Encounters in the New World

Mirela Altic is a specialist in map history with a keen interest in missionary cartography and the early modern encounter. She is professor of the history of cartography at the University of Zagreb (Croatia) and currently serves as vice-chair of the International Cartographic Association Commission on the History of Cartography and president of the Society for the History of Discoveries.

"Altic . . . has given the world the first comprehensive study of Jesuit mapmaking in the Americas. Encounters in the New World tells the story of Jesuit cartography during the Age of Exploration—when Jesuit missionaries played a crucial role as conduits among cultures, becoming bridges that allowed knowledge to flow between Europeans and Indigenous Americans. Combining European mathematical techniques with the knowledge of the peoples they evangelized, Jesuits produced the first modern maps of many parts of Mexico, South America, the Great Lakes and Canada. . . . Altic brings a wealth of knowledge about cartography and explores the techniques as well as the motivations—political, religious and beyond—of its Jesuit authors. In the process, Altic draws attention to the fact that maps—particularly in their seventeenth-century form—were simultaneously art and artifact. . . . Encounters in the New World shows how inseparable the Jesuit experience has been from the story and fate of the Americas."

• List of AbbreviationsIntroduction1 The History and Concept of Jesuit Mapmaking1.1 The Organization of the Society of Jesus and Its Educational System1.2 The Society of Jesus in the Age of Encounter and Exploration1.3 Cartographers of Heaven and Earth1.4 The Emergence and Development of Jesuit Cartography in the Americas1.5 Techniques of Jesuit Mapmaking1.6 Editorial Interventions into Jesuit maps: Originals and Their Edited Versions1.7 The Iconography of Jesuit Maps1.8 The Dissemination of Jesuit Maps and Their Impact on European Cartography1.9 Changing the Discourse: Post-Suppression Jesuit Cartography2 The Possessions of the Spanish Crown2.1 The Viceroyalty of New Spain2.1.1 The Jesuit Cartographic Endeavor in Florida2.1.2 Mexico: Missionary Cartography of the Borderlands2.1.2.1 Ivan Rattkay: Cartographic Pioneer of the Tarahumara Region2.1.2.2 Adam Gilg and the Art of Surveying in the Province of Sonora2.1.2.3 Eusebio Francisco Kino and His Followers: Mapping the Northwestern Frontier2.1.2.4 Cartographic Synthesis from the Time of the Military and Juridical Reorganization of New Spain2.1.2.5 Mapmaking Attempts in Sinaloa2.1.2.6 The Jesuit Cartography of Nayarit2.1.2.7 Juan Nentwig and Bernhard Middendorff: Cartographers of the Pima Uprising and Its Aftermath2.1.3 Baja California: Revealing a Geographical Enigma2.1.3.1 Eusebio Francisco Kino and the Appearance of the First Jesuit Maps of Baja California2.1.3.2 Ferdinand Konščak (Fernando Consag): Confirming the Peninsularity2.2 The Viceroyalty of Peru2.2.1 The Province of Peru: Mapping the Moxos Missions2.2.2 The Jesuit Cartography of Chile: Between Mythology and Utilitarianism2.2.3 Patagonia: Jesuits at the Southern Edge of the Spanish Empire2.2.4 The Province of Paraguay and the Río de la Plata: The Cartography of Conflicts and Martyrs2.2.4.1 Cartographic Reflections of the Treaty of Madrid2.2.4.2 The Jesuit Cartography of the Guaraní War and Its Aftermath2.2.4.3 The Post-Suppression Jesuit Cartography of Paraguay2.2.5 The Province of Quito: Challenging Border Disputes along the Amazon2.2.5.1 The Post-Suppression Vision of Quito: From Territorialization to Idealism2.2.6 New Granada: Defense and Commerce in the Orinoco River Region3 Portuguese Possessions: Brazil3.1 The Jesuit Mapping of Brazil: Cartography of the Edges of the Empire3.1.1 Claiming the Amazon and Setting the Northern Brazilian Border with French Guiana3.1.2 Mapping the Western Edge of the Empire: The Jesuit View of Minas Gerais3.1.3 At the Southern Edge: The Jesuit Cartography of Colônia do Sacramento, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul3.1.4 Back to the Northern Edge: The Amazon in the Aftermath of the Treaty of Madrid4 New France: Searching for the Northwest Passage4.1 The Early Jesuit Mapping of Huronia4.2 Cartography under Iroquois Attacks: A New Discourse by Francesco Giuseppe Bressani4.3 Mapping the Western Great Lakes (Huron, Michigan, and Superior)4.4 Jacques Marquette and His Breakthrough to the Mississippi River4.5 Pierre Raffeix and His Contribution to the Mapping of the Iroquois Country4.6 The Final Decline of Jesuit Mapping in New FranceConcluding RemarksNotesBibliographyIndex