Great Lakes Great Lakes The Great Lakes (), also called the Laurentian Great Lakes and the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of interconnected freshwater lakes located primarily in the upper mid-east region of North America, on the Canada–United States border, which connect to the Atlantic Ocean through the Saint Lawrence River. They consist of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, although hydrologically, there are four lakes, Superior, Erie, Ontario, and Michigan-Huron. The lakes are interconnected by the Great Lakes Waterway. The Great Lakes are the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth by total area, and second largest
Great Lakes region Hudson, Mohawk and Susquehanna form an arc of watersheds east to The Atlantic. The Great Lakes region, as distinct from the Great Lakes Basin, defines a unit of sub-national political entities defined by the U.S. states and the Canadian Province of Ontario encompassing the Great Lakes watershed, and the states and Province bordering one or more of the Great Lakes. Prior to European settlement, Iroquoian people lived around Lakes Erie and Ontario, Algonquian peoples around most of the rest, and a variety of other indigenous nation-peoples including the Lakotan, Ojibwa, Illinois, Pottawatmie, Huron, Shawnee, Erie, Fox, Miami, Crow and Ho-Chunk