Michigan: cartographic perspectives on the "Great Lakes State"

Michigan Historical Review, Spring, 2005 by Gerald A. Danzer

Since the beginning of American statehood, a map of the commonwealth has been an important expression of sovereignty and civic identity. The United States, it was true, cemented together the separate states, a unity created out of many entities, e pluribus unum. In the federal vision, however, individual states, especially new ones carved out of the common domain, also needed ways and means to establish their specific identities. Thus, each of the original states desired a map of its territory as soon as one could be produced. Such a document would mark the state's boundaries and establish its jurisdiction. Beyond that, it would inventory its resources, towns, and cities, putting them in the context of natural features. Viewers of such a map would be able to find their specific location and place it into the geographic setting of statehood. A sense of attachment to a polity with a given geographic dimension encouraged a feeling of belonging to an expanded community, articulated connections to a wider place, and suggested obligations of a larger citizenship. (1)

Residents of Michigan, which was admitted to the union in 1837, shared in this desire for an appropriate state map and a cartographic identity for the state's citizens. Although all the states created from the Northwest Territory received separate maps in the process of attaining statehood, Michigan had a unique geographical situation to proclaim. Over the years its citizens came to think of theirs as the "Great Lakes State," and indeed it was a special case because it alone of the new states was surrounded by the Great Lakes, its boundaries defined mainly by the lakes rather than by narrower rivers or lines on a map. A fundamental fact of Michigan's geography is that the state lies entirely in the watershed of the Great Lakes. The exception to this statement is a few square miles of Gogebic County at the western edge of the Upper Peninsula. Michigan is the only state so situated, a geographical fact that sets it markedly apart from its sister states carved out of the Northwest Territory, each of which has the bulk of its territory in the Mississippi valley. This article explores a few aspects of Michigan's uniqueness by making a general survey of the maps of the Michigan region from the earliest mapmakers to the present. (2)

Much of the interest in the early history of Michigan maps centers on the gradual discovery of the Great Lakes by the French and the appearance of these shapes on the portrayals of North America. (3) Geographic information concerning the interior of North America was often guarded or misunderstood, filled with gaps that tempted imaginations and encouraged adventure. Yet out of the process came two fundamentally different ways to perceive the heartland of North America, an initial orientation by way of the St. Lawrence estuary and the Great Lakes basin followed by a basic realignment of vision suggested by the dendritic pattern of streams and rivers that gradually defined the Mississippi valley. There was some tension between these two ways of comprehending the continent, and the French holdings eventually split into two parts, Canada and Louisiana, each positioned along a different geographic spine and each reflecting a different cartographic tradition.

Cartographically, the two angles of vision led to interesting results, especially as the mapmakers aligned the two watersheds, establishing their correct relationship to each other. Knowledge of these two approaches to visualizing America's heartland opens a door to understanding the history of Michigan maps and the state's developing conception of itself as the Great Lakes State. The actual lay of the land, of course, usually dictates the lines, shapes, and symbols on our maps. But each map uses this fund of knowledge selectively, addressing particular purposes and specific audiences, providing a center, an orientation, a set of icons, names, colors, and typefaces to present its message in the most convincing way.

Because the overriding objective of Europe's Age of Discovery was to reach the Orient by sailing westward, there was an initial inclination among European mapmakers to portray the intervening landmass as indented by deep bays and featuring long rivers and great lakes. In the best of all possible worlds, a convenient water route would facilitate seaborne commerce in the high middle latitudes, in other words, a Northwest Passage. In strict scientific honesty, the makers of the early maps of North America should have left the heartland blank, and some did or covered it with elaborate cartouches, illustrative drawings, or explanatory texts. But there were just enough early communications with Native Peoples to justify recording their suggestions about large lakes and long rivers on the map, which lent a hopeful tone to the cartography.

The first separately published map devoted to the Americas, Sebastian Munster's celebrated woodcut of 1540, may have reflected a misleading observation by Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524. While viewing the North Carolina coast, the navigator peered over barrier islands to waters beyond, imagining a Western Sea that was, he hoped, connected to the Pacific. This "Sea of Verrazano" also appeared as a prominent feature on the world map in Munster's Geographia Universalis, which appeared in many versions over the next several decades. (4)