Page 382 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - USA

380  THE GREA T LAKES

center of the Great Lakes – military, and religious out-
Native Americans were posts at Sault Sainte Marie in
grouped together into 1668 and at Detroit in 1701.
many distinct though Until the mid-1700s, religion
related tribes. The Huron and the fur trade remained
and Ojibwe in the north, the main points of contact
and the Fox, Shawnee, between Native Americans
and Menominee in the and Europeans.
south and west had The pace of settlement
developed intricate trade accelerated after the end
and cultural relationships. of the Seven Years’ War in
However, after some 100 Statue of Christopher Columbus outside Europe in 1763, and the
years of European contact, Ohio Statehouse in Columbus Americans and British
large Native populations acquired territorial control of
had been decimated through disease the region. Within a few decades Ohio,
and internecine warfare. Indiana, and Illinois had changed from
Initially, early European exploration of isolated frontier territories to states. Follow-
this part of the New World was dominated ing the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825,
by the French. Traveling from their colony and improved transportation on the lakes,
at Quebec, the first French explorers were settlers were able to reach the previously
rapidly followed by fur-trading “voyageurs” distant lands of Michigan and Wisconsin.
who bartered tools and weapons for beaver In 1858, Minnesota became the last of the
pelts. At the same time, French Jesuit Great Lakes states to join the nation.
missionaries began to establish commercial,
Immigrants & Industry
KEY DATES IN HISTORY The opening up of the Great Lakes region
1620 Etienne Brule is the first European to explore to settlement coincided with a major
present-day Michigan and Wisconsin influx of immigrants. From the 1840s on,
1673 Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette and immigration increased tenfold as more
explorer Louis Jolliet cross the northern Great Lakes than 200,000 people, mostly Irish and
and descend the Mississippi River
Germans fleeing the potato famine
1750 The population of Detroit, the only large Great
Lakes settlement, numbers 600 and political unrest respectively, came
to America every year. Many settled in
1763 France surrenders its Great Lakes territorial
claims to Great Britain ethnic enclaves in rapidly growing cities
such as Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, and
1783 The US acquires the region from Britain, and
forms the Northwest Territory
1803 Ohio is the first to become a state in the Great
Lakes area
1903 Henry Ford establishes the Ford Motor Company
in Detroit
1911 First Indy 500 auto race held in Indianapolis
1968 Chicago police attack anti-Vietnam War
protestors at the Democratic National Convention
1998 Ohio native John Glenn, at age 77, becomes
the oldest American to travel into space
1999 Former WWF champion Jesse “The Body”
Ventura is elected Governor of Minnesota
2009 Chicago resident Barack Obama becomes the
first African-American US president
Historical Museum, on the Mississippi, Winona, MN

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