Mythologies of the Kaskaskia Tribe

 

The Kaskaskia were one of the indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands. They were one of about a dozen cognate tribes that made up the Illiniwek Confederation, also called the Illinois Confederation. Their longstanding homeland was in the Great Lakes region. Their first contact with Europeans reportedly occurred near present-day Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 1667 at a Jesuit mission station. In 1673, Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette and French-Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet became the first Europeans known to have descended the Mississippi River. The record of their trip is the earliest, best record of contact between Europeans and the Illinois Indians. Marquette and Jolliet, with five other men, left the mission of St. Ignace at Michilimackinac in two bark canoes on May 17. To reach the Mississippi River, they travelled across Lake Michigan into Green Bay, up the Fox River and down the Wisconsin River. Descending the Mississippi, in June, they met the Peoria and Moingwena bands of Illinois at the Haas/Hagerman Site near the mouth of the Des Moines River in Clark County, northeastern Missouri. They met another Illinois band, the Michigamea, when they reached present-day Arkansas. They began their return trip from the Michigamea village about July 17, following the Illinois River eastward to Lake Michigan rather than taking the more northern route along the Wisconsin River. Near modern Utica in LaSalle County, Illinois, across from Starved Rock, they met the Kaskaskia at the Grand Village of the Illinois (now a State Historic Site, also known as the Zimmerman site). The land controlled by the allied Illinois groups extended north from modern Arkansas, through Eastern Missouri and most of Illinois, and west into Iowa, where Des Moines was named after the Moingwena.

The Kaskaskia was one of the chief tribes of the Confederacy of (Illinois) Illiniwek Indians. The origin of the French name Cascaquis is uncertain, but possibly referred to a hide scraper used by the tribe. The tribe’s anglicized name is Kaskaskia. The Kaskaskia made their first acquaintance with the French at the Jesuit mission station of Chegoimegon near present Bayfield, Wisconsin, which was established by Father Claude Allouez in 1667. Pete Marquette found Illiniwek villages scattered all along the length of the Mississippi on his voyage of discovery in 1673. Marquette was startled to learn the Illiniwek were now using firearms against their long-time enemy, the Shawnee. As Marquette traveled further up the Illinois River on his return from exploring the Mississippi, he came upon the great village of the Kaskaskia tribe of Illiniwek. Approximately 300 people lived in lodges at the villages near present-day Utica, Illinois, and they were very receptive to Father Marquette’s Christian message. Marquette needed to continue to Mackinac, but promised the Kaskaskia he would return to minister to them as soon as possible. Marquette developed a special love for the Illiniwek and was determined to establish a mission for them on the Illinois River, and he founded the Mission of the Immaculate Conception. He became very ill, and he was forced to return to Mackinac. Father Marquette died in route, and was buried on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Marquette’s Mission of the Immaculate Conception was the first of the Illinois missions. A month after his death his work was suspended until taken up again in 1677 by Father Allouez. Allouez remained until the arrival of the explorer La Salle in 1679. The Kaskaskia Mission of the Immaculate Conception was turned over to the Recollect Priest who accompanied La Salle. Recollect Priests, Father Gabriel Ribourde and Father Zenobius Membre, abandoned their ministry at the Great Village of the Kaskaskia after attacks from the Iroquois Tribe and the murder of Father Ribourde by Kickapoo warriors. Incursions of other tribes into their territory reduced the amount of the game they relied on for sustenance, and depleted the timber they used for firewood. This forced the Illiniwek to move south. The French began building forts in the Mississippi Valley, and established a settlement on the east bank of the Mississippi at Cahokia, Illinois, in 1699. The next year, the Kaskaskia tribe moved from the Illinois River and established a village at a small river within the present area of St. Louis. With them two Jesuit priests, Pierre-Gabriel Marest and Francois Pinet, built a small mission at the site, naming the small river River Des Peres, meaning River of the Fathers (Pere was French for father or priest), By 1703, the site was abandoned as the Kaskaskia tribe moved to the east bank and further south to a new settlement that was named Kaskaskia, Illinois. Their French priests accompanied them, and were instrumental in settling the tribe in a new village near the Kaskaskia River. A new Mission of the Immaculate Conception was established at French Kaskaskia, and remained as the tribe’s main village until they established a new village north of French Kaskaskia in 1718. Although most converted to Catholicism, many Kaskaskia people adhered to their old customs.

The Kaskaskia were one of several tribes that made up the Illiniwek Confederation. The name in their language translates to “he scrapes it off by means of a tool.” Their first contact with Europeans reportedly occurred near present-day Green Bay, Wisconsin in 1667 at a French Jesuit mission station. In 1673, Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette and French-Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet met the Kaskaskia at the Grand Village of the Illinois near present-day Utica, Illinois. Today, it is a state historic site. In 1703, the French established a permanent mission and settlement at Kaskaskia, a part of their New France colonization of North America. French settlers moved in to farm and to exploit the lead mines on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River. From its beginning, Kaskaskia was a French/Native American settlement, consisting of a few French men and numerous Kaskaskia and other Illinois Indians. Kaskaskia became the capital of Upper Louisiana in the early 18th century and by 1707, its population was estimated at 2,200, the majority of which were Illinois Indians. A visitor, writing of Kaskaskia in about 1715, said that the village consisted of 400 Illinois men, “very good people,” two Jesuit missionaries, and “about twenty French voyageurs who have settled there and married Indian women.” Many of the male descendants of Kaskaskia grew up to become voyageurs who would explore and exploit the Missouri River country. The first Fort de Chartres was built in 1720 but within five years, flooding from the Mississippi River had left the original fort in bad condition and a new fort was built further from the river.

The Kaskaskia are an American Indian tribe that is no longer extant. They were once a part of the Illinois, a group of approximately twelve Algonquian-speaking tribes who shared the same culture. The Kaskaskia moved from Kansas to Indian Territory (present Oklahoma) as members of the Confederated Peoria in 1867. Today their descendants are counted among the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. The principal Kaskaskia village was located at Starved Rock on the Illinois River near present North Utica in LaSalle County, Illinois. Father Jacques Marquette visited the settlement in 1673 and established a mission there in 1675. The village grew as French activity attracted other tribes to the area. The town contained 351 Indian dwellings in 1677. "The Grand Kaskaskia Village" was abandoned in 1680, and the Kaskaskia soon resettled near the site of present Peoria, Illinois. About 1703 the Kaskaskia joined the Michigamea at the mouth of the Kaskaskia River, and they remained until 1832. There, near French settlements, their population fell from an estimated six hundred in 1764 to 210 in 1778. Their decline was attributed to warfare, disease, and the introduction of liquor. Beginning in 1795 the Kaskaskia were involved in fifteen treaties with the United States. In 1803 the federal government recognized the Kaskaskia as the representative of the Michigamea, Cahokia, and Tamaroa, remnant Illinois tribes with whom they had combined. In that year the Kaskaskia surrendered all but about sixteen hundred acres of their land in present Illinois. In 1832 they united with the Peoria and exchanged their remaining lands for a reservation in present Kansas. In 1854 the Kaskaskia and Peoria joined with the Wea and Piankashaw in forming the Confederated Peoria tribe, which was assigned a new home in northeast Indian Territory (present Ottawa County, Oklahoma) in 1867. That reservation was allotted to 153 Peoria, including an indeterminate number of Kaskaskia, beginning in 1889.

Kaskaskia became the capital of the Illinois Territory and then the first state capital of Illinois in 1818 and the town was home to leading political and economic figures in the early, shaping years of Illinois. Good fortune, however, did not long endure. Natural disasters of unprecedented magnitude plagued the town and robbed its vitality. People came to regard Kaskaskia, once the center and focus of Illinois, as just a quaint and somehow foreign relic. The Mississippi River, so long Kaskaskia’s highway and source of its prosperity, turned on the town, washing away the buildings and even the very ground on which it was built. The changing course of the Mississippi was merely the coup de grâce, the finishing blow, the last of the disasters that led even reasonable people to wonder whether Kaskaskia had been cursed. The Kaskaskia Indians and the Jesuit missionaries who accompanied them settled in 1703 at what became the town of Kaskaskia. In 1719, Kaskaskia divided into two communities, French Kaskaskia and, about three miles north, Indian Kaskaskia.  The Jesuits felt the Indians would be less exposed to corrupting influences from rough voyageurs (boat men) and coureurs de bois (literally, "woods runners," a term for Indian traders and trappers, often operating illegally). Then,  the French regime ended in 1765. The inhabitants of Kaskaskia in this era enjoyed relative prosperity despite the hostility of the Fox and Chickasaw tribes. Kaskaskia went through difficult years of corrupt British rule, the conquest of the Illinois country by George Rogers Clark in 1778, and early years of neglect and inept rule by the United States.  Repeated crop failures and the great flood of 1785 also plagued Kaskaskia at this time. The town revived in the 1790s and again became the political and economic center of Illinois, serving as the territorial capital and then in 1818 the first state capital of Illinois.  The town, however, was also beset by disasters during this period: some natural, some man-made like the loss of the capital to Vandalia in a corrupt political deal.

One such site in Jackson County is the now almost forgotten Kaskaskia Indian Reservation, just west of Murphysboro. The name Kaskaskia is the anglicized version of the tribal term "kaskaskahamwa," which means "he who scrapes it off by means of a tool." I lir tribe Kaskaskia was part of the once powerful Illinois Confederacy along with the Peoria, Cahokia, Tamaroa, and Mitchigamie. In 1673, representatives of the French government came to the Illinois Country and observed where the native tribes were living. They discovered that the Kaskaskia were living in the vicinity of the present-day city of Peoria; the Peoria were living on the western, or Missouri, side of the Mississippi River, just south of Alton; the Cahokia were near Wood River; the Tamaroa lived between East St. Louis and Alton; and the Mitchigamie lived in the southern tip of the state.The tribes of the Illinois Confederacy were rivals of the Iroquois, Sioux, and most notably, the Shawnee. The best-known battle between these tribes occurred in 1802 and was fought between the Kaskaskia and Shawnee. Both tribes fought constantly over hunting grounds. It was mutually decided to hold one final battle with the winner holding dominance over the contested grounds. The Shawnee, who lived along the Wabash River, met the Kaskaskia at the Big Muddy River in present day Franklin County. The battle ensued and the Shawnee drove the Kaskaskia to within twenty miles of the old French city to which the latter tribe gave its name. The Kaskaskia were nearly annihilated.

The Kaskaskia tribe, part of the Illiniwek, first encountered European traders in the 1600s. Trade and mutual defense against other Native tribes led the Kaskaskia to further cooperation with French traders and settlers.  French missionaries and other Europeans eventually flocked to the area, along with African American settlers, increasing the town’s multicultural nature and solidifying its importance as a trade center ideally located on the Mississippi River. In 1809, with a population of about 7,000, the town became the capital of what was then the Illinois Territory. It relinquished that title to Vandalia in 1819, not long after Illinois became a state. A series of floods beginning in 1844 reduced and relocated the town, as its original site became in island in the river. Another flood in 1881 destroyed the remnants of the original site, which ultimately ended up on the west side of the Mississippi River, still within Illinois’ boundaries as an enclave that can only be reached from the Missouri side of the river.  

The Kaskaskia Indians were one of about a dozen blood-related tribes that made up the Illiniwek Confederation. The had long lived in the Great Lakes region and their first contact with Europeans was reported to be near Green Bay Wisconsin in 1667 at a Jesuit mission statement.  The Kaskaskia Indians along with the entire Illinois Confederation saw significant decline in the 18th century as they made war against the most formidable native nations including the Iroquois, Sioux, Fox, Chickasaw, Cherokee and the Osage Nation. Combat losses along with European diseases almost wiped out the Kaskaskia and other Illinois tribes.  With their population devastated, the Kaskaskia Indians signed a treaty with the United States at Vincennes in 1803. The Kaskaskia ceded their lands for two reservations where they would receive a yearly annuity, a priest and church, and the protection of the United States Government. Unlike the Louisiana purchase, president Thomas Jefferson's had no reservations over the acquisition of this territory. The treaty was signed and was currently in the Senate for ratificaion. Jefferson promised to lay it before Congress "before Congress as soon as the Senate shall have advised its ratification." In Jefferson's words, the land was "among the most fertile within our limits".  It was transferred to the United States by the friendly tribe of Kaskaskia Indians who had been "reduced by the wars and wants of savage life". To Jefferson this as a win-win situation.  The United States would gain an important acquisition, and the Kaskaskia tribe would be saved by turning from their "savage life" to an agricultural way.  It was all part of  Jefferson's Indian "Civilization program".  In his third annual address to Congress, Jefferson wrote these words"

Kaskaskia Indians, formerly chief tribe of the confederacy of Illinois Indians (q.v.). The name is of uncertain etymology, but may possible have reference to a “hide scraper”. With the other Illinois they probably made their first acquaintance with the French at the Jesuit mission station of Chegoimegon (Lapointe near Bayfield, Wisconsin), established by the noted Father Claude Allouez in 1667. In 1673, Father Marquette, on his return from the lower Mississippi, was kindly received at their village, and on their earnest request returned later and founded among them in April, 1675, the Mission of the Immaculate Conception, the first of the Illinois missions, apparently about the present site of Utica, Lasalle Co., Illinois. On his death, a month later, the work was suspended until taken up again in 1677 by Allouez, who remained until the arrival of Lasalle in 1679, by whom the mission was turned over to the Recollects, Fathers Gabriel de la Ribourde and Zenobius Membre. In consequence of the opposition of the Indian priests, the attacks of the Iroquois, and the murder of Father Ribourde by the Kickapoo, the Recollect tenure was brief. In 1684 Allouez returned, but withdrew a second time on the rumoured approach of Lasalle from the south in 1687. In the latter year also the Jesuit Father James Gravier visited the tribe. In 1692 the celebrated Jesuit Father Sebastian Rasle restored the mission, which continued thence-forward under Jesuit auspices for a period of eighty years. In 1693 Jacques Gravier (q.v.) took charge and with Binneteau, Pinet, Marest, and others labored with much success until his death in 1706 from a wound received at the hands of an unconverted Peoria. He compiled the first grammar of the language, and about the year 1700 was instrumental in settling the tribe in a new village about the present Kaskaskia, Illinois, near the mouth of the river of the same name, which remained their principal town and mission station until their final removal from the State. When visited by Charlevoix in 1721 the Kaskaskia were considered Christian, although a considerable portion of the other Illinois still adhered to their old forms.

The Kaskaskia Indian Tribe, also known as the Kaskaskia Nation, is a fascinating group with a rich history that dates back centuries. This Native American tribe, originally from the Illinois region, played a significant role in the early European exploration and settlement of North America. Their unique traditions, language, and cultural practices have left an indelible mark on the history of this nation. But what makes the Kaskaskia Indian Tribe truly captivating is their resilience in the face of adversity. Despite facing numerous challenges, including forced relocation and loss of land, the Kaskaskia people have managed to preserve their identity and cultural heritage. Today, they continue to thrive, working tirelessly to ensure that their ancestral traditions are passed down to future generations. Join us as we delve deeper into the remarkable story of the Kaskaskia Indian Tribe and discover how they have managed to endure and flourish against all odds. In studying the history of the Kaskaskia Indian Tribe, one cannot overlook the challenges and hardships they have faced throughout the years. From the forced removal from their ancestral lands to the loss of their cultural identity, the tribe has endured significant struggles. The encroachment of settlers on their territory resulted in the displacement of the Kaskaskia people, leading to a rupture in their community and traditions. Additionally, the lack of recognition and representation for the tribe has further marginalized them, hindering their ability to preserve their heritage and secure resources for their community. These issues highlight the ongoing pain experienced by the Kaskaskia Indian Tribe and emphasize the importance of addressing their historical injustices.

Kaskaskia Indians (perhaps akin to kāskāskahamwa, ‘ he scrapes it off by means of a tool.’ The Foxes have always held the Peoria in low esteem, and in their traditions claim to have destroyed most of them on a rocky island in a river. – Wm. Jones). Once the leading tribe of the Illinois confederacy, and perhaps rightly to be considered as the elder brother of the group. Although the first knowledge of this confederacy obtained by the whites related, in all probability, to the Peoria while they yet resided on the Mississippi, it is probable that the references to them in the Jesuit Relations of 1670 and 1671, from the reports of Father Allouez, apply to the Kaskaskia on upper Illinois river and possibly to some minor tribes or bands connected therewith whose names have not been preserved. Although it has been asserted that earlier visits than that of Marquette in 1673 were made to this people by the whites, there is no satisfactory evidence to justify this conclusion. Their chief village, which had the same name as that of the tribe, is supposed to have been situated about the present site of Utica, LaSalle county, Illinois. Marquette states that at the time of his first visit the village was composed of 74 cabins. He returned again in the spring of 1674 and established the mission of Immaculate Conception among them. It appears that by this time the village had increased to somewhat more than a hundred cabins. Allouez, who followed as the next missionary, states that when he came to the place in 1677 the village contained 351 cabins, and that while the village formerly consisted of but one nation (tribe), at the time of his visit it was composed of 8 tribes or peoples, the additional ones having come up from the neighborhood of the Mississippi. Although the known Peoria village was some distance away, it may be that at this time this tribe and the Moingwena resided at the Kaskaskia village. This is implied in an expression by Gravier, who speaks of the Mugulasha “forming a village with the Baiougoula [Bayogoula] as the Pioüaroüa [Peoria] do with the Kaskaskia.” This, however, would lead to the supposition, if the statement by Allouez be accepted as correct, that there were other bands or tribes collected here at the time of his mission whose names have not survived. Possibly they may have been bands of the Mascoutin or the Miami. Kaskaskia was the village of the Illinois which La Salle reached about the close of Dec., 1679, on his first visit southward from the lakes. He found it unoccupied, however, the inhabitants being on a hunting expedition. The French mission was maintained at this place under Fathers Rasles, Gravier, Binneteau, Pinet, and Marest, until about the close of 1700. At that time the Kaskaskia, influenced by a desire to join the French in Louisiana, resolved to separate from their brethren and migrate to the lower Mississippi. Gravier was much opposed to this movement, and although he arrived on the ground too late to prevent their departure, he was successful in checking the blow which the indignant Peoria and Moingwena were about to inflict on them. It was also through his influence that they were induced to halt at the month of Kaskaskia river, where they made their home, on or near the site of the present town of Kaskaskia, Randolph county, Illinois, until their removal west of the Mississippi under the treaty of Oct. 27, 1812. According to Hutchins, in 1764 the Kaskaskia numbered (500, but he gives the number 1778 as 210 individuals, including 60 warriors. They were then in a village about 3 miles north of the present town of Kaskaskia, greatly degenerated and debauched,

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