1796 Collot Map of the Country of the Illinois (Mississippi River near Missouri, St. Louis, Illinois

A map of 'superlative' rarity, this is Victor Collot's 1796 map of the Mississippi River in the vicinity of St. Louis, Missouri, or what at the time was known as the 'Country of the Illinois.' Focusing on the Mississippi River valley, this map covers from the confluence of the Mississippi, Fort St. Lewis (St. Louis, Missouri) and the confluence with the Missouri River, as far as the confluence of the Mississippi with the Illinois River. The map is extraordinarily detailed throughout being the finest map of any part of the Mississippi River yet published. It identifies numerous towns, ruins, and businesses, and American Indian settlements, including Bourbon, St. Genevieve, Gabory, a 'wooden fort,' Luzieres, numerous 'salt works,' Kaskaskias (the first European village in the region), 'windmills in ruins,' Fort Chartres (ruins), St. Philip, Hull's Town, Sandy Meadows, Denis, New Design or Corne de Cerf, Fountain, Carondelet, St, Louis, Florissant, Marais des Liards, and St. Charles. Most of these towns have since been erased by the meandering Mississippi or subsumed into the urban sprawl of modern St. Louis. It also notes the remarkable American Indian mound builder citadel of Cahokia. In addition, Collot has identified various roads, mountains, lakes and ponds, cliffs, swamps, the current of the Mississippi River, 'Indian Ancient Tombs,' and unnamed farmsteads. Relief is rendered in hachure.

French settlement began in 1703 with the founding of the town of Kaskaskia, which was followed by Fort Chartres (identified here as 'Ruins of the Town and Fort of Chartres') in 1718. In 1763, when the Treaty of Paris that ended the French and Indian War dismantled most of French America, the vicinity of Fort St. Lewis (St. Louis) was the most densely populated French enclave south of the St. Lawrence Valley and north of New Orleans. In 1786, eager to recover New World territory lost by the deposed French monarchy, the Directoire Executif assigned Victor Collot, then Governor of Guadeloupe, to complete a clandestine reconnaissance of the Mississippi. At the time this region was divided between Spain, which controlled New Orleans and the west bank of the Mississippi, and the United States, which dominated all of the territory east of the Mississippi (with the exception of Florida). Collot's mission, in addition to assessing the military preparedness of the region, was most likely to rally French colonists and their American Indian allies in support of a renewed push for French empire in America.

Collot did not however pass unseen, a fact that underscores just how remarkable his highly detailed maps and notes were, for he must have been under near constant scrutiny by suspicious Spanish officials. Collot himself records keeping two copies of all notes so that, if one were seized by the Spanish, he would have a spare. When he arrived in New Orleans on October 27 of 1796 he was arrested by Carondelet, the Spanish Governor of Louisiana. He was subsequently exiled from Spanish America on December 4. Back in France Collot spent 4 years preparing his notes, but the politically sensitive material was suppressed due to Napoleon's efforts to reclaim Louisiana via the 'secret' Treaty of San Ildelfonso. Louisiana returned to French control in 1800 and Collot was named commissioner. Nevertheless, in 1803, just before Collot planned to leave France to take up the post, Napoleon, strapped for cash after years of incessant warfare, decided to sell Louisiana to Thomas Jefferson in the famous Louisiana Purchase, possibly the most significant political event in the history of North America.

Collot's great work, Journey in North America, which included this map, among others, was finally printed in 1805. It included several fine maps and engravings by Pierre Antoine-Francois Tardieu, one of the finest French engravers of the period. Collot, unfortunately, died in the same year, a fact that further frustrated attempts to release the work. The volumes were shelved for 21 years until they fell into the 'hands of M. Bertrand, an eminent publisher in Paris, who reserved 100 copies of the English and 300 of the French edition, and made waste paper of the remainder' (Rich, Bibliotheca Americana Nova, 2:185). Thus we know that only 400 possible copies of this map exist, many of which have found their way into institutional libraries. Of the remainder, we have no way of knowing how many might have survived the subsequent century. Truly a once in a lifetime opportunity for the right collector.