Upstate New York
Upstate New York is the portion of the American state of New York lying north of the New York metropolitan area. The Upstate region includes most of the state of New York, excluding New York City, the Lower Hudson Valley, Long Island, although the precise boundary is debated. Major cities in Upstate New York include Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse. Before the American Revolutionary War, Upstate was populated by Native Americans and was home to the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy; the region saw many battles between the Continental Army and the Iroquois, several treaties drawn up after the war ceded much of the land to settlers of European descent. It is rural with rugged terrain; the development of Upstate New York was spurred by the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, which eased the transport of goods between the port of New York City and inland cities along the Great Lakes. As a result, Upstate became a hotbed for manufacturing, giving birth to such firms as General Electric, IBM, Xerox, it welcomed a large influx of immigrants.
Since the mid 20th century, American de-industrialization has contributed to economic and population decline Upstate, the region is considered part of the Rust Belt. Unlike the New York metropolitan area, Upstate New York contains vast areas of rural land; as a result, Upstate supports a strong agriculture industry, is notable for its milk and other dairy products, its fruit production, winemaking. New York City is dependent on the natural resources of Upstate for a variety of services, including the city's water supply and electricity; the region is home to several popular tourist and recreational destinations, including Niagara Falls, the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains, the Finger Lakes. There is no clear official boundary between Downstate New York; the most expansive definition of the term Upstate New York excludes only New York City and Long Island, which are always considered to be part of Downstate New York. Another usage locates the Upstate/Downstate boundary further north, at the point where New York City's suburbs segue into its exurbs, as the exurbs do not fall within the US Census' urban area.
This latter boundary places most, but not all, of Westchester and Rockland Counties in Downstate, while putting the northwestern edge of Rockland County as well as the northernmost quarter of Westchester County in Upstate. Yet another usage follows the U. S. Census definition of the New York metropolitan area prior to 2010, which included Westchester and Putnam Counties; this was the definition used by the plaintiffs in the federal redistricting case Rodriguez v. Pataki. In New York State law, the definition of the Upstate boundary varies: while Westchester is always considered downstate under state law, some definitions include Rockland and Putnam Counties in the downstate region, others include Orange and Dutchess Counties. Ulster County, and, in the largest state-defined extent of downstate, Columbia County, are sometimes included; the division line between the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York places Sullivan County and Dutchess County in the Southern District, Ulster and Columbia Counties in the Northern District.
Within New York State, surveys have had difficulty determining a consensus. In a 2016 poll of New York voters in which respondents were asked to choose among four definitions of where Upstate begins, three were about common, selected by between 25% and 30% of respondents each: north of New York City, north of Westchester County, north of Poughkeepsie in Dutchess County. An informal 2018 poll found the Hudson Valley region is the most disputed area regarding whether it is Upstate or Downstate. Residents of Upstate New York sometimes prefer to identify with a more specific subregion, such as Western New York or Central New York. A number of businesses and institutions in the area have "Upstate" as part of their name. Examples of this include the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, the Upstate New York Chapter of the Arthritis Foundation serving 31 of New York's 62 counties, the VA Healthcare Network Upstate New York, which includes all of New York State northward and westward from Kingston, New York in Ulster County.
Other organizations in New York with "Upstate" in their name include the Upstate Collegiate Athletic Association, the Upstate Correctional Facility, the Upstate New York Club Hockey League, the Upstate New York Synod, the Upstate Citizens for Equality. The other regions of New York State are culturally and economically distinct from the New York City area and in many ways from each other. Most of New York State is characterized both by agricultural and forested rural communities, by small and medium-sized cities and their surrounding suburbs located along major transportation corridors; the state's major metropolitan areas outside of New York City are Buffalo, Albany-Schenectady-Troy, Syracuse, each of whose population exceeds 500,000. The different regions of New York State are influenced by and have affinities with other adjacent regions. Western New York has cultural and economic ties to the other Great Lakes states as well as Southern Ontario; the Capital Distr
Chesapeake Bay
The Chesapeake Bay is an estuary in the U. S. states of Virginia. The Bay is located in the Mid-Atlantic region and is separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the Delmarva Peninsula with its mouth located between Cape Henry and Cape Charles. With its northern portion in Maryland and the southern part in Virginia, the Chesapeake Bay is a important feature for the ecology and economy of those two states, as well as others. More than 150 major rivers and streams flow into the Bay's 64,299-square-mile drainage basin, which covers parts of six states and all of Washington, D. C; the Bay is 200 miles long from its northern headwaters in the Susquehanna River to its outlet in the Atlantic Ocean. It is 2.8 miles wide at 30 miles at its widest. Total shoreline including tributaries is 11,684 miles, circumnavigating a surface area of 4,479 square miles. Average depth is 21 feet; the Bay is spanned twice, in Maryland by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge from Sandy Point to Kent Island and in Virginia by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel connecting Virginia Beach to Cape Charles.
Known for both its beauty and bounty, the Bay has become "emptier", with fewer crabs and watermen in past years. Recent restoration efforts begun in the 1990s have been ongoing and show potential for growth of the native oyster population; the health of the Chesapeake Bay improved in 2015, marking three years of gains over the past four years, according to a new report by the University of Maryland. The word Chesepiooc is an Algonquian word referring to a village "at a big river", it is the seventh oldest surviving English place-name in the United States, first applied as "Chesepiook" by explorers heading north from the Roanoke Colony into a Chesapeake tributary in 1585 or 1586. The name may refer to the Chesapeake people or the Chesepian, a Native American tribe who inhabited the area now known as South Hampton Roads in the U. S. state of Virginia. They occupied an area, now the Norfolk, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach areas. In 2005, Algonquian linguist Blair Rudes "helped to dispel one of the area's most held beliefs: that'Chesapeake' means something like'great shellfish bay.'
It does not, Rudes said. The name might have meant something like'great water,' or it might have just referred to a village location at the Bay's mouth." In addition, the name is always prefixed by "the" in usage by local residents: "The Chesapeake", "The Chesapeake Bay" and "The Bay". The Chesapeake Bay is an estuary to the North Atlantic, lying between the Delmarva Peninsula to the east and the North American mainland to the west, it is the ria, or drowned valley, of the Susquehanna River, meaning that it was the alluvial plain where the river flowed when the sea level was lower. It is not a fjord, because the Laurentide Ice Sheet never reached as far south as the northernmost point on the Bay. North of Baltimore, the western shore borders the hilly Piedmont region of Maryland; the large rivers entering the Bay from the west have broad mouths and are extensions of the main ria for miles up the course of each river. The Bay's geology, its present form, its location were created by a bolide impact event at the end of the Eocene, forming the Chesapeake Bay impact crater and the Susquehanna River valley much later.
The Bay was formed starting about 10,000 years ago when rising sea levels at the end of the last ice age flooded the Susquehanna River valley. Parts of the Bay the Calvert County, coastline, are lined by cliffs composed of deposits from receding waters millions of years ago; these cliffs known as Calvert Cliffs, are famous for their fossils fossilized shark teeth, which are found washed up on the beaches next to the cliffs. Scientists' Cliffs is a beach community in Calvert County named for the desire to create a retreat for scientists when the community was founded in 1935. Much of the Bay is shallow. At the point where the Susquehanna River flows into the Bay, the average depth is 30 feet, although this soon diminishes to an average of 10 feet southeast of the city of Havre de Grace, Maryland, to about 35 feet just north of Annapolis. On average, the depth of the Bay is 21 feet, including tributaries; because the Bay is an estuary, it has salt water and brackish water. Brackish water has three salinity zones: oligohaline and polyhaline.
The freshwater zone runs from the mouth of the Susquehanna River to north Baltimore. The oligohaline zone has little salt. Salinity varies from 0.5 ppt to 10 ppt, freshwater species can survive there. The north end of the oligohaline zone is north Baltimore and the south end is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge; the mesohaline zone has a medium amount of salt and runs from the Bay Bridge to the mouth of the Rappahannock River. Salinity there ranges from 10.7 ppt to 18 ppt. The polyhaline zone is the saltiest zone, some of the water can be as salty as sea water, it runs from the mouth of the Rappahannock River to the mouth of the Bay. The salinity ranges from 18.7 ppt to 36 ppt. The climate of the area surrounding the Bay i
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America and the only one located within the United States. The other four Great Lakes are shared by the U. S. and Canada. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume and the third-largest by surface area, after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that of Lake Huron through the wide Straits of Mackinac, giving it the same surface elevation as its easterly counterpart. Lake Michigan is shared, from west to east, by the U. S. states of Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan. Ports along its shores include Chicago; the word "Michigan" referred to the lake itself, is believed to come from the Ojibwe word michi-gami meaning "great water". Some of the earliest human inhabitants of the Lake Michigan region were the Hopewell Indians, their culture declined after 800 AD, for the next few hundred years, the region was the home of peoples known as the Late Woodland Indians. In the early 17th century, when western European explorers made their first forays into the region, they encountered descendants of the Late Woodland Indians: the Chippewa.
The French explorer Jean Nicolet is believed to have been the first European to reach Lake Michigan in 1634 or 1638. In the earliest European maps of the region, the name of Lake Illinois has been found in addition to that of "Michigan", named for the Illinois Confederation of tribes. Lake Michigan is joined via the narrow, open-water Straits of Mackinac with Lake Huron, the combined body of water is sometimes called Michigan–Huron; the Straits of Mackinac were an important Native American and fur trade route. Located on the southern side of the Straits is the town of Mackinaw City, the site of Fort Michilimackinac, a reconstructed French fort founded in 1715, on the northern side is St. Ignace, site of a French Catholic mission to the Indians, founded in 1671. In 1673, Jacques Marquette, Louis Joliet and their crew of five Métis voyageurs followed Lake Michigan to Green Bay and up the Fox River, nearly to its headwaters, in their search for the Mississippi River, cf. Fox–Wisconsin Waterway.
The eastern end of the Straits was controlled by Fort Mackinac on Mackinac Island, a British colonial and early American military base and fur trade center, founded in 1781. With the advent of European exploration into the area in the late 17th century, Lake Michigan became part of a line of waterways leading from the Saint Lawrence River to the Mississippi River and thence to the Gulf of Mexico. French coureurs des bois and voyageurs established small ports and trading communities, such as Green Bay, on the lake during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. In the 19th century, Lake Michigan played a major role in the development of Chicago and the Midwestern United States west of the lake. For example, 90% of the grain shipped from Chicago travelled east over Lake Michigan during the antebellum years, only falling below 50% after the Civil War and the major expansion of railroad shipping; the first person to reach the deep bottom of Lake Michigan was J. Val Klump, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
Klump reached the bottom via submersible as part of a 1985 research expedition. In 2007, a row of stones paralleling an ancient shoreline was discovered by Mark Holley, professor of underwater archeology at Northwestern Michigan College; this formation lies 40 feet below the surface of the lake. One of the stones is said to have a carving resembling a mastodon. So far the formation has not been authenticated; the warming of Lake Michigan was the subject of a report by Purdue University in 2018. In each decade since 1980, steady increases in average surface temperature have occurred; this is to lead to decreasing native habitat and to adversely affect native species survival. Lake Michigan is the sole Great Lake wholly within the borders of the United States, it lies in the region known as the American Midwest. Lake Michigan has a surface area of 22,404 sq.mi. It is the larger half of Lake Michigan–Huron, the largest body of fresh water in the world by surface area, it is 307 miles long by 118 miles wide with a shoreline 1,640 miles long.
The lake's average depth is 46 fathoms 3 feet. It contains a volume of 1,180 cubic miles of water. Green Bay in the northwest is its largest bay. Grand Traverse Bay in its northeast is another large bay. Lake Michigan's deepest region, which lies in its northern-half, is called Chippewa Basin and is separated from South Chippewa Basin, by a shallower area called the Mid Lake Plateau. Twelve million people live along Lake Michigan's shores in the Chicago and Milwaukee metropolitan areas; the economy of many communities in northern Michigan and Door County, Wisconsin is supported by tourism, with large seasonal populations attracted by Lake Michigan. Seasonal residents have summer homes along the waterfront and return home for the winter; the southern
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle; the Commonwealth is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, New Jersey to the east. Pennsylvania is the 33rd-largest state by area, the 6th-most populous state according to the most recent official U. S. Census count in 2010, it is the 9th-most densely populated of the 50 states. Pennsylvania's two most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh; the state capital and its 10th largest city is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 140 miles of waterfront along the Delaware Estuary; the state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States. Part of Pennsylvania, together with the present State of Delaware, had earlier been organized as the Colony of New Sweden.
It was the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, on December 12, 1787. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in the state's largest city of Philadelphia. During the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg was fought in the south central region of the state. Valley Forge near Philadelphia was General Washington's headquarters during the bitter winter of 1777–78. Pennsylvania is 170 miles north to south and 283 miles east to west. Of a total 46,055 square miles, 44,817 square miles are land, 490 square miles are inland waters, 749 square miles are waters in Lake Erie, it is the 33rd-largest state in the United States. Pennsylvania has 51 miles of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary. Of the original Thirteen Colonies, Pennsylvania is the only state that does not border the Atlantic Ocean; the boundaries of the state are the Mason–Dixon line to the south, the Twelve-Mile Circle on the Pennsylvania-Delaware border, the Delaware River to the east, 80° 31' W to the west and the 42° N to the north, with the exception of a short segment on the western end, where a triangle extends north to Lake Erie.
Cities include Philadelphia, Reading and Lancaster in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the southwest, the tri-cities of Allentown and Easton in the central east. The northeast includes the former anthracite coal mining cities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton. Erie is located in the northwest. State College serves the central region while Williamsport serves the commonwealth's north-central region as does Chambersburg the south-central region, with York and the state capital Harrisburg on the Susquehanna River in the east-central region of the Commonwealth and Altoona and Johnstown in the west-central region; the state has five geographical regions, namely the Allegheny Plateau and Valley, Atlantic Coastal Plain and the Erie Plain. New York Ontario Maryland Delaware West Virginia New Jersey Ohio Pennsylvania's diverse topography produces a variety of climates, though the entire state experiences cold winters and humid summers. Straddling two major zones, the majority of the state, with the exception of the southeastern corner, has a humid continental climate.
The southern portion of the state has a humid subtropical climate. The largest city, has some characteristics of the humid subtropical climate that covers much of Delaware and Maryland to the south. Summers are hot and humid. Moving toward the mountainous interior of the state, the winter climate becomes colder, the number of cloudy days increases, snowfall amounts are greater. Western areas of the state locations near Lake Erie, can receive over 100 inches of snowfall annually, the entire state receives plentiful precipitation throughout the year; the state may be subject to severe weather from spring through summer into fall. Tornadoes occur annually in the state, sometimes in large numbers, such as 30 recorded tornadoes in 2011; as of 1600, the tribes living in Pennsylvania were the Algonquian Lenape, the Iroquoian Susquehannock & Petun and the Siouan Monongahela Culture, who may have been the same as a little known tribe called the Calicua, or Cali. Other tribes who entered the region during the colonial era were the Trockwae, Saponi, Nanticoke, Conoy Piscataway, Iroquois Confederacy—possibly among others.
Other tribes, like the Erie, may have once held some land in Pennsylvania, but no longer did so by the year 1600. Both the Dutch and the English claimed both sides of the Delaware River as part of their colonial lands in America; the Dutch were the first to take possession. By June 3, 1631, the Dutch had begun settling the Delmarva Peninsula by establishing the Zwaanendael Colony on the site of present-day Lewes, Delaware. In 1638, Sweden established the New Sweden Colony, in the region of Fort Christina, on the site of present-day Wilmington, Delaware. New Sweden claimed and, for the most part, controlled the lower Delaware River region (parts of present-day Delaware, New Jersey, Pe
Ottawa River
The Ottawa River is a river in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. For most of its length, it defines the border between these two provinces, it is a major tributary of the St. Lawrence River; the river rises at Lac des Outaouais, north of the Laurentian Mountains of central Quebec, flows west to Lake Timiskaming. From there its route has been used to define the interprovincial border with Ontario; the river reaches great depths of nearly 460 feet in some places. From Lake Timiskaming, the river flows southeast to Ottawa and Gatineau, where it tumbles over Chaudière Falls and further takes in the Rideau and Gatineau rivers; the Ottawa River drains into the Lake of the St. Lawrence River at Montreal; the river is 1,271 kilometres long. The average annual mean waterflow measured at Carillon dam, near the Lake of Two Mountains, is 1,939 cubic metres per second, with average annual extremes of 749 to 5,351 cubic metres per second. Record historic levels since 1964 are a low of 529 cubic metres per second in 2005 and a high of 8,190 cubic metres per second in 1976.
The river flows through large areas of deciduous and coniferous forest formed over thousands of years as trees recolonized the Ottawa Valley after the ice age. The coniferous forests and blueberry bogs occur on old sand plains left by retreating glaciers, or in wetter areas with clay substrate; the deciduous forests, dominated by birch, beech and ash occur in more mesic areas with better soil around the boundary with the La Varendrye Park. These primeval forests were affected by natural fire started by lightning, which led to increased reproduction by pine and oak, as well as fire barrens and their associated species; the vast areas of pine were exploited by early loggers. Generations of logging removed hemlock for use in tanning leather, leaving a permanent deficit of hemlock in most forests. Associated with the logging and early settlement were vast wild fires which not only removed the forests, but led to soil erosion. Nearly all the forests show varying degrees of human disturbance. Tracts of older forest are uncommon, hence they are considered of considerable importance for conservation.
The Ottawa River has large areas of wetlands. Some of the more biologically important wetland areas include, the Westmeath sand dune/wetland complex, Mississippi Snye, Breckenridge Nature Reserve, Shirleys Bay, Ottawa Beach/Andrew Haydon Park, Petrie Island, the Duck Islands and Greens Creek; the Westmeath sand dune/wetland complex is significant for its pristine sand dunes, few of which remain along the Ottawa River, the many associated rare plants. Shirleys Bay has a biologically diverse shoreline alvar, as well as one of the largest silver maple swamps along the river. Like all wetlands, these depend upon the seasonal fluctuations in the water level. High water levels help create and maintain silver maple swamps, while low water periods allow many rare wetland plants to grow on the emerged sand and clay flats. There are five principal wetland vegetation types. One is swamp silver maple. There are four herbaceous vegetation types, named for the dominant plant species in them: Scirpus, Eleocharis and Typha.
Which type occurs in a particular location depends upon factors such as substrate type, water depth, ice-scour and fertility. Inland, south of the river, older river channels, which date back to the end of the ice age, no longer have flowing water, have sometimes filled with a different wetland type, peat bog. Examples include Alfred Bog. Major tributaries include: Communities along the Ottawa River include: The Ottawa River lies in the Ottawa-Bonnechere Graben, a Mesozoic rift valley that formed 175 million years ago. Much of the river flows through the Canadian Shield, although lower areas flow through limestone plains and glacial deposits; as the glacial ice sheet began to retreat at the end of the last ice age, the Ottawa River valley, along with the St. Lawrence River valley and Lake Champlain, had been depressed to below sea level by the glacier's weight, filled with sea water; the resulting arm of the ocean is known as the Champlain Sea. Fossil remains of marine life dating 12 to 10 thousand years ago have been found in marine clay throughout the region.
Sand deposits from this era have produced vast plains dominated by pine forests, as well as localized areas of sand dunes, such as Westmeath and Constance Bay. Clay deposits from this period have resulted in areas of poor drainage, large swamps, peat bogs in some ancient channels of this river. Hence, the distribution of forests and wetlands is much a product of these past glacial events. Large deposits of a material known as Leda clay formed; these deposits become unstable after heavy rains. Numerous landslides have occurred as a result; the former site of the town of Lemieux, Ontario collapsed into the South Nation River in 1993. The town's residents had been relocated because of the suspected instability of the earth in that location; as the land rose again the sea coast retreated and the fresh water courses of today took shape. Following the demise of the Champlain Sea the Ottawa River Valley continued to drain the waters of the emerging Upper Great Lakes basin through Lake Nipissing and the Mattawa River.
Owing to the ongoing uplift of the la
Wyandot people
The Wyandot people or Wendat called the Huron Nation and Huron people, are an Iroquoian-speaking peoples of North America who emerged as a tribe around the north shore of Lake Ontario. They traditionally spoke the Wyandot language, a Northern Iroquoian language, were believed to number over 30,000 at the time of European encounter in the second decade of the 17th century. By the 15th century, the pre-contact Wyandot had settled in the large area from the north shores of most of present-day Lake Ontario, northwards up to Georgian Bay. From this homeland, they encountered the French explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1615; the historical Wyandot emerged in the late 17th century from the remnants of two earlier groups: the Wyandot Confederacy and the Tionontati. They were located in the southern part of what is now the Canadian province of Ontario around Georgian Bay. Drastically reduced in number by epidemic diseases after 1634, they were dispersed by war in 1649 from the Iroquois based in New York.
Today the Wyandot have a First Nations reserve in Canada. They have three major settlements in the United States, two of which are organized as independently governed, federally recognized tribes. Due to differing development of the groups, they speak distinct forms of Wendat and Wyandot languages; the Huron Range spanned the region from downriver of the source of the St. Lawrence River, along three-quarters of the northern shore of Lake Ontario, to the territory of the related Neutral people, extending north from both ends to wrap around Georgian Bay—which became their territorial center after their 1649 defeat and dispossession. Early theories placed Huron origin in the St. Lawrence Valley, with some arguing for a presence near present-day Montreal and former sites of the historic St. Lawrence Iroquoian peoples. Wendat is an Iroquoian language. Early 21st-century research in linguistics and archaeology confirm an historical connection between the Huron and the St. Lawrence Iroquois, but all of the Iroquoian-speaking peoples shared some aspects of their culture, including the Erie people, any or all of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, or the defunct Susquehannock tribe.
In 1975 and 1978, archeologists excavated a large 15th-century Huron village, now called the Draper Site, in Pickering, Ontario near Lake Ontario. In 2003 a larger village was discovered five kilometres away in Whitchurch-Stouffville; the sites each had been surrounded by a palisade. The Mantle Site had more than 70 multi-family longhouses. Canadian archeologist James F. Pendergast states: Indeed, there is now every indication that the late precontact Huron and their immediate antecedents developed in a distinct Huron homeland in southern Ontario along the north shore of Lake Ontario. Subsequently they moved from there to their historic territory on Georgian Bay, where they were encountered by Champlain in 1615. In the early 17th century, this Iroquoian people called themselves the Wendat, an autonym which means "Dwellers of the Peninsula" or "Islanders"; the Wendat historic territory was bordered on three sides by the waters of Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe. Early French explorers referred to these natives as the Huron, either from the French huron, or from hure.
According to tradition, French sailors thought that the bristly hairstyle of Wendat warriors resembled that of a boar. French fur traders and explorers called them the "bon Iroquois". An alternate etymology from Russell Errett in 1885 is that the name is from the Iroquoian name Irri-ronon, a name applied to the Erie nation, they pronounced the name as Hirri-ronon in French, known as Hirr-on, spelled in its present form, Huron. William Martin Beauchamp concurred in 1907 that Huron was at least related to the Iroqouian root ronon. Other etymological possibilities come from the Algonquin words tu-ron; the Wendat were not a tribe, but a confederacy of four or more tribes who had mutually intelligible languages. According to tradition, this Wendat Confederacy was initiated by the Attignawantans and the Attigneenongnahacs, who made their alliance in the 15th century, they were joined by the Arendarhonons about 1590, the Tahontaenrats around 1610. A fifth group, the Ataronchronons, may not have attained full membership in the confederacy, may have been a division of the Attignawantan.
The largest Wendat settlement, capital of the confederacy, was located at Ossossane. Modern-day Elmvale, Ontario developed near that site, they called their traditional territory Wendake. Related to the people of the Huron Confederacy were the Tionontate, a group whom the French called the Petun, for their cultivation of that crop, they were divided into two groups: the Deer and the Wolves. Considering that they formed the nucleus of the tribe known as the Wyandot, they too may have called themselves Wendat. Tuberculosis was endemic among the Huron, aggravated by the close and smoky living conditions in the longhouses. Despite this, the Huron on the whole were healthy; the earliest written accounts of the Huron were made by the French, who began exploring North America in the 16th century. News of the Europeans reached the Huron when Samuel de Champlain explored the Saint Lawrence River in the early 17th century; some Hur
Great Lakes
The Great Lakes called the Laurentian Great Lakes and the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of interconnected freshwater lakes in the upper mid-east region of North America, on the Canada–United States border, which connect to the Atlantic Ocean through the Saint Lawrence River. They consist of Lakes Superior, Huron and Ontario, although hydrologically, there are four lakes, Erie and Michigan-Huron; the connected lakes form the Great Lakes Waterway. The Great Lakes are the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth by total area, second-largest by total volume, containing 21% of the world's surface fresh water by volume; the total surface is 94,250 square miles, the total volume is 5,439 cubic miles less than the volume of Lake Baikal. Due to their sea-like characteristics the five Great Lakes have long been referred to as inland seas. Lake Superior is the second largest lake in the world by area, the largest freshwater lake by area. Lake Michigan is the largest lake, within one country.
The Great Lakes began to form at the end of the last glacial period around 14,000 years ago, as retreating ice sheets exposed the basins they had carved into the land which filled with meltwater. The lakes have been a major source for transportation, migration and fishing, serving as a habitat to a large number of aquatic species in a region with much biodiversity; the surrounding region is called the Great Lakes region. Though the five lakes lie in separate basins, they form a single interconnected body of fresh water, within the Great Lakes Basin, they form a chain connecting the east-central interior of North America to the Atlantic Ocean. From the interior to the outlet at the Saint Lawrence River, water flows from Superior to Huron and Michigan, southward to Erie, northward to Lake Ontario; the lakes drain a large watershed via many rivers, are studded with 35,000 islands. There are several thousand smaller lakes called "inland lakes," within the basin; the surface area of the five primary lakes combined is equal to the size of the United Kingdom, while the surface area of the entire basin is about the size of the UK and France combined.
Lake Michigan is the only one of the Great Lakes, within the United States. The lakes are divided among the jurisdictions of the Canadian province of Ontario and the U. S. states of Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana, Ohio and New York. Both Ontario and Michigan include in their boundaries portions of four of the lakes: Ontario does not border Lake Michigan, Michigan does not border Lake Ontario. New York and Wisconsin's jurisdictions extend into two lakes, each of the remaining states into one of the lakes; as the surfaces of Lakes Superior, Huron and Erie are all the same elevation above sea level, while Lake Ontario is lower, because the Niagara Escarpment precludes all natural navigation, the four upper lakes are called the "upper great lakes". This designation, however, is not universal; those living on the shore of Lake Superior refer to all the other lakes as "the lower lakes", because they are farther south. Sailors of bulk freighters transferring cargoes from Lake Superior and northern Lake Michigan and Lake Huron to ports on Lake Erie or Ontario refer to the latter as the lower lakes and Lakes Michigan and Superior as the upper lakes.
This corresponds to thinking of Lakes Erie and Ontario as "down south" and the others as "up north". Vessels sailing north on Lake Michigan are considered "upbound" though they are sailing toward its effluent current; the Chicago River and Calumet River systems connect the Great Lakes Basin to the Mississippi River System through man-made alterations and canals. The St. Marys River, including the Soo Locks, connects Lake Superior to Lake Huron; the Straits of Mackinac connect Lake Michigan to Lake Huron. The St. Clair River connects Lake Huron to Lake St. Clair; the Detroit River connects Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie; the Niagara River, including Niagara Falls, connects Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. The Welland Canal, bypassing the Falls, connects Lake Erie to Lake Ontario; the Saint Lawrence River and the Saint Lawrence Seaway connect Lake Ontario to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which connects to the Atlantic Ocean. Lakes Huron and Michigan are sometimes considered a single lake, called Lake Michigan–Huron, because they are one hydrological body of water connected by the Straits of Mackinac.
The straits are 120 feet deep. Lake Nipigon, connected to Lake Superior by the Nipigon River, is surrounded by sill-like formations of mafic and ultramafic igneous rock hundreds of meters high; the lake lies in the Nipigon Embayment, a failed arm of the triple junction in the Midcontinent Rift System event, estimated at 1,109 million years ago. Green Bay is an arm of Lake Michigan, along the south coast of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the east coast of Wisconsin, it is separated from the rest of the lake by the Door Peninsula in Wisconsin, the Garden Peninsula in Michigan, the chain of islands between
