1703 Lahontan Map of the Great Lakes, Mississippi River, and Riviere Longue (first edition)

A foundational map of extreme importance and influence, this is the rare 1703 first edition of Baron Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce de Lahontan's, seminal map of the westernmost Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, and an enigmatic tributary river, the Riviere Longue or Long River, extending westwards towards the Rocky Mountains. Although the Baron de Lahontan's map has been severely criticized and considered by some apocryphal, it exerted a profound influence on other influential mapmakers of the era including Herman Moll, John Senex, Henry Popple, and Guillaume Delisle.

Although framed as a single map, this is in fact two separate depictions separated by a dotted line: the right hand Carte de la Riviere Longue et de Quelques Autres (Map of the Long River and Some Others) covering from a recognizable Lake Michigan (Lac des Ilinois) and Lake Superior (Lac Superieur) westward beyond the Mississippi an unclear distance; and the Carte que les Gnacsitares ont Dessine Sur (Map drawn on the Gnacsitares) covering from some unknown point far west of the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains and beyond. We will deal with each maps separately before addressing the document as a whole.

The first map is highly recognizable and is based upon earlier cartography combined with Lahontan's firsthand observations in the field during the Beaver Wars or Iroquois Wars. Being gifted with languages Lahontan had mastered Algonquin and so was sent with a detachment of French and indigenous American Indian troops to harass the Iroquois. He spent much of this time hunting and exploring the Upper Mississippi Valley, where he developed a romanticized impression of the local American Indians in line with the 'Noble Savage' trope. Lahontan was not trained as a cartographer or field surveyor, so his map is best understood as an amalgam of earlier maps intended as a platform to illustrate a loose interpretation of his own personal field observations. We can clearly recognize both Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. The Illinois River is evident, as is the Wabash. Based upon earlier maps he identifies the Missouri extending westward from the Mississippi near the bottom edge of the map and offers reasonable approximations of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers.

The main focus of interest in the great river extending westward of from the Mississippi here identified as the Riviere Longue or Long River. This river would become Lahontan's greatest contribution to cartography. While some scholars have decried the Long River as a fabrication, a close study of the map as well as Lahontan's journals suggests strongly that Lahontan had actually discovered and explored, without knowing it, much of the upper Missouri River generations before Lewis and Clark would embark upon their own famous voyage. Lahontan may have followed the Minnesota River than portaged overland to meet the upper Missouri around Sioux City, mistaking it for the same river. His map and narrative describes encounters with the Eokoros, the Esanapes, the Gnacsitares, and the Mozeemlek. The Eokoros may in fact have been the Arikaras, the pronunciation of which may have sounded similar to Lahontan's ear. If so, both the location and Lahontan's description of Eokoros life, fits. Between lands of the Gnacsitares and Esnapes, Lohontan divides the map with a double dotted line, marking the division between his actual explorations and maps he derived from indigenous peoples.

Which brings our focus to the second or left most map presented here. This map continues to follow the Riviere Longue, but here the name has change to Riviere Morte (River of Death). The source of the Riviere Morte, high in the North-South mountain range Lahontan's indigenous informants describe as 'so high that one must pass an infinity of windings and turnings so that he may cross them.' This is surely an apt description of the Rocky Mountains. West of these mountains Mozeemlek captives described a great river flowing westward into the lands of the Tahuglauk, a people who lived near a great salt sea or lake, lived in plank houses, wore conical hats, and built great canoes. To us, this seems a very apt description of the Columbia River and the American Indians of the Northwest Coast, specifically the Tillamook, who fit this description exactly and whose name bears a phonetic resemblance to Tahuglauk.

Regardless of whether our speculations regarding the veracity of Lahontan's explorations have any merit, his narrative and this accompanying map proved enormously popular in Europe, being published in multiple editions. Lahontan's Long River itself must have seemed a godsend to European powers and their cartographers who, despairing of finding the Northwest Passage, dreamed of a river route through the continent to the Pacific, where beaver pelts and other furs could be loaded onto ships and sailed to the rich markets of China. Lahontan's map was directly incorporated into most new maps of North America published in the early to middle part of the 18th century, including maps by such influential cartographers as Guillaume Delisle, Herman Moll, John Senex, and others.

This map appeared in the 1703 first edition of Lahontan's Nouveaux Voyages de M. le Baron de Lahontan dans l’Amerique Septentrionale ('New Voyages of the Baron de Lahontan in North America'). There are two states of the first edition, this being the first, identifiable by the absence of a longitudinal scale at the top of the map. Subsequent reissues of this map were vastly reduced in size and scale.