Historic Period

A.D. 1650 to Present

Prehistory ended in what is today Ohio when French explorers and map makers began to obtain the first vague reports regarding the lands lying south of the southernmost of the Great Lakes that eventually became known as Lake Erie. Nicholas Sanson's map of 1650 shows unnamed rivers flowing southward the yet unnamed lake. The Sanson map is the earliest known historic record of northern Ohio, although geographic knowledge of the region was more approximate than accurate.

The Iroquois drove out the native tribes of the Ohio valley during the Beaver Wars. Later, as the Iroquois tribes grew less powerful, other tribes from the east and south moved into Ohio. Shawnee, Delaware, Wyandot, and Miami are among the groups who lived in Ohio when the first European pioneers moved into this area.

In 1843, the Wyandot Indians living on a reservation at Upper Sandusky were forcibly removed from Ohio and sent to live on a reservation in Kansas. The Wyandots were the last Indian nation to be removed from Ohio, so their departure marked the end of an era. Many American Indians, however, remained here as isloated groups or as spouses of European-Americans. On the 2000 census, 76,075 Ohioans identified themselves as either American Indian or as having American Indian ancestry.