Saturday, January 05, 2008

Lewis and Clark Mystery Map at NAVTEQ MAPS Exhibit

NAVTEQ, the giant mapping company which was just acquired by NOKIA, is sponsoring a phenomenal exhibit of maps, called "Finding Our Place in the World." The exhibit  of over 130 maps from all over the world, and from all time periods, was organized by The Field Museum and The Newberry Library in Chicago. It will leave The Field Museum on January 27 to travel to only one other place, The Walters Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland where it will be on exhibit from March 16 - June 8, 2008. The maps are so rare, and so spectacular, that the wonder is that they were ever loaned out from their host institutions. This is one of the great exhibits, and is worth a trip from anywhere in the world if you love maps. The Field Museum has an online virtual tour of the exhibit, and Rachel Rubin has a nice online article with photos.

The mystery map is a Lewis and Clark map by George Shannon, dated 1811, that is very similar to the map shown here by William Clark. The Shannon map comes from a private collection, and is unknown to Lewis and Clark experts. I contacted Dr. Gary Moulton, the editor of the modern Lewis and Clark Journals and the Atlas of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He has never heard of the map, and told me that the original map by William Clark was drawn in 1810, and is part of Yale University’s Beinecke Library.  Dr. Ray Woods, another Lewis and Clark expert, has also never heard of the map. If anyone has any information to share, please contact me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

If you want a closer look at the Clark map, here is a link to a zoomable view  of the map at the University of Virginia Library. The William Clark map was copied by Samuel Lewis and published as part of the Biddle edition of the Lewis and Clark Journals in 1814. The map is also part of Google Earth’s historic map collection, which I blogged about earlier. The 1814 map can be superimposed over the landscape of Google Earth and each of its modern day locations determined, which is quite fascinating .

After Meriwether Lewis’s mysterious death in 1809 on the Natchez Trace, William Clark took over the management of getting the journals ready for publication. He recruited Nicholas Biddle of Philadelphia and asked George Shannon, a member of the expedition, to help him. It is a reasonable guess that Shannon made a copy of Clark’s 1810 map to help Biddle in preparing the manuscript. What is funny about a map made by Shannon is that he is most well known for getting lost!  Shannon, at age 19, was the youngest member of the expedition, and was lost several times during the journey. A Shannon Trail in northeastern Nebraska is one of the best Lewis and Clark tourist adventures along the entire trail.  Biddle later became president of the Second Bank of the United States, and Shannon became a U. S. Senator from Missouri. (January, 2008)

Posted by Kira Gale on 01/05/2008 at 11:49 AM

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