A Map of New-England, 1677
Item 104601 info
Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education
Rather than reading colonial maps as factual representations, we should examine them as political documents. This map was created during King Phillip’s War (1675-1678)—when Native people were violently displaced by settlers, and many resisted forced removal from their traditional territories.
This map was the first map printed in New England. Oriented with North to the right, the map's vertical lines marked the northern and southern boundaries of the Massachusetts Bay Colony as set forth in their 1629 charter. The mapmakers marked places of conflict between the English and the Indigenous peoples. Numbers indicated the locations of deaths and raids on the English, with numbers corresponding to towns: 42=Kittery; 47=York; 50=Saco River; 51=Wells; 54=Scarborough; 55=Falmouth Neck (now Portland).
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