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For the former mascot/symbol of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, see Chief Illiniwek.

The Illiniwek (also known as the Illini, Illinois, Illinois Confederacy) were a group of six Native American tribes in the upper Mississippi River valley of North America. The tribes were the Kaskaskia, the Cahokia, the Peoria, the Tamaroa, Moingwena, Michigamea, Albiui, Amonokoa, Chepoussa, Chinkoa, "Coiracoentanon," Espeminkia, Maroa, Matchinkoa, Michibousa, Negawichi and Tapouara.

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. What we know today about the Illiniwek comes to us mainly from the Jesuit Relations. The Relations were the reports which these missionaries who lived among the various native nations sent back to their superiors in France.

The name "Iliniwek" is an old Ojibwe word borrowed into French as "Illinois." The modern Ojibwe word is ininiweg, from /inin/ meaning "regular, ordinary, plain," /we/ meaning "to speak," joined with a connector vowel /i/, and an animate plural suffix /g/, which when combined means "those who speak in the ordinary way, regular way." In turn, this word was borrowed by Ojibwe from the Illinois language, from an original verb irenweewaki, which means "they speak in the regular way" or "they speak Illinois." However, due to a similar sounding word in old Ojibwe—iliniwak (singular as ilini; modern words ininiwag and inini respectively) meaning "men"—the name have been commonly mistranslated as "men," "proud men," "people," etc. The Illinois Tribes' name for themselves was 'Inoka', as documented in the French Jesuit dictionaries of Illinois. The Illinois themselves spoke various subdialects of the Miami-Illinois language, a member of the Algonquian language family.

In the seventeenth century, the Illiniwek suffered from a combination of European diseases and the expansion of the Iroquois into the eastern Great Lakes:(more near the Lake Michigan) region. The Iroquois had hunted out their traditional lands and sought more productive hunting and trapping areas. They needed these furs to purchase European trade goods, upon which they had grown dependent.

According to a story recorded by historian Francis Parkman in The Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851), a terrible war of retaliation against the Illiniwek resulted from the 1769 murder of the Ottawa war chief Pontiac by a Peoria warrior. According to the tale, the Peorias were practically wiped out as a result at what is now Starved Rock State Park. This legend was debunked by historian Howard Peckham in 1947, although it is still sometimes repeated in non-scholarly sources. There is no evidence that there were any reprisals for Pontiac's murder.

As a consequence of the Indian Removal Act, the descendants of the Illiniwek are now found in Ottawa County, Oklahoma, as the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma.

Costa, David J. 2000. Miami-Illinois Tribe Names. In John Nichols, ed., Papers of the Thirty-first Algonquian Conference 30-53. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba.

• NPS Site on the Illiniwek
• Illinois Confederacy
• The Illinois
• Tribes of the Illinois/Missouri Region at First
• The Tribes of The Illinois Confederacy
• Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma
• Ilimouec Ethnohistory Project: Eye Witness Descriptions of the Contact Generation, 1667 - 1700
• "Illinois Indians". Catholic Encyclopedia. (1913). New York: Robert Appleton Company.