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Great Lakes People
For a variety of reasons, the Great Lakes have attracted many
different kinds of people from all over the world. From Native
Americans to European immigrants, these people contribute to its
diversity and cultural richness. This lesson introduces students to
the people of the Great Lakes Basin.
About 10,000 years ago, around the time that the glacier
receded, the first inhabitants of the Great Lakes area appeared. IT is
believed that these Native Americans came from South America or across the
land bridge once connecting the continents of North America and Asia in
Alaska. Tribes of Native Americans peopled the shores, among them the
Iroquois, Allumettes, Chippewas, Hurons, Ottawas, Senecas, Mohawks, Eries, and
Ojibways. Many cities take their names from the tribes or great chiefs of
these tribes, including Ottawa, Canada, Pontiac, Michigan,: and Erie,
Pennsylvania. Lake Huron was named directly for the Huron Indians. Other
present-day cities were once Indian Villages, including Quebec, Canada, which
was once Stadacona: and Montreal, Canada, which was Hochelaga.
In Europe, two events increased curiosity about the
so-called New World: voyages by Norsemen in the twelfth to fourteenth
centuries and the voyage to America by Christopher Columbus in the fifteenth
century. Artifacts such as a Viking sword, axe and shield found in Ontario and
southwestern Minnesota suggest that the Vikings and Norsemen may have reached
the North American continent as far inland as Minnesota via the Hudson By.
In the 1500s and 1600s, the French were the primary
explorers and settlers in and around the Great Lakes. Less than 200 years
after Norsemen reached the Great Lakes, French explorers and missionaries
began to arrive. Over a period of time, they constructed forts along the Great
Lakes all the way to Kingston, Ontario, where Fort Frontenac was located.
The British were active, too, constructing Fort Oswego on
Lake Ontario's south shore in the early 1700s. The British had already
colonized the New England states and part of Pennsylvania. Steady migration by
the British into French-dominated territory around the Great Lakes led to war
between the two nations over the fur trade. The first African Americans
arrived in the Great Lakes area in the late 1700s, when Jean Batiste Pointe
DuSable, a trapper, built a cabin the Chicago area. African Americans came in
greater numbers in the late 1800s.
During the 1800s, there was a mass influx of other ethnic
groups from Europe. They came to the New World in search of freedom and
prosperity. In all, more that 21 different nationalities settled in the Great
Lakes area. Scandinavians again were among the first to arrive. Norwegians
founded the first permanent colony on the Fox River in Illinois, and Swedes
settled at Pine Lake, Wisconsin, west of Milwaukee. Belgians also came, and
the largest populations of Belgians in the United States are now in Door
County, Wisconsin. The Irish represented the largest immigrant group in
Canada. The first group of Finns settled on the upper peninsula of Michigan
and worked in the copper mines there. They also peopled the areas around
Duluth, Minnesota, working in the open-pit mines of the Vermilion and Mesabi
ranges. Germans flocked to the Great Lakes area, particularly in Sandusky,
Ohio, on Lake Erie and in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Also among the immigrants to the Great Lakes Basin were the
Canadians, French-Canadians, Russians, Czechs, Greeks, Turks, Persians, and
Spaniards, Welshmen, Scotsmen, and Dutch. Immigrants from Mexico, Puerto Rico,
and other Central American countries came at the turn of the century, with
significant migration occurring during World War I.
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