This may not be a great debate, but doesn’t anyone else find it strange that some states that are refered to as being in the ‘midwest’ are no where near the west?
I realize this goes back hundreds of years, and probably made sense at that time.
Sorry to be so picky. I just have trouble thinking of Indiana(for example)as being in the midwest. Especially if St. Louis is considered the gateway to the west. Indiana, Michigan, etc… are to the east of St. Louis.
I realize there are many places with names or references that don’t necassarily make sense anymore. ie. ‘far east’
You’re right that it goes back–not quite “hundreds” of years.
At the time of the Civil War, Kansas was still “the West.” Cattle drives from Texas ended there; there were quite a few battles and raids between the Indian nations and the army and encroaching settlers. In 1863, Minnesota was the scene of a conflict between whites and Indians.
In that context, while the Eastern states were still much more heavily populated than the rest of the country, the term was coined to indicate those lands (relatively recently settled) that were west of the truly “civilized” areas and were mid-way to the West.
In the last twenty years, I have seen a slow shift by a number of people to remove Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin (and sometimes Illinois and/or Minnesota) from the Midwest, identifying them as Great Lakes or Rust Belt states, and reserving Midwest for Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota, (and North Dakota if there had been such a place). Views change and language with it. Most dictionaries will still identify the Midwest as the Great Lakes region plus the Great Plains region.
In short (as if I ever…), Midwest never meant the middle of the West, but mid-way to the West.
I think you answered your own question. 150 years ago, Indiana was “out west” from where most Americans lived at the time.
I once tried to explain to a British person how people from California, Arizona and New Mexico aren’t “Southerners” - yet people from Arkansas or Tennessee are, and it made about as much sense as explaining how Indiana is “Midewestern” and not Colorado. We are stuck in the 1820’s with our regional names.
I always thought “upstate New York” was a bit of an odd designation. Especially when applied to places like Binghamton which are so far south they’re practically in Pennsylvania.
Well I’m from Indiana and I think if you had a vote today, Hoosiers would be flying the CBF- they’re WAY more Southern than Western.
This is in large part due to Northwards migration- when I was a child (a few years back) my grandparents and others of that generation had a very specific accent. I remember that when I learned to read that I was very surprised to find that there was no “r” in “wash” or “Washington” (Worshington). They talked about going to “Chicawguh.” This particular sound is gone now. It has been replaced by a sort of generalised Southern accent, primarily Kentucky with a bit of Carolinas thrown in. When GM built a factory in my home town (Marion) many people moved from Kentucky to work there, and brought their accent.
I don’t particularly miss this Hoosier sound (all things must pass) but at the same time I wonder narcissistically (sp?) how many people can say that in their lifetimes an entire accent has vanished?
This is especially interesting to me as I am trying to learn Russian here in St. Pete., and am beginning to think that there has been NO evolution in that language since it was codified by various loony professors a couple of centuries ago. JDM
LOL! I’ve been in college on “the coast” for a year and I’ve never even seen the ocean.
I guess the “Midwest” problem stems from the fact that we don’t have a controlling authority telling us how to refer to certain parts of the country. You can try to slowly make people switch to more realistic names, but it’s hard to get them to abandon a term that’s been used for so long.
IMHO it started when the majority of the population were on the East Coast. Even after people moved West, most of the power and the media were based in the East. A joke from an insurance branch office said that those big home office buildings in NY, Hartford and Boston didn’t have any windows on their West side.
The word “West” is similarly mis-defined. I grew up watching westerns and thinking of Texas as the quintessential western state. Of course, Texas is in the middle of the country.
Ah, well, the Alaskans and Hawaiians know the truth – California is in the East.
I also thinks it depends on where one lives in the United States and a person’s perception as to what states constitutes the Midwest. I’m sure there have been studies regarding people’s perceptions on what constitutes a given “region” (I know there’s been quite a bit of research dealing with people’s “mental maps” in Geography). A person living in Ohio will probably have a different idea as to what constitutes the Midwest versus someone from New York or California.
The Bureau of the Census, by the way, subdivides the Midwest (it refers to it as the North Central Region) into East North Central (the Great Lakes states) and West North Central (the Great Plains states) subregions.
Yup, I think it’s the same if you’re anywhere in the southern parts of Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio- I’m from southern Ohio with family frmo southern Illinois. There was a neighborhood in my school district that we referred to as “Little Kentucky.”
At the birth of our nation, the ‘West’ was anyplace beyond the Appalachian mountain ranges. This included such lovely areas as the swamps of Northwest Ohio, the backwaters of the Muddy Mississippi, etc. Indeed, the conclusion of the Revolutionary War saw the inclusion of the Northwest Territory, bounded by the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and the Great Lakes. The general predominance of population on the East Coast meant that that view of the country was maintained for quite some time after the borders shifted even more westerly as a result of the Louisiana Purchase, the aquisition of the Oregon Territory, the annexation of Texas and the conquest of the Mexican Cession (ignore the Gadsen Purchase, unless you happen to be from Tuscon). Chicago was the ‘West’ until after the turn of the century, and the fight song for University of Michigan, which was written in 1898 by Louis Elbel, proclaims the team the ‘Champions of the West’. This view was helped by the fact that, despite its organization into states, the Great Plains and the Great Basin didn’t really obtain much population, which skipped over the area to head to California, long considered a separate entity (even today ).
According to both Encyclopedia Brittanica and Merriam-Webster Online, Midwest is really a shortening of Middle Western. This is as opposed to the Far West, the land of fruits and nuts.
).