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Illiniwek - You may be looking for Chief Illiniwek, a mascot of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
- For the passenger train called the Illini, see Illini Service.
The Illiniwek (also known as the Illini, Illinois, Illinois Confederacy, etc) were a group of several Native American tribes in the upper Mississippi River valley of North America. The five most populous tribes were the Kaskaskia, the Cahokia, the Peoria, the Tamaroa, 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 Hileni or Illiniwek, which means "men." This the French rendered as Illinois. Today, little is generally known about this once powerful confederation of tribes. In the seventeenth century, the Illiniwek suffered due to a combination of European settlement on the Atlantic coast and the expansion of the Iroquois nations in the eastern Great Lakes region. These expanding Imperial powers drove several tribes into Illiniwek lands, including the Potawatomi, Miami, Kickapoo, Sauk, and others. These tribes all but destroyed the Illiniwek Confederacy. They drove the Illiniwek tribes into what is today southern Illinois. By the early nineteenth century, this area was taken over by United States settlers. This is why little is known about the once-powerful tribal confederation. As a consequence of Indian Removal, the descendents of the Illiniwek are to be found in Oklahoma as the Confederated Peoria Tribe. External links
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