Florida, et Regiones Vicinae, ca. 1630. Delineated by Hessel Gerritsz and published by Joannes de Laet in Novus Orbis, 1633 and L’Historie de Nouveau Monde, 1635 and various other works.

Florida, et Regiones Vicinae, ca. 1630. Delineated by Hessel Gerritsz and published by Joannes de Laet in Novus Orbis, 1633 and L’Historie de Nouveau Monde, 1635 and various other works.

The director of the Dutch West Indies Company, Johannes de Laet, and the company’s chief cartographer, Hessel Gerritsz, collaborated in producing and publishing early maps of the New World. This depiction of the southeastern region of North America was one of the first to label Florida the Tegesta Province for the Tequesta Indians who lived on the southeast tip of the peninsula. That title continued to be used by map makers for almost two centuries. Rather than showing the Mississippi as a single river, Gerritsz and Laet have six separate rivers flowing into the Bahía del Spíritu Santo and another illogical delta configuration of three rivers at what is now Apalachicola. They also followed the tradition of other early map makers by including large interior lakes in the Appalachian mountains and along the Atlantic seaboard. Hessel Gerritsz had worked for Willem Blaeu before he joined the Dutch West India Company, and Gerritsz actually travelled to Brazil and the Caribbean in 1628-29 to experience the New World, an unusual act for map makers during that period. His maps became models for those cartographers who followed him during the 17th century.

1630