EARLY SETTLEMENT AND THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE 45The early Jamestown settlers struggled to survive. But
within a decade of its founding the Virginia colony
had begun to stabilize, in part as a result of the
cultivation of tobacco. Relations with the Powhatan
Confederacy, however, remained hostile, and in 1622
Opechancanough (brother of Chief Powhatan) led
an attack that killed more than 300 colonists along
the James River. In response, the Virginia Company
sought to strengthen the colony by advertising the
region’s climate and geography, and offering land
to those willing to make the passage. Virginia was
framed as a guaranteed investment for anyone willing
to exert even a bit of effort, yet the deteriorating
relationships with Native Americans remained an
obstacle to growth.
Among the investors in the Virginia Company
was the mathematician Henry Briggs, who made
audacious claims in order to stimulate both
investment and emigration to the colony. In 1622
he published descriptions of a navigable waterway
that linked Hudson Bay to the Pacific Ocean,
renewing dreams of a Northwest Passage. But
geographical knowledge of the continental interior
remained extremely limited. The recent expeditions
of Samuel de Champlain and others up the Saint
Lawrence Seaway had begun to reveal the enormous
hydrographic system between the Atlantic Ocean
and the Great Lakes. Yet the geography to the south
and west of the Great Lakes remained a mystery,
leaving plenty of room for both wishful thinking
and outright fabrication.
Briggs imagined a geography that would link the
Virginia colony to the Pacific Ocean. He knew that
the headwaters of rivers flowing into the Chesapeake
Bay were located in the mountains west of Virginia.
For this reason, he carefully marked each of the rivers
that flow into the Chesapeake, believing that a short
portage from those headwaters over the mountains
would lead to others flowing north to the Great
THE LURE OF A NORTHWEST PASSAGE
Henry Briggs, “The North Part
of America,” 1625
Lakes and Hudson Bay. From there he suggested
that several rivers ran west to the Pacific. In 1625 he
sketched this geographical vision on the first printed
English map of North America, shown at left.
What led Briggs to believe that North America
could be so easily traversed? The news of Champlain’s
travels might have stimulated his imagination, for the
Great Lakes extended far into the western interior.
Briggs also claimed that Native Americans in the
east had reported seeing European ships in western
waters. All of this generated a picture in his mind of
a relatively narrow continent.
This rosy geographical view explains why Briggs
named the imaginary river flowing west to the Pacific
“Hubbard’s Hope”: travelers navigating Hubbard’s
Hope west out of Hudson Bay would find themselves
“very near as far toward the west as the Cape of
California, which is now found to be an island.”
Briggs was the first to depict California as an island,
propelling a myth that continued for much of the
seventeenth century. While he had a stake in the
Virginia colony, it is not clear whether Briggs was
unwittingly or deliberately deceptive in presenting
these geographical fables.
Briggs’ map is best seen as a measure of
contemporary geographical knowledge and emerging
imperial rivalries. His goal was to find a passage to
the Pacific and to “all those rich countries bordering
upon the South Sea”. Such a discovery through
British territory would enrich and empower the
English, not to mention Briggs himself. To his mind,
that journey across North America ought to avoid
“Newe Spain” and the missions of the Southwest,
including the recently founded town of Santa Fe,
which is marked as “Real de Nueva Mexico” on the
map. Instead, Briggs recommended that the English
cross the continent further north, taking a more
temperate and “wholesome” journey “through the
continent of Virginia,” then via Hudson Bay and
“Nova Brittania.” The absence of information about
the interior and the far West gave Briggs plenty of
room to make claims that advanced English interests
in the New World.