Encyclopedia o f Chicago
Interpretive Digital Essay : Globalization: Chicago and the World
Globalization: Chicago and the World
Essay: Introduction
Essay: Chicago in the Middle Ground
Map: Chicago's World—Within a Day's Travel
Essay: Global Chicago
Galleries:
Colonial Trans-Atlantic Networks
A Cosmopolitan Frontier
Global Capitalism and Chicago Real Estate
Built Environment in a Mercantile Metropolis
Networks of Rails
World's Columbian Exposition of 1893
Turn-of-the-Century Industrialization and International Markets
The Chicago Region and Its Global Models
An Upstart Behemoth
Mailing To the World
The World in Chicago
Chicago's Twentieth-Century Cultural Exports
"The Whole World Is Watching"
Corporate Headquarters and Industrial Relics
Map: Changing Origins of Metropolitan Chicago's Foreign-Born Population
Chicago's Place in the Water Routes of the Great Lakes Indian World, 1600-1830
Return to "Chicago in the Middle Ground"

For centuries the Chicago area represented for Native Americans just one of a number of key portages for long-distance canoe travel between the Great Lakes and the river network of the Mississippi Basin. These routes were vital for seasonal migrations and periodic trade between populations bordering the Great Lakes and the middle Mississippi Valley. These corridors of interregional movement proved essential to the successful development of the fur trade following contact with Europeans, a trade that flourished in the Chicago area until the opening decades of the nineteenth century.