21 January 2022
Detail of a 1681 map of North America showing the Great Lakes, including Lake Illinois (a.k.a., Lake Michigan) and an Illinois village.
The Illinois people were an informal confederation of a dozen or so Algonquian tribes who lived in the Mississippi Valley, stretching from present-day Michigan to Arkansas, including what is now the state of Illinois. The tribes included the Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Michigamea, Peoria, and Tamaroa, among others. Their name for themselves is irenweewa (he who speaks normally). In Ojibwa, that name is rendered as ilinwe, or in the plural ilenwek.
The French, who in the late seventeenth century made contact with the Ojibwa, rendered the -we ending as ‑ois, using the conventions of seventeenth-century French spelling to make it Illinois. Subsequent to European contact, the Illinois people were decimated by disease, war, and forced relocation. Today, the primary organization of the people is the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma.
The name Illinois appears in English by the end of the seventeenth century. This translation of an anonymous account of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle’s expeditions is from 1698 and mentions the Illinois people:
M. la Salle had given orders for Building a new Ship or great Bark, and our Men workt about it with all the diligence that the Season of the Year could permit; but the cold was so excessive, that not only Rivers, but even those vast Lakes were frozen all over, insomuch that they lookd like a Plain pav'd with fine polish'd Marble. We traded in the mean time with the Natives, and got a great number of Furrs; but several things being wanting to continue our Voyage, this couragious Gentleman resolv'd to return by Land to Fort Frontenac, and come back again in the Spring with a new supply of Ammunition and Merchandise, to trade with the Nations he intended to visit. He sent likewise fifteen Men further into the Country, with orders to endeavour to find out the Illinois, and left his Fort of Niagara, and fifteen Men under my command. One of the Recollects contineud [sic] with us.
And Louis Hennepin’s A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America gives an incorrect etymology for the name Illinois, claiming it meant “accomplished men.” This etymology has been thoroughly discounted, but it was accepted as correct for several centuries, and one will often still see it on websites and in popular press accounts of the word’s origin. From the 1698 English translation of Hennepin’s work:
The Lake Illinois, in the Natives Language, signifies the Lake of Men; for the word Illinois signifies a Man of full Age in the vigour of his Strength. It lies to the West of the Lake Huron toward the North, and is about a Hundred and twenty, or a hundred and thirty Leagues in length, and Forty in breadth, being in circuit about Four hundred Leagues. It is call'd by the Miamis, Mischigonong, that is, The Great Lake. It extends it self from North to South, and falls into the Southern-side of the Lake Huron; and is distant from the upper Lake about Fifteen or Sixteen Leagues, its Source lies near a River which the Iroquois call Hohio, where the River Miamis discharges it self into the same Lake.
The territory that is now the state of Illinois was acquired by the United States from France in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Illinois became a state in 1818.
Sources:
An Account of Monsieur de la Salle’s Last Expedition and Discoveries in North America. London: J. Tonson, et al., 1698, 20. Early English Books Online.
Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
Hennepin, Louis. A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America. London: M. Bentley, et al. 1698, 35. Early English Books Online.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2019, modified March 2021, s.v. Illinois, n. and adj.
Image credit: Claude Bernou, 1681. National Library of France. Image from the Library of Congress. Public domain image.