The Northwest Territory, also known as the Old Northwest and the Territory North West of the Ohio, was a governmental region within the early United States. The Northwest Ordinance, passed by the Continental Congress on July 13, 1787, provided for the administration of the territories and set rules for admission as a state. On August 7, 1789, the new U.S. Congress affirmed the Ordinance with slight modifications under the Constitution. The territory included all the land of the United States west of Pennsylvania and northwest of the Ohio River. It covered all of the modern states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, as well as the northeastern part of Minnesota. The area covered more than 260,000 square miles (673,000 km²).
European exploration of the region began with French Canadian voyageurs in the seventeenth century, followed by French missionaries and French fur traders. French Canadian explorer Jean Nicolet was the first recorded entry into the region in 1634, landing at the site of Green Bay, Wisconsin, today (although Etienne Brule is stated by some sources as having explored Lake Superior and possibly inland Wisconsin in 1622). The French exercised control from widely separated posts throughout the region they claimed as Nouvelle France, or New France. France ceded the territory to the Kingdom of Britain in the Treaty of Paris (1763), which ended the French and Indian Wars.
However, facing armed opposition by Native Americans, the British issued the Proclamation of 1763 which prohibited white settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains in an attempt to appease the Native Americans. But this action angered American colonists interested in expansion and was a contributing factor to the American Revolution.
Britain ceded the area north of the Ohio River and west of the Appalachians to the United States at the end of the American Revolutionary War with the Treaty of Paris (1783), but the British continued to maintain a presence in the region as late as 1815, the end of the War of 1812. The state cessions that eventually allowed for the creation of the Territories North and South West of the River Ohio
Several states (Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut) then had competing claims on the territory. Other states, such as Maryland, refused to ratify the Articles of Confederation so long as these states were allowed to keep their western territory, fearing that those states could continue to grow and tip the balance of power in their favor under the proposed system of federal government. As a concession in order to obtain ratification, these states ceded their claims on the territory to the U.S. government: New York in 1780, Virginia in 1784, Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1785. So the majority of the territory became public land owned by the U.S. government. Virginia and Connecticut reserved the land of two areas to use as compensation to military veterans: The Virginia Military District and the Connecticut Western Reserve. In this way, the United States included territory and people outside any of the states.
The Land Ordinance of 1785 established a standardized system for surveying the land into saleable lots, although Ohio had already been partially surveyed several times using different methods, resulting in a patchwork of land surveys in Ohio. Some older French communities' property claims based on earlier systems of long, narrow lots also were retained. The rest of the Northwest Territory was divided into roughly uniform square townships and sections, which facilitated land sales and development.
Difficulties with Native American tribes and with British trading outposts presented continuing obstacles for American expansion until military campaigns of General "Mad" Anthony Wayne against the Native Americans culminated with victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 and the Treaty of Greenville of 1795. Jay's Treaty, in 1794, temporarily helped to smooth relations with British traders in the region, where British citizens outnumbered American citizens throughout the 1780s. Ongoing disputes with the British over the region was a contributing factor to the War of 1812. Britain irrevocably ceded claim to the Northwest Territory with the Treaty of Ghent in 1814.
When the territory was created, it was inhabited by about 45,000 Native Americans and 4,000 traders, mostly French and British -- although both groups included the metis, a sizeable group descended from Native women married to European or Canadian traders who established a unique culture that ruled the Upper Midwest for more than a century before American settlement officially began at Marietta, Ohio, on April 7, 1788. The first governor of the Northwest Territory, Arthur St. Clair, formally established the government on July 15, 1788, at Marietta. His original plan called for the organization of five initial counties: Washington (Ohio east of the Scioto River), Hamilton (Ohio between the Scioto and the Miami Rivers), Knox (Indiana and eastern Illinois), St. Clair (Illinois and Wisconsin), and Wayne (Michigan).
On July 4, 1800, in preparation for Ohio's statehood, the Indiana Territory was carved out, reducing the Northwest Territory to the size of Ohio. The Northwest Territory went out of existence when Ohio was admitted as a state on March 1, 1803.
