The Indians Of Illinois
A Window To Their World
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Canal Stories, a series brought to you by the Canal Corridor Association to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the Illinois & Michigan Canal and the communities that were shaped by its legacy. Native Americans had lived in the Illinois Valley for well over 10,000 years before the arrival of the first Europeans, and the history of the area would not be complete without an exploration of these diverse and complex communities. Today, we’re taking a look at the Native American tribes of Illinois. This story comes to us from Mark Walczynski, Park Historian for the Starved Rock Foundation, who specializes in the Franco/Native American period of the western Great Lakes and the Illinois Country.
The name “Illinois” is an umbrella term for an alliance of Native groups or subtribes who shared the same language and customs, and who intermarried. Some of the better-known subtribes included the Michigamea, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Peoria, and Tamaroa, while some of the lesser known included the Chinko, Coiracoentanon, Chepoussa, Espeminkia, and Tapouaro. French missionaries, including Jacques Gravier and Jean-Antoine Le Boullenger, reported that the Illinois called their collection of subtribes, Inohka. They were never known as “Illiniwek.” Illiniwek is a word that was wrongly taken to be the name of an Indian tribe when, in fact, it is a word that mean “same speakers.”
The Illinois practiced a seasonal sustenance pattern that involved hunting, gathering, fishing, and agriculture. Every spring, Illinois subtribes moved to a particular summer agricultural village where maize, beans, squash, and other crops were grown. Sometime after the spring crop had been established, the Illinois participated in the summer bison hunt, an event that lasted usually four to five weeks and, as in most other aspects of Illinois life, involved the participation of everyone in the village. As autumn approached, ears of maize were ripped from the stalks, shelled, and stored in underground pits, for safe keeping. Next spring, the maize was eaten and used as seed for the year's crop. Then, usually by mid to late September, the village dispersed into small family and clan groups to participate in the winter hunt. As spring approached, each family or clan group would return to their summer village, and the cycle would begin anew.
The family unit was the foundation of the Illinois village. Every member, regardless of age, sex, or talent, did his or her part to ensure the survival of the group. Men were hunters and warriors, while women did most of the domestic work (farming, gathering, raising children, etc.). Grandparents were the village educators, whose lifelong learning experiences were passed on to the next generation. Children performed menial tasks, such as collecting sticks and assorted pieces of wood for low temperature fires used by the grandparents to dry bison and other meats that had been taken during the hunt. Adolescence was a time in which young Illinois boys and girls learned the skills that would make them capable adults.
Each Illinois belonged to a kinship, or blood division, called a clan. Each clan was represented by a specific totem or symbol, such as an otter, deer, or other animal. Certain clans were known for specific roles within Illinois villages. Hereditary chiefs, for example, typically came from a particular clan. Clans were also family or bloodline divisions. Members of one clan were expressly prohibited from marrying members of the same clan. The clan system not only prevented intermarriage, but it also provided a unique identity to each group, helping to form and keep alliances and friendships.
The Illinois system of leadership was based on consensus and council. The role of village civil chief was a position of governance that sought and fostered voluntary facilitation and cooperation between individuals and groups. Some civil chief’s influence and jurisdiction spread over several villages, while other subchief’s influence may only be legitimate in one village. Even though the civil chief's position was hereditary, he was still required to provide leadership during the annual bison hunt. Illinois civil chiefs and their counterparts, the village council, which was composed of elders and other headmen, made decisions as a group for the benefit of the group.
The civil chief was distinguished from the war chief, a proven leader who had led successful war parties in battle, had captured prisoners, and had brought each war party member back home safely. The war chief was personally accountable for the well-being of every warrior in his charge and was sometimes required to make restitution to a slain warrior's family. At the same time, the decision whether or not to join a war party was up to the individual. An Illinois man usually joined a war party to address perceived wrongs done to his people, or to retaliate against an enemy. Usually, potential volunteers were persuaded to join a war party by the rhetoric of the war chief, not by coercion.
Throughout their history the Illinois fought with other tribes including the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago), Nadouessi (Sioux), Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), Mesquakie (Fox), as well as others. Previously, these hostilities began as small skirmishes, but they eventually intensified with time and technology. The predominant tactic used by Illinois warriors was stealth, silence, and surprise. There was little or no regard for the age or sex of the victims. When practical, the Illinois preferred to return to their village with a prisoner, who was sometimes adopted into the tribe to replace a deceased member of the village, kept alive as a slave, or was killed. When the war party returned home from a successful foray, the villagers followed a specific protocol by feasting and celebrating. If the war party was met with defeat, the villagers would enter a state of mourning.
Illinois villages were long and narrow, usually spread along the banks of waterways such as the Mississippi, Kaskaskia, or Illinois Rivers. They seldom had walls, palisades, or defenses. When war or an attack was imminent, the Illinois only had a few options. They could consolidate their subtribes at one village, relocate to a new village site, attack the threat before being attacked, or in later years, move next to a European fort.
To travel the rivers and lakes of their claimed territory, the Illinois made wooden canoes, known as “dugouts” to English speakers, pirogues to the French, or mihsoora to Miami-Illinois speakers. Mihsoora were formed from the trunks of cottonwood trees, or perhaps large silver maples, and were fashioned by continuously burning and scraping the side of a trunk until it was deep enough and stable enough to hold passengers. Some mihsoora were very large and could reportedly carry as many as thirty to forty people.
Between the 1660s and 1690s, the Illinois lived in villages that were scattered throughout today's state of Illinois. Some villages were located near today's Starved Rock State Park, and near the modern-day cities of Peoria and East St. Louis. During this same period, some Illinois camps were located along the upper Fox River, in today's Wisconsin, and near the confluence of the Des Moines and Mississippi Rivers in Iowa. Between 1666 and possibly 1671, some Illinois wintered at La Pointe, a smattering of winter Native villages that included Wendat (Huron) Odawa (Ottawa), Ojibwe (Chippewa) Mesquakie (Fox), Kiskakon, and other tribes near today’s Ashland, Wisconsin, on Chequamegon Bay. Sometime during the winter of 1665-1666, French Jesuit missionary, Claude-Jean Allouez, met members of an Illinois delegation who were wintering at La Pointe. This encounter was the first known meeting between the French and the Illinois.
In 1691, the Illinois subtribes who lived in the Upper Illinois Valley, near present-day Starved Rock, relocated to Lake Peoria. By the first decade of the 18th century, nearly all Illinois groups, except for the large Peoria subtribe, had abandoned their Illinois River settlements and had established new ones along or near the Mississippi River in southern Illinois. Except for an eight-year period between 1722 and 1730, the Peoria, and a few Cahokia tribesmen, were the primary Illinois people that lived along the Illinois River. By the early to mid 1750s, those tribesmen left Lake Peoria and relocated to camps in modern-day southern Illinois.
Later reports of the alleged destruction of the Illinois Indians at Starved Rock after the murder of Odawa war chief, Pontiac, in 1769, are without any basis in fact. The historical record plainly reveals that the Illinois Indians sold land to a British firm in 1773, allied with George Rogers Clark during the American Revolution in 1778, and negotiated treaties with the United States Government in 1803, 1818, and 1832. Experiencing a significant population decline during the previous century, the four Illinois subtribes that remained in 1832 merged with the larger Peoria group, becoming the Peoria tribe. That same year, the Peoria left Illinois and settled in present-day Kansas. In 1854, the Wea and Piankashaw, Miami subtribes, merged with the Peoria: the group henceforth became known as the Consolidated Peoria Tribe. In 1868, the Consolidated Peoria moved to northeast Oklahoma and became the Peoria Indian Tribe of Oklahoma. They maintain tribal headquarters there today.
That concludes today’s Canal Story. Thank you so much for joining us as we continue our journey through the history of the Illinois & Michigan Canal. Be sure to tune in next week for part of two of our focus on the Indians of Illinois, where we explore Northern Illinois in the late 1600s. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, pass it along to your family and friends, leave us a like or drop us a comment, and we’ll see you again very soon.
Notes:
To learn more about the Peoria Indian Tribe of Oklahoma, visit their website at peoriatribe.com
For more information on the Illinois Indians, see Massacre 1769, The Search for the Origin of the Legend of Starved Rock (by Mark Walczynski, published by the Center for French Colonial Studies, 2019).
What to see more works from Mark Walczynski? Get his books HERE!