Mapa de Nueva Galicia (Estado de Jalisco) año 1550

Mapa de Nueva Galicia (Estado de Jalisco) año 1550

Map of New Galicia

This is one of many maps of various styles contained within the “Mapas de Mexico en el Archivo de Indias Sevilla”, a collection of the many products of the plentiful cartography of colonial Mexico. The map is a borderless depiction of the coastal region of New Galicia near Guadelajara in Mexico. It shows land in base parchment color and water in a darker shade of the same color with stylistic lines showing the flow of the water. The map has a clashing sense of scale between the three types of features depicted. The largest scale is that of the geographic features such as rivers, ocean, and roads. Next we see towns depicted as single buildings, drawn much larger than they would actually be in the landscape. Finally, the drawings of indigenous people are drawn either at the same size or much larger than the buildings they might inhabit. The map's depictions of indigenous people, presumably those that lived in the Guadelajara region. In the top left corner of the map, these people are performing various tasks such as hunting and human sacrifice. Smaller depictions of similar-looking people inhabit the top third of the map, almost all shown holding bows and arrows.

Unknown

Sevilla. Archivo General de Indias. MP-México, 560.

sheet map

Mapas d México en el Archivo d Indias Sevilla. Madrid: Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte : Testimonio Compañía Editorial, 2002.

1550

manuscript

Special Collections, Carleton College, Northfield, MN

Spanish

Regional map

Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

David Woodward, History of Cartography Volume 3 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), 1155-1159.