During the late eighteenth century, the area today known as the state of Indiana was a part of the Northwest Territory in the new United States. This large area west of the Appalachians and north of the Ohio River had been ceded by Great Britain after the Revolutionary War. It consisted of the area later organized as the states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota. At that time, there were few European settlements on the northern bank of the Ohio River, although French colonists had settled in the west Illinois Country along the Mississippi River. Kentucky, which developed on the southern banks of the Ohio, was originally considered part of Virginia. In 1792 it was granted statehood after becoming more densely settled by European Americans. Prior to the early nineteenth-century European-American settlement of the Hanover area, its predominant inhabitants were the Shawnee people.