Description
The Illinois Confederation, also referred to as the Illiniwek or Illini, were made up of 12 to 13 tribes who lived in the Mississippi River Valley. Eventually member tribes occupied an area reaching from Lake Michicigao (Michigan) to Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. The five main tribes were the Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Michigamea, Peoria, and Tamaroa. The spelling Illinois was derived from the transliteration by French explorers of iliniwe to the orthography of their own language. The tribes are estimated to have had tens of thousands of members, before the advancement of European contact in the 17th century that inhibited their growth and resulted in a marked decline in population.The Illinois people eventually declined because of losses to infectious disease and war, mostly brought through the arrival of French colonists.
Language
Miami and Illinois are dialects of the same Algonquian language, spoken in Indiana and later Oklahoma
Culture
The Illinois, like many Native American groups, sustained themselves through agriculture, hunting, and fishing. A partially nomadic group, the Illinois often lived in longhouses and wigwams, according to the season and resources that were available to them in the surrounding land. While the men usually hunted or participated in war, the women cultivated and processed their crops, created tools and clothing from game, and preserved food in various ways for storage and travel. Not officially a Confederation, the villages were led by one Great Chief. The villages had several chiefs who led each individual clan. The Illinois men and women practiced dream seeking, a ritual in which young boys and girls of about fifteen years of age would paint their face and isolate themselves to fast and pray as a means to reveal to them a specific spirit guardian upon which they would depend on to guide them for the rest of their lives. Called manitou, this vision quest was an important part of becoming an adult in the lives of the Illinois.