Aaron Arrowsmith  &  Samuel Lewis:  Louisiana

	(Click Image To Enlarge)

Title: Louisiana

Map Maker: Aaron Arrowsmith  &   Samuel Lewis

Description:

One of the earliest obtainable maps to depict the Louisiana Purchase.

Engraved by Henry Schenk Tanner, the map is one of Tanner's earliest works and a forerunner to many of the most important maps of the Transmissisippi West.

The map is the offspring of Antoine Soulard's map of the west, which was created at the request of the Spanish Governor of Louisiana, then based in St. Louis, who had requested an up to date map of the Missouri and Mississippi River Basins. An English copy of the Soulard map was one of the most important maps taken by Lewis & Clark on their overland trek to the Pacific.

The cartography of the region west of the Mississippi depicted on this map is described by Wheat in his Mapping the Transmississippi West over 5 pages, noting all of the firsts and important features. Certainly this was the best widely circulated map of the region prior to the explorations of Lewis & Clark.   Lewis and Soulard incorporate the maps of John Evans, James Mackay, Jacques d'Eglise and Jean Baptiste Truteau, each of which existed only in manuscript form. 

As Wheat states, until Lewis and Clark's own map appeared in print in 1814, the Soulard map, in the version offered to the public by Arrowsmith & Lewis in 1804, constituted the most ambitious, and --despite its many obvious infirmities--the most informative published attempt to portray the West and Northwest of what is now the United States.

An essential map of the American West. 

Condition Description: Left corner torn and repaired on verso.

References: Wheat 259.

Related Categories:
Maps of Northwest America
Maps of the American Plains
Maps of the Rocky Mountains
Maps of Southwest America