A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia in Vol. 1 of Theodore de Bry’s Great Voyages in 1590.

As an explorer, surveyor, cartographer, painter, and colonial administrator, John White played a central role in Sir Walter Raleigh’s attempt to plant a colony along this coast. Apparently from a humble background, White belonged to the London painter-stainers guild and achieved historical significance because of his employment by Raleigh. During White’s first voyage to Virginia in 1585-86, he along with Thomas Harriot, a noted scientist, surveyed the region. White’s detailed paintings of Natives engaged in daily activities rank among the most important images of North American Indians. The sketch White produced in 1585, a copy of which is preserved in the British Museum, became the basis for this published map.

In 1587 White returned to Virginia as governor with a small group of colonists. Under orders from Raleigh, White planned to pick up the remaining Englishmen on Roanoke Island and move the entire settlement to a more favorable location on the Chesapeake Bay, but the ship captain refused to comply with White’s orders. At the urging of his settlers, White returned to England to secure needed supplies. The arrival of the Spanish Armada in 1588 delayed his return until 1590, when he found the vacant “Lost Colony.” Among those missing were his daughter and granddaughter, Virginia Dare, the first English colonist born in North America. In the same year, White’s map appeared in Theodore De Bry publication of Harriot’s glowing accounts of Virginia that sought to attract new settlers to Virginia, even though White’s experience there might argue against such a migration.]]>
While this map included accurate information about the coast, the speculative nature of the interior, particularly the placement and size of the lakes, perpetuated misinformation for decades. Some later cartographers combined Le Moyne and White’s maps and produced a map which greatly reduced the Carolina area.]]>
The map in the bottom center panel was published separately in 1624 and then as shown here as a page in Smith’s Generall Historie. Cumming and De Vorsey commented on this map by noting how little cartographical impact Smith’s work had on later map makers. Burden disagrees and states how useful Smith’s work remains for contemporary archaeologists because Smith accurately located 166 Indian
villages.]]> he Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles, 1624.]]>
In 1614 he explored and surveyed the coast of Maine and Massachusetts Bay and in 1616 published this map, the first to use the name New England. He replaced many of the indigenous names with English ones, but his only surviving place names are Cape Ann, Charles River, and Plymouth. Storms, shipwrecks, pirates, and capture by the French ended his later attempts to settle there, and his map remains as the most positive result of this venture. Thwarted as a colonizer, in part because of his boldness, he settled for writing books about his adventures and the New World.]]> Block’s 1614 map and published in Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1635.]]>
Willem Janzsoon Blaeu, a Dutch cartographer, took Block’s work, expanded it, and produced one of the most beautiful maps of the period. Animals such as beavers, polecats, and otters appear here for the first time on a European publication. A Mohawk village based on John White’s drawings published by de Bry views for attention with sailing ships and Indian canoes.

Blaeu, who was educated by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, began a cartographic tradition that established his family for generations as the leading map, globe, and atlas publisher during the golden are of Dutch map making.]]>
In both his 1720 and 1729 maps, Moll trumpeted the military triumphs of the Charlestonians against the Spanish and the Indians. Both maps note the location of St. Maria de Palxy, a Spanish Apalachee Indian mission, destroyed by the English in 1705. Moll noted the contributions of Captain Thomas Nairn to his 1720 map; he had served as a commander in the raid against the Apalachees before being killed by the Yamassee in 1715. In 1720 Moll notes the victories of the English against the Indians in 1712 and 1716.

Moll’s information about Captain Nairn and warfare on the frontier might well have come from the contacts Moll developed at Jonathan’s coffee house in London that was frequented by well-known literati and adventurers, including pirates.]]> (Quote from Cumming & De Vorsey, 250-51.)]]>
The cartographer for this image, hopefully not Oglethorpe, failed to accurately interpret the waterways. The Ogeechee River is shown as parallel and co-equal with the Savannah. A “R Undiscovered” flows from a swamp southwest of Augusta and ends without reaching any other body of water. The Alatamaha splits into two main rivers and the southern branch flows to the ocean at the location of what should be the mouth of the St. Mary’s. Both Talbot and Amelia Islands are shown inside Georgia rather than in Florida, a reality Oglethorpe would have endorsed.]]>