Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/100

 6 1 A SYNOPSIS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES. [lNTROD. the British alliance as they had been into theirs. This connex- ion appears to have been dissolved in consequence of the removal of the Delaware* and Shawnoes to the Ohio. The Miamis have taken an active part in all the wars against the United States. They have now ceded the greater part of their lands, and are said including the Piankishaws to amount to less than two thousand souls. The Illinois consisted of five tribes, to wit, the Kaskaskias, Cahokias, Tamaronas, Peorias, and Mitch igamias. This last was a foreign tribe admitted into their confederacy, and which originally came from the west side of the Mississippi, where they lived on a small river that bore their name.* They were formerly the most numerous of the western tribes, amounting, in 1670, to ten or twelve thousand souls.f But, attacked on all sides by the Five Nations, by the Chickasaws, and princi- pally by the Sauks, Foxes, and Kickapoos, they were ultimate- ly almost entirely exterminated. Originally they occupied the whole country between the Mississippi and the Ohio, including both sides of Illinois River, and bounded eastwardly by the Piankishaws and Mia- mis. By the treaties of 1803 and 1818, reduced to about three hundred souls, they ceded all their lands or claims to the United States. They had then abandoned every pretension to the territory west of Illinois River which had been con- quered by the Sauks and Foxes. But they included in their cession all that lay east of that river, as high up as the junction of the Kankakee and Maple Rivers. The northern part of that country was, as has been seen, claimed by the Kickapoos by right of conquest. Their claim to the territory lying south of the parallel of latitude, passing by the mouth of Illinois River, was not disputed by any other Indian tribe. The French had at an early date established themselves at Vincennes, and at Kaskaskias, and some neighbouring villages on the Mississippi. But the grants of land obtained by them from the Indians were of very moderate extent ; and the western tribes, heretofore mentioned under this head, had not before the present century been disturbed in their possessions. The diminution in their numbers was owing to their intestine wars, and to those of the Iroquois, the Sioux, and the Chickasaws against them.
 * Charlevoix. f Relations of New France, 1671.