The Fighting Illini

The home state's football team, actually all their teams, are known as the Fighting Illini. Given the high profile of the banned Chief Illiniwek mascot, many people assume that the Illini were the native tribe of the area that became the state of Illinois.

Not so fast, all you braves and squaws in your orange t-shirts.

The Illini were a group of tribes native to this area. The largest of those tribes were the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Tamaroa, Cahokia, and Michigamea. Apparently they had once been a single tribe and had been divided as their numbers grew large, but they remained close. The drawing is of Keemorania, a Peoria chief.

The Illini were congregated along the Mississippi River and the Illinois River valley. This was prime real estate, good for agriculture and hunting. There were even buffalo herds in Illinois at the time. The Illini numbered somewhere between 10,000-12,000 at their most prolific, around the year 1680. The tribes that lived adjacent to the Illini were not the most desirable of neighbors: to the south were the Chickasaw, to the north were the Fox, Winnebago and Sioux, and to the east the nastiest group, the Iroquois.

There were five Iroquois tribes: the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, and the Seneca. The Iroquois were in the beaver pelt business, trading the pelts to the Dutch settlers in New York state. The Dutch paid for the pelts with modern warfare tools: steel knives and steel hatchets, guns, powder and ammunition. While it would take a few years to play out, the beaver pelt business assured that the Illini were going to catch a major whippin'.

The Iroquois depleted the beaver stock and moved west to find more, headed toward the good old Illini. The Illini were still using prehistoric quality tools, stone hatchets and bows and arrows, and they got whipped pretty badly, this in the late 1600's.

A couple of decades later, the Illini warred with the Fox, doing better in the battles, but still paying the price of attrition. Next, the Illini signed on to fight with their ally, the French, against the Chickasaws. The Chickasaws were blockading French trade traffic on the Mississippi River, traffic that was trying to link up to the French settlements in Louisiana. That war ended up with no clear victor, but the Chickasaw became the enemy of the Illini forever.

Now, when you select an ally, you really hope to pick a winner. The Illini had chosen the French. The British and the French warred, and the French lost, with the final bell being rung in 1763. Obviously, that left the Illini squarely behind the 8-ball. The worst enemy was still to come, and it wasn't the Brits.

Progress was coming. Settlers, and the United States Government.

The continual warring over the many, many years had left the Illini pretty well decimated. In keeping with the spirit of the times--and what would mark U.S. policy toward native Americans--the government struck a series of treaties with the Illini. The short version:

Treaty of Greenville: Illini gave up Chicago River delta, Illinois river delta, and parcels on the Ohio River and Mississippi River, plus 150,000 specified acres. Illini got $500.

Treaty of Vincennes: Illini gave up 9,000,000 acres. Illini got $12,000 and 1,500 acres.

Treaty of Castor Hill: Illini gave up the rest of their land in Illinois and Missouri. Illini got land in southeastern Kansas, near the Shawnee reserve.

This was 1832, and the fighting Illini were gone from Illinois.

Federal recognition of the Illini was not restored until 1978. With a current enrollment of nearly 2,000 and 39 acres of tribal land, the Peoria Tribe of Oklahoma is located in Miami, Oklahoma.

That is all.