Newborn USA without Northwest Territory?

...
Also it was not part of any of the colonies. The colonies has ended along the Appalachian mountains. .

The original charters had few western boundaries, & the two key colonies in this, Pennsylvania & Virginia still considered to Ohio territory within their jurisdiction. This was one of the items of contention that led to the Revolt. The crown was doing nothing to police the region. No Red Coats were to be found on the frontier protecting the farms & villages. Since the end of the Seven Years War the legislatures of the Carolinias, Virginia, Pennsylvania, had been bearing the cost and effort of keeping militia active against the Shawnee & allies fighting the frontier settlements. The combined military campaign of Pennsylvania and Virginia in 1774, that led to the battle of Point Pleasant, was the perfect storm of contrast. While the colonial administrations struggled to mount a counter to the growing threat in the Ohio region, the Crowns soldiers were entirely occupied enforcing tax levies in the coastal cities for the coffers in London. Whatever the legal details were the citizens of much of Pennsylvania & Virginia considered any Royal claim to be administering the Ohio region a joke covering a theft.
 
Loyalists are going to have a really tough time settling the NW Territory, or as it was better known then, the Ohio.

Or is it more daunting at this time, with stronger and more warlike Amerindian tribes there?

I think any time you have two aggressive colonial powers vying for the same space, you'll have them backing the Amerindian tribes, and you'll have those tribes playing the powers off against each other.

US supports the NW natives. Britain now throws support to anti-US natives, such as what is left of the Iroquois, or the Cheyenne or Creek. the Shawnee are in there somewhere, too (I think they've ended up in West Virginia/western Pennsylvania) ...

The Shawnee originated in Pennsylvania & were pushed west. By the time in question here they were the principle political and military group in the Ohio region. They were a bit bitter in their historical narrative of being driven from their former homelands in the east & fought a 35+ year war of survival against the colonial and later US settlers. 100,000 Loyalists drifting west are going to look like a major invasion to the Shawnee and every other tribe, nation, people, or what have you in the area.

A second problem is these Loyalists are not Danial Boone or his kin. For every Boone or other sturdy frontiersman & wife there were a hundred others who floundered about in the wilderness and frequently died there. These Loyalists would be mostly impoverished, badly equipped with tools, and mostly farmers or tradesmen from the coastal plains. They were weak on the sort of skills that ensured prosperity in a howling wilderness. Ft Dearborn and the thinly scattered settlements around it are not going to host 500,000, 100,000, or even 25,000 whining refugees disembarking from Lake Erie barges in the space of a year or two. Half million Loyalists trying to evacuate west to the Ohio are going to anticipate the Trail of Tears of the later century. As it was the Loyalists who fled the former colonies had a difficult time. At least one shipload from New York were kidnapped into slavery. The Crown that neglected their neighbors into revolt was a bit lackadaisical in attending them when they fled to its fold.
 
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Wouldn't settling Ohio lead to more conflict with natives than settling Ontario?

Maybe a little more than in Upper Canada, but less than the Americans as a whole. The British had a deep understanding of how Native Americans politics worked and the best way appease them. The giving of gifts, the use of Indian agents (who weren't blatantly corrupt), the value of personal relationships and generally following an established set of rules all endeared them more to the Indians than nearly anything the Americans did. Upper Canada resembled Ohio in a hundred different ways but was almost totally free of the casual violence that America faced in the Northwest.
 

Lusitania

Donor
Maybe a little more than in Upper Canada, but less than the Americans as a whole. The British had a deep understanding of how Native Americans politics worked and the best way appease them. The giving of gifts, the use of Indian agents (who weren't blatantly corrupt), the value of personal relationships and generally following an established set of rules all endeared them more to the Indians than nearly anything the Americans did. Upper Canada resembled Ohio in a hundred different ways but was almost totally free of the casual violence that America faced in the Northwest.
Any settlement of northwest would be in the same manner as upper Canada with lands set asside for the natives. You are right that many people from east like iotl went first to British east coast and then made there way upper Canada and in this case northwest.
 

Lusitania

Donor
The original charters had few western boundaries, & the two key colonies in this, Pennsylvania & Virginia still considered to Ohio territory within their jurisdiction. This was one of the items of contention that led to the Revolt. The crown was doing nothing to police the region. No Red Coats were to be found on the frontier protecting the farms & villages. Since the end of the Seven Years War the legislatures of the Carolinias, Virginia, Pennsylvania, had been bearing the cost and effort of keeping militia active against the Shawnee & allies fighting the frontier settlements. The combined military campaign of Pennsylvania and Virginia in 1774, that led to the battle of Point Pleasant, was the perfect storm of contrast. While the colonial administrations struggled to mount a counter to the growing threat in the Ohio region, the Crowns soldiers were entirely occupied enforcing tax levies in the coastal cities for the coffers in London. Whatever the legal details were the citizens of much of Pennsylvania & Virginia considered any Royal claim to be administering the Ohio region a joke covering a theft.
Ok there seems to be a contradiction, the settlers were demanding lands to the west and even moving overland while the ever enlightened British government had reserved these lands as native lands. That would explain why there was no red coats there to defend the squatters.
 
...& no Red Coats the previous decade defending the legit frontier settlements either. There were a few far to the west at Detroit ect... Guarding the merchants selling arms to the habitants, used to raid across the Ohio River.

Virginia & Pennsylvania kept up a frontier militia as a standing force to discourage both raids from beyond the Ohio, and general banditry along the frontier. The notable contribution of the Red Coats were ham handed tax enforcement actions in the coastal towns.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
The effects of this on the north/south balance are interesting.

On the one hand, "the west" such as it exists from at least 1783-1803, and possibly beyond, will be economically suitable for plantation agriculture. It consists of OTL Kentucky, Tennessee and most of Alabama and Mississippi. Plus, the southern Atlantic states will have the initial claims to those lands when they enter the Union. (Although, I think I did see one expansive New York charter claim to all the lands between the great lakes and Cumberland river: http://slideplayer.com/slide/909145...ration+and+Western+Land+Claims,+1781–1802.jpg).

So those four might come in as slave states like OTL. However, northern colonies will want to ensure opportunities for their citizens in the western lands. More northerners would move in to Kentucky and Tennessee. This might be enough to result in Kentucky or even Tennessee having constitutions writing them up as free states, with only Alabama and Mississippi (and maybe Tennessee) as new slave states. This pushes the north-south slavery divide into more of a "diagonal" line than a straight line.

If the south stiff arms the north on influence over the southwest, and is perceived as unilaterally forcing slave constitutions in disregard of or northern states and possibly even majority settler opinion, northern states might see that as a cause for dis-Union.
 

Bytor

Monthly Donor
Given that much of the Old Northwest was actually part of some of the colonies (especially Virginia), I seriously doubt you could get a peace treaty that doesn’t allow the colonies to keep the territory.

They claimed it, sure, but those claims were pretty words without much to back them up. They barely reached the standards for de jure, and not at all for de facto.
 

Bytor

Monthly Donor
This is a lot of good information, people, and I really appreciate the input from all sides and every point that was raised!
 
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