Nord America mit Westindien.

Description

This is a fascinating hand-colored example of Heinrich Kiepert’s circa 1867 map of North America, which includes Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean (West Indies).

This wonderfully detailed map features administrative borders, settlements, forts, mountains, waterways, Native American groups, and numerous other landmarks. The states of the United States are shaded green (with the exception of Alaska), while territories are colored yellow. The Wyoming Territory has a curious western border here, extending towards Virginia City, Montana. The borders and names of Canadian colonies/provinces are not indicated. However, the borders of individual Mexican states are printed (but not traced in hand-color) and their capital cities are underlined. The ownership of colonies in the Caribbean is indicated by color-shading. A table at the bottom lists corresponding terms in English, Spanish, and German.

Dating this map is difficult. The inclusion of the Montana Territory would mean it must date from no earlier than 1864, and Alaska appears to be included in the United States, which would indicate a date of 1867 or later. However, 1867 also saw the Canadian Confederation, but the term ‘British North America’ is retained here, while Canada only refers to the former Upper and Lower Canada (Ontario and Quebec). Similarly, the term British Columbia, which had been used since 1858 when it became a colony, is nowhere to be seen; Kiepert instead uses an older name for the area, New Caledonia. Presumably, then, Kiepert (or Carl Ohmann, who revised the map from earlier editions) had more up-to-date information for the United States than for Canada, explaining the discrepancies. In any event, it seems most likely that this map dates to the late 1860s (for comparison, see our 1862 edition of the same map https://neatlinemaps.com/product/nl-02200/nord-america-mit-westindien/ ).

This map was prepared by Heinrich Kiepert and his team and published by the Geographisches Institut Weimar for the Allgemeiner Hand-Atlas der Erde und des Himmels.