Whither the Waters

Mapping the Great Basin from Bernardo de Miera to John C. Frémont

by John L. Kessell

Published by: University of New Mexico Press

120 Pages, 9.50 x 11.00 in, 55 color plates

Paperback
9780826358233 | April 2017

$29.95

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EPUB
9780826358240 | April 2017

$29.95

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Description
Contributors
Acclaim

Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco (1713â€"1785) is remembered today not only as colonial New Mexicoâ€™s preeminent religious artist, but also as the cartographer who drew some of the most important early maps of the American West. His â€œPlano Geographicoâ€� of the Colorado Plateau and Great Basin, revised by his hand in 1778, influenced other mapmakers for almost a century. This book places the man and the map in historical context, reminding readers of the enduring significance of Miera y Pacheco. Later Spanish cartographers, as well as Baron Alexander von Humboldt, Captain Zebulon Montgomery Pike, and Henry Schenck Tanner, projected or expanded upon the Santa Fe cartographerâ€™s imagery. By so doing, they perpetuated Miera y Pachecoâ€™s most notable hydrographic misinterpretations. Not until almost seventy years after Miera did John Charles FrÃ©mont take the field and see for himself whither the waters ran and whither they didnâ€™t.

Historian John L. Kessell, professor emeritus of history at the University of New Mexico, has devoted nearly two decades compiling, translating, and editing the Vargas papers along with Rick Hendricks, Meredith D. Dodge, and Larry D. Miller.

â€œKessell knows Miera so well, and writes so authoritatively, that reading this book is like having him along as a guide on the expedition. . . . Kessellâ€™s book deserves great praise. It represents a superb fusion of image and word, storytelling and analysis, that students of the Southwest will treasure for generations to come.â€�
â€"The Journal of Arizona History

â€œA lavishly illustrated cautionary tale about cartographic inference and its persistence even in the face of contrary experience.â€�
â€"Southwestern Historical Quarterly

â€œKessellâ€™s style is inimitable, and his usage of illustrations and maps masterful.â€�

"By means of his detailed yet lively examination of Miera y Pacheco's evolving cartographic images, Kessell offers readers a meticulous case study of cartographic intertextuality and the role of maps in shaping, often powerfully, geographical imaginations and practices."
--Hispanic American Historical Review

â€œKessellâ€™s book is much more than a geographical treatise. Kessell, an entertaining writer, employs a fine selection of words, and his extraordinary knowledge of the Spanish records allows him to punctuate what could be dry geographical material with details of the times and surroundings on the Spanish frontier and insight into the characters involved.â€�
â€"Terrae Incognitae: The Journal of the Society for the History of Discoveries