I love old maps, especially maps which show the locations of tribes and villages of Native people. I don’t know how many of you have been to New York City and visited Long Island, but suffice it to say, it looks nothing today like it looked in 1665.
On the map above, North is to the right, and you can see the island to the left, along with lots of Native tribal notations.
New York was only a village at that time. In the painting below from 1664, you can get a good feel for New York City as the village of New Amsterdam of long ago.
The bottom painting is a view of New Amsterdam by Johannes Vingboons. I have a high-quality print hanging in my bedroom. The original is located at the Nationaal Archief, the National Archives of the Netherlands where I work. I saw the original during a Vingboons exhibition a couple of years ago and it is just stunning. The detail is incredible.
At that time, high resolution scans were made of the entire Vingboons collection. See http://www.gahetna.nl/en/collectie/afbeeldingen/kaartencollectie/zoeken/f/web_theme_id/a7b6ac30-5178-11e0-8873-0030489e184c for the entire collection or http://proxy.handle.net/10648/af87ab06-d0b4-102d-bcf8-003048976d84 for a zoomable version of this map of New Amsterdam.
I love maps. Sigh. I have several on my walls too.
Another favorite of mine is this map of the James River in Virginia: http://proxy.handle.net/10648/af87e5d0-d0b4-102d-bcf8-003048976d84 It has places like ‘Chepocks Creke’ and ‘Tapahan Mars’ that I assume reflect Native American names.
This is great. I’ll be blogging it shortly too. Thanks so very much!!! Now, can you please find a map that tells us where our Lost Colonists went:)