Christopher Hammer
Maps have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. My collection of historic maps began in earnest more than a decade ago, when my partner Justin and I gave each other 19th-century atlas maps for our first Valentine’s Day together. From there, we have developed a collection of maps showing the history of the Great Lakes region, where both of us grew up. For this exhibition, I have selected three foundational maps that trace the French settlement of the Great Lakes region.
My collecting interests beyond maps of the Great Lakes are eclectic and include queer periodicals, such as One (1952-1969), Detroit Gay Liberator (1971-1976), and Christopher Street (1976-1995) and poetry, particularly the poetry of Philip Levine.
Vincenzo Maria Coronelli.
“Partie Occidentale du Canada ou de la Nouvelle France.”
Paris: Jean-Baptiste Nolin, 1688/[1690].
Vincenzo Coronelli, an Italian cartographer and globemaker to Louis XIV, produced this first printed identification of Chicago (“Chekagou,” from the Algonquin for “onion field”) only a decade and a half after the first non-indigenous people (Marquette and Joliet) passed through. Coronelli’s focus on the interior of the continent—the Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi—reflect a shift in French imperial aims during the late 17th century to focus on the fur trade.
Louis-Armand de Lom d’Arce, Baron de Lahontan.
“Carte que les Gnacsitares / Carte de la Riviere Longue,” from Nouveaux Voyages de M. le Baron de Lahontan dans l’Amerique Septentrionale.
The Hague: Les Fréres l’Honoré, 1703.
This map comes from a popular travelogue of New France by Baron de Lahontan (1666–c.1716), a French soldier stationed in the western Great Lakes in the 1680s. Lahontan’s description of the indigenous nations reflect the “noble savage” cultural stereotype common during this period, and his depiction of the “Riviere Longue,” based on secondhand accounts, influenced and caused debate among cartographers for decades.
Guillaume De L’Isle.
“Carte Du Canada ou De La Nouvelle France.”
Paris: Guillaume De L’Isle, 1703/[1718].
Guillaume de L’Isle (1675–1726) was named First Geographer to Louis XV in 1718, the year he reissued this 1703 map of New France, notable for being the first identification of Detroit on a published map. To the west, de L’Isle depicts a version of La Riviere Longue but suggests that Lahontan “has invented all of these things,” providing a great example of the provisional nature of information traveling across the Atlantic during this time period.