PART II EMIGRANT PERSPECTIVE
1817-25. The Erie Canal (US) 584 km (363 miles) long. Ground was broken 4 Jul 1817 at Rome NY and the canal was completed 26 Oct 1825 , opening commerce and westerly migration to rich farmlands south of the Great Lakes. The cost of transshipment of goods from New York to Lake Erie was reduced tenfold, further affirming New York as a major mercantile capital.
Fig. 21. Erie Canal boats “Within a generation after the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, the fertile open land around the American shores of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie was converted to farms, and many an isolated village became a bustling center of commerce .and infant industry. Farther west around Lake Michigan in new immigrant settlements, agriculture, and commerce, replacing the fur trade and Indian ways, produced a civilization similar to that on the eastern lakes” (Larson,1983). 1821. First Steamboat on Lake Michigan (US). The steamboat Walk-in-the-Water left Detroit Michigan bound, via the Straits of Mackinac, for Green Bay Wisconsin on 31 July 1821 with 200 passengers and an expedition to explore the south shore of Lake Superior and Upper Mississippi region. Four years elapsed before another steamer returned to Lake Michigan (Jepson, 2023). 1821. Merger of the North West Fur Company into the Hudson Bay Company (BNA). These two major North American fur-trade companies had become bitter, often violent, rivals until forced by the British government to merge in 1821 , when their reach in the fur trade was permitted to extend across the continent and beyond the Rockies to the Columbia River Basin. The Company would continue to control their business through a network of trade posts and alliances with indigenous peoples, effectively resisting foreign expansionism into Rupert’s Land prior to the Confederation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867 (Bown, 2021).
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