Antique Maps and the Study Ok Caribbean Prehistory

ANTIQUE MAPS AND THE STUDY OK CARIBBEAN PREHISTORY Stephen D. Glazier In this presentation I will explore possible uses of sixteenth and seventeenth century maps for the study of Caribbean prehistory and protohistory. Several considerations entered into my choice of maps, the foremost of which was accessibility. Maps covered in this present ation are readily available through private collections, the map trade, museums, libraries and in facsimile. Accuracy was a secondary consideration. The succession of New World maps is not a general progression from the speculative to the scientific, and at times, as Bernardo Vega demonstrated in his mono graph on the caciques of Hispaniola, early maps may be more accurate than later editions. Professor Vega found that the map of Morales (1508) was far superior to later maps and that it was far more accurate than the published accounts of Las Casas and Oveido (Vega 1980: 22). Tooley (1978: xv), the foremost authority on antique maps, claims that seventeenth century maps are much more "decorative" than sixteenth century maps. Whenever mapmakers of the sixteenth century encountered gaps in their knowledge of an area, they simply left that area blank or added a strapwork cartouche. Seventeenth century mapmakers, on the other hand, felt obliged to fill in all gaps by provid ing misinformation of depicting native ways of life and flora and fauna. Sea monsters and cannibals were commonly used. All mapmakers claimed to base their works on the "latest" inform ation; however, it is my contention that maps are essentially conserv ative documents. A number of factors militated against the rapid assimilation of new data. The sheer cost of changes could be enormous. As Coolie Verner (1975) has pointed out, copperplate printing was prohibitively expensive and to cut costs publishers frequently acquired one another's plates. The American publisher Mathew Carey, for example;, republished Bellin's 1764 map of Haiti in his atlases until 1835. Secrecy was also a factor in the conservative character of maps. A great deal of intrigue surrounded the making of maps and no one wanted accurate maps to fall into the hands of his enemies or business competitors. Trading firms such as the Dutch East India Company retain ed their own cartographers - in this case the house of Blaeu about which much will be said later. For this reason publishers frequently could not include recent discoveries in their maps intented for public consumption. Joan Blaeu's Atlas Maior ("Grand Atlas") contained many maps engraved over thirty years earlier by his father. Even though many of the maps to be discussed in this presentation were engraved in the mid-1600s they reflect an earlier state of know ledge. Generally it could be said that sixteenth century maps reflect sixteenth century knowledge but that seventeenth and eighteenth century maps often reflected the knowledge of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively. 556 Of the many possible uses of sixteenth and seventeenth century maps in Caribbean research, I will focus on four potentially fruitful areas of inquiry: 1) Antique maps may aid in the location of archae ological sites. The major concern here would be the discovery of mission sites and aboriginal settlements; 2) antique maps contain considerable linguistic data, for example, toponyms, and patterns of ethnicity may be retrievable (cf. Laurence 1975); 3) Antique maps have cartouches which portray native flora and fauna (George 1978) , and for many Europeans these were their sole "experience" of the New World; 4) antique maps may reveal something of tribal migrations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Duval 1677). The earliest known maps of the New World is usually attributed to Juan de la Cosa. Some claim that this map was made as early as 1500, but its date of execution and authorship continue to be argued (Schwartz and Ehrenberg 1980: 19). Scholars contend that the map includes details about the New World which could not have been known prior to the voyages of Vespucci, and that the map is not by Juan de la Cosa - the pilot on Columbus' voyage of 1493 - but by another man of that name (Roukema 1959). The map was discovered in a Paris bric-à-brac shop in 1832, authenticated by Alexander von Humboldt, and in 1853 was put up for auction. The Queen of Spain bid high, at $208, and the map has since become a major attraction at the Museo Naval in Madrid. La Cosa's map is of interest because it is the first map to name Cuba and to show it as an island. Columbus believed - or professed to believe - that his discovery was somehow connected to the Asian main land. Actually, La Cosa's representation was more in keeping with European ideas. Fifteenth century maps contain a number of large islands in the Atlantic shaped very much like Cuba. It was believed that when Roderick, the last Visigothic king of Spain, lost his king dom to the invaiding Moors, seven bishops escaped to the sea and established themselves on an island. This island, described as the "land opposite", appeared on maps as Antilia, Antilha, or Antilla. The first map to depict the New World as a landmass totally distinct from Asia was that of Sebastian Munster ("New World," Basil 1540). This map was widely distributed and was among the first to portray American natives as Cannibals. Mention must also be made of G.M. Contarini's 1506 map of the world-again, showing America as an extension of Asia; Waldseemuller's 1507 map, the first map to name America; and the map appearing in Peter Martyr's Decades (1511). The Italian cartographer Gastaldi produced a map of South America in 1546 which served as the prototype for numerous editions of Ortelius and the South American map in Wytfleet's atlas of 1597, which was the first atlas devoted exclusively to the Americas. I. The first plate, "Hispaniola, Cuba, Aliaumque Insularum", is by the Flemish cartographer Wortel (1527-1598) - more commonly known by his latinized surname Ortelius. Ortelius was the first publisher to issue a collection of maps of uniform size and content, and his Theatrum, appearing on May 22, 1570, revolutionized the map trade. Earlier in the sixteenth century some Italian mapmakers had issued bound collections of maps, but their maps were not of the same size and no two collections were exactly the same. Collections, in all cases, had been compiled to suit a particular client's needs. 557 Forty editions of Ortelius' Theatrum were printed between 1570 and 1612 with texts in Latin, Dutch, French, Spanish, German, English and Italian. It was one of the; most popular and influential works of the sixteenth century. Because there were so many editions, Ortelius' maps are readily available today. The upper half of plate one is devoted to the western coast of Mexico while the bottom half is devoted to the Caribbean area from the Yucatan peninsula to Martinique. The map's center, however, is the Greater Antilles. Western Mexico is accurately portrayed for the period, but many errors can be found in the Caribbean section. The Bahamas are in a straight line, Barbados is too far North, Bermuda is too far South, and the "Scylla Magna", actually located along the northern coast of Africa, is radically misplaced. This map does not reflect the state of knowledge in 1592 when this particular edition was published. Familiar place names abound: Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Antigua, Anguilla, Saba, St. Eustacius, Florida, Santo Domingo, Havana, and the Cayman Islands. The cartouche in the upper left hand corner depicts flora and fauna including parrots, sea shells, and exotic plants. The island of Bimini is prominently displayed due to its connect ion with the Fountain of Youth. Sometime before 1511 the Spanish heard tales of a magical fountain in a land to the North called Bimini, and this tale may have led to the discovery and eventual exploration of Florida. II. Plate number two, "Insula America in Océano Septentrional", is by the Dutch cartographer G. Blaeu (1571-1638). This particular copy is from a 1662 edition of his "Grand Atlas", but it is identical to copies printed much earlier. In the seventeenth century there was a great increase in the number of maps devoted to the Americas, but as mentioned previously, publishers did not update their works. Of the twenty one maps that comprised Blaeu's volume on the Americas (the "Grand Atlas" was in twelve volumes and consisted of 600 hand- colored maps), fourteen were taken directly from De Laet (1625). Copies of this map are plentiful. Because Blaeu's atlases were so expensive, they were well cared for. Koeman notes that it was one of the most expensive books of the period costing about 450 guilders at a time when printers in the book trade were making about 2 guilders a day. Today when collectors spend $25,000 for an atlas, they are spending about the equivalent of what these atlases would have sold for when originally published (Koeman 1970: 47). This map covers the entire Gulf coast and there is much less distortion than was noted in the map by Ortelius. Bermuda is much closer to its actual location, the Bahamas are depicted more accurat ely, and the Florida peninsula is no longer devoid of place names; for example, Cape Canaveral is listed. The cartouche includes flora and fauna: a sea turtle, iguanas - which seems to have captured the European imagination because they are similar to the dragons of European lore (Quinn 1976: 654) - bats, which play a significant role in Taino mythology, and serpents. In the Caribbean, toponyms are European; on the mainland, aboriginal names are noted.

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