INDIANA

The Midwest. constituent state of the United States of America, one of the Midwestern states lying in the north-central United States, bounded on the north by Lake Michigan and the state of Michigan, on the east by Ohio, on the south by Kentucky, and on the west by Illinois. The capital is Indianapolis. Indiana was originally inhabited by Algonquian-speaking Indians whose major tribes included the Miami, the Potawatomi, and the Delaware. The French claimed the area in the late 17th century and established several forts. In 1763 the area passed to the British, then to the United States in 1783. The struggle with the Indians lasted until 1811, when General William Henry Harrison defeated them at the Battle of Tippecanoe, near present-day Lafayette. Indiana was admitted to the Union in 1816 as the 19th state. In 1820 Indiana University was founded, and in 1825 Robert Owen established his utopian settlement, New Harmony, on the lower Wabash River. The major Indian tribes left the area in 182040. Industrialization accelerated after the American Civil War, and the steel-making city of Gary was founded in 1906. Indiana forms part of the east-central lowlands that slope downward from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River. The north, modified in recent geologic time by glacial action, presents a gently rolling landscape; the central plain is flat and extremely fertile; and the south hilly and eroded. The highest elevation is along the Ohio border, at 1,257 feet (383 m) above sea level. The general slope and drainage pattern is toward the southwest; an almost imperceptible groundswell in the northeast forms a St. Lawrence-Mississippi divide. Among the notable features of Indiana's landscape are the sand dunes along Lake Michigan in the northwest. The climate of Indiana is temperate, with four distinct seasons. January mean temperatures range from 37 F (3 C) in southern Jeffersonville to 25 F (-4 C) in northern South Bend. The corresponding July range is 78 F (26 C) to 73 F (23 C). Annual precipitation varies from an average of 44 inches (1,120 mm) in the south to 35 inches (890 mm) in the north. Northern cities in the snowbelt of Lake Michigan often report more than 100 inches (2,540 mm) of snow during the winter. The people of Indiana are predominantly white, native-born Americans of native-born parents, most of whom trace their ancestry to England, Scotland, Ireland, and Germany. Blacks predominate in Gary, Poles in South Bend. Amish and Mennonite communities are found in and around Middlebury, Nappanee, and Goshen. The state's rate of population growth was slower than the national average for much of the late 20th century. Agriculture employs only a small percentage of the state's labour force, but agricultural output is high, and Indiana ranks in the top quarter nationally in cash receipts from farm marketings. Major crops include corn (maize), soybeans, and wheat, with tomatoes the principal vegetable crop. Hogs continue to be the most numerous livestock. Natural resources include coal in the southwest and quarry stone in the centre. Manufacturing industries are the dominant source of income in the state and employ approximately one-third of the work force. The steel industry is a major component. Musical instruments are made in Elkhart and diamond cutting tools in Fort Wayne. Indiana's transportation network is highly developed. The Ohio River carries large amounts of freight at low costs. The Port of Indiana on Lake Michigan, like all Great Lakes ports, connects with the St. Lawrence Seaway. Indiana ranks high nationally in road mileage per square mile of area, and virtually all of its roads are paved. There is a relatively dense network of railway track. Indianapolis is served by more major highways than any other American city, and it is headquarters for some of the nation's largest moving companies. The Indianapolis Civic Theater is the nation's oldest continuously operating theatrical organization. There is a well-known art colony in Nashville, and Columbus is acclaimed for its rich and varied architecture. Indiana has turned out an exceptionally high number of popular entertainers, songwriters, and authors, including Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, James Whitcomb Riley, Booth Tarkington, George Ade, Theodore Dreiser, Ernie Pyle, Red Skelton, James Dean, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. The Indianapolis 500 is one of the world's most famous auto races. The University of Notre Dame, near South Bend, is widely regarded as the leading Roman Catholic university in the United States. Area 36,413 square miles (94,309 square km). Pop. (1990) 5,544,159. county, west-central Pennsylvania, U.S., bounded to the south by the Conemaugh River. It consists of a hilly region on the Allegheny Plateau that rises to the Allegheny Mountains in the southeast and is drained by Crooked, Yellow, Two Lick, Blacklick, and Little Mahoning creeks. Other waterways include Yellow Creek Lake, which is surrounded by Yellow Creek State Park. Indiana county was created in 1803 and named for Indiana Territory (now the state of Indiana). The borough of Indiana is the seat of the county and of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, which was founded in 1875 as Indiana State Normal School. County residents are employed in retail trade, services, manufacturing, and bituminous coal mining. Area 829 square miles (2,148 square km). Pop. (1990) 89,994; (1996 est.) 90,073. borough (town), seat of Indiana county, west-central Pennsylvania, U.S., in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, 46 miles (74 km) northeast of Pittsburgh. Settled about 1764, it was laid out in 1805 on land donated for a county seat by George Clymer of Philadelphia, a signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. It was incorporated in 1816. Prior to the American Civil War, Indiana was a station on the Underground Railroad, an escape route for slaves. Indiana University of Pennsylvania was founded there as a teachers college in 1875. The borough is now a centre of retail trade and tourism; the surrounding area produces bituminous coal and a large annual crop of Christmas trees. The Jimmy Stewart Museum honours the life and career of the actor who was born in the borough. Pop. (1990) 15,174; (1998 est.) 14,399. constituent state of the United States of America. The state sits, as its motto claims, at the crossroads of America. It borders Lake Michigan and the state of Michigan on the north, Ohio on the east, Kentucky on the south, and Illinois on the west, making it an integral part of the Midwest. Indiana's 36,185 square miles (93,720 square kilometres) also make it, except for Hawaii, the smallest state west of the Appalachian Mountains. The capital has been at Indianapolis since 1825, nine years after Indiana, the name generally thought to mean land of the Indians, was admitted on Dec. 11, 1816, as the 19th state of the Union. Indiana, though officially an eastern north-central state of the United States, is perhaps the most Southern in character of all Northern states. This is largely a reflection of the early settlement of the region by immigrants from the Southern hills, who brought slavery and a hearty distrust of the federal government. Today Indiana is a manufacturing state; its northern half lies in the mainstream of the industrial belt stretching from Pennsylvania and New York to Illinois. Many of its people, nevertheless, continue to cherish an image derived from 19th-century America: largely white, dedicated to the Protestant ethic of sobriety and hard work, oriented to the small town and medium-sized city, and interested in maintaining the prerogatives of local self-determination. It is not by coincidence that Indiana's federal aid is one of the lowest per capita of any American state or that the Indianan's nickname, the Hoosier, remains a symbol in the nation's lore for a kind of homespun wisdom, wit, and folksiness that harkens back to what is popularly regarded as a less-hurried and less-sophisticated period of history. The state's northwestern cities form an industrial, economic, and social continuum with neighbouring Chicago. Their heavy black populations and black political aspirations contrast strikingly with life in the cities and towns on the Ohio River. Thus, the state is at once Northern and black, Southern and white-dominated, with all the problems attendant on both circumstances. Though generally considered a conservative and Republican stronghold, Indiana has voted into both state and national office an almost equal number of liberals and Democrats. Additional reading Writers' Program, Indiana: A Guide to the Hoosier State (1941, reissued 1973), provides a still-useful descriptive introduction. Robert D. Kingsbury, An Atlas of Indiana (1970), analyzes physical, economic, and political features. DeLorme Mapping Company, Indiana Atlas & Gazetteer (1998), is also useful. Ronald L. Baker and Marvin Carmony, Indiana Place Names (1975), categorizes the state's geographic names and gives the history of each. Overviews of Indiana history include Howard H. Peckham, Indiana: A Bicentennial History (1978); Dwight W. Hoover and Jane Rodman, A Pictorial History of Indiana (1980); and James H. Madison, The Indiana Way: A State History (1986). Various periods are studied in volumes of The History of Indiana series: John D. Barnhart and Dorothy L. Riker, Indiana to 1816: The Colonial Period (1971); Donald F. Carmony, Indiana, 18161850: The Pioneer Era (1998); Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 18501880 (1965); Clifton J. Phillips, Indiana in Transition: The Emergence of an Industrial Commonwealth, 18801920 (1968); and James H. Madison, Indiana Through Tradition and Change: A History of the Hoosier State and Its People, 19201945 (1982). Further research is published in Indiana Magazine of History (quarterly). The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica