1754 Buache / Ochagach Map of Lands West of the Great Lakes (American Indian Cartography)

Auchagah Map, a unique synthesis of American Indian and European cartography.

This is Philipe Buache's c. 1754 dual map of inland water routes west of Lake Superior extending, ostensibly, to the Pacific. It is an important and intellectually complex juxtaposition of two radically divergent cartographic conceptions of the North American interior: American Indian (Cree) geographic knowledge (known as the Auchagah Map) and Philippe Buache's speculative synthesis of French exploration, hydrographic theory, and the elusive dream of a navigable route to the Pacific. Within a decade of this map's issue, the route revealed here between Lake Superior and Winnipeg became the primary artery of the Canadian fur trade.

A Closer Look - The Cree Map

The upper map, titled Réduction de la Carte tracée par le Sauvage Ochagach et autres [Reduction of the Map Drawn by the Native Ochagach and Others], is derived from a manuscript compiled from three maps supplied in 1728-29 by Cree informants identified as Auchagach (Ochagach), Tacchigis, and La Marteblanche. It traces a canoe route from Lake Superior through a demanding network of rivers, lakes, rapids, and portages toward 'Lac Ouimpigon' (Lake Winnipeg) and beyond to the 'Fl. de l'O' (River of the West) and largely unknown western interior. At the river's headwaters appear the 'Mgnes de pierres brillantes' [Mountains of Shining Stones], a descriptive American Indian reference to the glittering peaks of the Rocky Mountains.

Its seemingly unusual linear configuration reflects the practical geography of canoe travel rather than European cartographic conventions of scale, orientation, and projection. Rivers, lakes, rapids, and portages are presented as a sequence of navigational experiences: a map concerned less with measured space than with movement through the landscape.

Like the larger map below, this map is derived from indigenous sources and personal exploration by the French coureur des bois, Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de La Vérendrye (1685 - 1749), a French military officer, fur trader, and explorer.

A Closer Look - The French Coureur des Bois Map

The lower and larger map is likewise directly connected to La Vérendrye and his sons. It encompasses the Coureur des Bois primary stomping grounds, the three great drainage systems of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence, Hudson Bay, and the Mississippi River, with coverage extending from Lake Huron and Lake Michigan west beyond the Rocky Mountains to the supposed 'Mer de L'Ouest'.

It identifies fur trading depots established by the La Vérendrye enterprise, including Fort Saint-Pierre, Fort Saint-Charles on the Lake of the Woods, and Fort Bourbon in present-day Manitoba. Mountain ranges divide the continent into vast hydrographic basins, while conjectural waterways press westward toward the presumed River and Sea of the West.

American Indian Cartography Transmitted Through European Hands

The source of the upper map is a French manuscript compiled from three Cree maps obtained by the fur traders La Vérendrye or his sons in 1729. The original American Indian mapmakers are identified elsewhere in La Vérendrye's journals as Ochagach (Auchagach), Tacchigis, and La Marteblanche.

In 1729, La Vérendrye assumed command of Fort Kaministiquia, near present-day Thunder Bay on Lake Superior. The post stood at the western limits of sustained French geographic knowledge and served as a jumping-off point for the fur trade and exploration further into the interior.

Like most fur traders, La Vérendrye maintained close relations with local American Indian groups, in this case the Cree. From them, he acquired the geographic knowledge used to compile this map. The compiled manuscript map traveled east through the colonial administration and eventually entered the official collections in France, where it became available to Buache.

[The La Vérendrye manuscript map, or at least copies of it, survive in manuscript at the BNF (GE DD-2987 (8696 B)), where it is incorrectly attributed to Guillaume de L'Isle and misdated 1722, based on a misreading of the map's legend. It is unlikely that La Vérendrye collected the source map before 1729 and unlikely that it made its way back to France before 1730, by which time De L'Isle would have passed (d. 1726). The more likely author of the BNF map is Buache himself, or potentially Nicholas de L'Isle, who worked closely with Buache. Some of the handwriting on the BNF manuscript map closely resembles known examples in Buache's hand.]

The resulting printed map is thus neither an unmediated Indigenous artifact nor a wholly European creation. It records Cree geographic knowledge selected for communication to French interlocutors, redrawn by a French draftsman, and ultimately engraved and published for a European audience. (Notably, compared to the source manuscripts at the BNF, Buache truncates the distances between Lac Tecamamiouen, Lac de Bois, and Lac Ouinipigon, while exaggerating the portages between Lake Superior and Lac Tecamamiouen. Possibly to fit the most relevant content more easily on the small page.) Its several stages of transmission make it a uniquely revealing documentation of 18th-century cross-cultural cartographic engagement.

Buache's Synthesis of French Exploration

Indigenous reports of waterways extending westward from Lake Superior encouraged La Vérendrye to undertake an ambitious series of expeditions into the continental interior. He, his sons, and their associates traveled beyond the Lake of the Woods and Lake Winnipeg into present-day Manitoba, establishing a network of forts intended to support both exploration and the expansion of the French fur trade.

Buache's lower map attempts to reconcile manuscript maps generated by these expeditions. Like the Ochagach map, it depicts an extensive river system leading westward from Lake Superior. It differs, however, by orienting the route along a northwest-southeast axis. Buache attributed the discrepancy to what he regarded as the Indigenous mapmakers' insufficient attention to seasonal changes in the position of sunrise and sunset - an observation that reveals as much about European assumptions of cultural and scientific superiority as it does about the maps themselves.

The two maps also differ in their treatment of the route beyond Lake Winnipeg. Ochagach's map shows the River of the West flowing directly westward from the lake. Buache instead proposes two possible passages farther south and west. One crosses a narrow mountain chain, apparently intended to represent the Rocky Mountains; the other follows a tributary of the Mississippi through the 'L. du Brochet.' To accommodate this theory, Buache gives the upper Mississippi an extraordinary westward bend, bringing it almost to the foot of the western mountains.

The River and Sea of the West

The mythical River and Sea of the West (Mer l'Ouest) emerged from Europe's centuries-long search for a navigable passage across North America to the Pacific. The concept of a great western sea has precedents in 16th-century maps depicting the Pacific penetrating deeply into the continent - Verrazzåano's Sea, as it is known. Its more familiar 18th-century form appears to have originated with Guillaume De L'Isle around 1695, perhaps through a combination of reports concerning Juan de Fuca's broad Pacific inlet and geographic conjecture. Guillaume De L'Isle mapped the sea in his notes, but never committed it to print, recognizing it as conjectural.

The 'Mer de Ouest' hypothesis first appeared in print on Jean-Baptiste Nolin's world map of 1700. Philippe Buache and Joseph-Nicolas Delisle revived it spectacularly in the early 1750s, drawing on surviving Guillaume De L'Isle manuscript work and, in part, on the supposed authority of Admiral Bartholomew de Fonte. Fonte's fictitious voyage entered European geographic literature through an account published in the Monthly Miscellany, or Memoirs for the Curious in April and June 1708, possibly fabricated by the periodical's editor.

The River of the West was a related but more adaptable hypothesis. Drawing on incomplete Indigenous reports and the purported journeys of Lahontan, La Vérendrye, and others, European cartographers imagined that one of the rivers flowing westward from the Great Lakes or upper Mississippi crossed, or nearly so, the 'Mountains of Shining Stones' before emptying into the Pacific or the Sea of the West.

By the later 18th century, this conjecture evolved into a remarkably convenient transcontinental waterway, often separated from the Mississippi basin by only a short portage. The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804 - 1806) eventually revealed the formidable mountain geography lying between the continent's eastern and western river systems.

However mistaken Buache's conception of the River and Sea of the West, the Carte Physique represents a serious and influential effort to interpret the geography of western North America from fragmentary and culturally diverse sources. Its two maps preserve, respectively, an early transmission of Indigenous geographic knowledge and an ambitious European attempt to synthesize French field reports and manuscript cartography from the 1720s and 1730s.

Translation of the Text Panel

The lengthy text in the lower left is most revealing and interesting; we translate it here in full,

Here the three maps made by our French officers, discussed in the Considérations, pages 39 and following, have been reconciled with one another and compared with what M. Jérémie wrote concerning the course of the Bourbon River. Our officers observed that Fort Caministigouia lies at latitude 47° 27′, Fort Saint-Pierre at 47° 15′, and Fort Saint-Charles at 48° 27′. From the latter two observations, and from the courses of the rivers farther west, it must be recognized that the Mississippi—which is little known to us above the Falls of Saint Anthony—runs from west to east, and not from the northeast, as has hitherto been supposed.

On the map made by the Native Ochagach, the lakes and rivers run westward from Lake Superior, whereas on the maps of the French officers they take a west-northwesterly direction. This difference appears to arise in part from the fact that, in the course of their travels, the Natives do not pay sufficiently close attention to the different points on the horizon at which the sun rises and sets during the different seasons. This consideration must therefore be taken into account when examining their descriptions and comparing them with those of more enlightened nations.

The mountain chains indicated by the succession of river sources divide this part of Canada into three terrestrial drainage basins. One inclines toward the Gulf of Mexico and contains the waters that form the Mississippi; another inclines toward Hudson Bay, into which flows the Bourbon River, the outlet of the newly discovered lakes; and the third inclines toward the Northern Ocean, into which the St. Lawrence River empties. As the latter is formed principally by the waters of Lake Superior and the other lakes, its sources are now seen to lie toward Lakes Sesakinaga and Tecamamioen, near which are also found the sources of the Bourbon River.

Although our officers used symbols on the maps of their discoveries to indicate heights of land and the courses of rivers, they nevertheless adopted, like the Natives, certain supposed connections between rivers flowing in opposite directions, although passage between them is possible only by portage; several examples are given in the Considérations, pages 145 and following. To represent the natural configuration of the terrain, however, mountains have here been drawn—instead of symbols—between the sources of the neighboring rivers west of Lake Superior, some of which empty into that lake, while others flow westward or southward.

Publication History

This example is a separate issue representing the 1754 first state. The map is most commonly associated with Philippe Buache's Considérations Géographiques et Physiques sur les nouvelles découvertes au nord de la Grande Mer, a collection of essays addressing the geography of the North Pacific and the American West. The Considérations have a date of 1753 on the title page, but were likely not published by Ballard until 1754. The 1754 date on this map suggests that it was added late to the compilation. The second state, published by Ballard in the Considérations, differs only through the addition of the page number '146' above the upper-right neat line. All examples are of the utmost rarity.

Cartographers

Auchagah (fl. c. 1700 - 1740) was a Cree leader mentioned in the journals of the French fur trader and explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vérendrye (1685 - 1749). His name is also transliterated as Ochagach, Ochakah, or Ochagac. La Vérendrye questioned Auchagah extensively on routes west of Lake Superior, and Auchagah produced a map that was later sent to France. Auchagah may have served as a guide for La Vérendrye and his children on more than one occasion. As it was, La Vérendrye held a high opinion of Auchagah, describing him as 'the man most capable of guiding a party and with whom there would be no fear of our being abandoned on the way.' Auchagah's work in mapping the rivers and lakes West of Lake Superior helped establish Grand Portage as a headquarters of the Canadian fur trade and the Northwest Company.   Further Details...

Phillipe Buache (February 7, 1700 - January 24, 1773) was a late 18th-century French cartographer and map publisher. Buache began his cartographic career as the workshop assistant and apprentice to the important and prolific cartographer Guillaume de L'Isle (1685 - 1726). Upon De L'Isle's untimely death, Buache took over the publishing firm, cementing the relationship by marrying De L'Isle's daughter. Over the years, Buache republished many of De L'Isle's maps and charts. Buache was eventually appointed Premier Geographe du Roi, a position created for and previously held by Guillaume de L'Isle. Buache is most respected for introducing hachuring as a method for displaying underwater elevation on a two-dimensional map surface. Buache compiled maps based upon geographic knowledge, scholarly research, the journals of contemporary explorers and missionaries, and direct astronomical observation. Nevertheless, even in 18th-century Paris, geographical knowledge was severely limited - especially regarding those unexplored portions of the world, including the poles, the Pacific northwest of America, and the interior of Africa and South America. In these areas, Buache, like his primary rival Robert de Vaugondy (fl. c. 1716 - 1786), must be considered a speculative geographer or 'positive geographer'. Speculative geography was a genre of mapmaking that evolved in Europe, particularly Paris, in the middle to late 18th century. Cartographers in this genre filled in unknown areas on their maps with speculations based on their vast knowledge of cartography, personal geographical theories, and often dubious primary source material gathered by explorers and navigators. This approach, which attempted to use the known to validate the unknown, naturally engendered many rivalries. Buache's feuds with other cartographers, most specifically Didier Robert De Vaugondy, resulted in numerous conflicting papers being presented before the Académie des Sciences, of which both were members. The era of speculative cartography effectively ended with the late 18th-century explorations of Captain Cook, Jean-François de Galaup de La Perouse, and George Vancouver. Buache was succeeded by his nephew Jean-Nicholas Buache de Neuville (1741 - 1825).   Further Details...

Guillaume-Nicolas Delahaye (1725 - February 24, 1802) was the most prolific member of the Delahaye (De-La-Haye) family of engravers active in Paris throughout the 18th century. Given that the name, Delahaye literally translates to 'of the Hague' it can be assume they were French Huguenots who were forced to flee the Netherlands under threat of religious persecution. Born in Paris, he was the son of patriarch Jean-Baptiste Delahaye and brother to Jean-Baptistie-Henri Delahaye. It is said that his godfather, who held him at the baptismal font, was none other than the famous french cartographer Guillaume de L'Isle. The Delahaye family engraved for many of the great cartographers of 18th century Paris, including Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville, Didier Robert de Vaugondy, Jean-Baptiste de Mannevillette, and Jean-Nicolas Buache, among others. He was awarded the public office Premier Graveur du Roi and worked on a series of maps illustrating the king's hunts around Versailles. Guillaume also worked with foreign cartographers such as Tomas Lopez of Madrid. Possibly Delahaye's most significant map is A Map of the Country between Albemarle Sound and Lake Erie prepared for the memories of Thomas Jefferson. He married in 1758. In total he engraved some 1200 maps. Delahaye died in Charenton. In 1792, his daughter, Antoinette Marie Delahaye (1773-1857), married the geographer Jean-Denis Barbie du Bocage.   Further Details...

Condition

Good. Engraving on laid paper. 9 × 13.25 inches at neat line, plus margins. Evening toning and minor staining. Several short marginal tears. Minor loss at the lower-left corner affecting the 'D' in Delahaye. Laid on linen at an early date.

References

Kershaw, K., Early Printed Maps of Canada, no. 1111. McGuirk, D., The Last Great Cartographic Myth: Mer de l’Ouest, no. 43. Wheat, C. I., Mapping the Transmississippi West, vol. I, no. 132, pp. 143 and 214. Storm, Colton, A Catalogue of the Everett D. Graff Collection of Western Americana, no. 460. Streeter, vol. VI, no. 3451. Verner, C. and Stubbs, The North Part of America, pp. 102-105. Neill, E. D., The History of Minnesota, pp. 800-801. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, The G. Malcolm Lewis Collection of Cartographic Activities of the North American Indian and Inuit Peoples, particularly the entry concerning the incorporation of the three 1728–1729 Cree maps by Ochagach ('Auchagach'), La Marteblanche, and Tacchigis. National Overseas Archives, FR ANOM COL E 199 file La Vérendrye (Gaultier de La Veranderie, Pierre). Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans, GE DD-2987 (8696 B). Dépot des cartes et plans de la Marine, Service hydrographique, Paris, MS 4044B, No. 39. Recueil 67 no2/2.