Great Lakes Waterway River between Huron and Erie. Usually, one or more U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers help keep the water passage open for part of the fall and early winter, although shipping usually ceases for two to three months thereafter. The Great Lakes Waterway is co-administered by the governments of Canada and the United States of America. The waterway allows passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the inland port of Duluth on Lake Superior, a distance of and to Chicago, on Lake Michigan, at . Together with the Saint Lawrence Seaway, the Waterway allows both ocean-going vessels and the ore, grain and coal-bearing
Lake Superior Chippewa out of most of northern Wisconsin and northeastern Minnesota into the western plains. The Sioux (Lakota) were pushed to the west, where they eventually settled in the Great Plains of present-day Nebraska and the Dakotas. The Ojibwe successfully spread throughout the Great Lakes region, with colonizing bands settling along lakes and rivers throughout what would become northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota in the United States. La Pointe on Madeline Island remained the spiritual and commercial center of the nation. The island is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Lake Superior Chippewa were numerous and contained many bands.