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A federally administered division of Canada. Its capital is Yellowknife. The former northern and eastern-most parts of the Territory comprise the new territory of Nunavut, effective April 1, 1999.

and the Ordinance of 1787 for its government. The Northwest Territory, consisting of the area west of Pennsylvania, north of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi, came under the control of the Continental Congress by reason of the cessions made by Virginia (1784), New York (1782), Massachusetts (1785) and Connecticut (1786). In 1784 Jefferson brought forward an ordinance for the government of this territory. Its leading features were that it provided for its erection into States, and their entrance into the Union on equal terms with the rest. A clause which would have prohibited slavery after 1800 was voted down. In 1787 a new ordinance was framed upon this and passed on September 13. The credit of its final form, including the forbidding of slavery, has been attributed to Nathan Dane, member of the Continental Congress from Massachusetts, and, more largely of late, to Dr. Manasseh Cutler, of the same State, agent of the Ohio Company. The ordinance provided that no land was to be taken up until it had been purchased from the Indians and offered for sale by the United States; no property qualification was required of electors or elected; a temporary government, consisting of an appointed governor and law-making judges, might be established until the adult male population of the territory increased to 5000; then a permanent and representative government would be permitted, with the right of sending a representative to Congress, who should debate, but not vote. When the number of inhabitants in any of the five divisions of the territory equalled 60,000, it should be admitted as a new State; the new States should remain forever a part of the United States; should bear the same relation to the Government as the original States; should pay their apportionment of the Federal debts; should in their governments uphold republican forms, and slavery should exist in none of them. It also provided for equal division of the property of intestates, and for the surrender of fugitive slaves from the States. Under this government Arthur St. Clair was Governor of the territory from 1788 to 1802, when Ohio became a State. The western portions were then organized as the Territory of Indiana, the northern as the Territory of Michigan, in 1805.