), TNA, CO 5/1046 No. 15ii and a draft of the same, GLI, GLC,
LP, 02051 (The draft includes a computation (p.7) and rough sketch (p.8) of “The Distance of Onnandage from
Albany”); “Lord Bellomont’s Conference with the Indians” (26 Aug 1700), TNA, CO 5/1045 No. 1v; Bellomont to
Board of Trade (17 Oct 1700), TNA, CO 5/1045, No. 1.
403
Iroquois; “magnifie the King’s greatnesse and power” to the Iroquois; and, finally, undercut the
Iroquois monopoly on trade with the English by enabling “the Dowaganhas and those other
remote Nations” around the lake to “trade at our Fort.” Notably, Bellomont employed a map to
convince the Iroquois that the isthmus would “be the fittest place for a Fort.” As Bellomont
explained it, when “Coll Römer and I shew’d ‘em the map . . . they [the Indian sachems] quickly
Comprehended.” Though these sachems—as it later turned out—were being disingenuous, the
transaction suggests a fluidity between Native and European geographic practices. It not only
reveals the cartographic literacy of these sachems but hints that maps were commonly used to
guide Native and European interactions—more than could be inferred from the dearth of extant
maps. Bellomont also used the conference to help settle the “Eastern Indians . . . about
Schackhook w
th
our River Indians.” The project would “strengthen our 5 nations, and annoy the
ffrench,” while also helping move northwards the boundary between French and English
colonies.
38

After the conference, Bellomont instructed Römer to visit Iroquoia to design the
fortification, commanding he “observe the country exactly as you go and come, with the rivers
lakes woods plains and hills” so that he could map the area. As Bellomont waited upon Römer’s
return from Iroquoia, he again pleaded that the Board take up the issue of fortifications in Albany
and Schenectady with the King. Not only were these forts “Scandalously weak, but do us
unspeakable mischief w
th
our Indians who conceive a proportionable Idea of the King’s power
and greatness.” Their disrepair also displeased the English inhabitants who explained “that if the
King would not build a Fort there to protect ‘em, they would on the very first news of a war
between and England and France, desert that place . . . rather than . . . have their throats Cut.” He

38
Bellomont to Römer (Albany: 3 Sept 1700), TNA, CO 5/1045, No. 1viii; Bellomont to Board of Trade (17 Oct
1700), TNA, CO 5/1045, No. 1.
404
enclosed a petition from the inhabitants of Albany to further demonstrate their dissatisfaction.
Living in a frontier exposed them “to inexpressible dangers, [including] being barbarously
murdered, scalp’d & carried captives by the French and their merciless indians, which terrified”
them and forced many “to desert their habitations.”

He again invoked Römer’s sour assessment
of the fortifications and explained that the New York Assembly had refused to fund the projects.
The only way forward would be for the King to “order me to begin to build Forts . . . and order
me a Credit on some of the Revenue Offices in London . . . or . . . compell all the Plantations to
Contribute to the charge.” Bellomont repeated Römer’s point that otherwise the “Neighbouring
Plantations will be defenselesse and expos’d to Certain ruin if a war should happen between the
Two Crowns.”
39

Römer returned in late October. The voyage was a miserable failure with the Iroquois
surreptitiously blocking him from carrying out his work. As Römer explained it, he sensed his
life in danger and “was forced to abscond in the bushes . . . [returning] to Albany without being
permitted . . . to come within 40 miles of the point proposed for scituation of that Fort.” The
travels were deleterious to his health; according to Bellomont he developed a “rupture, which the
Physicians . . . say will kill him if he goes not to England to be cured.”

Nevertheless, Römer
summoned the energy to draft a map of his travels in Iroquoia (Fig. 9.21). It was an exercise in
omission and distraction. The map did not hint at the danger to Römer’s life, the demographic
disaster that had befallen the Five Nations, or the likelihood of an end to the Anglo-Iroquois
alliance. Römer did, however, fill the map with his authorial identity, an aberration from the rest
of his visual corpus. He titled the map (“A Mapp of Coll Römer his Journey to the 5 Indian
Nations”) within the narrative frame of his journey. He traced his path of travel in red dotted ink

39
“Address of the Citizens of Albany to the Earl of Bellomont” (24 Aug 1700), TNA, CO 5/1045, No. 1xiv;
Bellomont to Römer (Albany: 3 Sept 1700), TNA, CO 5/1045, No. 1viii; Bellomont to Board of Trade (17 Oct
1700), TNA, CO 5/1045, No. 1.
405
and the cartouche offers a textual description of the same. The only allusion to trouble, vaguely
described, came at the Oneida’s village, “I was stoped & could not procede any further for sum
important reasons and obliged to go from Onnondages to the Lake of Canenda . . .” Perhaps
Römer felt it necessary to demonstrate his first-hand experience in this instance because he
depicted a space beyond the bounds of English settlement—though one theorized by English
people to fall within English sovereignty.
40

Fig. 3.21: Römer, “A Mapp of Coll Romer his Journey to the 5 Indian Nations” (1700), TNA, CO 700/New York
13A.

40
Römer to Bellomont (5 Oct 1700), TNA, CO 5/1045, Nos. 18viii and 18ix.
406

Detail9.21.1: The Area of Contestation, “Cadragqua Lake” or Present-Day Lake Ontario. Note the French “F[ort]:
Frontenak” in black ink at the northeastern corner of the Lake and a proposed English fort in red along the southern
bank.

Detail 9.21.2: Mohawk and English Settlements on the “Maquas” [Mohawk] River

407

Detail 9.21.3: The Way to New France. Note the “chemin du Roy” (King’s Road) at the Top Right.

Detail 9.21.4: Iroquois Settlements
408

Detail 9.21.5: Dotted Red Line (Römer’s Path)

Detail 9.21.6: Beavers

409

Detail 9.21.7: Idyllic View of Iroquois Habitations with Man Relaxing

The Iroquois settlements occupied the center of the map, surrounded by forests and
unembellished empty space.

These settlements branched off waterways, many at the heads of
smaller rivers, and were connected to the Anglo-Dutch settlements via the Mohawk River.
Römer’s path demonstrated that overland movement was certainly possible but that rivers were
essential for moving goods for advancing trade or military expeditions. If this map showed the
infrastructure that made possible political and economic relations between two peoples, it
omitted the many legacies of war that had eroded those relations. Perhaps the implication was
that a fortification (projected near the junction of the Oswego River and Cadracqua Lake) would
render the landscape peaceful. The map’s natural landscape suggests a mixture of danger and
riches by including a variety of vicious (bears and foxes) and lucrative (beavers and deer)
animals. Its visually dominant cartouche, influenced by late seventeenth century Dutch
geography, presented the viewer with an exotic body intermingled with nature: An Iroquois man
with a tattooed face who has mastered a threatening animal, perhaps a tiger. In situating viewers
in an exotic imaginary space, the map placed the Iroquois man on an uncertain position along the
spectrum from human to animal. Perhaps this was intended to flame the ideological imperative
410
of bringing civilization to the wilderness—to help Bellomont secure the Anglican ministers he
believed would combat the growing French influence of Catholic missionaries. It also reinforced
the image of northeastern America as a periphery.
41

Detail 9.21.8: Cartouche. Full Text Reads: “A Mapp of Coll Romer his Journey to the 5 Indian Nations going from
new York to Albany here West to ye 3 Maquas Castels & from ye last [Castle] called Daganakoge WSW towards
Onydes a Second Nation & thence to ye Onnondogas ye third Nation, & there I was stoped & could not proceede
any further from sum important reasons and oblidged to go from Onnondages to the Lake of Canada, down Caneda
River till we meet Onnondages River and the Oswege River from whence we were to Return towards Onnondages
having no provision and thence to Onneydas & from thence to the Carrying place, wood kill & Bewver Dam so to
Onneydas againe thence to Albany as it is sett forth with Read pricked Lines.”

41
Benjamin Schmidt, Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).
411

Detail 9.21.9: Close up of Iroquois Man with Facial Tattoo.

Bellomont ultimately accomplished little of his agenda, however. He died on March 5,
1701 at the same time that the Board of Trade began declining in power around, having staked
their reputation on a scheme to reorganize the colonial charters to allow for the easy and uniform
implementation of royal policies. The political winds had looked promising with Parliamentary
victories for the Tories in 1698 and an expansion of Blathwayt’s influence on the Board.
However the Board’s bill was defeated at the hands of colonial lobbyists, notably Pennsylvania
proprietor William Penn and his coterie of Quakers. With the death of King William and
accession of Queen Anne in March 1702, the Board of Trade found itself isolated from and
unable to influence the Parliament and the Ministers. The frequency of meetings declined and
members turned over quickly. The Board was not irrelevant but neither was it able to drive a
vision of colonial centralization. Bellomont’s and King William’s were not the only deaths of
significance in these years. Count Frontenac had died on November 28, 1698 as well as the
Spanish King Charles II on November 1, 1700—without a clear heir to assume the throne.
European powers quickly began jockeying to establish who would succeed him, all hoping to
shift the European balance of power in their favor. Legal maneuvering in 1700 morphed into
412
outright war on the continent in 1701. England joined the fray in 1702, and its American colonies
followed suit.
42

Römer did not fare well without Bellomont, complaining to the Board of Trade that his
large number of responsibilities, from making “journeys among the Barbarians” to acting “as
Master of Fortification everywhere” with an insufficient provision of materials, impeded his
ability to do any one task well. New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire reverted to
having separate governors, which proved especially challenging to the engineer: Once he arrived
in a particular colony he found his movement restricted as governors refused to grant him leave,
fearing his work might go unfinished. As his work shifted from drafting maps and landscape
sketches to actually building fortifications, Römer found it difficult to control laborers and other
subordinates. He lamented that the colonists did not appreciate his work nor knew how to
execute it well without his supervision so that he received “every day a thousand annoyances”
because they lacked discipline, were insubordinate, “and of a very touchy temper.” Lest we think
this only a matter of rhetorical posturing within transatlantic correspondence we can point to on-
the-ground resistance: Laborers frequently refused to work for him, seemingly at the command
of officers who held disputes with Romer. In 1701 Romer complained to the Massachusetts
Council that the commander of Castle Island was “countenancing ye Souldiers & others in their
disobedience to my commands” The complaint would resurface in 1702 in regards to a different
commander. As Massachusetts Governor Joseph Dudley would later reflect, although Römer was
“a skilfull officer, and has served very well here . . . his Temper is harsh & Superiour and very

42
Steele, Politics of Colonial Policy, 60-81.
413
disagreeable to the People, that It has been a difficult Province, to keep matters quiet, passing
through His hands with other Commissioners.”
43

These experiences left the engineer deeply bitter. He declared himself “unwilling to
submit my self to ye directions of raw & inexperienced people w many of them pretend to be my
friends, but hate me in their hearts, as I have found by grievous experience during my Slaving &
toyling in sd Work.” In 1704 Römer requested leave to return to England. The following year the
Board of Ordnance agreed, sending a replacement engineer named John Redknap, but stipulated
that before Römer could depart, he must provide Redknap “all Copyes of Draughts, Shemes &
papers relating to the fortifications in these parts.” Römer lamented that the copying would “be a
worck of some time, so that these Services will inevitably hinder my passage”—which was
indeed true. It seems that at some point, perhaps in 1705, Dudley sent a batch of maps to the
Board of Trade—some of them new, others copies of Römer’s earlier fortification schematics.
Redknap and Dudley affixed their names to these works without crediting Römer (Fig. 9.22). His
name was erased but his style and his visual rhetoric lived on: Redknap, for example, made
recourse to the Union Jack (Fig. 9.23).
44

43
William Römer to Board of Trade (Boston: 16 Oct 1701), TNA, CO 5/862, No. 80; “Petition of Col. Romer” (18
Aug 1701) MA, MAC, 70:533; “Col. Romer’s Complaint of Abuse” (21 Oct 1702), MA, MAC, 70:590; Joseph
Dudley to Board of Trade (Boston: 25 July 1705), TNA, CO 5/863, No. 140; Remonstrance of Col Romer (Nov 11,
1705), MA, MAC, 71:170-3.
44
Romer to Board of Trade (4 Jan 1704) TNA, CO 5/863 No. 72; William Romer to Board of Trade (28 March
1705) TNA, CO 5/864, No. 154;
414

Fig. 9.22: John Redknap, “Pemaquid Fort in the Province of Main in America Latitude 43 55” (1705?), TNA, CO
700/Maine 10/1. Compare with Römer’s Fig. 9.17. The date is marked 1705 but Dudley did not appear to send them
to the Board of Trade in that year.

Details 9.22.1 and 2: Redknap and Dudley take credit for the map.

415

Fig. 9.23: John Redknap, “The North Battery in the Town of Boston in ye Province of the Massachusetts Bay in
America Latitude 42-25” (1705?), TNA, CO 700/Massachusetts 9

Detail 9.23.1: The Union Jack
416
Conclusion
After 1713, the mercantilist cartographic vision receded from America—though it was
revived in the middle of the eighteenth century during another period of imperial warfare. The
legacy of the period considered in this dissertation was twofold: An enduring corpus of
cartographic material and a network of mapmakers and enthusiasts in northeastern America, both
of which helped to elucidate the contours of French and British empires for people on both sides
of the Atlantic. Maps (especially the French ones) produced during this roughly thirty-year
period of internal and external colonial conflict enjoyed long lives throughout the eighteenth
century—much in the same way that earlier promotional maps of North America had been
recycled throughout the seventeenth century. While some people reproduced these maps to foster
transnational scientific collaboration in the spirit of “enlightenment,” many others did so to
sustain the geopolitical fears and fantasies that first emerged during this quarter century of
conflict. In this way, these maps helped to frame the long century of Anglo-French rivalry in
North America between 1688 and 1815. We might consider two examples here, both pertaining
to Quebec: The 1690 siege map by Robert de Villeneuve and the 1709 city plan by Jacques
Levasseur de Neré.
While scholars of print culture have generally described manuscript material entering into
print, both of these cartographic images followed trajectories from manuscript into print and then
back into manuscript. As noted in chapter five, the printers Nicolas de Fer and Pierre van der Aa
published Villeneuve’s siege map at least six times between 1694 and 1729 within atlases
dedicated to militaristic and exotic themes respectively. In 1744, meanwhile, the Parisian
hydrographer Jacques-Nicolas Bellin printed Neré’s 1709 map of Quebec (he did not include
Neré’s projected expansion of the lower city) in Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix’s Histoire
417
et Description Generale de la Nouvelle France, which emerged as the most important source of
information about Canada for metropolitan audiences in both France and Britain. Maps crossed
the English Channel regularly during the long eighteenth century—sometimes delivered by spies,
defectors, or map sellers and other times, sent in the name of transnational scientific
collaboration. Bellin compiled an atlas of all of “the maritime maps” that he had “drawn and
published between 1731 and 1751,” including his version of Neré’s 1709 Quebec map, which he
submitted to the Royal Society of London in 1752 as part of his application. Although British
copyists sometimes reproduced French maps in the early eighteenth century, this process
intensified during the 1750s, reflecting the rising quality of British cartography, the swelling
number of map copyists employed by the British military, and a new global Anglo-French
conflict known today as the Seven Years War.
1

1
Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix, Histoire et description generale de la Nouvelle France, avec le journal
historique d'un voyage fait par ordre du roi dans l'Amérique Septentrionnale 3 vols (Paris: Nyon fils, 1744);
Douglas W. Marshall, “Military Maps of the Eighteenth-Century and the Tower of London Drawing Room” Imago
Mundi 32 (January 1, 1980): 21–44; Peter Barber, “Necessary and Ornamental: Map Use in England Under the Later
Stuarts, 1660-1714” Eighteenth-Century Life 14, no. 3 (1990): 1–28, especially 19; Peter Barber and A. Stuart
Mason, “‘Captain Thomas, the French Engineer’: And the Teaching of Vauban to the English” Proceedings of the
Huguenot Society (1991), 25:279–87; Mireille Pastoureau, “Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, French Hydrographer, and the
Royal Society in the Eighteenth Century” The Yale University Library Gazette (1993), 68:65–69; Michèle Virol,
“Savoirs d’ingénieur acquis auprès de Vauban, savoirs prisés par les Anglais?” Documents pour l'histoire des
techniques (2010) Accessed 19 Feb 2015. Available: http://dht.revues.org/1263; Alexander James Cook Johnson,
“Charting the Imperial Will Colonial Administration & the General Survey of British North America 1764-1775”
Dissertation (University of Exeter, 2011), 40-83; Stephen Hornsby, Surveyors of Empire: Samuel Holland, J.W.F.
Des Barres, and the Making of the Atlantic Neptune (Montreal: McGill Queens University Press, 2011).
418

Fig. 10.1: Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, “Plan de la Ville de Quebec” in Charlevoix’s Histoire et Description Generale de
la Nouvelle France (Paris: Didot, 1744), Inset between III:72-73.

The transmission of these maps resisted any one single pathway. For example, King
George III had three manuscript copies of Bellin’s engraving but no copies of the siege map,
which seem to reside exclusively in North American archives. We can reasonably guess that the
siege map copies dating from the Seven Years War were produced in North America where
Bellin’s engravings may not have been present. Sometimes the copyists seem, judging from the
similarity of engraving to manuscript, to have been working directly with the engraved version.
In other instances, distortions suggest they were relying on a manuscript copy of the engraved
version or even a late iteration in a chain of such manuscript copies. Four of the five copies of
the siege map drafted during the 1750s embellished the terrain, transforming what was empty
space in the engraved versions into cultivated fields drawn in a variety of configurations with
none of the extant manuscript maps directly copied from any of the others. This mutation, then,
speaks not to the misdeeds of an individual copyist but rather to a pervasive aesthetic mindset
that sought to present foreign landscapes as fertile, improved, and worthy of conquest. It also
suggests that many more copies of this siege map existed during the 1750s than could be directly
419
inferred from the few that survive. Additionally, two of these manuscript copies feature
important erasures. The first depicted the smaller English vessels along the coastline but omitted
all but five of the larger ships (Fig. 10.2). The second was likely possessed by Major-General
John Campbell the 4
th
Earl of Loudoun as he planned attacks on Louisbourg and Quebec (Fig.
10.3). It expunged almost all references to the 1690 attack, acknowledging only the “place where
the English debarked.” No English ships occupied the river or the coast. No cannon trajectories
emerged from the walled city. Invasion and occupation have always rested on the displacement
of certain fictions with others, upon selective acts of forgetting and remembering. In this case, it
seemed necessary to omit the past defeat.
2

2
For the earliest manuscript copy of the de Fer version of the siege map see “Quebec: Ville de l'Amerique
septentrional dans la Nouvelle France” (1707), Harvard Library, Francis Parkman Map Collection, G3454.Q4
1707.Q4. For the three other extant copies likely produced during the 1750s, see Abraham d’Aubant, “Qubbec, ville
de l'Amerique septentrionale dans la Nouvelle France” (c.1755), Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division
(Washington, D.C.), G3454.Q4S2 1670 .A9 Vault; C[harles] Tarrant, “Quebec Ville de l'Amerique Septentrionale
dans la Nouvelle France” (1750s) and [F. Roule?], “Quebec Ville de l'Amerique Septentrionale dans la Nouvelle
France” (1750s), Library and Archives of Canada, H3/349/Québec/[1693-1694] (this is the call number for both
maps). The Huntington acquired its two copies of the siege map from the Museum Book Store in separate lots.
[Leon Kashnor], A Catalogue of Rare Maps of America from the Middle of the Sixteenth to the Middle of the
Nineteenth Centuries No. 93 (London: The Museum Book Store, 1924), 31-2 and A Catalogue of Rare Maps of
America from the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries No. 105 (London: The Museum Book Store, 1927), 71.
Abraham d’Aubant, Charles Tarrant, and Charles Rivez all served in the British army and were stationed in North
America during the Seven Years War, hence the likelihood during the 1750s. D’Aubant and Rivez possessed
Huguenot backgrounds, which perhaps helps to explain the transmission of de Fer’s atlas. Bellin’s “Plan de la Ville
de Quebec” became the most reproduced map of Quebec in the eighteenth century. Kenneth Kershaw has identified
thirty-eight different engraved states in French, German, Dutch, and English. Roughly half of these were printed
before the British conquest of Quebec in 1759. Kershaw, Early Printed Maps of Canada, IV:43-76. For the
manuscript copies of the Bellin engraving possessed by George III, see BL, K.Top 119:32-34—it is unclear if these
were copied for the King or acquired by him at a later date. Only one (Nº33), drafted by the copyist William Roy,
has a date (April 1755).

420

Fig. 10.2: “Ville de L'Amerique Septentrionale dans la Nouvelle France” (1757?), HL, Kashnor Collection of Early
American Maps, HM 15467.

Fig. 10.3: Fig. 18: Charles Rivez, “QUEBEC Ville de L'Amer[i]que Septentrionale Capitale du Canada” (c.1757),
HL, Kashnor Collection of Early American Maps, HM 15428.
421

By the end of the decade, printers began using to the maps to compare past and present.
In 1759 the engraver E. Oakley republished Bellin’s “Plan de la Ville de Quebec” (Fig. 10.4) by
an act of Parliament, including an inset with a version of the de Fer engraving. Its inclusion here
was pointedly historical—to illustrate “The Port & Environs of Quebec as it was when Attack’d
by the English” (Detail 10.4.1) in contrast with the supposedly current image by Bellin. In
September 1759 the French surrendered Quebec to the British after a long siege and a short
battle. The news reached London in late October and immediately engravers set to work. Now
the goal was to achieve distance from the earlier failure represented in and by the de Fer
engraving. The earliest depictions of the 1759 assault reframed the St. Lawrence River, flipping
the map’s orientation and expanding the area depicted. They also flooded the river with British
ships and filled the land with British encampments, suggesting an overwhelming British military
advantage. Later engravings (Fig. 10.5) borrowed from the topographical surveys of Samuel
Holland, presenting sophisticated and detailed renderings of this conquered landscape (Detail
10.5.1). It was as much a cartographic victory as a military one.
3

Fig. 10.4: “A Plan of Quebec” (London: E. Oakley, October 1759), HL, Rare Book Maps, 150256

3
Kershaw, Early Printed Maps of Canada, IV:15-41.
422

Detail 10.4.1: The Inset Based on the de Fer Engraving

Fig. 10.5: “correct plan of the environs of Québec and of the battle fought on the 13th September 1759 : together
with a particular detail of the French lines and batteries and also of the encampments batteries and attacks of the
British army ....drawn from the original Surveys taken by the engineers of the army” (London: Thomas Jefferys,
1759).

423

Detail 10.5.1: The Jefferys Map included a high level of topographical detail.

The British conquest of Quebec and the emergence of new maps, however, did not
completely eradicate the old ones. Some mapmakers retained Bellin’s basic prototype of the city
while altering specific details that reflected changes in the physical landscape. It also seems the
earlier maps continued to circulate through a tradition of manuscript copying. The Bibliothèque
Nationale de France holds one copy of the siege map, which had been traced onto transparent
paper (and later attached to a backing) with the note: “Copied from a Spanish manuscript, the
year V” (i.e. the fifth year of the Revolutionary French government, 1796 or 1797). This version
(Fig. 10.6), which possessed a different aesthetic style, was stripped of English vessels along
with most topographical details and many items in the key. It seemed a map many stages
removed from the original engraved version, suggesting a rich history of copying. Why might
have a Hispanophone have had interest in Quebec? Why would the French, now dispossessed of
Canada, have copied it? Did they not realize they already possessed the maps from which it
owed its ultimate derivation? Few clear answers exist. It seems, though, that whatever happens to
424
survive does not fully testify to the degree to which cartographic images produced between 1680
and 1713 were reproduced across the long eighteenth century. Frequently they did ideological
work along the way, fueling the fantasies about enemy landscapes that made imperial conflict
seem worthwhile.
4

Fig. 10.6: “Piano de la Ciudad de Quebec Capital del Canada” (1796), BNF, SH18, PF127, DIV7, P13D.

In considering the legacies of this period from 1680 to 1713, we might also look to the
mapmakers and cartographically literate individuals who migrated to northeastern America
during these decades. As one example, we might briefly revisit Captain Cyprian Southack,
discussed in chapters six and nine, who patrolled the New England coast from 1696 to 1714 as

4
For examples of post-invasion manuscript versions that altered the Bellin engraving to reflect changes in the
Quebec landscape, see BL, K.Top 119:36-37.
425
the commander of the Province Galley. Southack was among a cohort of Royalist and an
Anglican Englishmen who travelled to Boston during the Dominion of New England and
remained there after the 1689 revolt. During his early years in the colony he drafted two maps of
which we have knowledge. The first, referenced on p. 277, does not survive so that we cannot
evaluate it. The second, described in fn. 3 of chapter four, copied an existing map. It is not
exactly surprising that Southack, the son of a naval lieutenant, would have arrived in America
with some knowledge of European mapping practices but we might speculate here that it
increased during his time in America. Here we might point to his c.1697 acquisition of The
English Pilot The Fourth Book Pilot (London: n.d.), which he used to record drafts of his letters
along with navigational calculations and notes. We might also point to the list of skilled
mapmakers with whom he came into prolonged contact including William Römer in 1699 and
those associated with Admiral Hovenden Walker in 1711. Finally, we might consider his
cartographic output after the Walker expedition, which included many rhetorical pieces such as
his 1717 map (Fig. 6.10), printed in Boston, depicting a chain of French fortifications along the
Mississippi River.
Even more telling is his expansive New England Coasting Pilot (neither publication date
nor location provided) which included a robust list of eighty subscribers, including the South
Carolina Governor Francis Nicholson who paid “near One half part of the whole Expence.” Like
Southack, Nicholson first came to America during the Dominion of New England where he built
a successful career as an imperial official. Readers may recall that Nicholson travelled to Maine
in 1687 to encourage petitioning for the confirmation of land titles. He also backed the pleas for
a second Quebec expedition, travelling to London in 1710 with the four Indian “Kings” to help
organize this spectacle of empire. It seems that during this visit, he commissioned a portrait of
426
himself touching a globe positioned prominently next to him (Fig. 10.6). What we gleam from
the biographies of Southack, his patron Nicholson, and the other subscribers to the New England
Coasting Pilot is not simply an increase in the quality or quantity of cartographic output in the
English/British colonies, but the forging over this thirty year period of a network of people in
northeastern America, invested in the imperial project so long as it secured their status, who
publicly linked their identities to cartographic knowledge. The story looks somewhat different in
Canada but we find similar elements—for example, the rise of hydrographic education fueled by
the ongoing circulation through the colony of mapmakers with ties to the metropole. In both
French and British cases, these networks helped to establish maps as sources of cultural capital
that for decades aligned the interests of landowners, merchants, and metropolitan officials.
Ultimately, the imperial project of transplanting state cartographic practices during these years of
conflict, while implemented in uneven and intermittent ways, helps to explain how an imperial
vision rooted itself in North America.
5

5
Cyprian Southack “The New England Coasting Pilot from Sandy Hook, New York, unto Cape Canso in Nova
Scotia” (n.d.)—see two different editions at TNA, CO 700/New England 5 and Library of Congress, G1106.P5 S6
1734; LeGear, Nickelis, and Martin “The New England Coasting Pilot of Cyprian Southack;” Webb, “The Strange
Career of Francis Nicholson;” Sinclair Hitchings, “Guarding the New England Coast: The Naval Career of Cyprian
Southack” in Seafaring in Colonial Massachusetts, (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1980) 43-65;
Hinderaker, “The ‘Four Indian Kings’ and the Imaginative Construction of the First British Empire;” Pritchard,
“French Developments in Hydrography with Particular Reference to the St. Lawrence River During the Reign of
Louis XIV, 1665–1709.” Also see “Cyprian Southack letters” (1697-1705), MHS, Ms. N-949 (oversize). These
“letters” were recorded in an undated edition of The English Pilot The Fourth Book. The MHS catalog lists the
publication date as 1689, which is when the title was first published in London for William Fisher and John
Thornton, but the MHS copy lacks a title page so it is unclear if this date is accurate. The pages are out of order if
not missing entirely, which further complicates the dating.
427

Fig. 10.7: Photograph of portrait attributed to Michael Dahl c.1710, believed to be Francis Nicholson.
Maryland State Archives, Special Collections 1621-1-590.

428
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