Historian Mary Sponberg Pedley says, "once authority was established, a geographer's name might retain enough value to support two or three generations of mapmakers".

Up to that point, he had drawn maps not only of European countries, such as Italy, Spain, Germany, Great Britain, Poland, and regions such as the Duchy of Burgundy, but he had also contributed to the empire's claims to recently explored continents of Africa and the Americas.

Given his family's and his own reputation, Delisle had access to fairly recent accounts of travellers who were returning from the New World, which gave him an advantage over his competitors.

[3]: 41 Delisle's search for exactitude and intellectual honesty entangled him in a legal dispute in 1700 with Jean-Baptiste Nolin, a fellow cartographer.

[5]: 155  On March 8, 1700, De L'Isle accused Nolin (at first not naming him) of having copied proprietary cartographic information from a manuscript globe that he had made for Chancellor Boucherat, which resided in the cabinet of the latter's son.

The youngest Delisle, Simon Claude, lacked practical knowledge in cartography; he asked for the king's help in finding him an associate.

It spans the area from the bottom of Lake Superior in the north to the point at which the Rio Grande meets the Gulf of Mexico in the south; the map also extends from the Atlantic coast, where numerous European settlements had been made, and westward to the Rocky Mountains.

[10] The hundreds of labels on the map name lakes, rivers, colonies, cities, forts, mountains, and Indian tribes.

For example, there is a flawed conception of the Appalachians as reaching into the Michigan peninsula, an error potentially borrowed from earlier maps by Morden Brown or Sanson.

[7]: 19–20  The map extended the territories under French control by pushing the British colonial border further east than the Appalachian frontier.

Because of the perceived territorial offenses against the British colonies on the map, there was a political controversy between England and France that lasted for at least fifteen years.

[7]: 19–20  Delisle extended the French territorial claims to the Rio Grande and Pecos River, causing outrage in turn in Spain.

Spanish cartographers reacted by producing their own maps of their territories; this information had previously been protected as "virtual state secrets."

Months after Delisle's map of Louisiana was published, Louis XV awarded him the unique title of premier geographe du roi, with a pension of 1200 livres.

Delisle based this and other maps on astrologically determined latitudes and longitudes, as well as on critical examinations of primary and secondary source material.

He made several earlier sketches drawn from information extracted from the Jesuit Relations, and personal relationships with many missionaries and explorers enhanced his ability to gain a rather extensive knowledge of the landscape.

[13] In spite of these holes and the scientific nature of his map, Delisle's 1703 Carte still contains a large amount of information from Indians and considerations on imperial influence.

For example, on the map, Lake Winnipeg – marked as Lac des Assenipoils – is shown with its water communication down to the Hudson Bay, information taken from an Indian report rather than one of European discovery.

Furthermore, although hundreds of Indian tribes were identified in Delisle's earlier sketches, he consolidated a number of related bands under one heading in his final map.

The map provides a large cartouche in the upper left corner, which includes scenes from the New World implying imperial claims.

[16] This map covers areas which today are countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Kuwait, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Armenia, and the republic of Azerbaijan.