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Did a complete rewrite of this page, which was based on entirely false information. There was never an organized territory called the Ohio Territory, except in that the particular name was used as synonymous with the Northwest Territory. When the the NW was divided in 1800, the western half became the new Indiana Territory but the eastern half was still the "Territory North and West of the Ohio River", with the same territorial government.

The broadest use of the term "Ohio Territory" is in the colloquial sense, refering the area of the Northwest Territory, even before the Revolutionary War. Being so, I rewrote the article to reflect that. It overlaps some with the NW Terr and NW Ordinance articles, some of the material of which can perhaps be removed to make those articles more specific to those subjects. --- Decumanus | Talk 07:47, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I was wondering about this. I had actually forgotten about this article until you started editing it yesterday. I started to look into it, but got distracted. Glad to see you followed up. Bkonrad | Talk 13:04, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Okay, knowing what we know--er, what you know :)--do you think Ohio belongs on List of U.S. states that were never territories? I'm not saying it does or doesn't, just asking. jengod 23:55, Mar 25, 2004 (UTC)

I knew this would come up! I don't know the answer but I tend to think that it shouldn't be on the list, because as far I can know, the Northwest Territory ceased to exist after the creation of the state of Ohio, with the rest of the Northwest Territory being given to the Indiana Territory. So it seems like basically the Northwest Territory "became" the State of Ohio. I use quotation marks here because the whole idea of a territory "becoming" a state is something I don't quite understand fully at this point, from a legal standpoint. Technically they are two different things. But it would be pedantic not to say that certain territories "were admitted" as states, because the government was basically the same in persons and form. Typically the first act of a new state legislature was to enact all of the laws of the previous territory.

But obviously there had to be some continuity from a legal standpoint. Obvouisly prisoners held in territorial prisons were not set free on ex post facto grounds because they had technically not violated any laws of the newly created state, etc.

Again all this reflects my current fuzzy understanding of this which I hope to correct. Perhaps these were the very things addressed by Congress in legislation such as the Enabling Act and were specifically in Statehood articles passed by Congress.

So I guess the question you asked is equivalent to asking: should Arthur St. Clair be considered a territorial governor of Ohio the way other territorial governors are listed on the lists of territorial governors of states. I think the answer is "yes" but I'm not sure. -- Decumanus | Talk 00:22, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Oh! Lord Dunsmore's War! Another little war! How superexciting!! (me >> hell) :) Anyway...I tend to agree with you re Ohio/NW. Stupid territories. ;) jengod 00:29, Mar 26, 2004 (UTC)

Sheesh. I had rewrite this article again after doing a little more research and discovering I had made a huge assumption that the term Ohio Territory/Ohio Country applying to the entire region that became the Northwest Territory. What an idiot I am! Well at had enough gas in the tank tonight to modify the article enough (preserving as much as possible you guyses fantastic contributions) so that it is more factually correct and figured a map was in order, based on one of the links I found from an Ohio historical web site [1].

This actually redeems a little bit the Mel Gibson movie The Passion of Francis Marion in my eyes, the scene when the evil British officer puts his finger on a map and says greedily "Tell me about...Ohio", implying that he's going to have a big estate there after they win the war. It was called that before the Revolution and there was a lot of early enterprising going on there just like the movie implied. Go figure. Mel was right. -- Decumanus | Talk 07:19, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Sigh. I always get frustrated when I put an entry in the wikipedia search feature, an article comes up, but my question is still not answered. I put OHio Valley in the search feature, and this article came up. Yes, the history of the old NW Territory is interesting. But, where is the Ohio Valley? That is my question. Is it along the Ohio River only? How is it defined? So, in terms of Topography or Cartography, where exactly is it? Whole state of Ohio? L. Thomas W. ( talk) 14:32, 15 August 2011 (UTC) L. Thomas W. L. Thomas W. ( talk) 14:32, 15 August 2011 (UTC) reply

"Ohio Valley" usually refers to the Ohio River drainage basin (often called the "watershed"). That is, the land where the creeks, streams, and rivers flow (eventually) to the Ohio River. By coincidence, the drainage basin article currently uses a picture of the Ohio River basin as an example. If you look at that image, you'll see that it includes areas from several states, and only about 2/3 of Ohio.

Several months ago, someone made a change to a redirect page, causing a search of "Ohio Valley" to end up at this article. That was probably a mistake, since this article is about a historical region, but the Ohio Valley still exists. I'll fix the mistake. But had you ended up at the Ohio River article, your question would have still remained, since we haven't yet explained the terminology very well. Sorry about that. — Kevin Myers 04:05, 16 August 2011 (UTC) reply

The Shawnee were not in what is present day Ohio until after 1660's. The Siouan people occupied the Ohio Valley at that time and had done so since leaving Cahokia. See the Jean Baptiste Louis Franquelin Map of 1684 which was based on Franquelin's survey of the Ohio region between 1772 and 1780.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste-Louis_Franquelin

Also see pages 21 and 22 of https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:4qhGfrjXQXgJ:https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/1811/28545/Rankin?sequence%3D1+Siouans+in+Ohio&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShz3irRfqgp8r1q26KzoCTmVdbZNhl_0lLadKkktfJBqKjiMVEUOtwJIv0r5m6eqPIU1Oj1mdBEuZHFKrp8Qr6FUouGMpR_NVGW42vsZ416c83QjbQ-NnttiRI4_eUJn31emInA&sig=AHIEtbQyf2GpOTSyUFVQeOUg7OtrFRARLg

by Dr. Rankin — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.6.53.203 ( talk) 16:29, 4 August 2012 (UTC) reply

Also see Swanton, "Siouan Tribes and the Ohio Valley", http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/662865?uid=3739920&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101119587731 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.6.53.203 ( talk) 16:39, 4 August 2012 (UTC) You can access this full article here http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1943.45.1.02a00050/pdf reply

This article is missing information about French colonial period. Please expand the article to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page.

This article is almost completely lacking in the French period of colonial rule -- 65.94.43.89 ( talk) 15:04, 10 May 2015 (UTC) reply

Yeh, including how the Ohio Country got its name, and who named it. Sbalfour ( talk) 01:59, 16 January 2019 (UTC) reply

I once added a sentence that the name of 'Ohio' country was taken from the name of the resident river, a name that the Indians had given it, and the text was stricken. So, the implication is that the name of Ohio Country was NOT taken from the name of the Ohio River!? Then propose, from whence it came. There is dispute over what Indian dialect the name may have come from and what it meant, but the whiteman did NOT name that river. So can we insert some bland assertion like: "The name of the country was taken from the name of the river, a name which was given it by the resident Indian tribes, and which in colonial English, was spelled 'Ohio'". Or write something yourself. Sbalfour ( talk) 22:13, 29 April 2023 (UTC) reply

I might add, that the river was known by the same phonetic name, however spelled, since before the time of La Salle; that is, before whitemen entered the Ohio Valley. And La Salle referred explicitly to the "falls of the Ohio", among other place names. And the name of the Ohio River valley, and lands beyond were soon referred to by other explorers, by that name. Sbalfour ( talk)!