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Chapter Xiit CHAPTER XIIT. ABORIGINAL INII9BITANTS-THE SETTERAL ILLINOIS TRIBES. THEIndians mho lived in and claimed the territory to ~vllicllonr attention is directed mere the several tribes of the Tl!inois and 3Iiarni confederacies,- the Pottawatomies, the Icickapoos and scattered bands of Sharl-nees and Delawares. Their title to the soil had to be extin- guished by conquest or treatise of purchase before the conntrr could be settled by a higher civilization ; for the habits of the t~oraces? red and n~hite,vere so radically diff'erent that there could be no fusion, and they could not, or rather did not, live either happily or at peace together. NTe proceed to treat of these several tribes, obser~-ingthe order in which their names llare been mentioned; and n-e do so in this con- nection for the reason that it will aid toward a more ready under- standing of the subjects TI-hichare to follow. Tlie Illinois were a subdivision of the great Algonquin family. Theil*language and manners differed somen-hat from other surround- ing tribes, and resembled rnost the Miamis, with whom they originally bore a rery close afinity. Before Joliet and Marquette's voyage to t,he Jlississippi, all of the Indians who carne from the south to the mission at La Pointe, on Lake Superior, for the purposes of barter, nere b~ the French called Illinois, for the reason that the @st Indians who came to La Pointe tkom the sontll '' culZec2 tJlenzse1ves IUinois.'' In the Jesuit Relations the name Illinois appears as '(Illi-mouek," " Illinoues," Ill-i-ne-w-ek,'? " Allin-i-wek '? and " Lin-i-wek." By Father Marquette it is "Ilinois," and Hennepin- has it the same as it is at the present day. The ois was pronounced like our way, so that ouai, ois, v~ek and ouek nere almost identical in pronunciatio11.t '' Willinis ?? is Lewis EL-ans' orthograph-. Major Thomas Fors~tl~, who for manv pears was a trader and Indian agent in the territory? and subsequently the state, of Illinois, says the Corifederation of Illinois * As me have given the name of Ottawas to all the savages 3f these countries, al- though of different nations. because the first who have appeared among the French . have been Ottawas; so also it is with the name of the Illinois, very numerous, and dwelling toward the south. because the first who base come to the "point of the Holy Ghost for commerce called themselves Illinois."-Father Claude Dablon, in t,he Jesuit Relations for 1670, 1671. i Xote by Dr. Shes in the article entitled "The Indian Tribes of Wisconsin," fur- nished by him for the Historical Society of Wisconsin, and published in 1-01. I11 02 their collections, p. 128. Public Domain Book - Found at COAN.NET / VermilionCounty.INFO 106 HISTORIC KOTES OK THE NORTHWEST. called theinselves Linnewny,"-- which is almost identical with the Lin-i-wek of the Jesuits, having a regard for its proper pronuncia- tion,-" and that by others they were called Minnemaj-, signifj-ing men," and that their confederacy embraced the combined Illinois and lhlianii tribes ; c6 that all these different bands of the Minneway nation spoke the language of the present Miamis, and the 11-liole considered thein- selves as one and the same people, yet from their local sitnation, and having. no standard to go by, their language became broken up into different dialects." They mere by the Iroquois called ''C/~ich.-ta~!~- icks." Nany theories have been advanced 2nd much fine specnlatioll in- dulged in concerning the origin and meaning of t,he word. Illinois. We have seen that the Illinois first inade then~selreskno~~n to the French by that rlarnc, and ye bar-e never had a better sigr~ificationof the name than that 11-hich the Illirlois tllelnselces gmTeto Fathers Mar- quette and I-Iennepin. The former, in his narrative journal, observes: ': To say Illinois is? in their language, to say ' the men,' as if other Indians, compared to them, were mere beasts." t "The word Illinois signifies a Inan of frill age in the vigor of his strength. This ~\-ordIlli- nois comes, as it has already beer1 observed: faroni idlini, which in the language of that nation signifies a perfect 2nd accomplislied man." $ S~~bsec~nentlythe name Illini, Linnewa-, Willinis or Illinois, wit11 more propriety became limited to a confederacy, at first composed of fonr subdivisions, known as the IiaskasLias, Cahokias, Tanlaroas and Peorias. Not Inany gears before the discovery of the Mississippi by the French, a foreign tribe, the Met chigainis, nearly destroyed by IT-ars with the Sacs to the north and the Chickasaws to the south, to save themselves from annihilation appealed to the I<askaskias for admission into their confederacy.$ The request xas grant.ed, and the Metchiga- mis left their homes ou, the Osage river and established their villages on the St. Francis, within the limits of the present State of Xissouri and below the inoath of the Kaskaskia. The subdivision of the Illinois proper into cantons-, 'a the French writers denominate the ramilies or villages of a nation, like that of other tribes was never vclry distinct. There were no villages exclu- sively for a separate branch of the tribe. Owing to intermarriage, adoption and otlier processes hrnilinr to modern civilization, the sub- * Life of Black-Hawk, by Benjamin Drake, seventh edition, pp. 16 and 17. f Shea's Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, p. 25. $ Hennepin's Discovery of America, pp. 35 and 119, London edition. 1698. $ Charlevoix's " Narrative Journal," Vol. II! p. 228. Also note of B. F. French, p. 61 of Vol. 111, First Series of Historical Collections of Louisiana. Public Domain Book - Found at COAN.NET / VermilionCounty.INFO LOCATIOE OF VILLAGES. 107 tribal distinctions mere not well preserved ; and when Charlevois, that acute observer, in 1791 visited these several Illinois villages near Kas- kaskia, their inhabitants mere so mixed together and confounded that it nas almost impossible to distinguish the different branches of tlle tribe from each other." The -first accounts we have of the Illinois are giren br the Jesuit missionaries. In the " Relations" for the year 1655 we find that the Lin-i-ouek are neighbors of the Winnebagoes; again in the LL Rela- tions" for the next gear, " that the Illinois nation dn-ell more than sixty leagues from here, t and beyond a great ril-era, $ 11-hich as near as can be conjectured flows into the sea toward Virginia.- These people are warlike. They use the bow, rarely the gun, and nel-er the canoe. When Joliet and Yarquette were descending the Mississippi, the)- found villages of the Illinois on the Des Moines river, and on their return they passed through lager villages of the same nation situated on the Illinois river, near Peoria and higher up the stream. While the Illii~oisFere nomads, though not to the estent of many other tribes, they had villaqesC of a somewhat permanent character, and vhen they moved after game they went in a body. It rrould seem from the most authentic accounts that their faxori te akidi~~gplaces mere on the Illinois river, from the Des Plaines doll-11 to its confinence with the Mississippi: and on the Mississippi from the Kaskaskia to the mouth of the Ohio. This beaatiful region abounded in game; its riv- ers mere well stocked with fish, and kt:-?frequented Gy myriads of wild fowls. The climate mas mild. The soil TI-as fertile. By the mere tnrning of the sod, the lands in the rich river bottoms ~ielded bountiful crops of Indian corn, melons and squad+ les. In disposition and morals the Illinois v-ere not to be verT highl- commended. Father Charlevoix, speaking of them as the^- were in 1700, says : " Missionaries have for some years directed quite a flour- ishing church among the Illinois, and the- llare ever since continued to i~lstrnctthat nation., in whom christianit.y had already produced a change such as she alone can produce in morals and disposition. Before the arrival of the missionaries, there were perhaps no Indians in anr part of Canada IT-ith fewer good qualities and more rices. Tl~echave * " These tribes are at present very much confounded: and are become very inconsici- erable. There remains only a very small number of Kaskaskias, a.nd the tiyo villages of that name are almost entirely composed of Tamaroas and ,7letchigamis. a foreign nat,ion adopted by the Kaskaslcias, and originally settled on a small river you meet wit11 going down the Mississippi. "-Charlevoix' " Sarrat,ive Journal, " Letter SSVIII, dated Kasliashia, October 20. 1721 ; p: O9S.k4 Vol. 11. i The letter is sent froin the 3Iisslon of the Holy Ghost? at La Pointe. $ The 3Iississippi. Public Domain Book - Found at COAN.NET / VermilionCounty.INFO 108 HISTORIC NOTES ON THE XOETHWEST. always been mild and docile enough, but they were corrardly, treach- erous, fickle, deceitful, thievish, brutal, destitute of faith or honor, selfish, addicted to glluttony and the most monstrous lusts, almost un- known to the Canada tribes, who accordingly despised them heartily, but the Illinois were not a whit less haughty or self-complacent on that account. Such allies could bring no great honor or assistarice to the French ; yet we never had any more faithf~~l,and, if we except the Sbknaqui tribes, they are the only tribe who never sought peace with their ene- mies to our prejudice. They did, indeed, see the necessity of our aid to defend themselves against several nations who seemed to have sworn their ruin, and especially against the Iroquois and Foxes, who, by con- stant harrassing,, hare somewhat trained them to war, the former taking home from their expeditions the vices of that corrupt nation." Father Charlevoix' comments upon the Illinois confirm the state- ments of Hennepin, who says : " They are lazy va,gabonds, timorous: pettish thieves, and so fond of their liberty that they have no great .
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