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A region of the north-central United States around the Great Lakes and the upper Mississippi Valley. It is generally considered to include Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. The area is known for its rich farmlands and highly industrialized centers.
Midwestern Mid·west'ern adj.
For more information on Midwest, visit Britannica.com.
Midwest is a region extending north and west from the Ohio River to just west of the Mississippi River and includes the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The region is often referred to as the heartland of America. It was originally home to numerous Native American groups who had a mixed economy of hunting, fishing, and agriculture. The region included three of North America's predominate biomes, that is, conifer forest, deciduous forest, and prairie. The climate is typical of midcontinental positions. Winters and summers are characterized by extremes in temperature and precipitation.
The land east of the Mississippi was acquired from the British as part of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and was designated the Northwest Territory. The land west of the Mississippi was acquired in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.The region's geography and identity are rooted in its creation in the Land Ordinance of 1785, which created the orderly survey of land, and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which established a pattern of government for the new territory. These two federal acts laid the groundwork for rapid and orderly settlement in the nineteenth century.
The region was a productive fur trade area for over two hundred years. The timber industry moved west out of Maine and New England early in the nineteenth century. The rich and diverse forests of the region have made this a continuing and profitable industry. Early timber harvesting focused on pine, particularly white pine. As pine lands were exhausted the timber industry turned to hardwoods and pulpwood production. Settlers originally attempted to farm the cutover lands but found that conditions were not conducive to commodity agriculture. Second-and third-growth forests came to cover the land, and timber production and recreational uses came to predominate in the northern reaches of the Midwest.
Yankees, Pennsylvanians, and northern Europeans came throughout the nineteenth century. Agricultural settlement stretched out along the rivers first, then followed the railroad into the interior of the tall grass prairie. Commodity agricultural production, primarily grains and livestock, dominated the region from the start. Farming population rose dramatically until the early twentieth century but made a steady decline as mechanization increased. The rural character of the region is evident in the farms and small towns that dot the landscape.
Manufacturing and heavy industry also became prevalent in the region, particularly along major water ways and south of the Great Lakes. Early on waterpower and access to water transportation figured heavily in this development. The dramatic increase in iron mining in Michigan and Minnesota also contributed to development. Industrial development and mining attracted new immigrants in the first half of the twentieth century. African Americans fled the South during this period and were attracted to the Midwest by industrial jobs and greater freedom from "Jim Crow." Eastern Europeans also immigrated to work in the region's industrial and mining operations. Like other places across the United States, the region became home to a multitude of ethnic groups and immigrants from around the world.
While the region was originally blanketed by mixed forests and prairies, this is no longer the case. Forests have been cleared, the prairie has been plowed, and rivers have been dredged and straightened for commercial barge traffic. Agriculture, the timber industry, and heavy manufacturing have all left an indelible mark on the land.
Bibliography
Cayton, Andrew R. L., and Peter S. Onuf. The Midwest and the Nation: Rethinking the History of the Region. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.
Bibliography
See A. Carpenter, The Encyclopedia of the Midwest (1982); J. H. Madison, ed., Heartland: Comparative Histories of the Midwestern States (1988); J. R. Shortridge, The Middle West (1989).
This entry is a subtopic of United States.
The term "Midwest" first appeared in print in 1880 to describe the Kansas-Nebraska region and was enlarged by 1910 to include all twelve of what are now considered the midwestern states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Geographic features of what are now considered the midwestern states include wide and fertile river valleys, limestone bluffs overlooking rivers and lakes, broad expanses of grasslands, the Great Lakes, the dry and rocky Badlands of the Dakotas, the deciduous woodlands of the northern Midwest and southern Missouri, the sandhills of Nebraska, and wetlands.
According to the geographer James R. Shortridge, "midwestern" connotes pastoralism, small town life, hospitality and friendliness, traditional values, farmers, yeoman society, and the Jeffersonian ideal. "The Midwest is America's pastoral face," he says, "etched into our consciousness as a permanent physical location, despite the presence of industrial cities" (Fertig, 1999, p. 30).
The most prominent geographic feature of the Midwest is rolling grassland or prairie. But of the 400,000 square miles of prairie that once stretched from central Ohio westward to the foothills of the Colorado Rockies and from Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan in Canada south to central Texas, less than 1 percent has remained natural prairie (Fertig, 1999, p. 166).
Native Foods
Before European settlement of the Midwest, Native American tribes gathered wild foods, such as native persimmons, papaws, berries, nuts of all kinds, and prairie turnips (Wilson, 1987, p. 119). Wild rice, really an aquatic grass, not a true rice, is the only grain native to North America, and it was a staple food of the Sioux and Chippewa tribes. Wild rice grows in the lakes and rivers of Minnesota, upper Michigan, northern Wisconsin, and lower Canada (Fertig, 1999, p. 223).
Wild game included venison, rabbit, elk, antelope, quail, migrating geese and ducks, prairie chickens, wild turkeys, and the American buffalo (bison). Certain tribes also planted many different varieties of corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers (Wilson, 1987, pp. 16, 58, 68, 82–84). Dakota Sioux Indians pounded buffalo fat, dried meat, parched cornmeal, and dried berries together to make "wasna," a high-calorie trail food (Episcopal Church Women, 1991, vol. 2, p. 21). Native Americans also fished for walleyed pike, bass, and perch from the lakes and catfish and trout from the rivers and streams.
Most of the prairie ultimately became productive farmland, small towns, cities, and suburbs. It is rangeland to the American cattle industry and is recognized as the nation's breadbasket. The eastern or short-grass prairie in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa has become the corn belt. The western or tall-grass prairie in Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Canada has become the wheat belt. The central mixed-grass prairie in the hilly grasslands of southern Indiana, Illinois, and southwestern Wisconsin has become the dairy belt (Fertig, 1999, p. xi).
Midwestern Cooking
Midwestern cooking reflects both the bounty of the land and the ethnic diversity of the population. Favorites include wheat and honey buns, kolaches (fruit-filled sweet yeast dough pastries, originally kolače), traditional breads of all kinds, steaks, hamburgers, fried chicken, and pot roast. Locally brewed wheat beers are enlivened with a squeeze of lemon and accompany a bowl of chuck wagon chili zipped with the heat of peppers. Crisply roasted pheasant and other game delicacies are autumn treats. A piece of homemade pie and a cup of coffee welcome a newcomer, provide a warm and homey occasion for catching up with all the gossip, or bring a sweet ending to a family dinner.
City dwellers start the day with a cup of coffee and a bagel or a piece of toast. For farm families a hearty breakfast of bacon or sausage, eggs, biscuits or toast, and hash browns is more common. Lunch is a sandwich or salad and soup, perhaps a favorite bean soup. For dinner farm families might enjoy a slow-simmered pot roast or stew that has cooked all day. Midwesterners are also fond of casseroles, known as "hot dishes" in Minnesota, that can be assembled early in the day and baked later on. City households might have pasta, grilled chicken, or steak.
From barbecue competitions in the warmer months to ethnic food festivals throughout the year, midwesterners proudly affirm their culinary traditions. Residents of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, enjoy traditional Friday night fish fries at restaurants and churches. Catholic churches in rural parts of eastern Indiana and western Ohio offer chicken dinners throughout the summer and fall months, featuring chicken fried in lard, garden vegetables, and homemade pies and cakes. The Door County Fish Boil is an ongoing summer ritual in Wisconsin in which white-fish, potatoes, and onions are boiled to overflowing in an outdoor cauldron.
Culinary Traditions
During the late 1700s and early 1800s settlers from the original thirteen American colonies began to move westward into Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. French settlers had already established villages along the Mississippi River in what is now Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa, and along the Missouri River in what is now Missouri and Kansas. These small settlements began to grow as the Louisiana Purchase, acquired by President Thomas Jefferson in 1803, opened up vast tracts of land for settlement. Between 1865 and 1880 Kansas attracted more immigrants than any other place in the nation. The promise of virtually free land and a chance to start over drew thousands to the rolling prairie. The first Homestead Act, passed by Congress in 1862, enabled the head of a family to claim 160 acres of land in Kansas for only a small filing fee and a residency requirement of five years (Fertig, 1999, p. 29).
As the Homestead Acts continued to be revised, new land was opened up in North and South Dakota, Iowa, and Nebraska that attracted new groups of immigrants, including Poles, Irish, Czechs or Bohemians, and Austrians. Each adult in the family could claim 160 acres, up to 480 acres per family, on the prairie. For a small filing fee the families could farm the land providing they built a homestead and lived there for a certain number of months a year. Women as well as men filed claims and lived on the land until it was theirs after the residency requirement had been completed (Fertig, 1999, p. 29). Each ethnic group brought its own unique culinary traditions to the melting pot of the Midwest.
Czech. Immigrants from what became Czechoslovakia brought their love of sweet and sour flavors, dumplings of all kinds, dried fruits and mushrooms, and kolache. Wild duck or jackrabbit was marinated in a vinegar and spice mixture, then roasted in the oven. The gravy was thickened with sour cream. Dumplings made from flour, bread crumbs, or potatoes were cooked on top of simmering stews or soups. Dried fruits and mushrooms were plumped in liquid and made into sweet or savory soups. Barley filled out stuffed cabbages or added depth to wild mushrooms in a baked dish. Cold weather vegetables like cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and parsnips also feature in Czech cooking. Kolache, tiny individual coffeecakes made of buttery yeast dough and filled with fruit butters or preserves, are a favorite fresh and hot in Nebraska, South Dakota, and Kansas kitchens.
German. The Heartland welcomed Germans from many different culinary traditions, and each group brought a different cooking style. The Volga Germans enjoyed a tradition of bierocks, verenicke, and other dishes similar to those of the Russian Mennonites. The "border people" from Bavaria loved homemade noodles and sweet-sour dishes, such as sweet-sour heart, liver, and tongue. Most of their cuisine was centered around cabbage and pork of all kinds. Smoky flavors combined with sweet and sour flavors, and onions and herbs. Homemade sauerkraut simmered with pork, potato pancakes, tortes, braised cabbage, sausage cooked in beer, honey, and spice cookies entered mainstream American cuisine thanks to German immigrants.
Russian Mennonite. Wheat-farming Russian Mennonites, who brought the first Turkey red winter wheat seeds to Kansas in 1875, are credited with transforming this part of the prairie into the nation's breadbasket (Fertig, 1998, pp. 47–57). Their foodways were influenced by sojourns in the Netherlands, Germany, and the Ukraine. A Protestant sect advocating a simple life and a firm commitment to the ideas of the church, much like the Amish, the Mennonites kept searching for a place where they could work and worship in peace. Fleeing religious persecution for their pacifist views, the Mennonites brought their favorite foodways with them to each new homeland. One specialty, a fruit soup or moos (pronounced "mose"), is thickened with flour. Verenicke, a ravioli-like pasta filled with dry-curd cheese, is served with sour cream ham gravy, jelly, or syrup. Homemade bread is a staple in most households, but the traditional favorite is zwieback, a brioche-type sweet yeast bread often served on Sundays. When sliced and toasted in the oven, it takes on a nutty, delicious flavor and keeps for weeks. Immigrant families often brought baskets of toasted zwieback to last until they reached the prairie.
Swedish. Pure, clean flavors combine with rich, buttery baked goods and creamy, mild tastes to form the constellation of Swedish foods of the Midwest. The flavors and colors of sillsalat, pickled herring, and pickled beets offer a taste counterpoint to the mild flavors of Swedish potato sausage, baked brown beans, and Swedish yellow pea soup. Fresh dill turns up in potato dishes and pickles of all kinds. But the highlight of a meal is always the baked goods: hard and crispy knackebrod with soup, almond-flavored kringler or saffron-flavored Lucia buns (for Saint Lucia Day on 14 December) and tea rings with breakfast, mellow limpa rye bread with dinner. Mellow and milky desserts like ostakaka and rice pudding are often served with a red fruit sauce as much for a color contrast as for a taste complement. Indeed deep red is a favorite punctuation mark in Swedish meals, whether is appears in the spiced gluhwein on special occasions, beet dishes and sillsalat, or lingonberry and red currant sauces for everything from lacy Swedish pancakes to roast goose.
Polish. Without the traditional "seven sours" of pickled vegetables, no deluxe Polish meal would be complete. Centered around hearty peasant food, the cooking of Poland is full of thick soups, dried mushrooms, sauerkraut, potatoes, ground and spiced meats, fish with horse-radish sauce, sour rye bread, and buttery baked goods. The Easter tradition of "breakfast all day long" and the Christmas tradition of the multicourse Vigilia hold firm in Polish families. Sour cream, vinegar, plums, horseradish, beets, cabbage, potatoes, poppy seeds, caraway seeds, and allspice configure and reconfigure in countless recipes. Buttery baked goods flavored with almonds and poppy seeds, smoked sausages of all kinds, poached pike with horseradish sauce, marzipan baked apples, and herring in sour cream reflect the diversity of this cuisine.
Italian. Italians, mainly from Sicily, were one of the last immigrant groups to arrive in the Midwest, in the early 1900s. Many Italian immigrants became market gardeners or opened restaurants or produce businesses in places like Des Moines, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Kansas City. Varieties of Italian cookies, some made with pine nuts or fig preserves, star in Italian bakeries and festivals throughout the Heartland. Amogio, a marinade of white wine, garlic, and herbs, flavors chicken and beef, which is then rolled in modiga or flavored breadcrumbs and grilled. Zesty tomato sauce tops pasta dishes and baked eggplant.
Barbecue. Traveling up from South America, the barbeque tradition is rooted in the foodways of rain-forest Indians, who smoked meats over green wood to preserve them for later use. Over time this technique spread to the American South and from there to Missouri, where black residents used pit barbeques to smoke lesser and cheaper cuts of meat like spareribs and brisket. In 1916 the Kansas City resident Henry Perry began selling barbequed turkey, duck, pig, and goose, and by 1929 he had three separate barbeque stands. His fame spread, and he taught others, including Charlie Bryant, the secrets of slow smoking. Bryant and his brother Arthur Bryant eventually took over Perry's business, calling it Charlie Bryant's. When Charlie died in 1952, it became Arthur Bryant's, whose barbeque rose to fame when Calvin Trillin extolled it. By the early twenty-first century Kansas City had over one hundred barbeque joints, from the basic shack to the high-style restaurant (Stein and Davis, 1985, pp. 11–20).
State Fairs
The region's agricultural roots are celebrated every year in state fairs held in late summer and early fall. During the 1850s, when the region was predominately agricultural, state fairs were established throughout the Midwest. The first was the Ohio State Fair, held in Cincinnati in 1850. Even though most state economies changed from mainly agricultural to businesses of other kinds, the tradition continued into the twenty-first century. They usually include the butter cow or other object or person sculpted from butter, a traditional attraction that began at the Ohio State Fair in 1903. Concessions offer unique state fair food, such as pork chop dinners in Iowa, barbecued rib dinners in Missouri, fried chicken dinners in Ohio, Indian tacos in Nebraska, and anything you want on a stick, including cheese, bamboo beef, smoked turkey legs, roasted corn, and corn dogs (Fertig, 1999, p. 60).
Bibliography
Episcopal Church Women of the Saint James Episcopal Church, comps. Our Daily Bread. Enemy Swim Lake, Waubay, South Dakota. 1991.
Fertig, Judith M. "America's Wheat." Saveur Magazine 20 (June 1998): 47–57.
Fertig, Judith M. Prairie Home Breads. Boston: Harvard Common Press, 2001.
Fertig, Judith M. Prairie Home Cooking. Boston: Harvard Common Press, 1999.
Shortridge, James R. Peopling the Plains: Who Settled Where in Frontier Kansas. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995.
Stein, Shifra, and Rich Davis. All About Bar-B-Q Kansas City–Style. Kansas City, Mo.: Barbarcoa Press, 1985.
Wilson, Gilbert L. Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987.
—Judith M. Fertig
![Regional definitions vary from source to source. The states shown in dark red are usually included, while all or portions of the striped states may or may not be considered part of the Midwestern United States. Kentucky and West Virginia are generally included in the South and Pennsylvania is usually included in the Mid-Atlantic, but regions of these states are often included in the Midwest in maps, descriptions, and cultural delineations.[1][2]](http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/4/44/300px-US_map-Midwest.PNG)
The Midwestern United States (or Midwest) refers to the north-central states of the
Chicago is the largest city in the region, followed by Detroit and Indianapolis. Other important cities in the region include: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Des Moines, Kansas City, Madison, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Omaha, St. Louis, and Wichita.
The term Midwest has been in common use for over 100 years. Other designations for the region have fallen into disuse, such as the "Northwest" or "Old Northwest" (from Northwest Territory), "Mid-America," or "Heartland". Since the book Middletown appeared in 1929, sociologists have often used Midwestern cities, and the Midwest generally, as "typical" of the entire nation.[4] The Midwest region of the United States has a higher employment to population ratio (the percentage of persons at least 16 years old employed) than the Northeast, the West, the South, or the Sun Belt states.[5]
Traditional definitions of the Midwest include the Northwest Ordinance "Old Northwest" states and many states that were part of the Louisiana Purchase. The states of the Old Northwest are also known as "Great Lakes states". Many of the Louisiana Purchase states are also known as Great Plains states.
The North Central Region, is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as these 12 states:
These states are generally perceived as being relatively flat. That is true of several areas, but there is a measure of geographical variation. In particular, the eastern Midwest lying near the foothills of the Appalachians, the Great Lakes Basin, and northern parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa demonstrate a high degree of topographical variety. Prairies cover most of the states west of the Mississippi River with the exception of eastern Minnesota, the Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri, and the southern tip of Illinois. Illinois lies within an area called the "prairie peninsula," an eastward extension of prairies that borders deciduous forests to the north, east, and south. Rainfall decreases from east to west, resulting in different types of prairies, with the tallgrass prairie in the wetter eastern region, mixed-grass prairie in the central Great Plains, and shortgrass prairie towards the rain shadow of the Rockies. Today, these three prairie types largely correspond to the corn/soybean area, the wheat belt, and the western rangelands, respectively. Hardwood forests in this area were logged to extinction in the late 1800s. The majority of the Midwest can now be categorized as urbanized areas or pastoral agricultural areas. Areas in northern Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, such as the Porcupine Mountains, and the Ohio River valley are largely undeveloped.
Residents of the wheat belt, which consists of the westernmost states of the Midwest, generally consider themselves part of the Midwest, while residents of the remaining rangeland areas usually do not. Of course, exact boundaries are nebulous and shifting.
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European settlement of the area began in the 17th century following French exploration of the region. The French established a network of fur trading posts and Jesuit missions along the Mississippi River system and the upper Great Lakes. French control over the area ended in 1763 with the conclusion of the French and Indian War. British colonists began to expand into the Ohio Country during the 1750s. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 temporarily restrained expansion west of the Appalachian Mountains, but did not stop it completely.
Early settlement began either via routes over the Appalachian Mountains, such as Braddock Road; or through the waterways of the Great Lakes. Fort Pitt, now Pittsburgh, at the source of the Ohio River, was an early outpost of the overland routes. The first settlements in the Midwest via the waterways of the Great Lakes were centered around military forts and trading posts such as Green Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, and Detroit. The first inland settlements via the overland routes were in southern Ohio or northern Kentucky, on either side of the Ohio River, and early such pioneers were Daniel Boone and Spencer Records.
Following the American Revolutionary War, the rate of settlers coming from the eastern states increased rapidly. In the 1790s, American Revolutionary War veterans and settlers from the original states moved there in response to Federal government of the United States land grants. The Ulster-Scots Presbyterians of Pennsylvania (often through Virginia) and the Dutch Reformed, Quaker, and Congregationalists of Connecticut were among the earliest pioneers to Ohio and the Midwest.
The region's fertile soil made it possible for farmers to produce abundant harvests of cereal crops such as corn, oats, and, most importantly, wheat. In the early days, the region was soon known as the nation's "breadbasket".
Two waterways have been important to the Midwest's development. The first and foremost was the Ohio River which flowed into the Mississippi River. Spanish control of the southern part of the Mississippi, and refusal to allow the shipment of American crops down the river and into the Atlantic Ocean, halted the development of the region until 1795.
The river inspired two classic American books written by a native Missourian, Samuel Clemens, who took the pseudonym Mark Twain: Life on the Mississippi and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Today, Twain's stories have become staples of Midwestern lore. Twain's hometown of Hannibal, Missouri is a tourist attraction in the area offering a glimpse into the Midwest of his time.
The second waterway is the network of routes within the Great Lakes. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 completed an all-water shipping route, more direct than the Mississippi, to New York and the seaport of New York City. Lakeport cities grew up to handle this new shipping route. During the Industrial Revolution, the lakes became a conduit for iron ore from the Mesabi Range of Minnesota to steel mills in the Mid-Atlantic States. The Saint Lawrence Seaway later opened the Midwest to the Atlantic Ocean.
Inland canals in Ohio and Indiana constituted another great waterway, which connected into the Great Lakes and Ohio River traffic. The canals in Ohio and Indiana opened so much of Midwestern agriculture that it launched the world's greatest population and economic boom foreshadowing later "emerging markets". The commodities that the Midwest funneled into the Erie Canal down the Ohio River contributed to the wealth of New York City, which overtook Boston and Philadelphia. New York State would proudly boast of the Midwest as its "inland empire"; thus, New York would become known as the Empire State.
Because the Northwest Ordinance region, comprising the heart of the Midwest, was the first large region of the United States which prohibited slavery (the Northeastern United States emancipated slaves in the 1830s), the region remains culturally apart from the country and proud of its free pioneer heritage. The regional southern boundary was the Ohio River, the border of freedom and slavery in American history and literature (See: Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe; Beloved, by Toni Morrison). The Midwest, particularly Ohio, provided the primary routes for the "Underground Railroad", whereby Midwesterners assisted slaves to freedom from their crossing of the Ohio River through their departure on Lake Erie to Canada.
The region was shaped by the relative absence of slavery (except for Missouri), pioneer settlement, education in one-room free public schools, and democratic notions brought with American Revolutionary War veterans, Protestant faiths and experimentation, and agricultural wealth transported on the Ohio River riverboats, flatboats, canal boats, and railroads.
By the time of the American Civil War, European immigrants bypassed the East Coast of the United States to settle directly in the interior: German immigrant Lutherans and Jews to Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, and eastern Missouri; Swedes and Norwegians to Wisconsin, Minnesota and northern Iowa. Poles, Hungarians, and German Catholics and Jews founded or settled in Midwestern cities. Many German Catholics also settled throughout the Ohio River valley and around the Great Lakes.
The Midwest was predominantly rural at the time of the Civil War, dotted with small farms across Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, but industrialization, immigration, and urbanization fed the Industrial Revolution, and the heart of industrial progress became the Great Lakes states of the Midwest. German, Scandinavian, Slavic and African American immigration into the Midwest continued to bolster the population there in the 19th and 20th centuries, though generally the Midwest remains a predominantly diverse, Protestant region. Large concentrations of Catholics are found in larger metropolitan areas because of German, Irish, Italian, and Polish immigration before 1915, and Mexican American migration since the 1950s. Famous Amish farm settlements are found in northern Ohio, northern Indiana and central Illinois.
In the 20th century, African American migration from the Southern United States into the Midwestern states changed Chicago, St. Louis, Gary, Detroit, and many other cities dramatically, as factories and schools enticed families by the thousands to new opportunities.
The term "Middle West" originated in the 19th century, followed by "Midwest." The heart of the Midwest is bounded by the Great Lakes and the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, the "Old Northwest" (or the "West"), an area that comprised the original Northwest Territory. This area is now called the "East North Central States" by the United States Census Bureau and the "Great Lakes" region by its inhabitants.
The Northwest Territory was created out of the ceded English (formerly French and Native American) frontier lands under the Northwest Ordinance by the Continental Congress just before the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery and religious discrimination, and promoted public schools and private property, but did not apply after the territories became states. The Northwest Ordinance also specified that the land be surveyed and sold in the rectangular grids of the Public Land Survey System, which was first used in Ohio. The effect of this grid system can be seen throughout the Midwest in such things as county shapes and road networks.
In contrast, land in Kentucky and Tennessee was surveyed and sold using metes and bounds. As Revolutionary War soldiers were awarded lands in Ohio and migrated there and to other Midwestern states with other pioneers, the area became the first thoroughly "American" region. Frederick Jackson Turner celebrated its frontier for shaping the national character of individualism and democracy.
The Midwest region today sometimes refers not only to states created from the Northwest Ordinance, but also may include states between the Appalachian Mountains and the Rocky Mountains and north of the Ohio River. In all, 12 states are covered by The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia(2006).
The term West was applied to the region in the early years of the country. Later, the region west of the Appalachians was divided into the Far West (now just the West), and the Middle West. Some parts of the Midwest have also been referred to as Northwest for historical reasons (for instance, this explains the Minnesota-based Northwest Airlines as well as Northwestern University in Illinois), so the current Northwest region of the country is called the Pacific Northwest to make a clear distinction.
The boundaries of what is considered the Midwest today are somewhat ambiguous. People from across the region consider themselves to be from the Midwest for very different reasons and have varying definitions and perceptions of the Midwest, and use has changed historically, gradually growing westward to include states which formerly were thought of as being the "West." Because the Northwest Territory lay between the East Coast and the then-far-West, the states carved out of it were called the "Northwest" in 1789, and "Middle West" (Middlewest, Middle-West) by 1898.
In the early 19th century, anything west of the Mississippi River was considered the West, and the Midwest was the region west of the Appalachians and east of the Mississippi. In time, some users began to include Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri, and with the settlement of the western prairie, a new term, "Great Plains States," was used for the row of states from North Dakota to Kansas. Later, these states annexed themselves unofficially to the Midwest. Today, the term "Far West" means the West Coast, and people as far west as the prairie sections of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana sometimes identify themselves with the term Midwest.[7]
Midwesterners are alternately viewed as open, friendly, and straightforward, or sometimes stereotyped as unsophisticated and stubborn. Factors that probably affected the shaping of Midwest values include the religious heritage of the abolitionist, pro-education Congregationalists to the stalwart Calvinist heritage of the Midwestern Protestants, as well as the agricultural values inculcated by the hardy pioneers who settled the area. The Midwest remains a melting pot of Protestantism and Calvinism, mistrustful of authority and power.
Catholicism is the largest single religious denomination in the Midwest, varying between 19 and 29% of the state populations. Baptists compose 14% of the populations of Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, up to 22% in Missouri and down to 5% in Minnesota. Lutherans peak at 22-24% in Wisconsin and Minnesota, reflecting the Scandinavian and German heritage of those states as parodied humorously by Garrison Keillor in his Prairie Home Companion. Pentecostal and charismatic denominations have few adherents in the Midwest, ranging between 1 and 7% (although the Assembly of God began in lower Missouri). Judaism and Islam are each practiced by 1% or less of the population, with slightly higher concentrations in major urban areas, such as Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Detroit and Cleveland. Those with no religious affiliation make up 13-16% of the Midwest's population.
The rural heritage of the land in the Midwest remains widely held, even if industrialization and suburbanization have overtaken the states in the original Northwest Territory. Given the rural, antebellum associations with the Midwest, further rural states like Kansas have become icons of Midwesternism, most directly with the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.
Midwestern politics tends to be cautious, but the caution is sometimes peppered with protest, especially in minority
communities or those associated with agrarian, labor or populist roots. This was especially true in the early 20th century when
Milwaukee was a hub of the
Because of 20th century African American migration from the South, a large African American urban population lives in most of the regions' major cities, although the concentration is not nearly as large as that of the Southern United States. The combination of industry and cultures, Jazz, Blues, and Rock and Roll, led to an outpouring of musical creativity in the 20th century in the Midwest, including new music like the Motown Sound and techno from Detroit and house music & the blues from Chicago. Rock and Roll music was first identified as a new genre by a Cleveland radio DJ, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is now located in Cleveland. See also Music of the Midwest/Motown, Detroit, 70s Soul Music, Ohio Players, Kool and The Gang, and Dayton. Today the population of the Midwest is 65,971,974, or 22.2% of the total population of the United States.
Differences in the definition of the Midwest mainly split between the Heartland and the Great Plains on one side, and the Great Lakes and the Rust Belt on the other. While some point to the small towns and agricultural communities in Kansas, Iowa, the Dakotas and Nebraska of the Great Plains as representative of traditional Midwestern lifestyles and values, others would assert that the declining Rust Belt cities of the Great Lakes, with their histories of 19th- and early-20th century immigration, manufacturing base, and strong Catholic influence, are more representative of the Midwestern experience. Under such a definition, cities as far east as Buffalo, New York and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania may be considered Midwestern in nature.
Certain areas of the traditionally defined Midwest are often cited as not being representative of the 'Midwest,' while other areas traditionally outside of the Midwest are often claimed to be part of the Midwest. These claims often embody historical, cultural, economic or demographic arguments for inclusion or exclusion.
Another important region, Appalachia, overlaps with the Midwest, especially in southern Ohio. The Ohio River has long been the boundary between North and South, and between the Midwest and the Upper South. All the lower Midwestern states, including Missouri, have a major Southern component, but only Missouri was a slave state before the Civil War.
In addition, parts of the Northeastern states have a Midwestern feel. Western Pennsylvania, which contains the cities of Erie and Pittsburgh, shares culture, history, and identity with the "Midwest," but overlaps with Appalachia as well.[citation needed] Buffalo, New York, the western terminus of the Erie Canal and gateway to the
