Illinois Indians

Of Algonquian stock. First mentioned in the Jesuit

Relation of 1660 as living south-west of Green Bay. They ranged

throughout the country between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi, and

down the west bank of that river as far as the Des Moines; and have been

described by Allouez, Marquette, Hennepin, Rasles, and other early

French explorers. Harassed on one side by the Sioux and Foxes, and on

the other by the Iroquois, their numbers were reduced from six or eight

thousand, at the end of the seventeenth century, to less than two

thousand about 1750. The murder of Pontiac by one of their warriors

brought upon them a war of extermination. To-day only a handful remain,

in Oklahoma. =Index=: (Count Frontenac era) Allies of the French against the Iroquois,

144. (Bishop Laval era) La Salle forms alliance with, 148. =Bib.=: Hodge, Handbook of

American Indians.