JSTOR

Antoine Simon Le Page du Pratz (ca. 1695–1775) traveled to North America with a group of colonists in 1718 and lived in Louisiana until 1734. This map, drawn from the popular English translation of the book he published after his return to France—Thomas Jefferson, among others, owned a copy—shows the locations of the various Indian nations and French settlements across the trans-Appalachian West. It depicts the eastern border of the trans-Appalachian West as a coastline—a visual rendering, perhaps, of the geographic significance of the Appalachian Mountains in Atlantic history. “A map of Louisiana, with the course of the Missisipi [sic], and the adjacent rivers…,”from Antoine Simon Le Page du Pratz, The History of Louisiana, or of the Western Parts of Virginia and Carolina…, 2 vols. (London, 1763). Courtesy Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

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