Geographical, Statistical, and Historical Map of Mississippi

The final edition of Carey & Lea’s important early map of Mississippi.

Published just ten years after statehood, this map of Mississippi shows significant remaining Native American territorial claims of the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes in the north. The process of forced removal would expedite rapidly after the Indian Removal Act of 1830, allowing for surveying and settlement of the land. The map labels the mission at Elliot, which also contained a school at which Native American children were taught farming techniques and domestic labors, and stripped of their indigenous identity. Other contemporary details can be found throughout the image, including Indian agencies, rudimentary roads and paths, and extensive parcels of land claims in the adjacent Missouri Territory. Surrounding the map are numerous paragraphs providing information on the state’s climate, infrastructure, political composition, and history.

The map was drawn by Fielding Lucas, Jr. and engraved by Young & Delleker. It was included as sheet number 29 in the 1827 (final) edition of Carey & Lea’s influential Complete Historical, Chronological, and Geographical American Atlas. This important American publication was issued in six separate editions and three different languages between 1822 and 1827. It was heavily influenced by an earlier European atlas by Emmanuel Las Cases (published under the pseudonym A. Lesage.), which inspired the format of a base map surrounded by blocks of informative text and tables of statistics.

Henry Carey, a political economist and the son of prominent publisher Matthew Carey, and his brother-in-law Isaac Lea incorporated this novel theme into their atlas, which focused entirely on the countries of the Western Hemisphere. It was issued at a time of tremendous political change in both North and South America, and the detailed maps accompanied by extensive text provide a unique, often insightful, perspective on the problems and possibilities of the Americas in the first quarter of the 19th century.