Great Lakes region

The Great Lakes region of Northern America is a binational Canadian–American region centered on the Great Lakes that includes the U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and the Canadian province of Ontario. It encompasses both the Upper Midwest and parts of the Mid-Atlantic. Canada's Quebec province is at times included as part of the region because the St. Lawrence River watershed is part of the continuous hydrologic system. The region forms a distinctive historical, economic, and cultural identity. A portion of the region also encompasses the Great Lakes megalopolis.

State and provincial governments are represented in the Conference of Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers, which also serves as the Secretariat to the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Compact and the Great Lakes–Saint Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement.

The Great Lakes region takes its name from the corresponding geological formation of the Great Lakes Basin, a narrow watershed encompassing the Great Lakes, bounded by watersheds to the region's north by the Hudson Bay, to the west by the Mississippi, and to the east and south by the Ohio. To the east, the rivers of St. Lawrence, Richelieu, Hudson, Mohawk and Susquehanna form an arc of watersheds east to the Atlantic.

The Great Lakes region, as distinct from the Great Lakes Basin, defines a unit of sub-national political entities defined by the U.S. states and the Canadian province of Ontario encompassing the Great Lakes watershed, and the states and province bordering one or more of the Great Lakes.

Since time immemorial indigenous peoples have lived in the Great Lakes region. Historically, native tribes in the region have engaged in political alliances with other indigenous groups and maintained cultural kinship and harvesting relationships. For instance, Potawatomi peoples have organized culturally and politically through the ‘seasonal round’ system to adapt to environmental change. During the period of early European exploration and colonization in the region, policies aimed at western expansion encroached upon Native land, intending to remove Native Americans from their land and the U.S. political landscape. European settlement also affected Native American relationships with local ecosystems through removal from lands, industrialization, and environmental degradation, causing disconnection from cultural practices. Despite this, indigenous groups including the Anishinaabe and Potawatomi exercise self-determination through maintaining reciprocal relationships with the land and conservation projects including that of Lake Sturgeon.

Geography

thumb|Niagara Escarpment (in red)

thumb|right|[[Cleveland and Lake Erie in winter]]

thumb|upright=1|right|An upbound [[lake freighter passing the Detroit riverfront including the Renaissance Center]]

thumb|[[Buffalo, NY|Buffalo near the Niagara River]]

The Palaeozoic strata are parts of a great area of similar layers hundreds of feet in thickness. These strata decline gently southward from the great upland of the Laurentian Highlands of eastern Canada. The visible upland area of today was a small part of the primeval continent with the remainder of it still buried under a Palaeozoic cover. The visible part was the last part of the primeval continent to sink under the advancing Palaeozoic seas. This district may be considered an ancient coastal plain. The weaker layers are worn down in sub-parallel belts of lower land between the upland and the belts of more resistant strata, which rise in uplands. Illustrations of this type of forms are found in the district of the Great Lakes. The chief upland belt or escarpment is formed by the firm Niagara limestone/dolomite, which takes its name from the gorge and falls cut through the upland by the Niagara River. The Niagara Escarpment has a relatively strong slope or effacing escarpment on the side towards the upland, and a long gentle slope on the other side. Its relief is seldom more than 200 or and is generally small. Its continuity and its contrast with the associated lowlands on the underlying and overlying weak strata make it an important feature. The escarpment would lie straight east–west if the slant of the strata were uniformly to the south. However, the strata are somewhat warped and so the escarpment's course is strongly convex to the north in the middle, gently convex to the south at either end.

The escarpment begins where its determining limestone/dolomite begins, in west-central New York. There, it separates the lowlands that separate Lake Ontario from Lake Erie. It curves to the northwest through the Ontario province to the island belt that divides the Georgian Bay from Lake Huron. From there, it heads westward through the land-arm between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan and southwestward into the narrow points dividing Green Bay from Lake Michigan. Finally, it fades away with the thinning out of the limestone and is hardly traceable across the Mississippi River. The arrangement of the Great Lakes closely matches the course of the lowlands worn on the two belts of weaker strata on either side of the Niagara escarpment. Lake Ontario, Georgian Bay and Green Bay occupy depressions in the lowland on the inner side of the escarpment. Lake Erie, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan lie in depressions in the lowland on the outer side. When the two lowlands are traced eastward, they become confluent after the Niagara limestone has faded away in central New York, and the single lowland is continued under the name of the Mohawk Valley. This is an east–west longitudinal depression that has been eroded on a belt of relatively weak strata between the resistant crystalline rocks of the Adirondacks on the north and the northern escarpment of the Appalachian Plateau (Catskills-Helderbergs) on the south. Early in U.S. history, this provided a vital economic route between the Atlantic seaports and the U.S. interior.

In Wisconsin, the inner lowland is a knob of resistant quartzites, known as Baraboo Ridge, rising from the buried upland floor through the partly denuded cover of lower Palaeozoic strata. This knob or ridge can be thought of as an ancient physiographic fossil, as it is an ancient monadnock having been preserved from destructive attacks of weather by burial under sea-floor deposits. It has been recently re-exposed through the erosion of its cover. The occurrence of the lake basins in the lowland belts on either side of the Niagara escarpment is an abnormal feature. Glacial erosion has formed them through the glacial drift obstructing the normal outlet valleys and to crustal warping in connection with or independent of the glacial sheet.

Lake Superior is unlike the other lakes. The greater part of its basin occupies a depression in the upland area, independent of the overlap of Palaeozoic strata. The western half of the basin occupies a trough of synclinal structure. The Great Lakes receive the drainage of a small peripheral land area, enclosed by a water-parting from the rivers that run to Hudson Bay or the Gulf of Saint Lawrence on the north and to the Gulf of Mexico on the south.

The three lakes of the middle group: Lake Michigan, Lake Huron and Lake Erie stand at practically the same level. Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are connected by the Straits of Mackinac with the Mackinac Bridge spanning the straits. Lake Huron and Lake Erie are connected by the St. Clair River and Detroit River, with the small Lake St. Clair between them. The land northeast of the rivers is undergoing a slow elevation. The Niagara River connecting Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, with a fall of ( at the cataract) in , is thought to have been of recent origin, as an older river would have a mature valley. The original valley that is thought to have connected the two depressions through the Niagara Escarpment is thought to have been at the present route of the Welland Canal, and to have been completely filled with glacial drift. The same is true for the St. Lawrence, where there may not have been an original valley. The Ontarian River that was a precursor to Lake Ontario is thought to have drained westward, and the St. Lawrence drainage to have been created by subsidence due to the weight of the ice sheet.

History

thumb|upright=1.4|Map of the [[Great Lakes Basin.]]

Native American history and relationships to the land

Indigenous peoples have lived in the Great Lakes region of North America since time immemorial. West of them were the Wenrohronon. On the Ontario Peninsula was the Neutral Confederacy, Petun Country, and Huronia (Wendake). The Council of Three Fires territories of Anishinaabewaki, also known as the United Nations of Ojibweg, Ottawas, and Potawatomis, covered the lands around Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior. To the west of the lakes were a number of Algonquian peoples and their homelands, such as Myaamionki and Algonquian-speaking peoples such as Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Menominee, and Mesquakie (Hoxie, 2016). Also to the West are the Ho-Chunk and, formerly on the coasts of the lakes, the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ or Seven Council Fires of the Dakota and Lakota peoples.

Since time immemorial the Potawatomi have lived in an area of 30 million acres in the Great Lakes region of North America as an ecologically mobile, culturally distinct, and politically independent society. Potawatomi are closely related with Anishinaabe, including Ojibwe and Odawa peoples and usually identify themselves using environmental terms based on where they resided, such as clan animals, or plant terms that refer to kinship relationships with those species. for use by Native Americans, who already inhabited it. Historian Jeffery Ostler describes how in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the British promised to set a boundary between the colonists and Native Americans in the region, however settlers encroached on Native lands leading British officials to redraw the Proclamation line farther west in the 1769 Treaty of Fort Stanwix. Settlers defying the agreement resulted “in widespread conflict with Native peoples”.

During the American Revolution, the region was contested between Britain and rebellious American colonies. Hoping for favorable claims of territorial control in an eventual peace treaty with Britain, American adventurers led by Kentucky militia leader George Rogers Clark briefly occupied village settlements, including Cahokia, Kaskaskia and Vincennes unopposed, with passive support from Francophone inhabitants. In the Peace of Paris (1784) Britain ceded what became known as the Northwest Territory, the area bounded by Great Lakes, Mississippi and Ohio rivers, and the eastern colonies of New York and Pennsylvania, to the fledgling United States. Britain, which may have entertained ambitions to repossess the area if America failed to govern it, retained control over its forts and licensed fur trade for fifteen years. By well-established trade and military routes across the Great Lakes, the British continued to supply not only their own troops but a wide alliance of Native American nations through Detroit, Fort Niagara, Fort Michilimackinac, and so on, until these posts were turned over to the United States following the Jay Treaty (1794).

During the Confederacy Period of 1781–1789, the Continental Congress passed three ordinances whose authority was unclear regarding the region's governance on the American side. According to Witgen, resistance to expansion following the Royal Proclamation of 1763 informed settlers that to continue plans to settle Western territory claimed by the United States, “the United States would need to control the immigration of settlers onto Native lands”. As a result, Native peoples in the Great Lakes region were confined to shrinking reservation lands.

The British-Canadian London Conference of 1866, and subsequent Constitution Act, 1867 analogously derived from political, and some military, turmoil in the former jurisdiction of Upper Canada, which was renamed and organized in the new dominion as the province of Ontario. Like the provisions of the ordinance, Ontario prohibited slavery, made provisions for land distribution to farmers who owned their own land, and mandated universal public education.

Immigration and industrialization

Industrial production, organization, and technology have made the region among the world's most productive manufacturing centers. Nineteenth-century monopolies such as International Harvester, Standard Oil, and United States Steel established the pattern of American centralized industrial consolidation and eventual global dominance. The region hosted the world's greatest concentrations of production for oil, coal, steel, automobiles, synthetic rubber, agricultural machinery, and heavy transport equipment. Agronomy industrialized as well, in meat processing, packaged cereal products, and processed dairy products. In response to disruptions and imbalances of power resulting from so vast a concentration of economic power, industrial workers organized the Congress of Industrial Organizations, a coherent agricultural cooperative movement, and the Progressive politics led by Wisconsin's Governor and Senator Robert M. La Follette. State universities, professional social work, and unemployment and workers' compensation were some of the region's permanent contributions to American social policy.

The Great Lakes region has produced globally influential breakthroughs in agricultural technology, transportation and building construction. Cyrus McCormick's reaper, John Deere's steel plow, Joseph Dart (Dart's Elevator), and George Washington Snow's balloon-frame construction are some of innovations that made significant, global impact. The University of Chicago and Case Western Reserve University figured prominently in developing nuclear power. Automobile manufacture developed simultaneously in Ohio and Indiana and became centered in the Detroit area of Michigan. Henry Ford's movable assembly line drew on regional experience in meat processing, agricultural machinery manufacture, and the industrial engineering of steel in revolutionizing the modern era of mass production manufacturing. Chicago-based Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck companies complemented mass manufactures with mass retail distribution.

Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland carry important roles in the field of architecture. Chicago pioneered the world's first skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building designed by William LeBaron Jenney. Engineering innovation established Chicago from that time on to become one of the world's most influential epicenters of contemporary urban and commercial architecture. Equally influential was the 1832 invention of balloon-framing in Chicago which replaced heavy timber construction requiring massive beams and great woodworking skill with pre-cut timber. This new lumber could be nailed together by farmers and settlers who used it to build homes and barns throughout the western prairies and plains. Wisconsin-born, Chicago-trained Sullivan apprentice Frank Lloyd Wright designed prototypes for architectural designs from the commercial skylight atrium to suburban ranch house.

German-born Pennsylvania immigrant John A. Roebling invented steel wire rope, a pivotal part of suspension bridges he designed and whose construction he supervised in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Buffalo, based on earlier successful canal aqueducts. His most famous project was the Brooklyn Bridge. Contributions to modern transportation include the Wright brothers' early airplanes, designed and perfected in their Dayton, Ohio mechanics' workshops; distinctive Great Lakes freighters, and railroad beds constructed of wooden ties and steel rails. The early nineteenth century Erie Canal and mid-twentieth century St. Lawrence Seaway expanded the scale and capacity of massive water-born freight.

Agricultural associations joined the nineteenth century Grange, which in turn generated the agricultural cooperatives that defined much of rural political economy and culture throughout the region. Fraternal, ethnic, and civic organizations extended cooperatives and supported local ventures from insurance companies to orphanages and hospitals. The region was the political base, and provided much leadership political parties in the region.

The region's greatest institutional contributions were major corporate, labor, educational and cooperative organizations. It hosted some of the most influential national and international corporations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century monopoly age, including John Deere Plow, McCormack Reaper, New York Central and Erie railroads, Carnegie Steel, U.S. Steel, International Harvester and Standard Oil.

20th century

thumb|Ford's River Rouge assembly plant 1941

As a result of industrialization, the population became more concentrated into urban areas. In part to balance democratic representation against the economic and political power of these corporations, the region hosted industrial labor organization, consolidated agricultural cooperatives and state educational systems. The Big Ten Conference memorializes the nation's first region in which every state sponsored major research, technical-agricultural, and teacher-training colleges and universities. The Congress of Industrial Organizations grew out of the region's coal and iron mines; steel, automobile and rubber industries; and breakthrough strikes and contracts of Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan.

The role of government also grew during the early 20th century. In the rural areas, most people obtained food and manufactured goods from neighbors and other people they knew personally. As industry and commerce grew, goods such as food, materials, and medicines were no longer made by neighbors, but by large companies. During World War II, the region became the global epicenter of motorized land vehicles, including cars, trucks and jeeps, as well as a major supplier of engine, transmission, and electrical components to the wartime aeronautics industry. Despite extreme labor shortages, the region increased mechanization, and absorbed large numbers of women and immigrant labor, to increase its food production.

Indigenous peoples' self-determination and conservation

Kyle Powys Whyte, a Citizen Potawatomi environmental scholar, explains that European settlement in North America caused many Native American societies to become separated from local plants, animals, and ecosystems at a rapid pace due to removal and relocation. Practices including deforestation, land contamination through pollution, and commodity agriculture have reshaped ecosystems throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century. Whyte explains that water is considered a relative with an intrinsic value and with responsibilities to give and support life and humans, in turn have a responsibility to care for and respect water.

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