On Mon, 3 Oct 1994, Douglas Canning wrote:

> The term Pacific Northwest as a reference to the northwestern
> portion of the United States was preceeded in the late 18th
> century and very early 19th century by reference simply the
> Northwest Territory. After the close of the Revolutionary War
> and the peace treaty with Great Britian, the new United states
> acquired title to the lands west to the Mississippi River. What
> was not a part of the thirteen original states was organized as
> the Northwest Territory and the Southwest Territory. The
> Northwest Territory was soon divided into the territories (and
> later states) of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and
> Wisconsin.

Actually, the history is a bit more complicated. Ownership of the lands
west of the Appalachian Mountains was the major constitutional issue of
the Confederation period.

When the various British monarchs were parcelling out land in the New
World among various royal favorites, they tended to be s bit sloppy about
boundaries. By the early eighteenth century, there were thirteen
colonies strung along the Atlantic coast. They fell into two categories:
those that had fixed western boundaries and those that did not.
Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware had definite
boundaries. Virginia (which was the original name of all of the British
claims in North America), the Carolinas, and Georgia were bounded by the
South Sea. Some colonies -- most notably Connecticut -- claimed that
their colony jumped over another subsequently created colony (New York)
and resumed again in the West.

Following the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the thirteen
colonies began the process of attempting to form a government. The
result was the Articles of Confederation which provided for a very loose
relationship among largely sovereign states. The disposition of the
western land claims was a major stumbling block. Virginia claimed all of
the land north of its southern border and west of the end of
Pennsylvania; the other southern colonies had similar claims. The small,
bounded colonies -- particularly Maryland -- were unwilling to
confederate since they feared that they would be overwhelmed by
Virginia. They insisted that the lands back of the Appalachians be ceded
to the Confederation.

The purity of Maryland's motives is open to question since some of her
leading citizens were engaged in buying huge chunks of the Ohio River
Valley after getting the Indian owners drunk.

The Articles of Confederation were not adopted until 1781 because
Maryland refused to join until the back lands problem was settled. In
the end, Virginia transferred its claim and Congress set about creating
the system of disposing of the land received. This was the Territory
North and West of the Ohio River -- the Northwest Territory. The
Southwest Territory was not created until much later because the other
southern states were very slow in transferring their claims.

dale goble
moscow, idaho