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Show I THE STORY OF j OUR STATES j ; By JONATHAN BRACE I i ( by McClur Newspaper Syndicate.) OHIO s fllE Northwest X Terrltory.of fffl li.a which Ohio is a (rh'$w$( part, was a bone of contention between WRsftMtf Spain, France and XMffy England. S p a i n's S-g-s claim was based on 'the voyage of De Soto up the Mississippi Mis-sissippi river. France, through the explorations ex-plorations of La Salle from the north and the early entry of French priests from Canada, considered this territory theirs. As for England, she rested her claims on the discovery of North America by the Cabots, and in the charter granted to Virginia included all the country lying to the West. As there was no Spanish colony in this part of the country, the real conflict for ownership was between Frauce and England. The French were the first to get a foothold in Ohio, but the English pioneers, who shortly began to drift westward, firmly established their settlements set-tlements in the fertile Ohio valley. After Af-ter a long period of warfare, in which the Indians played a leading part, the Northwest Territory was finally ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Independence in 1783. And Virginia and other states, which had laid claim to portions of this region turned over their rights to the federal government. govern-ment. The government of the Northwest Territory was formally created by the ordinance of 17ST. People from the East migrated into this territory in such numbers that by 1803 Ohio was taken into the Union as the seventeenth seven-teenth slate. The fourth largest state in size of population, Ohio has 24 electoral votes for President, while in area, with its 41,000 square miles, it ranks only thirty-fifth, which shows how densely it Is populated. It is noted as the state of Presidents. President Harding makes the seventh Ohioan to fill the presidential office. The name Ohio is derived from the Iroquois word O-hee-yo, meaning "beautiful river." It was first applied by the Indians of the Five Nations to what we now call the Allegheny river, one of the chief tributaries of the Ohio. Gradually the name came to Include the whole river, sometimes even being applied to the Mississippi. Later it was confined to the river between be-tween Pittsburgh and Cairo, and appropriately ap-propriately the first state formed on its northern bank was named after It. Ohio is often called the Buckeye State from its large number of horse-chestnut horse-chestnut trees. I |