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Eastern Great Lakes: Indiana, Michigan, Ohio

and 1400 CE . The largest mound is 44 feet tall and covers the area of three football fields. The first known European in Indiana was the French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle. France claimed the region and Frenchmen operated a profitable fur trade with the area’s Native American tribes. At the time of French settlement, the Miami lived in villages along the Maumee and Wabash rivers. The Potawatomi lived north of the Wabash and along Lake Michigan. In fact, Indiana is thought to mean “land of Indians.”

the cold season is short. Summer heat waves top out around 90 degrees. The state receives about 40 inches of pre- cipitation a year, with a reliable amount during the growing season. History No one knows exactly who first settled in Indiana. But one early group of Native Americans left large mounds that give clues about their lives. Today, visitors can tour 11 mounds at Angel Mounds State Historic Site southeast of Evansville. Native tribes built the structures sometime between 1050

Monument to George Rodgers Clark, who in 1779 led a Patriot militia to Vincennes, in present- day Indiana, where they cap- tured a British fort. The Siege of Fort Sackville (also called Fort Vincennes) gave control of the western frontier to the Americans, and after the Revolutionary War the territory would become part of the new United States.