Old Map of North America by Claude Bernou, c.1681
Price range: £35.55 through £59.95
North America by Claude Bernou, circa 1681
Attributed to the Abbé Claude Bernou, this large map stretches from the mouth of the St Lawrence River south to Cayenne and records French claims and explorations across the continent. It marks the Mississippi as the “Colbert River” and includes New France, Louisiana and the Great Lakes, alongside territories whose Indigenous nations are largely obscured by European labels. A compelling map print that makes the ambitions and limits of seventeenth-century French cartography visible.
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Historical Background
Attributed to Claude Bernou and dated about 1681, this map extends from the mouth of the St Lawrence to Cayenne, taking in North America and part of the northern coast of South America. Its breadth reflects the French effort to connect reports of exploration into a picture of a vast overseas sphere.
Map Details
- Original title: Carte de l’Amérique septentrionale et partie de la méridionale depuis l’embouchure de la rivière St Laurens jusqu’à l’isle de Cayenne avec les nouvelles découvertes de la rivière de Mississipi ou Colbert
- Cartographer: Attributed to Claude Bernou
- Date: Circa 1681
- Area shown: North America and part of South America, from the St Lawrence to Cayenne
The map records French discoveries in the Mississippi Valley and marks forts established during the late 1670s and early 1680s. The river appears as the “Mississipi” or “Colbert,” a name that ties geography to the political ambitions of Louis XIV’s minister. Labels for New France and Louisiana project French claims across lands inhabited and governed by Indigenous nations, whose presence is often reduced or overwritten by the map’s European terminology.
Follow the Mississippi south from the Great Lakes and compare it with the mapped route between the St Lawrence and the Gulf of Mexico. The map’s wide reach is striking, but it also exposes how uneven knowledge remained: explored waterways are traced alongside spaces labelled unknown. The map is therefore both an important record of French exploration and a document of colonial power.