Going west, the low-lying Interior Plains of the east slowly rise to altitudes of 1500 meters.
These
are the
Great Plains, once an immense prairieland where milllions of buffalo roamed but it is now mainly farmland.
Major
Native American peoples were
Iroquois in the east and the
Algonquian to the north, while west of the Mississipi
the nomadic
Plains Indians roamed and hunted buffalo for a living.
From the 17th century most of the Midwest was incorporated
in
New France. The area east of the Mississipi became part of the newly formed US Northwest Territory in 1783
In 1803 Napoleon needed
money to invade Britain and he sold all his territories west of the Mississipi to the USA. This Louisiana Purchase instantly
doubled the size of the USA.
The agricultural west is known as the
Corn Belt while the heavy industrialized eastern
part once was called the Steel Belt, but presently has the less flattering name of
Rust Belt. It was here that Donald Trump won
the 2016 election for US President.
