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Map of the Tennassee Government From the Latest Surveys.
New York: E. Low, 1810. Engraving, 7” x 15” plus margins. CONDITION: Good, some foxing. The second state of Payne’s map of Tennessee, one of the first maps of the state based on the surveys of Daniel Smith, showing the region during the period of early statehood when it was still at the edge of westward expansion. This remarkable early map shows Tennessee—spelled “Tennassee”—as it appeared around the time of its admission to the United States in 1796. The map depicts the region between the Mississippi River and Appalachian Mountains, and is visually dominated by the courses of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, and their tributaries (widths at crossing points along these rivers are given in yards). Additionally, the map depicts mountains, settlements, public roads, industrial sites, and forts. Dashed lines indicate “Indian boundaries,” which mark areas ceded by the Cherokee to the U.S. in a series of treaties, the most recent being the 1791 Treaty of Holston. At the time of the first drafting of this map, Tennessee effectively consisted of two separate districts in the middle and eastern portions, separated by the Cumberland Plateau. Over three-quarters of the present-day state remained in Native American hands. The few settler-established towns which appear on this map—including Nashville, Knoxville, and “Clerksville” [Clarksville]—are far outnumbered by “Indian towns,” which are marked with diamonds. The Cherokee towns depicted here include two former tribal capitals: “Talasse” (a spelling variation of Tanasi, from which “Tennessee” is derived), and Chota, along the Tennessee River. During this time, the Chickasaw controlled the western area near the Mississippi (as indicated by “Chickasaw Bluff”). A “Creeks Crossing Place” indicates Creek presence around the southern bend of the Tennessee River. Several notes add information that would have been relevant to the ongoing Euro-American settlement of the region. The western region is described as a place of “Light soil, long grass, little timber, broken ground on the heads of these rivers.” Over the Cumberland Plateau, another note describes the route “to Pensacola, the Way nearly level.” In contrast with modern nomenclature, the term “Apallachian” is identified with a small cluster of mountains in the southeast. Scale is provided in miles, and longitude is shown in degrees west of Philadelphia (the U.S. capital until 1800). Payne’s map, which derives from John Reid’s map of 1796 based on the Smith surveys, first appeared in Payne’s New and Complete Universal Geography (1799) with an engraving credit at the top reading “Engraved for Payne’s Geography.” In this second state of the map, published over a decade later, the engraving credit reads “Eng.d for the New Encyclopedia Published by E. Low N. York.” Low’s encyclopedia, formally titled The New and Complete American Encyclopædia or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, was an early American encyclopedia published in seven volumes between 1805 and 1811. The first five volumes were published by John Low (1763–1809), and the remaining two by his widow, Esther Prentiss Low (1762–1816). John Payne (fl. ca. 1780–1800) was a cartographer and publisher based in New York and Philadelphia. He published several books on geography, including Payne’s New and Complete Universal Geography (1798-99), in which the first state of this map appeared, An Epitome of History (1794), and A New and Complete History of Europe (1810). Daniel Smith (1748–1818) was a surveyor, treaty negotiator, and politician whose early surveys of Tennessee were instrumental in producing some of the first maps of the state. A Virginia native, Smith served as a colonel in his state’s militia on the western frontier during the American Revolution. He settled in Tennessee around 1780, soon becoming a prominent citizen and one of its foremost advocates for statehood. Smith’s surveys formed the basis of the first map of Tennessee (then called Southwest Territory), published by Mathew Carey in 1794. After serving in county government during the 1780s, Smith was appointed secretary of the Southwest Territory by George Washington, a position he held from 1790 until statehood in 1796. Smith was one of the signatories of the state constitution and an important early politician, representing Tennessee twice in the U.S. Senate, once from 1798 to 1799 and again from 1805 to 1809. REFERENCES: “Daniel Smith” at Tennessee Encyclopedia online.
Item #9733
Price: $950.00
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