Crossing the Atlantic

This chapter explores the existence of exotica in America. The flora and fauna of the Americas offered fresh scope for demonstrating the centrality of European culture. New species had to be ordered, classified, named, and fitted within established parameters. From the start, the same was true for native peoples. Furthermore, pictorial and textual descriptions were used to advance several agendas with far-reaching consequences. Primarily to encourage settlement in the New World, exotica were portrayed as variations on European plants and animals. Early maps of North America thus featured deer, bears, beavers, and rabbits, with only the occasional wild turkey—unique to the New World—intruding upon the familiar bestiary. Throughout the seventeenth and into the eighteenth centuries, European colonizing and commercial interests continued to purvey a vision of American resources as easy to transform into marketable commodities.