The Buffalo Map: Real vs Pastiche vs Fake

Daniel “daan” Strebe, March 2025

Circulating in the antique map market are many maps that are not genuinely antique but sometimes advertised as antique or left ambiguous. This series of articles will examine some of these forgeries, fakes, pastiches, and concoctions. Throughout the articles, you can right-click on any of the images to open it in a new tab or window to see greater detail.

In this article, I spotlight the “Buffalo Map” that is often encountered in online marketplaces. The original buffalo map was published by J.B. Homann around 1720. It is titled Amplissimæ Regionis Mississipi seu Provinciæ Ludovicianæ â R.P. Ludovico Hennepin Francisc Miss. in America Septentrionali Anno 1687 detectæ. …. On this map we see some intriguing vignettes, including the cartouche portraying a bison head as if mounted on a wall above the cartouche banner and a scene with a priest (surely Father Hennepin from the map title), accompanied by a little boy and backed by a soldier, presumably preaching to a naked native; a version of the famous vignette of eerie beavers laboring with the Niagara Falls in the background; and of course the famous side view of a “buffalo” sandwiched between a native man and woman. The imagery was popular in Europe, and the map enjoyed a long run into the late 1700s in several atlases.

J.B. Homann c. 1720, Amplissimæ Regionis Mississipi…, or, “The Buffalo Map”

This map has been the subject of several imitations, some deliberately deceptive; others not. Here we examine the ones I have found. If you take one thing away from this article, it is that the image above shows the only authentic map among those that that look anything like this. Being hand-colored, the coloring can differ, but that is all. The fakes also do not have the correct size for the printed area (outer neatline), which is 577 mm × 487 mm, give or take a few.

The research that has gone into this article is mine, and therefore, so are any errors. Some of the earlier observations were made by John Woram and Tony Campbell, who then graciously entertained my ramblings in email exchanges in the 2010s. I generally do not provide sources: Much of what I say here is verifiable with judicious Internet searches; what’s left that isn’t cited is either clearly speculation by phrasing or else the consequence of my own observations over time in the market as a seasoned collector.

Probably in the mid 1960s, a set of six maps appeared on the market showing the world and America in the style of 17th to early 18th century cartography, intended to be framed as wall art. The imprint, Abrams Art Prints, was part of the Harry N. Abrams company, a well known publisher founded in 1949 that specializes in books about art. Renamed as Abrams Books, the firm still has many imprints today such as Abrams Noterie, Abrams Comicart, Abrams Appleseed, and so forth. Abrams Art Prints collaborated with artist Howard Morris on several products, including this set. The attribution to Abrams Art Prints and Howard Morris appears on the sleeve’s verso. I have found no further information about Mr. Morris. The imprint, Abrams Art Prints, was active at least until 1979.¹

In its original sleeve, I have never seen this set represented as authentic antique maps. Without the sleeve, sometimes the full set is. You can commonly find a specimen of the set listed on eBay. Each map on its own is sometimes listed as an authentic antique map, especially the infamous Buffalo Map. No dealer or serious collector would be fooled by these pastiches, although some of them are close enough copies to the originals that, with bad photography, someone might wonder. A novice collector or the general public may well misconstrue the maps as authentic, especially because the publisher did not add a copyright date or the publishing house imprint.

There are many signs that these comprise a modern production: The colors are printed using a half-tone process and are garish and of a uniform scheme across the maps; there is no plate mark; the paper is a modern woven paper rather than laid; there is no center crease; and if you are lucky enough to get a photo of the reverse, there is no text. There is also no watermark, but if you can check for that, you probably are holding the map in your hands and it obviously looks, smells, and feels wrong.

The sleeve for the set

The Homann Buffalo Map pastiche

Here we have the Abrams/Morris pastiche of Homann’s “Buffalo Map”. While largely copied from Homann, we can see many clear differences outside of the map proper. Most particularly, the cartouche has moved from upper left to lower right and gone from elaborate to a simple “America 1690” in an anachronistic decorative frame. We can only speculate on why “1690” was chosen as a date for this, but the prominence immediately marks the map as inauthentic.

Abrams/Morris pastiche of Homann’s 1720 “Buffalo Map”

Meanwhile in the place of the original cartouche we have a whaling scene copied from a 1601 print by Theodor de Bry from his travelogue Indiæ Orientalis. Possibly the same scene appears on some authentic map, but I have not located it. The view of Quebec is an engraving from Mallet’s Description De L'Univers, from about 1686. The view of New York City is from Seutter’s Recens edita totius Novi Belgii, in America septentrionali, a copy of which comprises another map in this collection (see below) and which has a better copy of the original New York City port view. Given all the changes, this map is more a concoction than a copy, but its primary source is blatantly the Homann Buffalo Map.

Despite the 1690 date on the map it shows “Neu Orleans”, a name that did not exist until 1718. There are probably other anachronistic toponyms, given the ~1720 date of the authentic model versus the stated 1690 date (1695 in the case of the Albarel fake below). The coat of arms for the “West Indies Company” (Societatis Indiae Occident [sic: should be Occidentalis]) shown above the bison vignette was not adopted until 1717.

Some of the Abrams/Morris specimens of this map have been framed and accompanied by an excerpt from an unidentified text. The excerpt is titled AMERICA 1690 in the upper right and has a page number of 25 at the lower right. It is divided into three columns and is about four times as wide as tall, thus appearing to be a complete page of a short, wide booklet that likely accompanied the set. It reads,

The original Homann map was not made in 1690, but probably between 1717 and 1719, at the request of John Law for use in the land promotion scheme of the “Company of the West” or the “Mississippi Company.” Great liberties were taken in this altered copy. At the time of the [original] map’s execution, short titles such as “American 1690” were not used. In the original, the cartouche, which was at the upper left, had a long Latin title stating that the map was of the MIssissippi Region or Louisiana Province of North America. Decorating this cartouche there had been two figures—one holding a peace pipe and presumed to be an Indian in spite of light wavy hair, the other Father Hennepin, a Franciscan missionary. In place of it is the whale scene on this map. Other additions here are the views of Quebec and New York and all the figures and animals, with the exception of one small scene of hunters and buffalo just south of the Ohio River. This appeared on the original. On the Homann map the mountains and trees were uncolored, and there were names and dated explorer’s routes, one as late as 1716, which have been omitted here. The original did include the scene of the Indians, buffalo, raccoon and pelican on the right. Above it is the coat of arms adopted by the “Company of the West” in 1717—the two Indians flanking the horn of plenty.

The modern lettering points out Indian tribes, rivers and cities. Even Cape Canaveral in Florida is noted.

Example of framed copy with booklet leaf

The Elwe world map pastiche

Next in the set is a world map copied from Jan Barend Elwe’s 1792 Mappe Monde ou Description du Globe Terrestre & Aquatique. It is a fairly close copy, including the iconography. There isn’t much to say about the pastiche, other than that its choice of subject is a little questionable: By the time the Elwe map was published, its cartography and iconography were anachronistic, copied from Alexis-Hubert Jaillot’s map one century older, Mappe Monde ou Description Du Globe Terrestre & Aquatique…. Elwe’s map surely was intended to be “vintage” or nostalgic.

Abrams/Morris pastiche of Elwe’s 1792 Mappe Monde…

The Blaeu Americæ map pastiche

The source for this next map is Joan Blaeu’s iconic 1638 map, Americæ nova Tabula. Auct: Guiljesino Blaeuw. Blaeu popularized the carte-à-figures style of surrounding the map with panel vignettes. The Abrams pastiche is a fairly close copy. However, the authors felt the map needed a little more pizzazz, it seems, so they added a compass rose in the Pacific, a sea monster in the North Atlantic, and enlarged the sailing ship in the lower right. Everyone loves compass roses, sea monsters, and sailing ships!

Abrams/Morris pastiche of Blaeu’s 1638 Americæ nova Tabula

The Hondius North America map pastiche

Narrowing in to just North America, this next maps is, again, a fairly close copy of the original, this time of Henricus Hondius’s 1636 map America Septentrionalis. Predictably, a sea monster has been added, and the ships, while reduced in number because the copy is smaller, have individually been enlarged. Despite the penchant for exaggeration, for some reason a sea monster-like whale in the Pacific off the cost of Mexico has been changed into a less scary rendition.

Abrams/Morris pastiche of Hondius’s 1636 America Septentrionalis

The Seutter North America map pastiche

The collection contains a second map of eastern North America besides the Buffalo Map. Its source is Georg Matthäus Seutter’s 1734 map Accurata Delineatio Celeberrimae Regionis Ludovicianae vel Gallice Louisiane ol. Canadae et Floridae Adpellatione in Septemtrionali America…. Another map is very similar: Henri Chatelain’s 1719 map Carte De La Nouvelle France, ou se voit le cours des Grandes Rivieres de. S. Laurens & de Mississipi…. The Seutter map is surely the source, given the title, and also because both it and the pastiche show all of Cuba and some more to the south, whereas the Chatelain map barely shows the north part of Cuba. The pastiche map discards the cartouches of either source and replaces them with a cartouche in the anachronistic style of the Blaeu cartouche mentioned above. You might be sensing a pattern that the map must be embellished, and if so, you will not be disappointed: A large compass rose has sprouted in the Atlantic; we have a native queen riding a sea monster; and the ships are larger and have several extra sea monsters to menace them.

Abrams/Morris pastiche of Seutter’s 1734 Accurata Delineatio Celeberrimae Regionis Ludovicianae…

The Seutter New England map pastiche

Last in this set is a map of New England modeled after Georg Matthäus Seutter’s c. 1735 map Recens Edita Totius Nova Belgii in America Septentrionali Fiti…. Seutter’s map was a rework of earlier maps by Visscher and Jansson, but we can confidently pin Seutter’s map as the source because of the similarities: the pastiche is a close copy—the closest copy in this set. No added sea monsters or animals, no ships to enlarge, no exaggerated or extra compass rose. Even the New York scene is copied faithfully, unlike the shrunken version in the Buffalo Map. Of all the maps, this is the most likely to fool a novice.

Abrams/Morris pastiche of Seutter’s 1735 Recens Edita Totius Nova Belgii in America Septentrionali Fiti…

Similar to the Abrams set in concept and execution, an imprint called “Frederick’s Fine Art” also put out a set of six pastiche maps in a protective sleeve. The two sets have two maps in common, America Septentrionalis after Hondius, and… you guessed it… the Buffalo Map. The sleeve gives a title Early American Maps, subtitled 16th and 17th Century. The sleeve’s recto also gives a bit of a freebie, a half-sized pastiche of Michael Mercator’s 1595 America sive India Nova. The verso lists a price of $10.

The Worldcat listing for these maps gives dimensions that suggest about the same printed area as the maps in the Abrams set, but the margins are wider on the left and right sides, making the total width about 500 mm compared to the Abrams width of 430 mm.

I found very few clues about the imprint or the timeframe of this set’s appearance. Maddeningly, while the © symbol appears after the imprint name, no date is given. I have seen offered for sale a set of four prints called Colonial New York from “Frederick Fine Art”, dropping the apostrophe, which I presume to be the same imprint. The date given for that set is 1956, and I think we can assume that the map set is roughly contemporaneous.

The idea that “Frederick” and “Frederick’s” is the same entity is reinforced by the fact that one of the prints in the Colonial New York set is the New York (or New Amsterdam) harbor view that also appears on the pastiche Buffalo Maps:

Frederick Fine Arts, 1956: view of New Amsterdam in 1667

The color in the maps in the Frederick's set is executed in a yet more garish style than even the Abrams prints. The print quality is poorer, having registration problems similar to comic books of the era. Having not been able to examine the prints in person, I cannot say for sure, but the color application appears to be lithographic, rather than as process color.

The following images are courtesy of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee’s American Geographic Society Library, which holds a copy of this set.²

Sleeve's recto

Nova Anglia, after de Laet 1620

America, after Hondius 1604

America Septentrionalis, after Hondius 1639

Carte du Canada et de la Louisiane, after Homann 1720

Floridae Americae Provinciae, after le Moyne 1591

Virginiae Item et Floridae, after Hondius 1634

Sleeve verso

Homing in on the Buffalo Map, we see content that is identical to the corresponding Abrams/Morris version over most of the map. A couple of typographical details differ, but the glaring difference is the cartouche’s content. Where it was a simple America 1690 on the Abrams concoction, here we find a much more elaborate and convincing Carte du Canada et de la Louisiane dressée par le Sieur Albarel en 1695 A.P.D.R.

Frederick’s Buffalo Map cartouche

Many question naturally arise out of an inspection of this cartouche. For example, where did the title come from, and why does it differ from both the Homann original and the Abrams pastiche — especially when almost all of the remaining content appears identical to the Abrams map? The source of the title would appear to be a 1756 J.B. Nolin map titled Carte Du Canada et de La Louisiane Qui Forment La Nouvelle France et Des Colonies Angloises… Why that map’s title was excerpted is anyone’s guess. The Buffalo Map extends considerably further west than the Nolin map, but otherwise does have similar range.

Who is “Albarel”? The name is a real French surname but otherwise has no known connection to mapping. There was a Jesuit priest Charles Albanel (not Albarel) who explored French Canada between the St. Lawrence River and James Bay of the Hudson Bay in 1672, but he is not known to have produced any maps. The A.P.D.R. inscription at the bottom of the cartouche means avec privilège du roi, translating to “by license of the King”. If it were legitimate, this would mean a mapmaker with official standing, and therefore very likely to be known to history. That he is not strongly suggests that the name was chosen arbitrarily or is a corruption of Albanel, and is not, as is sometimes hopefully posited by sellers, the name of a real mapmaker whose work is now lost.

Just as in the Abrams/Morris map, the date is an anachronism. While 1695 brings the map five years closer to its content than the Abrams version, the fact remains that the map contains content that did not exist at the purported date of its creation. That, of course, is the nail in the coffin of the “lost work” theory.

Frederick’s and Abrams: What’s the connection?

Given the similarities between these two sets of art prints, it is clear that there is some connection between them, either directly or by pedigree. Later I will establish the pedigree connection. Here I will explore whether there might have been any direct connection.

Which of the two came first? Even establishing this is hard. I do not find any records that could give the earliest date for the Abrams production after the founding of the company in 1949. However, the company’s history does not suggest a venture like this would have taken place before the 1960s.³ An upper bound on the date might be inferred from stylistic clues: The Indian motif and font use would seem increasingly anachronistic in the 1970s. My guess is mid 1960s.

Frederick’s is even harder because I find nothing at all about it, with the sole exception of the four piece set of New York views with copyright date of 1956. That date is consistent with the map set’s print quality, or lack thereof. The sleeve’s graphical design also seems older than the Abrams by at least a decade. It seems plausible for the 1940s or 1950s, but would have been firmly old-fashioned by the 1960s.

It is tempting to suggest that Abrams acquired Frederick’s or its assets and reworked the set. However, the assets would have been of little use because only two of the prints overlap in content, because the Buffalo Map has some important details that would have meant reworking the lithographic plate, and, most especially, because the Abrams set did not even use the lithographic process. On the other hand, the concept is obviously the same, and so I think it is fair to say that Abrams was aware of the Frederick’s set and decided to put out a recreation probably well after Frederick’s went defunct. The new set aimed to improve marketability with better print quality, better graphic design quality, and wider appeal in map subject.

But but but the Buffalo Map…

Comparing the Abrams and Frederick’s versions of the Buffalo map, however, we find that they are identical almost across the entire map. The only differences are:

• The cartouche content.
• The color scheme.
• Frederick’s uses Mar du Nort to label the Atlantic instead of the correct Mer du Nord.
• While the detailed typography is identical between Frederick’s and Abrams, the larger sea and vignette labels differ. On the Frederick’s, these are rendered in a flourishy script whereas on the Abrams, the style of these labels is more consistent with the original’s period.

I don’t have the finest attention to detail, so perhaps someone else might find differences, but no matter how closely I examine the two maps, they are otherwise identical. The same cannot be said of the America Septentrionalis maps after Hondius: the two versions differ in many particulars even though the underlying cartography is very similar.

Why would Abrams go to all the trouble of exactly reproducing a fake map… but with just a few changes? The labor would have been considerable: Because the Frederick’s source was color, they could not just photographically reproduce it to create something with a completely different color scheme. Even if we posit that Abrams acquired the lithographic plate for the line work from Frederick’s, it would mean that they could only have used it as a template in creating completely new plates for a different print process, making certain modifications along the way. If they were going to put all that work into it, surely they have gone back to the Homann original. The conclusion is that Abrams did not reproduce the Frederick’s map. What actually happened is that both Frederick’s and Abrams photographically reproduced and reduced in size yet earlier fakes of the Homann map. Those earlier versions are what are directly related to each other.

The Abrams and Frederick’s Buffalo Maps differ from each other in ways I list above, but, interestingly, each appears to be identical to other maps that show up in the collectibles markets. They differ only in coloring, paper, size, and outer border. These others are all of the same size to each other and considerably larger than the Abrams and Frederick’s art prints. Whatever their original intent, these prints sometimes show up in the market fraudulently: It is not uncommon to check eBay and find someone selling one of these as authentically antique on the basis of possessing authentically antique traits: Hand color, laid paper, watermarks, and, sometimes, plate marks.

Hand-colored variant of the Abrams/Morris Buffalo Map

The specimen above is a typical example. Compared to the Abrams/Morris pastiche, the coloring is much more representative of the period it imitates. The paper is laid and has a watermark. It is colored by hand. It is also much larger than the Abrams/Morris map, being similar or the same as the Albarel map described below. This specimen shows no evidence of a plate mark in the promotional images from the seller; nor did the seller claim there was one. However, the seller represented the map as genuine and priced it as such. The pitch included this description:

This map enjoyed a long production run and was extremely popular throughout Europe… Though this map was issued in only one edition, it was published in Homann’s Neuer Atlas… and many other composite atlases well into the late 1700s, making specific instances of the map all but impossible to date with precision. Most examples thus reference the original publication date, c. 1690.

This quotation was plagiarized from the blurb about a genuine Homann copy on the website of map seller Classical Images, including the presumably unintentional run-on of italicization from the atlas title. The kicker here is that the seller changed “c. 1720” to “c. 1690”. Given that, and given that the seller pretended that that blurb applied to the map they were selling despite the obvious differences between the genuine article and their own wares, we can conclude the seller knew very well that the map was fake. (The quotation also appears on the site of map seller Geographicus, so either one of the sellers lifted it from the other, or else it is a quote from a reference that I have not found. Classical Images gives “Ref: Tooley; M&B”, but I do not find the quote in Tooley’s Mapping of America and I do not recognize M&B.)

Watermark on the same variant

Like the Abrams version of the Buffalo map, variants of the Frederick’s version also exist. Other than paper, coloring, and size, they appear identical to the Frederick’s version.

The “Albarel Map”: the original fake “Buffalo Map”

Cartouche from the “Albarel Map”

Other important differences from the Frederick’s version are:

• The Albarel map is colored by hand. Frederick’s is printed.
• The Albarel map is considerably larger and only slightly smaller than the Homann original.
  • Paper: 648 mm × 500 mm vs 430 mm × 356 mm
  • Printed: 537 mm × 454 mm vs 375 mm 316 mm
• The Albarel uses laid paper with the Arches UFPC watermark. (I don’t know if that is always the case.)

The Albarel map is a much more expensive production than the Frederick’s version, being larger, printed on heavy, laid, watermarked art paper, and hand-colored. Most copies are evidently naturally more aged. While still not a convincing antique, the Albarel map is more likely to fool an amateur.

Albarel watermark: Arches UFPC

The Albarel map’s history has been mysterious. Some say, on the basis of no obvious evidence, that the map originated about 1935 in France. It’s true that the papermaker, Arches, is French. However, its wares are, and long have been, readily available worldwide and commonly used in the arts scene in New York City. Further, I don’t see this map showing up in European marketplaces nearly as often as North American. More damning, the Atlantic label Mar du Nort is a nonsensical phrase in French. Given that the genuine Homann map as well as the Abram variants all show Mer du Nord, it is hard to grasp how the Albarel version ended up with this error, but regardless, the map seems unlikely to have originated in France—at least, not by a French speaker.

It is also often repeated by sellers—even reputable antique map sellers—that the Albarel map may have been copied from an unknown map from 1695. Whether sellers imagine this factoid will command a higher price—it’s not uncommon to see northward of US $500 paired with such speculation—or they genuinely believe the nonsense, the anachronisms present on the map soundly refute that hypothesis.

Surprisingly, the Albarel fake has shown up in institutional archives, usually having been recognized as fake, or probably fake, but not always. Many of the institutions where I had found the map listed in the past no longer list it. John Woram gives some citations here. Université de Moncton also lists a specimen in a long list of fakes. One surprising listing that does not indicate doubt about its authenticity comes from Library and Archives Canada, stating, Unable to identify cartographer all references have been checked. Strikingly similar to Homann's [1720] Amplissima regions Mississippi. The cataloged artifact seems to be a photocopy of a map in a private collection.

The origin of the Albarel map

When we consider some of the other maps in the later “art print” sets from Abrams and Frederick’s, we start to find clues about where the fake Buffalo Map might have originated. It turns out that I have seen all of the maps represented in both of these art print sets as higher quality, and apparently older, fakes. Frank Manasek has a chapter about fakes in his Collecting Old Maps work (Chapter 5 in the first edition). He mentions a couple of the fakes that concern us, but of note here is that he knows the provenance of one in his possession, a America Septentrionalis purportedly a Hondius (but actually after Jansson), and can trace it back to the mid 1930s. (It is not clear if that means it originated then, or that that is as far back as he has information for.) He also states that he does not believe that the map was intended to deceive buyers.

The fake Hondius America Septentrionalis that Mr. Manasek describes is, clearly, the source of the Abrams version of the map. The details are identical. This older map was printed without color; any colored specimens were colored by hand. As such, an uncolored specimen could be used as a source by photographing it and reducing it to serve for the color separation plates in the Abrams set.

Each of the remainder of the maps in the art print sets have corresponding sources in older fakes from a similar time period. I have seen all of them being sold as legitimate, even occasionally from established auction houses. For example, a specimen of Virginiae Item et Floridae Americae Provinciarum nova Descriptio. that served as the progenitor for Frederick’s version sold in 2023 for $2,625 in an auction by Charlton Hall.

A clear indication of a fake version of any of these maps is the presence of a date in the cartouche where the authentic archetype has none. Another commonality across many of the maps is the inclusion of images from Theodore de Bry’s travelogues that are not present on the originals. It is reasonable to think that all — or at least most — of these maps have a common source. How it is that they became prototypes for Abrams and Frederick’s is an open question, but the answer may be no deeper than that they were a cheap source of uncolored, antique-seeming maps in good condition whose authenticity was irrelevant to the enterprise. No copyright owner could be traced, and any copyright likely had expired by then anyway, so the labor-intensive design and artwork phase could be dispensed with to move straight into print production logistics.

The fake Buffalo Map is something of an outlier in this analysis. It does share the common traits of de Bry images and a date in the cartouche, and so it probably has the same origins. With more vignettes and many smaller changes, such as all the animals and people strewn about the landscape, the map diverges from its archetype more than any of the others.

And what of the “Albarel” version versus the “America 1690” version? I think this is a simple case of an evolving project. The “Albarel” version is the original. Sometime after publication, the author went back to fix the Mar du Nort embarrassment, improve the vignette title font, and simplify the cartouche content, possibly to reduce the chances of being mistaken for legitimate.

Speaking of Mar du Nort, how did that happen? That might have an easy answer. America Septentrionalis after Hondius uses Mar del Nort for the Atlantic. Having just finished that recreation, the author moved on to the Buffalo Map, and in went Mar du Nort as a jumble of Mer du Nord and Mar del Nort. The implication is that the author knew neither French nor Ligurian.

1. Pierce, Catherine, Trouble Youth and the Arts: A Resource Guide p. 176. Read, Inc., Silver Springs, 1979.

2. University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, American Geographical Library, Doren Wehrley Collection. Library staff informed me of a 2002 accession date for this set. A set is also held by the Moody Memorial Library at Baylor University.

3. The Abrams Books history’s narrative does not suggest room for art prints unrelated to masterpieces of art until the mid 1960s. From that time, the diversity of original material put out by the company increased rapidly.