For most of the 1600s & 1700s, few first-hand images of Native Americans are known to have been created with little or no contemporary documentation. European publishers often used illustrations imagined by European artists, who had never sailed across the Atlantic. These illustators were hired to illustrate written accounts of events in the New World without any visual evidence about how people actually lived & looked. And, so, they had to rely on European fantasy & generic landscapes to create images of America's Indiginous Peoples. For these representations, which tend to be exotic, the artists borrowed indiscriminately, mixing invented & actual details & interchanging characteristics of native groups from both American continents & from Africa.
In the 1671 edition of John Ogilby's (1600-76) America, Being an Accurate Description of The New World, many images of Native Americans are based on the work of Arnoldus Montanus (c 1625–1683). Translated by the bookseller Ogilby from the original Dutch in 1671, the book provides an account of the newly discovered lands in the Americas. Although it is inaccurate, often including fanciful tales of mythical beasts & locations such as the Fountain of Youth, it was widely read & was a highly influential book. At its time, the publication offered the most complete cartographic records to date of North & South America & was the most accurate compendium available of the New World. In 1671 the Amsterdam printer Jacob "van" Meurs (1619-1680) published De nieuwe en onbekende weereld; of Beschryving van america en't zuid-land, or America, by Montanus, a compilation in Dutch of historical accounts from North & South America. Montanus, a Jesuit, seemed to seek illustrations emphasizing the non-Christian, heathen character of Native Americans.
