Illiniwek

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You may be looking for Chief Illiniwek, a symbol of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The Illiniwek (also known as the Illini, Illinois, Illinois Confederacy, etc.) were a group of six Native American tribes in the upper Mississippi River valley of North America. The most populous tribes were the Kaskaskia, the Cahokia, the Peoria, the Tamaroa, Moingwena and the Michigamea.

When French explorers first journeyed to the region from Canada in the early 17th century, they found the area inhabited by a vigorous, populous Algonquian nation who called themselves "Illiniwek", which means "men." This the French rendered as "Illinois". What we know today about the Illiniwek comes to us mainly from the Jesuit Relations. The Relations were the reports which these missionaries who lived among the various native nations sent back to their superiors in France.

In the seventeenth century, the Illiniwek suffered due to a combination of European diseases and the expansion of the Iroquois into the eastern Great Lakes region. The Iroquois had hunted out their traditional lands and sought more productive hunting and trapping areas. They needed these furs to purchase European trade goods, upon which they had grown dependent.

According to a story recorded by historian Francis Parkman in The Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851), a terrible war of retaliation against the Illiniwek resulted from 1769 murder of the Ottawa war chief Pontiac by a Peoria warrior. According to the tale, the Peorias were practically wiped out as a result. This legend was debunked by historian Howard Peckham in 1947, although it is still sometimes repeated in non-scholarly sources. There is no evidence that there were any reprisals for Pontiac's murder.

As a consequence of Indian Removal, the descendants of the Illiniwek are now found in Ottawa County, Oklahoma as the Confederated Peoria Tribe.

External links

• NPS Site on the Illiniwek
• Illinois Confederacy
• The Illinois
• Tribes of the Illinois/Missouri Region at First
• The Illini: Lords of the Mississippi Valley Contact (1673)
• The Tribes of The Illinois Confederacy
• Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma

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