History

  The Kickapoo were known as the "Kiwigapawa," or "He Who Moves About," when they ranged over about 10 million acres, comprising three-quarters of what is now the state of Illinois. They now occupy reservations of a few thousand acres in Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas, and two places along the Mexican border. The Kickapoo  traveled freely for centuries across much of North America.

  The Kickapoo ranged from the Great Lakes and Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to Missouri and as far east as New York before the arrival of European explorers.  No one knows when the Kickapoo put down roots at the Grand Kickapoo Village. The first documentation came in 1752, when a French soldier wrote his superiors disclosing the location of the large Indian settlement and fort. A map made in 1818 when Illinois became a state lists much of the region as still "unexplored."

  At the heart of the map, a square marks "the Grand Village of the Kickapoo." A surveyor counted 2,000 to 3,000 Kickapoo and more than 5,000 graves when he visited in 1824.  A few years before the surveyor's visit, the Kickapoo signed a treaty that gave Illinois to the United States. But most Natives believe their ancestors were tricked, not understanding English or what it meant to "cede" land, they believed the Creator made the earth for all to use.

  Some  Kickapoo chose the year, 1819, to look for a place farther west to preserve their customs and culture. Kickapoo spokesmen say the strain from white encroachment must have been intense for them to go. Unlike most whites who lost connection to their past when they crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the New World, American Indians have always maintained a link to the "old ones" by holding burial grounds sacred and living nearby.  The remainder of the Kickapoo left Illinois in 1832. By then, settlement by whites was well under way. 

  Homeless, the Kickapoo spread to the winds. Some tried to settle in Missouri, but were forced farther west after conflicts with another tribe already there. Some went to Mexico, invited by officials who wanted the Kickapoo warriors to act as a buffer between them and the Apache. The Kickapoo remain there, linked by family ties and tradition to the Kickapoo in the states.  Others went to Kansas and Texas. After skirmishes between Texans and the Chicanos based in Mexico around the time of the Civil War, the U.S. Army crossed the border while the Kickapoo braves were out hunting one day. Women and children were taken prisoner and relocated to Oklahoma. Their husbands and fathers eventually joined them.