1612 Captain John Smith Map of Virginia (Rare Second State)

Earliest Acquirable Example of a Foundational Americanum.

This is the earliest acquirable state of Captain John Smith's 1612 map of the Virginia colony and Chesapeake Bay, in a remarkably clean, bright example. Its importance cannot be overstated. Smith's fine survey work, combined with reports from indigenous American Indian tribes, resulted in one of the most essential maps of America to emerge in the 17th century. Philip D. Burden, the author of The Mapping of North America, called it 'one of the most important maps of America ever produced and certainly one of the greatest influence.'

A Closer Look

Smith’s map is oriented to the west, largely a chartmaking convention: presenting the coastline as it would be approached by sea. The map spans from Cape Henry in the south to the Susquehanna River; it reaches inland as far as the Appalachian Mountains. The Chesapeake Bay appears in full, as do many of its river estuaries. While well-informed about waterways, the beautiful mountains depict ranges where there are, in fact, none. In the upper right is the map's key and a depiction of a Susquehanna warrior. At the top, a flowing, elegantly engraved banner names the map; below it is displayed the British Royal Arms. Beyond the artfully placed banner lies the land of the Massawomecks, whose villages lie on the shores of a mysterious body of water.

In the upper-left is a depiction of the chief of the Powhatan, enthroned before a great fire in his longhouse. Powhatan is the chief in the famed legend regarding the capture and trial of John Smith and Smith's fabled liberation at the behest of the chief's daughter, Pocahontas. Romantic tales aside, Powhatan likely saw Smith and his Englishmen as potential allies against rival American Indian groups, such as the Massawomecks and the Susquehanna, that were pressing hard against his borders.

Smith did contact and trade with both neighboring tribes. The Susquehanna impressed the diminutive (5' 3') Smith with their size: the depiction of their warrior includes the text 'The Sasquehanougs are a Gyant-like people and thus attired.' Smith's interactions with these other tribes expanded the map's reach well beyond what his fellow colonists could achieve on their own. The Maltese crosses marked along the rivers represent the limits of his actual exploration: 'To the crosses hath bin discovered; what beyond is by relation.' Thus, the crosses show the areas derived from actual European exploration and those about which Smith had only the verbal report of his Indian contacts. Some of this information must have been disappointing - the rivers didn't go all that far. But reports, particularly from the Massawomecks, would have been tantalizing.

How Much Land can be There, Surely?

The placement of the map's title banner separates the Virginia colony from the Massawomecks, making the distance between the two locations ambiguous. (Dutch copies of this map, with smaller title cartouches, removed that separation, creating the impression that Virginia and the Massawomecks were close to one another.)

The great hope of European explorers throughout this period was that some means could be found of quickly traversing North America, or circumventing it entirely, in the effort to reach the Pacific and the wealth of the East Indies and China. Many maps of the 16th century had already proposed a massive bay cutting into North America - the 'Sea of Verrazzano' - easily accessible from the vicinity of Virginia. Indeed, the Virginia colony's trade potential depended entirely on it being a practical access point to the riches of Asia.

Herein lies the importance of the body of water appearing in the land of the Massawomecks. Smith describes this tribe in his The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles:

Beyond the mountains from whence is the head of the River Patawomeke, the Savages report, inhabit their most mortal enemies, the Massawomecks, upon a great salt water, which by all likelihood is either some part of Canada, some great lake, or some inlet of some sea that falleth into the South Sea. These Massawomekes are a great nation and very populous.... from the French (they) have their hatchets and Commodities by trade.

Although Smith relates violent encounters with a Massawomeck raiding party on the Chesapeake, the Massawomeck were a fur-trapping and trading tribe nearly as new to the Chesapeake region as Smith - their homeland was actually Lake Erie. Thus, the 'Massawomeck' body of saltwater appearing on this map can be understood as an early, secondhand depiction of Lake Erie. Smith, by contrast, hoped for an even larger body of water: the Pacific, via the legendary Sea of Verrazzano.

Verrazzano's Sea

In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed in search of a passage through North America to the Pacific Ocean. Although he found nothing he could support with direct exploration, his observations of the barrier islands of the American southeast, the Pamlico Sound, and possibly the Chesapeake Bay led him to speculate that, in places, North America was quite narrow and that only an isthmus separated the Atlantic from the Pacific. Efforts to depict this on maps illustrate a massive body of water plunging into North America from the Pacific nearly to the mid-Atlantic coastline. This so-called 'Sea of Verrazano' appeared on many 16th-century maps and suggested access to the Pacific from the Atlantic. European mapmakers and explorers - in particular, John Smith and Henry Hudson - hung their hopes on discovering the Verrazano Sea, an assumption that colored interpretations of what they discovered. Smith's map reflects his hope that only short marches separated Jamestown from large navigable bodies of water to the west and north. Smith reported this in a 1609 letter to Henry Hudson, and Hudson acted on the intelligence, sailing for the 40° parallel and discovering the river that now bears his name. In most Europeans' minds, the Virginia colony's trade potential depended on it being a practical access point to Asia's riches.

Publication History and Census

This map was engraved by William Hole, initially as a separate issue. Joseph Barnes later published it in 1612 as A Map of Virginia. According to Verner's survey, states 1 to 6 belong to that work. The present example, including the dates 1606 under the scales and 1607 under the Powhatan scene but lacking Smith's coat of arms, is of the second state, appearing only in the that 1612 edition. (Burden records a dozen states.) The map has a long print history thereafter; starting in 1624, it appears in Sparke's The Generall Historie of Virginia (running to many editions) and in the 1625 Purchas His Pilgrimes. We see a separate example of this second state cataloged only in the Library of the Sorbonne in Paris. In terms of market presence, this second state is nearly as unobtainable as the first, with only two recorded sales in the last 30 years.

Cartographers

Captain John Smith (1580 - 1631) was an English soldier, explorer, colonial governor, Admiral of New England, author, and self-promoter. He was pivotal in the establishment of the first permanent English settlement in America (Jamestown, Virginia) and was the first Englishman to map the Chesapeake Bay, and the coast of New England. His maps of these areas, especially his mapping of the Chesapeake, were broadly influential: there are few maps of Virginia that were produced in the 17th century that do not derive from his work. His books describing the Virginia Colony were themselves important in encouraging further settlement.

Smith was born to a farming family in Lincolnshire; after his father's death, he began his military career as a mercenary, fighting with the French at war with Spain. He was intermittently a merchant and a pirate in the Mediterranean, where his travels brought him into the fight against the Ottoman Turks. He fought for the Austrian Habsburgs in Hungary, and fought for Radu Șerban in Wallachia against Ottoman vassal Ieremia Movilă. His coat of arms - featuring three Turkish heads - was itself a gruesome memento of Smith's reputedly killing and beheading of three Ottoman challengers in single-combat duels. His fortunes turned in 1602, which saw him captured and enslaved by the Crimean Tatars, captured, and sold as a slave - a condition which apparently lasted only long enough for him to escape to Muscovy, thence to take the scenic route back to England in 1604.

In 1606, Smith was sent as one of the leaders of London's Virginia Company's effort to colonize Virginia. Over the course of the next year, as some sixty percent of the settlers died of starvation and disease, Smith explored Chesapeake Bay and its vicinity, producing his seminal, wildly influential map which would be eagerly copied by mapmakers throughout the next century. Preserved on this map was also a body of water, reported to Smith by Native Americans, which he believed to be either a massive lake, or the Sea of Verrazano - in short, the Pacific. He was forced to return to England in 1609 following his injury in a gunpowder explosion in his canoe. While in England, Smith passed on a tip on this possible Pacific passage to Henry Hudson, who would gain no joy of it.

Smith did not return to Virginia. He did, however, return to America, exploring the coast of New England in 1614. (This name was his own; Smith's New England would be the first map to employ that appellation.) Smith's 1614 journey was meant to capture whales for their oil, and to find gold or copper mines. Failing these, they found instead fish and furs. It is also very likely that in his exploration of the northeastern coast, Smith was the same Sea of Verrazano that so tantalized Hudson.

A difficulty with Smith's biography is that so much of it relies entirely on his own report: and Smith does not at all appear to have been a modest man.   Further Details...

William Hole (fl. c. 1601 - 1624) was an English map engraver and metal worker active in the 17th century. Little is known of Hole's life. He may have apprenticed with William Rogers, taught Francis Baker, and was definitely a member of the Goldmsith's Company. He held the posts of "Head Sculptor of the Iron for Money in the Tower and Elsewhere for Life" and was "Graver of the Kings Seals, Ensigns and Arms". Hole's known corpus of maps is small but distinctive. According to the historian Arthur M. Hind,

The Work of William Hole has a peculiar fascination for its individual character, somewhat French in piquant flavour, and for its relation to various poets, writers and musicians, with whom one can image he lived in familiarity.

  Further Details...

Source

Smith, Captain J., A Map of Virginia, (London: Barnes) 1612.    

Condition

Very good. Trimmed just into neatline at left and top.

References

OCLC: 956947132. Not in Rumsey. Burden, P., The Mapping of America: A List of Printed Maps, 1151-1670, #164, State 2. Verner, C., 'Smith's Virginia and its Derivatives' in Tooley, R.,The Mapping of America, pp. 135-160, state 2. Stephenson, R. W., and McKee, M. M., Virginia in Maps: Four Centuries of Settlement, Growth, and Development #pp. 8-12. Morrison, R. et al., On the Map no. 7.