26 A HISTORY OF AMERICA IN 100 MAPS
The Spanish were the first Europeans to explore any
part of the North American interior. Among the most
famous—or perhaps infamous—of these explorers
were Hernando de Soto and Francisco Vázquez de
Coronado, both of whom ventured through what is
now the southern United States in search of wealth
in the 1540s. Today Coronado is enshrined across
the Southwest as a heroic explorer, though others
consider him the archetypical Spanish invader. With
Hernán Cortés as his model, Coronado set out for
the Great Plains to find the fabled cities of gold that
he believed were even richer than Mexico City. De
Soto had similar visions of wealth, but also sought
a passage to Asia. Though neither Coronado nor de
Soto found riches, both of their expeditions treated
the native populations brutally and left an enduring
legacy of hostility.
News of Spanish expeditions found its way onto a
large and gloriously detailed woodcut map designed
by Giacomo Gastaldi in 1561. Gastaldi’s map was
one of the most complete pictures of the world at
the time, though it was relatively unknown until the
British Library purchased it at auction in 1978. Here
we have reproduced the upper left quadrant of the
map, which encompasses North America. A closer
look here and on the next page reveals the ambitions
of the Spanish as they ventured north from Mexico
into what is now the southwestern United States.
The map was most likely authorized by the
Venetian Senate; blank cartouches indicate that it
was either unfinished or a printer’s proof. Gastaldi
was a well-regarded mapmaker in Venice, and this
was among his last and most ambitious efforts.
Like many maps of the sixteenth century, it includes
elements of both confirmed geographical knowledge
and persistent fantasy.
Giacomo Gastaldi, with Paolo Forlani
and Matteo Pagano, “Cosmographia
Universalis et Exactissima ...,” 1561
THE SPANISH REACH NORTHWARD