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Great Lakes Forever
c/o Biodiversity Project
4507 N Ravenswood #106
Chicago, IL 60640
773-496-4020 phone
773-906-1303 fax
project@biodiverse.org |
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 People have lived in the Great Lakes region for over 10,00 years. Archaeological evidence suggests that three distinct and successive cultures lived in the Great Lakes region before the 17th century: the Paleo-Indians, the Old Copper Indians and the Woodland Indians. All of these peoples utilized their resources in the Great Lakes by hunting, fishing and eventually farming. The Woodland Indians descendants would form the Chippewa (Ojibwe), Fox, Huron, Iroquois, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Menominee and other Great Lakes tribes of today.
When Europeans first came to Great Lakes in the early 17th century, 60,000 to 170,000 native people lived in the region. Relations between the first Europeans, French fur traders, and native people were relatively friendly - an amicable exchange of metal tools and guns for beaver and other animal pelts. Unfortunately with the onset of European colonization, these friendly relations wouldn’t last.
The first wave of European settlers came largely from Britain and France in the 1820s and 1830s. Immigration to the Great Lakes region throughout the rest of the 19th century was dominated by Germans, Scandinavians and Dutch. Settlers specifically sought out the Great Lakes region because of its incredible natural bounty and the promise of prosperity. The region’s fertile land to farm, thick forests to harvest, plenteous waters to fish and abundant employment made the Great Lakes ideal.
While most settlers originally came to the region to farm, they soon recognized the potential for logging. Major commercial logging operations took place in upper Canada, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin by the 1830s and 40s and focused on harvesting white pine Early logging practices were far from sustainable, and loggers had to move farther west and north to find white pine. When white pine became overly scarce, loggers switched to hardwoods. Today, because an estimated 4/5 of the region's timber was logged, the forests look drastically different than they originally did.
Settlers were also drawn by glowing reports of the Great Lakes fisheries. Commercial fishing began in 1820 and grew steadily through most of the century - reaching 147 million pounds in 1888 and 1889! Unfortunately, over-harvesting and the introduction of invasive species depleted the waters of the native fish. Since then, average annual catches have rarely exceeded 110 million pounds.
Many immigrants who came originally to farm the Great Lakes region - especially those lacking funds to buy land - ended up working in cities such as Chicago, Minneapolis and Toronto. Their labor was the foundation of such historical Great Lakes industries as steel-production, paper-making, manufacturing, and eventually automobile and chemical production.
The region's burgeoning economic prosperity was ultimately fueled on the shipping industry. With the construction of the Erie Canal in the 1820s and increased ease of navigation on the Mississippi River,,the Great Lakes became the hub of transportation in eastern North America. Today, a wealth of maritime songs and legends reflect the economic and cultural importance of these "Sweetwater Seas".
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