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Native
Americans
Native Americans inhabited
what is now Illinois dating back to 8000 B.C. The
early peoples of Illinois can be classified into
various levels of the Archaic and Woodland cultures.
Earliest inhabitants are known as the Early Archaic
Indians. They survived by tracking and hunting
large animals, such as the mammoth. They also fished
and foraged for seeds, roots, berries and nuts.
For shelter, these early inhabitants lived in caves
and bluffs along the Illinois River valley. At about
1000 B.C. the Early Archaic Indians joined
new inhabitants to form what is known as the Late
Archaic Indians. This generation of Indians
made weapons such as snares, spears, and stone axes,
and created other tools such as woven baskets, hoes,
and pottery. The Late Archaic Indians engaged
in trade with tribes from areas known today as Michigan,
Kentucky and Missouri.
Following the Archaic
Period, a Woodland Culture would emerge at
around 600 B.C. These people focused more on agriculture
and less on the hunting of large animals. This group
also engaged in trade with nearby tribes. Because
this group of people planted gardens and cultivated
their own food, they were able to develop a village
life and expand their population. With a larger
population, cultural advancements began to take
shape including elaborate funeral ceremonies that
included burial mounds. Around the time of Christ,
the Woodland Culture evolved into the Middle
Woodland Culture. This culture would last until
300 A.D. where it would evolve into the Late
Woodland Culture. This culture of people began
to cultivate and store their food, trading corn,
beans, pumpkin and squash.
At around 500 A.D.,
the Mississippian Indians, also a mound-building
Woodland culture, migrated to Illinois from
the southeast. Here they developed floodplain agriculture
and used rivers to facilitate their trade. The Mississippians
established villages near rivers and protected them
with moats and other earthworks. They established
close to 100 mounds around Cahokia. Monks Mound
is an earthwork of this culture, and at 100 feet
tall and covering fourteen acres, it is the largest
pre-historic earthen structure in North America.
This civilization began to decline around A.D. 1050,
and by the 1500s, only small scattered settlements
remained. The reason for the decline of this culture
is not known, but some theories include environmental
degradation, erosion, crop failures, or faulty leadership.
The Illinois Confederacy
inhabited Illinois by the early 1600s and occupied
Cahokia by mid-century. The tribes that made up
this confederacy included the Cahokia, Kaskaskia,
Michigamea, Moingwene, Peoria, and Tamaroa. These
people fished, hunted, and cultivated the land for
food. This Confederacy would engage in occasional
small-scale warfare. Large-scale warfare would not
be known to the Illinois Confederacy until
1655 when they would be forced to defend themselves
from continual attacks by the Sioux and the Iroquois.
Discovery and French Settlement
Jacques Marquette
and Louis Jolliet were the first white men to see
what would later be called Illinois Country. Marquette
was a French-born Jesuit missionary and Jolliet
an explorer and mapmaker from Canada. In 1673, they
started out from Green Bay and traveled down the
Fox River until they arrived at an Indian village
at the headwaters of the Wisconsin River. They traveled
down the Wisconsin until finding a footpath that
led them to an Illinois Indian village where they
would spend the night. From there, the pair traveled
300 miles down the river passing the mouths of the
Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio Rivers and arriving
at the mouth of the Arkansas River. Here they met
with local tribes learning that the river would
lead to the Gulf of Mexico not California, like
they had hoped. They were also warned that if they
continued down the Arkansas they would encounter
hostile Indians and Spaniards. Turning back, they
learned of a shortcut back to Lake Michigan via
the Illinois River. On their way back Marquette
and Jolliet made a stop at the village of the Illinois
Indians, located between the present day cities
of La Salle and Ottawa. Father Marquette so impressed
the Indians that they insisted he return the following
year. The Indians would also send an escort to guide
the men back to Lake Michigan. With the passage
of Jolliet and Marquette up the Illinos River and
through the Chicago portage, the history of Illinois
begins.
After the Marquette-Jolliet
expedition, five years passed before colonization
of the Illinois area would be attempted. Rene-Robert
Cavalier, sieur de La Salle, with the backing of
the Governor of New France, planned to build trading
posts in the Illinois and Mississippi Valleys to
win the allegiance of local Indians and secure the
territory for Louis XIV. In January of 1680, La
Salle erected Fort Crevecoeur. La Salle left his
associate, Henry de Tonty, in charge of Crevecouer
and went on to erect more forts. Upon returning
to Fort Crevecoer in the fall, La Salle found nothing
but ruins, the result of a mutiny. A year later,
La Salle and Tonty erected Fort Saint Louis at present-day
Starved Rock. La Salle continued his explorations
traveling down the Mississippi to its mouth. He
named the entire area Louisiana and claimed it for
France. In 1684, La Salle attempted to return to
the area by way of the Gulf of Mexico in hopes of
creating a colony, but overshot the mouth of the
Mississippi and spent three years wandering through
Texas before being murdered by his frustrated men.
In 1696, Father Francois
Pinet established the Jesuit Mission of the Guardian
Angel on the site of what later became Chicago.
The mission eventually closed and Chicago's history
would all but end until after the Revolutionary
War. Colonization slovenly continued in the area.
The 1723 census showed the population of Cahokia
to be twelve, and Kaskaskia to be 196. These villages
became too populous to survive without protection
so in 1720 Fort de Chartres was built and garrisoned
for their protection.
Life in the French
settlements was highly agricultural, modeled in
the French medieval style. Homes were built of logs
placed upright and filled with a mud plaster. There
was a common for pasturing stock in the villages
and individual farms were organized in strips a
few hundred feet wide and two miles in length. The
equipment used at the time was primitive, mostly
consisting of wooden plows and two-wheeled carts.
Settlers didn't use fertilizers during this period.
War: The French and Indian War,
the American Revolution and the War of 1812
As
anticipated (because of concurrent wars in Europe),
the French and Indian War between the French and
the British broke out in 1754. In North America
the war lasted until 1760, but carried on in Europe
for an additional three years. At the Treaty of
Paris in 1763, France ceded Canada and all of her
territory east of the Mississippi to Britain. The
British did not immediately begin occupation of
this territory though, Indian attacks and Pontiac's
Rebellion delayed their occupation until 1765.
The British ruled
Louisiana (which included Illinois) for thirteen
years prior to the American Revolution. Many of
the men who commanded the garrisons in Illinois
were corrupt, exploiting the colony without making
any attempts to understand its French inhabitants.
This behavior proved to hinder the British when
later, the mistreated French decided to side with
the Americans during the Revolution.
The bulk of the Revolution
was fought outside of the Louisiana Territory, and
George Rogers Clark and other Virginians succeeded
in preventing the British from taking the area.
After the Revolution, Illinois Territory was included
as part of Virginia. In 1784, Virginia ceded the
territory to Congress and three years later it became
part of the Northwest Territory. Arthur St. Clair
was appointed Governor of the territory and a slow
trickle of settlers would begin to arrive.
The War of 1812 had
a lasting effect on the settlers in Illinois. Many
of the settlers grew wary of Indian attacks, with
a serious engagement waged outside of Dearborn in
August of 1812, where Indians massacred soldiers
and civilians who were on their way to Fort Wayne.
Moving Toward Statehood
Many steps were taken
before Illinois became a state. After the Revolution,
the territory had to be ceded by Virginia to Congress
to begin the progress of statehood. These steps
continued with the creation of Indiana Territory
in 1800, which included illinois. On February 3,
1809 Illinois became its own territory, and included
what is now Wisconsin. As more settlers moved into
the territory, agitation for statehood increased.
On April 18, 1818, Congress passed an Enabling Act
allowing Illinois to become a state, although there
being fewer inhabitants than prescribed by the Ordinance
of 1787. A constitution was adopted in August of
that year, and on December 3, 1818, Illinois came
into the union as the twenty-first state. The town
of Kaskaskia was designated the capital of the new
state, lasting only until 1820 when the capital
would be moved to uninhabited Vandalia for real
estate moneymaking purposes. |
