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Indians Migrating

Many Native Americans found themselves forced to leave their homes and familiar surroundings in order to make way for white settlement in the nineteenth century. For Illinois the process of Indian removal culminated with the defeat of Tecumseh's forces to the east in the War of 1812 and the Illinois tribes' gradual disintegration before the forces of white encroachment and disease. In 1832 state and federal troops removed Illinois' last Native Americans, the Sac and Fox tribes, in a brief conflict known as the Black Hawk War. Like so many other Indians before them, the remnants of Chief Black Hawk's band migrated westward to reservations in Iowa, only to later forfeit these lands as well to the onward march of white settlement.