Between 1783 and 1815, the terms West, Northwest, and Southwest referred to different geographic areas of the United States than they do in the twenty-first century. The meaning of "the West" changed constantly through America's early history as the population increased and moved farther from the Atlantic coast. In the 1600s, any land more than 100 miles from the Atlantic shore was "the West." During the early 1700s, the West was western land within the boundaries of the thirteen original colonies. By the 1780s, the West referred to land west of the Appalachian Mountains and, in the South, land west of the Carolinas and Georgia.

The Old Northwest encompassed territory north of the Ohio River to the Great Lakes and Canada, stretching east to the Pennsylvania border and west to the Mississippi River. The present-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, along with a portion of Minnesota...