Ohio History Journal

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Book Reviews

Book Reviews

 

 

 

Early Maps of the Ohio Valley: A Selection of Maps, Plans, and Views

Made by Indians and Colonials from 1673 to 1783. By Lloyd Arnold

Brown. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1959. xiv??

132p.; illustrations, maps, plans, and bibliography. $12.00.)

This handsome volume, edited by Lloyd A. Brown for the Eavenson

Cartography Fund, is an attractive picture book which summarizes the

cartographic history of the Ohio River region from 1673 to 1783. It

features a brief introductory chapter on La Belle Riviere, fifty-four

beautifully reproduced maps, and explanatory notes for each map. Mr.

Brown's work stands not only as a handsome tribute to Howard N.

Eavenson, who devoted so much of his life and fortune to the study of

the cartographic record of the trans-Allegheny area, but also as a fas-

cinating introduction to the evolution of geographical knowledge about

that vast region of vast importance.

Writing in 1744, Jacques Nicolas Bellin, one of the best geographers

of his day, observed that "one day Geography would prove to be so

advantageous to a knowledge of History that the two would become

inseparable." In this book Mr. Brown presents an erudite illustration

of this maxim, with geography tending to lag behind history a few

paces, but finally catching up in 1783, when the treaty of Paris created

a new nation and fixed its geographical boundaries on a copy of John

Mitchell's map, the "title guarantee" of the United States. Indeed, there

seems to be something significantly symbolic about Mr. Brown's choice

of end papers, the front one being Bellin's map of the Mississippi and

Ohio River areas "et pays voisins" at the peak of French power and

the back one featuring the Fry-Jefferson map, published only a year

before the junior collaborator's son gained fame as the author of the

Declaration of Independence.

The earliest maps are those by Father Marquette and Jolliet in

1673-74, perhaps the first maps to show the beautiful Ohio. From the

early French period there are also important maps by Franquelin, Hen-

nepin, and La Hontan, "discoverer" of the mythical River Long. The

earliest English maps reproduced are an undated anonymous sketch