76 A HISTORY OF AMERICA IN 100 MAPS
A century before John James Audubon thrilled
Americans with his Birds of America, the Englishman
Mark Catesby published the equally stunning Natural
History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands.
Catesby first visited Virginia and the West Indies
in 1712, spending seven years studying plants and
animals in their native habitats. He returned to
London just long enough to realize that he needed to
know more, and in 1722 he visited South Carolina to
continue his work.
Catesby could not have known that his American
visits would coincide with a period of profound
upheaval. At first glance the elegant map he created
to guide readers through his Natural History reveals
little of this disruption. But, on closer inspection, we
can see some clues to the imperial rivalries at work
in the Southeast. Note that Catesby used color to
identify the presence of the British (pink), the French
(brown), and the Spanish (yellow). However neatly
colored on the map, these colored spheres were far
less stable on the ground. Catesby noted that the
British charter for Carolina extended well south of
St. Augustine. The Spanish rejected this claim, which
led to several skirmishes, raids, and wars between the
two on this contested borderland. In 1702 and again
in 1740 the British raided St. Augustine to protest
the Spanish practice of welcoming escaped slaves
from the Carolinas and offering to liberate them in
exchange for conversion to Catholicism.
The most important of these conflicts occurred at
Stono, near Charleston in South Carolina. In 1739,
a group of armed slaves rebelled, heading south
toward promises of liberty in Spanish Florida. As they
marched, the group grew to a critical mass of one
hundred. A battle with the British killed many of these
rebels, and those who survived were immediately
Mark Catesby, “A Map of Carolina,
Florida and the Bahama Islands,” in The
Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the
Bahama Islands, 1731–43
WAR AND DISCORD IN THE SOUTHEAST