Alternate Great Lakes

Sorry about the lack of recent posts. Work and feeling under the weather took up a chunk of time (and learning how to play EUIV). Right now I'm trying out my new desk treadmill system and walking at a zippy 1mph as I type and edit an image. Once I build some extensions for my desk it should be a cool set-up and help me stay in a shape other than round.

So for this latest update I'm looking at the North American Great Lakes. I live near one of them and I have to say it can be nice. Back in elementary school I was told the Great Lakes and Finger Lakes were created by the glaciers during the last ice age. Nice of them to do so given the general pain in the butt glaciers made life for early humans.

So I got to thinking: What if the lakes ended up looking a bit different. Some different variations in the ice sheet or other factors I should really research could have given us different lakes than the ones were are accustomed to. So here is a sketch I made of one possibility. I'll next have to dig up some old maps from National Geographic and refine the shapes of these with a better eye on actual geological factors.

might be a little difficult to see but I enlarged the analog of Lake Ontario and have it exit down the Mowhawk Valley then Down the Hudson Valley instead of the St. Lawrence River. I also picture large swamps where Illinois would be.

What do you think? What sort of changes in the eventual European colonization would happen? How wold local tribes and nations be different?