Looking at the greater region today it’s convenient to label The Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi as the Midwest due to the economic interconnectivity and the prosperous western lake hub cities. Chicago, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Duluth & Thunder Bay are all important regional, national & international hubs that have grown up bridging the gap between navigable waterway systems.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Land...akes-Joint-Venture-Region_fig2_326811224
Taking a step back in time and looking at the original Great Lakes civilization the so called “Copper Culture” and their trade routes gives a glimpse at Great Lakes centered trade in albeit in a state of pre-sedentary civilization (6,500 BC - 1,000 BC). Lake Superior has the worlds largest deposit of Natural Copper or Copper appearing in the form we think of it as not a mineral which requires smelting to be useable.
Note that trade extended northwest from the Great Lakes to Lake Winnipeg and Lake Manatoba via the Rainy and Winnipeg Rivers head waters in and around The Lake of the Woods and its surrounding multitude of lakes, rivers and wetlands. The Black Swamp allowed easy canoe based trade from Lake Erie to the Maumee to Wabash & Illinois Rivers by the wetlands where Fort Wayne Indiana now is.
To the east the Ottawa River which nearly reaches Lake Huron and the chain of lakes, rivers & wetlands that surround the once secondary glacial outflow provided another route to take advantage. The Great Lakes were used in pre-Colombian trade but the hazards of navigation before the modern age on stormy waters likely played a role in where and when to travel. This is in addition to accessing tribes who were settled along these sometimes shallow or impassable waterways creating focal points and trade centers around portages.
The Potawatomi who lived in SW Oakland county had a trading hub at 14 mile and Halstead at Minnow Pond. It’s a wetlands at the headwaters of the Upper Rouge River on the edge of the Huron River watershed. I am extrapolating and scaling up to add context for my perspective. Based on what I know about local trade between watersheds which are filled with lakes, rivers & wetlands
https://www.mpm.edu/research-collections...-research/old-copper-culture/artifacts-0
Here’s a suggested look at settled agrarian pre-Colombian North American civilization cities, trade hubs and routes. While the age of sail Europeans placed a much greater emphasis on access to deep navigable waters and ocean access getting a picture of the modern world isn’t hard when looking at this map.
http://chapter20projectgroup.weebly.com/pre-columbian-north-america.html
The French vision for North American Empire is another possibility of how North America may have been developed/settled/conquered. Just as New York City is the natural harbor on an eastern seaboard British based North America. The St Lawrence River & the Gulf of St Lawrence offers best path forward to the interior of North America. In another universe Montreal could have become the greatest city in North America though New York was always destined to be a great city full stop. The French use interior waterways following the Native American trade routes setting up forts in Manitoba with a Great Lakes alignment after losing their Hudson Bay claim in 1713.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nouvelle-France_map-en.svg
If Benedict Arnold wasn’t defeated storming the citadel of Quebec ironically due to a deserter tipping the British off that his frontal assault was a diversion to fix them in place. When he broke down the back gate instead facing an ambush in the narrow streets and getting a face full of British lead he may have brought Canada into the Continental fold. Without a hostile border and a long delay settling the Great Lakes while the Erie Canal was built the St Lawrence may have been a blue highway to the interior coast of America. It’s possible that the Great Lakes would have been settled on par with the Mississippi Valley or slightly quicker as it was more developed and had easier access to the old world.
You can’t look west at the plains without looking east to Ontario and Quebec the “Midwest” doesn’t work as a region truly unless you look at it from a North American perspective. Looking at it that way changes things Great Lakes & Upper Mississippi, Midwest, North East Central whatever. There is a border that makes Michigan and Upstate New York look like the end of the line but there aren’t two counties that have closer economic, political, military & cultural ties (with the exception of French culture going strong in Quebec while dying in Louisiana).
Definitely not apples to apples Canada spent a long time separated from the US as part of The British Empire before the post civil war rapprochement began to blur the lines again. Though that most of the population of Canada lives within 50 miles of the US border it’s hard to say with the exception of politics (Canada doesn’t have the post civil war & slavery baggage, maybe why they’re so polite) we’re pretty similar people’s. Pre 9/11 you didn’t feel the border though things have perhaps started to drift again due to that. Hopefully new high speed rail connections into Ontario from Michigan and hopefully New York will make travel easier and help bring a little Canadian perspective & cordiality into our lives.
*Map of US rivers & watersheds
https://www.livescience.com/56751-visualization-of-united-states-rivers.html
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to get a better idea of Chicago, Illinois, Lake Michigan part of the Great Lakes, or any Midwest subject matter I don't know too much about.
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