1.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
2.
Illinois
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Illinois is a state in the midwestern region of the United States, achieving statehood in 1818. It is the 6th most populous state and 25th largest state in terms of land area, the word Illinois comes from a French rendering of a native Algonquin word. For decades, OHare International Airport has been ranked as one of the worlds busiest airports, Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics. With the War of 1812 Illinois growth slowed as both Native Americans and Canadian forces often raided the American Frontier, mineral finds and timber stands also had spurred immigration—by the 1810s, the Eastern U. S. Railroads arose and matured in the 1840s, and soon carried immigrants to new homes in Illinois, as well as being a resource to ship their commodity crops out to markets. Railroads freed most of the land of Illinois and other states from the tyranny of water transport. By 1900, the growth of jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted a new group of immigrants. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars, the Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans in Chicago, who created the citys famous jazz and blues cultures. Three U. S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, additionally, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was the only U. S. president born and raised in Illinois. Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official slogan, Land of Lincoln. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is located in the capital of Springfield. Illinois is the spelling for the early French Catholic missionaries and explorers name for the Illinois Native Americans. American scholars previously thought the name Illinois meant man or men in the Miami-Illinois language and this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language, as the word for man is ireniwa and plural men is ireniwaki. The name Illiniwek has also said to mean tribe of superior men. The name Illinois derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa he speaks the regular way and this was taken into the Ojibwe language, perhaps in the Ottawa dialect, and modified into ilinwe·. The French borrowed these forms, changing the ending to spell it as -ois. The current spelling form, Illinois, began to appear in the early 1670s, the Illinois name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, the Koster Site has been excavated and demonstrates 7,000 years of continuous habitation
3.
Kankakee River
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The Kankakee River is a tributary of the Illinois River, approximately 133 miles long, in northwestern Indiana and northeastern Illinois in the United States. At one time, the river drained one of the largest wetlands in North America, significantly altered from its original channel, it flows through a primarily rural farming region of reclaimed cropland, south of Lake Michigan. The Kankakee rises in northwestern Indiana, approximately 5 miles southwest of South Bend and it forms the border between LaPorte, Porter, and Lake counties on the north and Starke, Jasper, and Newton counties on the south. The river curves westward as it enters Kankakee County in northeastern Illinois, approximately 3 miles southeast of the city of Kankakee, it receives the Iroquois River from the south and turns sharply to the northwest for its lower 35 miles. It joins the Des Plaines River from the south to form the Illinois River, the Kankakee River Basin drains 2,989 sq mi in northwest Indiana,2,169 sq mi in northeast Illinois, and about 7 sq mi in southwest Lower Michigan. The Kankakee River heads near South Bend, Indiana, then westward into Illinois. Although the Kankakee River basin includes portions of Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, the Kankakee Outwash and Lacustrine Plain, a large and poorly drained plain, comprises approximately the southern quarter of both Lake and Porter Counties. It is the most recent of the three regions to face the pressures of impending urbanization. Large portions of the area were once associated with the meandering Kankakee River. The marsh area was 3 to 4 miles wide and contained water 1 to 4 feet deep, the low marshland was broken by infrequent islands of sand blown into dunes. The sand islands were the sites of Indian encampments and later of pioneer homes, the Kankakee marsh was an effective barrier to early southerly exploration of both counties, but the area has been progressively drained by ditches constructed during the past 60 years. The Kankakee River Basin is a product of the Wisconsin Glacial Episode and it is a remnant of the glacial lakes that comprised the Lake Michigan lobe of the ice sheet. Local relief varies from 60 feet along the Iroquois Moraine, up to 100 feet on the Valparaiso Moraine, deposits range from 50 to 100 feet in the lower basin. The deepest deposits of 100 to 250 feet are in the upper basin, along the Valparaiso Moraine, deposits can reach 350 feet thick. Outwash deposits occur primarily along the border of the basin. The southern half of the Kankakee Basin, south of the river channel, is characterized by the fine-grained sediments that are wind driven. Lacustrine silts and clays are mixed with the various waterborne and wind driven deposits throughout the basin, the bedrock underlying the Kankakee Basin is primarily of Silurian age. There are also strata from the Devonian, and Mississippian periods, the Silurian rocks are primarily dolomite and limestone
4.
Des Plaines River
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Native Americans used the river as transportation route and portage. The local Native Americans showed these early European explorers how to traverse waterways of the Des Plaines watershed to travel from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River and its valley. The slow-moving Des Plaines River rises in southern Wisconsin just west of Kenosha, the river turns to the east and flows through woodland forest preserve districts in Lake and Cook counties, northwest of Chicago. Numerous small fixed dams have been built on the river starting in central Lake County, eventually, the river turns to the southwest and joins with the Sanitary and Ship Canal in Lockport before flowing through the city of Joliet. In the heavily industrialized area around Joliet, dams control the river, just west of Joliet, the Des Plaines converges with the Kankakee River to form the Illinois River. The original course of the riverbed was moved to the west at the town of Lockport during the construction of the Sanitary and Ship Canal in 1905. Sections of the river in the Lake County and Cook County Forest Preserve districts in Illinois create a nearly continuous greenway though all of Lake County, while canoe launching ramps are available, The lack of ramps for trailered boats makes this long river a quiet, family-friendly river. This greenway also supports the Des Plaines River Trail, a trail that roughly follows the course of the Des Plaines River through Lake County. The Des Plaines River was named by early French coureur de bois sometime between the 17th and 18th centuries, after the trees lining the banks of the river. This meaning of plaine survives in Canadian French, Plaine or Plaine rouge refers to an Acer rubrum, the English word for the plane tree came from the 14th century Old French word la plane. Since the later 18th century, the French word for the tree has evolved into le platane. A side effect of such action was that the original French meaning of the applied to the Des Plaines River was obscured. Today, des Plaines in modern Parisian French literally means of the plains or of the prairie and this has led to confusion about the meaning of the original French name for the Des Plaines River. Many people today believe that the river was named after the plains, but, in the 18th-century French dialect, it was more common to use the word prairie to indicate a plain, such as Prairie du Rocher in Illinois and Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin. Also, as noted above, it is likely that the river was named in reference to the trees rather than the land. The French, like the Native Americans, traveled primarily by waterways rather than overland, the view of the prairie was nearly always blocked by trees. To this day a number of both maples and sycamores grow along the Des Plaines River. Although the original French name for the river has survived, its pronunciation has been altered, today, locals pronounce it in an anglicized way, rather than according to the French pronunciation
5.
Mississippi River
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The Mississippi River is the chief river of the largest drainage system on the North American continent. Flowing entirely in the United States, it rises in northern Minnesota, with its many tributaries, the Mississippis watershed drains all or parts of 31 U. S. states and 2 Canadian provinces between the Rocky and Appalachian Mountains. The Mississippi ranks as the fourth longest and fifteenth largest river in the world by discharge, the river either borders or passes through the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Native Americans long lived along the Mississippi River and its tributaries, most were hunter-gatherers, but some, such as the Mound Builders, formed prolific agricultural societies. The arrival of Europeans in the 16th century changed the way of life as first explorers, then settlers. The river served first as a barrier, forming borders for New Spain, New France, and the early United States, and then as a vital transportation artery and communications link. Formed from thick layers of the silt deposits, the Mississippi embayment is one of the most fertile agricultural regions of the country. In recent years, the river has shown a shift towards the Atchafalaya River channel in the Delta. The word itself comes from Messipi, the French rendering of the Anishinaabe name for the river, see below in the History section for additional information. In addition to historical traditions shown by names, there are at least two measures of a rivers identity, one being the largest branch, and the other being the longest branch. Using the largest-branch criterion, the Ohio would be the branch of the Lower Mississippi. Using the longest-branch criterion, the Middle Mississippi-Missouri-Jefferson-Beaverhead-Red Rock-Hellroaring Creek River would be the main branch and its length of at least 3,745 mi is exceeded only by the Nile, the Amazon, and perhaps the Yangtze River among the longest rivers in the world. The source of this waterway is at Browers Spring,8,800 feet above sea level in southwestern Montana and this is exemplified by the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the phrase Trans-Mississippi as used in the name of the Trans-Mississippi Exposition. It is common to qualify a regionally superlative landmark in relation to it, the New Madrid Seismic Zone along the river is also noteworthy. These various basic geographical aspects of the river in turn underlie its human history and present uses of the waterway, the Upper Mississippi runs from its headwaters to its confluence with the Missouri River at St. Louis, Missouri. The source of the Upper Mississippi branch is traditionally accepted as Lake Itasca,1,475 feet above sea level in Itasca State Park in Clearwater County, however, the lake is in turn fed by a number of smaller streams. From its origin at Lake Itasca to St. Louis, Missouri, fourteen of these dams are located above Minneapolis in the headwaters region and serve multiple purposes, including power generation and recreation. The remaining 29 dams, beginning in downtown Minneapolis, all locks and were constructed to improve commercial navigation of the upper river
6.
Tributary
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A tributary or affluent is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean, tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage basin of its surface water and groundwater, leading the water out into an ocean. A confluence, where two or more bodies of water together, usually refers to the joining of tributaries. The opposite to a tributary is a distributary, a river or stream that branches off from, distributaries are most often found in river deltas. Right tributary and left tributary are terms stating the orientation of the relative to the flow of the main stem river. These terms are defined from the perspective of looking downstream, where tributaries have the same name as the river into which they feed, they are called forks. These are typically designated by compass direction, for example, the American River receives flow from its North, Middle, and South forks. The Chicago Rivers North Branch has the East, West, and Middle Fork, the South Branch has its South Fork, forks are sometimes designated as right or left. Here, the handedness is from the point of view of an observer facing upstream, for instance, Steer Creek has a left tributary which is called Right Fork Steer Creek. Tributaries are sometimes listed starting with those nearest to the source of the river, the Strahler Stream Order examines the arrangement of tributaries in a hierarchy of first, second, third, and higher orders, with the first-order tributary being typically the least in size. For example, a second-order tributary would be the result of two or more first-order tributaries combining to form the second-order tributary, another method is to list tributaries from mouth to source, in the form of a tree structure, stored as a tree data structure
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Wisconsin
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Wisconsin is a U. S. state located in the north-central United States, in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, Wisconsin is the 23rd largest state by total area and the 20th most populous. The state capital is Madison, and its largest city is Milwaukee, the state is divided into 72 counties. Wisconsin is second to Michigan in the length of its Great Lakes coastline, Wisconsin is known as Americas Dairyland because it is one of the nations leading dairy producers, particularly famous for its cheese. Manufacturing, especially paper products, information technology, and tourism are major contributors to the states economy. The word Wisconsin originates from the given to the Wisconsin River by one of the Algonquian-speaking Native American groups living in the region at the time of European contact. French explorer Jacques Marquette was the first European to reach the Wisconsin River, arriving in 1673, subsequent French writers changed the spelling from Meskousing to Ouisconsin, and over time this became the name for both the Wisconsin River and the surrounding lands. English speakers anglicized the spelling from Ouisconsin to Wisconsin when they began to arrive in numbers during the early 19th century. The legislature of Wisconsin Territory made the current spelling official in 1845, the Algonquin word for Wisconsin and its original meaning have both grown obscure. Interpretations vary, but most implicate the river and the red sandstone that lines its banks, other theories include claims that the name originated from one of a variety of Ojibwa words meaning red stone place, where the waters gather, or great rock. Wisconsin has been home to a variety of cultures over the past 12,000 years. The first people arrived around 10,000 BCE during the Wisconsin Glaciation and these early inhabitants, called Paleo-Indians, hunted now-extinct ice age animals such as the Boaz mastodon, a prehistoric mastodon skeleton unearthed along with spear points in southwest Wisconsin. After the ice age ended around 8000 BCE, people in the subsequent Archaic period lived by hunting, fishing, agricultural societies emerged gradually over the Woodland period between 1000 BCE to 1000 CE. Toward the end of period, Wisconsin was the heartland of the Effigy Mound culture. Later, between 1000 and 1500 CE, the Mississippian and Oneota cultures built substantial settlements including the village at Aztalan in southeast Wisconsin. The Oneota may be the ancestors of the modern Ioway and Ho-Chunk tribes who shared the Wisconsin region with the Menominee at the time of European contact, the first European to visit what became Wisconsin was probably the French explorer Jean Nicolet. He canoed west from Georgian Bay through the Great Lakes in 1634, pierre Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers visited Green Bay again in 1654–1666 and Chequamegon Bay in 1659–1660, where they traded for fur with local Native Americans. In 1673, Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet became the first to record a journey on the Fox-Wisconsin Waterway all the way to the Mississippi River near Prairie du Chien
8.
Indiana
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Indiana /ɪndiˈænə/ is a U. S. state located in the midwestern and Great Lakes regions of North America. Indiana is the 38th largest by area and the 16th most populous of the 50 United States and its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th U. S. state on December 11,1816, before becoming a territory, varying cultures of indigenous peoples and historic Native Americans inhabited Indiana for thousands of years. Indiana has an economy with a gross state product of $298 billion in 2012. Indiana has several areas with populations greater than 100,000. The states name means Land of the Indians, or simply Indian Land and it also stems from Indianas territorial history. On May 7,1800, the United States Congress passed legislation to divide the Northwest Territory into two areas and named the section the Indiana Territory. In 1816, when Congress passed an Enabling Act to begin the process of establishing statehood for Indiana, a resident of Indiana is officially known as a Hoosier. The first inhabitants in what is now Indiana were the Paleo-Indians, divided into small groups, the Paleo-Indians were nomads who hunted large game such as mastodons. They created stone tools made out of chert by chipping, knapping and flaking, the Archaic period, which began between 5000 and 4000 BC, covered the next phase of indigenous culture. The people developed new tools as well as techniques to cook food, such new tools included different types of spear points and knives, with various forms of notches. They made ground-stone tools such as axes, woodworking tools. During the latter part of the period, they built mounds and middens. The Archaic period ended at about 1500 BC, although some Archaic people lived until 700 BC, afterward, the Woodland period took place in Indiana, where various new cultural attributes appeared. During this period, the people created ceramics and pottery, an early Woodland period group named the Adena people had elegant burial rituals, featuring log tombs beneath earth mounds. In the middle portion of the Woodland period, the Hopewell people began developing long-range trade of goods, nearing the end of the stage, the people developed highly productive cultivation and adaptation of agriculture, growing such crops as corn and squash. The Woodland period ended around 1000 AD, the Mississippian culture emerged, lasting from 1000 until the 15th century, shortly before the arrival of Europeans. During this stage, the people created large urban settlements designed according to their cosmology, with mounds and plazas defining ceremonial
9.
Great Lakes
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Consisting of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, they form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth, containing 21% of the worlds surface fresh water by volume. The total surface is 94,250 square miles, and the volume is 5,439 cubic miles. Due to their sea-like characteristics the five Great Lakes have also long been referred to as inland seas, Lake Superior is the second largest lake in the world by area, and Lake Michigan is the largest lake that is entirely within one country. The southern half of the Great Lakes is bordered by the Great Lakes Megalopolis, the lakes have been a major highway for transportation, migration and trade, and they are home to a large number of aquatic species. Many invasive species have been introduced due to trade, and some threaten the regions biodiversity, though the five lakes reside in separate basins, they form a single, naturally interconnected body of fresh water, within the Great Lakes Basin. The lakes form a chain connecting the 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, the lakes drain a large watershed via many rivers, and are studded with approximately 35,000 islands. There are also several smaller lakes, often called inland lakes. The surface area of the five primary lakes combined is roughly equal to the size of the United Kingdom, while the area of the entire basin is about the size of the UK. Lake Michigan is the one of the Great Lakes that is located entirely within the United States. The lakes are divided among the jurisdictions of the Canadian province of Ontario and the U. S. states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. Both Ontario and Michigan include in their boundaries portions of four of the lakes, Ontario does not border Lake Michigan, New York and Wisconsins jurisdictions extend into two lakes, and the remaining states into one of the lakes. This designation, however, is not universal and those living on the shore of Lake Superior often refer to all the other lakes as the lower lakes, because they are farther south. This corresponds to thinking of Lakes Erie and Ontario as down south, vessels sailing north on Lake Michigan are considered upbound even 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, 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 connects Lake Ontario to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which connects to the Atlantic Ocean
10.
Illinois Country
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The Illinois Country — sometimes referred to as Upper Louisiana — was a vast region of New France in what is now the Midwestern United States. Explored in 1673 from Green Bay to the Arkansas River by the Canadien expedition of Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette and it was settled primarily from the Pays den Haut in the context of the fur trade. Overtime, the fur trade took some French to the far reaches of the Rocky Mountains, the French name, Pays des Illinois, means Land of the Illinois and is a reference to the Illinois Confederation, a group of related Algonquian native peoples. The territory thus became known as Upper Louisiana, by the mid-18th century, the major settlements included Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Chartres, Saint Philippe, and Prairie du Rocher, all on the east side of the Mississippi in present-day Illinois, and Ste. Genevieve across the river in Missouri, as well as Fort Vincennes in what is now Indiana. As a consequence of the French defeat in the Seven Years War, the Illinois Country east of the Mississippi River was ceded to the British, and the land west of the river to the Spanish. Following the British occupation of the bank of the Mississippi in 1764, some Canadien settlers remained in the area, while others crossed the river. Eventually, the part of the Illinois Country became part of the British Province of Quebec. Louis to the confluence with the Ohio River, the boundaries of the Illinois Country were defined in a variety of ways, but the region now known as the American Bottom was nearly at the center of all descriptions. One of the earliest known geographic features designated as Ilinois was what became known as Lake Michigan. Early French missionaries and traders referred to the area southwest and southeast of the lake, including much of the upper Mississippi Valley, Illinois was also the name given to an area inhabited by the Illiniwek. A map of 1685 labels a large area southwest of the lake les Ilinois, in 1688, in 1721, the seventh civil and military district of Louisiana was named Illinois. Thus, Vincennes and Peoria were the limit of Louisianaa reach, as part of a general report on conditions in the newly conquered lands, Gen. Many French settlers moved west across the river to escape British control, on the west bank, the Spanish also continued to refer to the western region governed from St. Louis as the District of Illinois and referred to St. Louis as the city of Illinois. The first French explorations of the Illinois Country were in the first half of the 17th century, led by explorers, Étienne Brûlé explored the upper Illinois country in 1615 but did not document his experiences. Joseph de La Roche Daillon reached an oil spring at the northeasternmost fringe of the Mississippi River basin during his 1627 missionary journey. In 1669–70, Father Jacques Marquette, a missionary in French Canada, was at a station on Lake Superior. He learned about the river that ran through their country to the south
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"Illinois, a river of the United States". The American Cyclopædia. 1879.
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