Willem Janszoon Blaeu, Nova Virginiae Tabula, 1635

“One of the most important maps of America ever produced.” -Burden

A beautiful, original color example of Guillaume Blaeu’s 1635 map of the Virginia colony and the Chesapeake Bay. Oriented to the west, this map covers from Cape Henry to the Susquehanna River and inland as far as the Appalachian Mountains. The Chesapeake Bay is shown and many of its river estuaries, although topographically this map places several mountain ranges where none exist.

In 1618, Jodocus Hondius, Jr. drew this map from John Smith’s seminal 1612 map of Virginia. Willem Blaeu then purchased the Hondius plate and published it in 1629 and subsequent issues. While Smith’s publication was the first to appear, the editions of the map published by Blaeu and Hondius more widely popularized Smith’s mapping of English colonial claims in Virginia. As Burden notes, “through the purchase of this plate by Willem Janz. Blau in 1629 and its subsequent extensive publication for forty-two years, word of the English in Virginia became known throughout Europe.”

Lake Erie? At the upper-right of this map – to the northwest – is a stippled, unnamed body of water on whose shores are noted to live the tribe 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.

In 1606, the London Company sent its first ship to Virginia and established the Jamestown settlement. Captain John Smith accompanied the settlers, and from 1607 to 1609 he explored the major rivers that flowed into the Chesapeake Bay, also recording the names of the Native American villages and tribes he encountered there. The key at the upper right indicates symbols for King’s residences (Domus Regum) and “ordinary” villages. The iconic illustrations of Powhatan’s Council and a Sasquesahanough figure are derived from the original drawings of John White, who accompanied the earlier expedition to Roanoake. The limits of Smith’s explorations are marked on the map with Maltese crosses on the rivers that were traveled. For areas beyond these marks, Smith relied on Native American accounts to delineate those territories lying further upriver. As Smith had noted, “To the crosses hath bin discouerd what beyond is by relation.” While traditionally attributed to Smith alone, the work of his accompanying surveyor, Nathaniel Powell, is almost certainly included in the map.

This is an essential map for collectors of this region.

Refs: Burden, The Mapping of North America, no. 193