This is a paper that was written by Kasandra Fager, a graduate student in the 2021-22 cohort and recipient of The Donna M. Nieman Award for Undergraduate Research Excellence in History. Fager recently published an article featuring some of the research in this paper in the NW Ohio History Journal.

When you look around a city, what do you see? I am sure that you see buildings, factories, streets, and homes like any other city or town in America. You would also probably see parents rushing to and from work, grandparents running to the grocery store, and children playing ball in the streets. These things are normal and have been considered as such for centuries, but have you ever stopped to consider how we got here and who or what came before us? In history class, we learned how the wilderness and the Native Americans lived on this land before the Europeans came and the rest is, as we say, history. Today, I want to stop for a moment and consider how the land in Bowling Green, Ohio was affected by the battle between Native Americans and Europeans to live on and commercialize the land to better understand our nation’s environmental and economic history.