Reproduced is a copy from a first edition of Les Voyages du Sieur de Champlain (Paris, 1613), now in possession of the John Carter Brown Library.
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH’S MAP OF NEW ENGLAND
The Pilgrims were familiar with Capt. John Smith’s account of a voyage in which he had surveyed the coast from Cape Cod to Penobscot Bay in 1614. He had even offered his services as guide and military captain, but Myles Standish got the job. Undoubtedly they did bring with them his Description of New England (London, 1616), in which the following map was published.
Capt. Smith, who had already gained some fame and fortune in Virginia, dedicated to Prince Charles this effort in which the term “New England” first appeared: “... it being my chance to range some other parts of America, whereof I here present your highness the description in a map, my humble suit [in original, “sure”] is you would please to change their barbarous names for such English, as posterity may say Prince Charles was their godfather.” Several English place-names were incorporated in the map, but posterity disregarded most of them, a noteworthy exception being “Plimouth.” Smith notes that the Indians called the site “... Accomack, an excellent good harbor, good land, and no want of any thing but industrious people,” recalling that “After much kindness, upon a small occasion we fought also with 40 or 50 of those [Indians]; though some were hurt and some slain, yet within an hour after, they became friends.”
The map was subsequently reissued in several other works by Smith, additions being made on the engraved copper plate from time to time, to indicate more recent discoveries and settlements. The copy reproduced here is from a first edition, now in possession of the John Carter Brown Library; obviously the representations of European-style buildings were as inappropriate as were the illustrations of monsters, introduced by imaginatively artistic cartographers. (The note concerning Smith’s death was written in ink by a previous owner of this copy.)
A
RELATION OR
Journal of the beginning and proceedings
of the English Plantation settled at Plymouth in New England, by certain English adventurers both merchants and others.
With their difficult passage, their safe arrival, their joyful building of, and comfortable planting themselves in the now well defended town of New Plymouth
AS ALSO A RELATION OF FOUR
several discoveries since made by some of the same English Planters there resident.
I. In a journey to Pokanoket, the habitation of the Indians’ greatest King Massasoit: as also their message, the answer and entertainment they had of him.