The history of human activity in
Michigan, a US state in the
Midwest, began with settlement of the western Great Lakes region by Native Americans perhaps as early as 11,000 BCE. The first
European to explore Michigan,
Étienne Brûlé, came in about 1620. The area was part of
French Louisiana from 1682 to 1762. In 1701, the French officer
Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, along with fifty-one additional French-Canadians, founded a settlement called
Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, now the city of Detroit. When New France was defeated in the
French and Indian War, it ceded the region to
Britain in 1763. After the British defeat in the
American Revolutionary War, the
Treaty of Paris (1783) expanded the United States' boundaries to include nearly all land east of the Mississippi River and south of Canada. Michigan was then part of the "Old Northwest". From 1787 to 1800, it was part of the
Northwest Territory. In 1800, the
Indiana Territory was created, and most of the current state Michigan lay within it, with only the easternmost parts of the state remaining in the Northwest Territory. In 1802, when Ohio was
admitted to the Union, the whole of Michigan was attached to the Territory of Indiana, and so remained until 1805, when the
Territory of Michigan was established.