36 A HISTORY OF AMERICA IN 100 MAPS
At first glance this map is a complete mystery: the
geography is unrecognizable, the place names are
nearly indecipherable, and the larger picture looks
more than a little like a large intestine. But give it a
second look, for it rewards patience.
In 1606 King James gave the newly formed
Virginia Company the rights to establish another
colony in North America. Having learned from
earlier failures, the company adopted a joint-stock
model to aggregate capital and mitigate the risk to
individual investors. Just before the end of the year,
the company sent 144 men and boys in three ships
to the New World. After making landfall in May 1607,
the party traveled fifty miles up a river they renamed
in honor of their king. The settlers chose a spot with
a deep-water shoreline that could be protected from
Spanish attack. But, despite abundant game and
protective woods, “Jamestown” was also marshy and
full of mosquitoes, and thus malaria.
Two of these colonists, George Percy and Robarte
Tindall, immediately set off to explore the area.
Percy kept a diary, and Tindall prepared a map.
Percy’s diary gives a firsthand account of these
early interactions between the English and Native
Americans, describing both friendly and hostile
encounters. For this reason, historians have paid
close attention to his diary. Far less attention has
been given to Tindall’s map of the James and York
rivers, drawn upon his return to Jamestown in April
- Tindall sent his map to Prince Henry along
with Percy’s journal, hoping that the geographically
curious young prince would be pleased to share with
the royal family an account of places “where never
Christian before hathe been.”
Tindall’s map is difficult to read, and slightly
disorienting. But as the first English chart of the
James and York rivers, it records crucial information.
The chart is oriented with west at right, where the
James (at the top) and the York (below) flow from
right to left. This itself is revealing: Tindall focused
on the rivers rather than the adjoining land because
these early settlers sought to follow them to their
source, hoping to find a portage that would take
them beyond the continent to Asia.
THE ORIGINS OF THE VIRGINIA COLONY
Robarte Tindall, a colored chart of the
entrance of Chesapeake Bay, 1608