History
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"We do not know on whose merits or guilt such a decision was made, or with what we have offended Your Lordship so much that Your Lordship has deservedly been directed against us, creating hardship for us everywhere. First of all, you made and announced a decision about the land of Samogitia, which is our inheritance and our homeland from the legal succession of the ancestors and elders. We still own it, it is and has always been the same Lithuanian land, because there is one language and the same inhabitants. But since the land of Samogitia is located lower than the land of Lithuania, it is called Samogitia, because in Lithuanian it is called lower land [Žemaitija]. And the Samogitians call Lithuania Aukštaitija, that is, from the Samogitian point of view, a higher land. Also, the people of Samogitia have long called themselves Lithuanians and never Samogitians, and because of such identity (sic), we do not write about Samogitia in our letter, because everything is one: one country and the same inhabitants."
— Vytautas the Great, excerpt from his 11 March 1420 Latin-written letter sent to Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, in which he described the core of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, composed of Žemaitija (lowlands) and Aukštaitija (highlands). The term Aukštaitija has been known since the 13th century.
Historically, Aukštaitija corresponded to the Duchy of Lithuania until the 13th century. Its initial capital was most likely Kernavė. In the 1322 treaty of Gediminas, Aukštaitija was called terra Eustoythen (land of Aukštaitians). Some German sources also titled Grand Duke Gediminas, after whom the Gediminids dynasty is named, Rex de Owsteiten (King of Aukštaitija). Aukštaitija was mentioned as Austechia in Chronicon terrae Prussiae, written around 1326. Politically, from the end of the 13th century, it comprised the Duchy of Vilnius/Lithuania and the Duchy of Trakai, and it is possible that the term was then used to refer to both of them. Since the 15th century, the Trakai and Vilnius voivodeships made up Aukštaitija, a political and ethnic entity also known as Lithuania proper.
