Touching four of the five Great Lakes Michigan’s location and geography have helped it become one of the most populous states in the Midwest The big waters divide the state into two large peninsulas Upper and Lower Forests and lakes cover much of the north while southern Michigan is home to the state’s largest cities and major industries American Indian tribes such as the Ottawa Ojibwa and Potawatomi have been living in Michigan for thousands of years However as white settlers arrived they gradually pushed the tribes off their land The first white people to arrive were missionaries and fur traders Jacques Marquette a French missionary founded Sault Ste Marie in 1668 In 1701 French explorer Antoine Cadillac built a fort and trading post on the future site of Detroit 6
The Potawatomi tribe originally lived in Michigan but was forced west as white settlers came to the area The British captured Detroit from the French in 1760 They held the city until 1794 when a treaty gave the newly independent United States control Two years later the area became part of the Northwest Territory And in 1805 Michigan became its own territory Around this time the United States and local tribes began signing treaties In these agreements the tribes gave up land for US settlements 7
New settlers arrived to farm and trade Settlement increased thanks to the Erie Canal in New York which linked the Great Lakes to the East Coast This helped Michigan settlers bring their goods to busy eastern markets In the early 1800s there were still few roads leading to the territory Maps had little detail In 1835 one mapmaker’s mistake nearly led to a war between settlers in Michigan and Ohio The two sides argued over who should own the mouth of the Maumee River and the town of Toledo According to one story Ohioans nicknamed Michiganders Wolverines during this time The THINK ABOUT IT How do you think the Great Lakes shaped the settlement of Michigan in the state’s early days 8
Originally in Detroit the University of Michigan moved to its current location in Ann Arbor in (cid:15)Πwolverine is a feisty bad-tempered animal that is always ready for a fight The people of Michigan adopted the name with pride The University of Michigan which had opened in 1817 made the wolverine the mascot for its sports teams Michigan became a state in 1837 Its name comes from an Ojibwa word meaning great water Throughout the early to mid 1800s settlers cleared farmland in southern Michigan 9
