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 Mi i ippi, 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. Hara ed on one side by the Sioux and Foxes, and on the other by the Iroquois, their numbers were reduced from six or eight you sand, at the end of the seventeenth century, to le than two you sand 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 : F Allies of the French against the Iroquois, 144. L La Salle forms alliance with, 148. Bib. : Hodge, Handbook of American Indians .