Michigan: cartographic perspectives on the "Great Lakes State"

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

After La Salle's death, Hennepin asserted that he had been the first European to descend the Mississippi River all the way to its mouth, and he produced two new maps to substantiate this claim. Both showed the "Newly Discovered Lands" and traced the entire course of the Great River, but placed its mouth at the western edge of the Gulf of Mexico, the actual location of the Rio Grande. Hennepin's Mississippi River also lacked a delta, a second major clue that he had not actually descended the river. His larger-scale new map, dated 1697, clearly placed major tributaries of the Great River in close proximity to those of the Great Lakes (fig. 1). This map went through many editions extending well into the eighteenth century, often with the addition of place names and some alterations in the geographical features. Hennepin's maps exerted great influence on those issued in every center of cartographic production. In England, for example, Robert Morden developed "A New Map of the English Empire in America" to replace several small maps he had previously published in 1680 and 1687. (21) In his first effort, Morden's crude rendition of the Great Lakes pictured them as open-ended. The second version, for a pocket atlas, showed all five of the lakes in recognizable fashion, but they were pinched together beneath an enormous Hudson Bay. His "New Map" of 1695, which was more than four times as large, used the extra space to relate the English colonies to both the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The most unusual feature that Morden placed on his 1695 map was a long mountain range extending, in our geography, from the Straits of Mackinac to the Everglades in Florida. It cut through the center of Michigan's Lower Peninsula and then slanted eastward to join the Appalachian spine. A note explained that the Michigan section of this cordillera featured a high plateau: "On top of these mountains is a plain like a tetras [sic] walk above 200 miles in length." Thus Morden furnished the future state with a wondrous topography as well as a unique situation. In 1719 the map was slightly revised by John Senex for inclusion in his New General Atlas. (22)

After Hennepin's maps, or really after the reports of Joliet, Marquette, and La Salle, American cartography needed to portray a midcontinent balanced between great lakes and great rivers. Some maps by Sanson were updated to reflect this new perspective, but several of the most impressive maps in the new fashion came from Italian cartographers. This "Italian chapter" in North American maps started with Vincenzo Coronelli, a Franciscan priest with a great interest in the world picture emerging from the European discoveries that occurred during his lifetime. In 1688 he published a celebrated set of gores for making a terrestrial globe measuring about forty-two inches in diameter. The Great Lakes, shown in a remarkably accurate design, appeared above a great-river system whose branches fed a sturdy stem that flowed due south toward the western shore of the Gulf of Mexico. (23) For the present investigation, one of the most useful maps produced by Coronelli, featuring the western part of Canada, was engraved in Paris in 1688. Several later versions appeared in Venice, one with the title "La Louisiana." (24) It is noteworthy that the peninsulas later designated as Michigan lie entirely within the Great Lakes basin. In contrast, the southern and western reaches of the Great Lakes show tributaries of the "River Colbert" (Mississippi) reaching out to almost touch several short rivers belonging to the lakes. Coronelli has marked these connecting points as portages in several places. Scenes of Indian life take up blank spaces on the map and trees are scattered across the landscape, reminders that this was a productive country, especially for the fur trade.