Could use a good name for a freaking giant forest

[Segev]

Uh...That's quite a few cultures you're lumping into one category. I'm pretty sure of all of the tribes that inhabited that area, someone gave it a name. I think the Ojibwe had a name for the place at the very least. I don't think you can have massive trade networks without at least naming places, else that would get confusing.

I'm willing to bet the locals named regions within the Great Plains. Despite the unified name, there's a ton of variation across the geography. And the point wasn't "the European explorers" so much as "some foreign-to-the-land explorers" who happened to be determined to explore as MUCH land as possible and return with a report on it.