Cities of the "New" World
Commissioned on 9 July, 1581, the Mapa del Pueblo de Tetela de Ocampo depicts a small town in the contemporary state of Puebla, Mexico, situated on the foot of the Sierra Norte de Puebla mountain range. This map’s production comes shortly after, and thus likely in response to the series of questions posed by the Spanish Crown in their survey of the lands that had begun to comprise the Viceroyalty of New Spain only some 60 years prior. The questions asked – seeking maps to explain and depict the surroundings, resources, and relative location of various places in what was to the Spanish, a "New" World – received a number of responses. Some of these can be seen at the University of Texas at Austin in their collection: Relaciones geográficas de México y Guatemala.
The maps recieved in the Relaciones geográficas maps were often composed by Indigenous mapmakers and illustrated depictions of space that were significantly cosmologically and artistically different from those used in European mapmaking traditions.
The map is focused less on the layout of the town itself, but rather what comprises its surroundings, emphasizing buildings of importance, such as churches. Humans are depicted on the map, including a priest, and merchants or workers in caravans travelling on roads that weave through the map. One road is labelled Camino real de México (Royal road of Mexico). All the humans on the map wear European clothing.
Elements in the Mapa del Pueblo de Tetela de Ocampo depict many of the same geographical elements and spatial focus as the Indigenous-made maps of the Relaciones geográficas but differ in the method used to depict them. For instance, in maps such as the Pintura de Cuzcatlan the depiction of cities is defined by landmark structures and the surrounding landscape, with less focus on minor structures. The information provided may have been intended to satisfy requests made in the accompanying questionnaire:
“Is the terrain flat or rugged, clear or wooded, with many or few rivers or springs, abundant in or lacking water? Is it fertile or without pasture, abundant or lacking in fruits and sustenance?” (Question 4)
On the lower right of this map, the observer can make out squares, which depict salt flats according to the annotation by the University of Texas. A variety of vegetation is depicted as well. Similarly in the Mapa del Pueblo de Tetela de Ocampo, vegetation is also diverse, with different trees on the sides of the valley which dominates the center of the map.
Composed a few decades prior to the questions posed by the Relaciones geográficas, the 1550 Mapa de Nueva Galicia nevertheless shares a similar focus on the roads and settlements in a city's hinterland. Human figures appear in the upper left margin quite prominently.
Common among these maps, is a schematic approach to depicting cities. They are lacking much detail about the layout of potential neighbourhoods, minor roads and buildings, and other features characteristic of European city maps in the 16th century. The maps contemporary to the Relaciones geográficas do however, to varying degrees, successfully depict information that was asked of their composers in the accompanying questionnaire. It is important to understand that, alongside the artistic traditions of the respective societies whose artists produced them, the depiction of these maps are often influenced by the questions asked and the officials who commissioned them.
These maps’ intention as assets for bettering the Spanish Crown’s understanding of its possessions heavily inform the style used in their creation, as do the values of it’s administrators – among them being propogation of faith, clerical superintendence, and productive capacity, undergirding the prominence of structures such as churches. Therewith, the maps alone do not define the breadth of Indigenous or Spanish American cartography, nor fully illuminate the ways in the two traditions affected each other. With long indigenous inhabitation of the continent comes a familiarity with their land that would not necesessarily necessitate the usage of the cartographical traditions or methodology of the Spanish, whose comparatively recent arrival saw the map used as a tool to better understand what was, to them, a truly "New" World.
Anton-August "Ashton" Macklin '27
Mundy, Barbara E. The Mapping of New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of
the Relaciones Geograficas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Mundy, Barbara E. "The Questionnaire of the Relaciones Geográficas." Translated and annotated by Barbara E. Mundy. Included in The Mapping of New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of the Relaciones Geográficas, pp. 227-230. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.