Michigan is a state in the Great Lakes and upper Midwestern United States. Its name comes from the Ojibwe word meaning “large water” or “large lake”. The area was first occupied by a succession of Native American tribes over thousands of years. Inhabited by Natives, Métis, and French explorers in…
View More United States of America: MichiganWisconsin is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin’s geography is diverse, having been greatly impacted by glaciers during the Ice Age with the exception of the Driftless Area. At the time of European contact, the area that is now Wisconsin was inhabited by Algonquian and Siouan nations.…
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Tennessee, officially the State of Tennessee, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is rooted in the Watauga Association, a 1772 frontier pact generally regarded as the first constitutional government west of the Appalachian Mountains. The state’s name is derived from “Tanasi”, a Cherokee town…
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Alabama is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Originally home to many native tribes, present-day Alabama was a Spanish territory beginning in the sixteenth century until the French acquired it in the early eighteenth century, founding Mobile in 1702. The British won the territory in 1763 until…
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Mississippi is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. On December 10, 1817, Mississippi became the 20th state admitted to the Union. By 1860, Mississippi was the nation’s top cotton-producing state and slaves accounted for 55% of the state population. Mississippi declared its secession from the Union on…
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Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Humans have inhabited the land now known as Missouri for at least 12,000 years. The Mississippian culture built cities and mounds, before declining in the 14th century. When European explorers arrived in the 17th century, they encountered the Osage…
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Washington, officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. Named for George Washington, the first U.S. president, the state was made out of the western part of the Washington Territory, which was ceded by the British Empire in 1846, in…
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Texas is a state in the South Central region of the United States. Texas is nicknamed the “Lone Star State” for its former status as an independent republic, and as a reminder of the state’s struggle for independence from Mexico. The origin of Texas’s name is from the word táyshaʼ,…
View More United States of America: TexasNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It was one of the original thirteen colonies forming the United States. New York had been inhabited by tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans for several hundred years by the time the earliest Europeans…
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Illinois is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Although today Illinois’s largest population center is in its northeast, the state’s European population grew first in the west as the French settled lands near the Mississippi River, when the region was known as Illinois Country and was…
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