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Illinois: Illinois River
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The eastern border of Illinois is Lake Michigan. Its eastern border with Indiana is all of the land west of the Wabash River, and a north-south line above Post Vincennes, or 87°
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The fertile plains of Illinois have served as a center for commerce and transportation since prehistoric times. Located in the center of the North American continent, Illinois has boundaries that are largely defined by three great rivers—the Mississippi, Ohio, and Wabash—and by the southern shore of Lake Michigan. A Paleo-Indian culture existed in Illinois at least as early as 8000 B.C.E. About 1000 C.E. a great Woodland (or Mississippian) Indian culture established its capital at Cahokia, near present-day East St. Louis. Here at least twenty thousand inhabitants built huge earthen mounds, fortified their city with an elaborate log stockade, conducted trade with peoples on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and dominated the economic and political life of the Mississippi River valley.
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Prior to 1640, the state of Illinois including both sides of the Mississippi River from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin to the mouth of the Ohio, and then south along the west bank to the Arkansas River. The dominant tribe in the region before 1655, their hunting territory extended into western Kentucky and across Missouri and Iowa, the latter provoking occasional skirmishes with the Pawnee and Wichita on the plains (from whom the Illini learned the calumet ceremony).
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The third division is Southern Illinois, comprising the area south of U.S. Route 50, and including Little Egypt, near the juncture of the Mississippi River and Ohio River. This region can be distinguished from the other two by its warmer climate, different mix of crops (including some cotton farming in the past), more rugged topography (the southern tip is unglaciated with the remainder glaciated during the Illinoian Age and earlier ages), as well as small-scale oil deposits and coal mining. The area is a little more populated than the central part of the state with the population centered in two areas. First, the Illinois suburbs of St. Louis comprise the second most populous metropolitan area in Illinois with nearly 600,000 inhabitants, and are known collectively as the Metro-East. The second area is Williamson County, Jackson County, Franklin County, Saline County and Perry County. It is home to around 210,000 residents.[14]
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The fur trade was still flourishing throughout most of Illinois when it became a state in 1818, but already settlers were pouring down the Ohio River by flatboat and barge and across the Genesee wagon road. In 1820 the capital was moved from Kaskaskia to Vandalia. The Black Hawk War (1832) practically ended the tenure of the Native Americans in Illinois and drove them W of the Mississippi. In the 1830s there was heavy and uncontrolled land speculation. Mob fury broke out with the murder (1837) of the abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy at Alton and in the lynching (1844) of the Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum at Carthage.
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In 1673 French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet explored the Illinois River, which they named for the native Illiniwek people. As a result, the area was part of the French Empire until the Treaty of Paris of 1763 when it passed to the British as a result of the French and Indian War. At the time of the American Revolution, about 2000 Native American hunters inhabited the area. The area became part of the Northwest Territory of the United States in 1787.
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Illinois River