Before the pioneer families of Edgar County settled the North Arm area, the countryside was already inhabited. In the 1600s, the Iroquois Confederacy pushed the Kickapoo Tribe out of lower Michigan. The tribe settled in Illinois spanning from the Vermilion River to what is now Edgar County. The Kickapoo can be called Illinois’ earliest pioneers.

The Kickapoo people was a tribe that frequently migrated and had a mistrust of outsiders. These two reasons have hindered scholars in documenting the information on their traditional customs. The name Kickapoo translates as those who walk the earth or he who moves here and there.

The Kickapoo lived in villages, worked fields, harvested crops, gathered wild fruits and vegetables and hunted. Contrary to stereotyping, the Kickapoo Tribe did not live in tepees. They lived in wikiups – a shelter made of brushwood, mats or grass with an oval frame.

The Kickapoo had tenuous relationships with several cultures. First, it was the French followed by the English and the American settlers. During the Revolutionary War, the Kickapoo shifted their allegiance to the colonists thanks to General George Rogers Clark. Clark made a treaty with the Kickapoo stating no colonist would settle within Kickapoo territory.

The treaty was not honored. Settlers from Kentucky, who were unaware of Clark’s promise, made their way north into Kickapoo territory and settled on land they believed was open and free.

The Kickapoo took this as a broken promise and went to Detroit to seek counsel of the British in hopes of stopping the colonist influx.

The Kickapoo were documented as joining their first uprising in 1763. Ottawa Chief Pontiac banded together tribes including the Kickapoo to fight against the British. Pontiac’s war lasted two years ending with the signing of a preliminary peace treaty here in Edgar County near Palermo.

From the end of the Revolutionary War until 1789, Native Americans tried all they could do to keep from losing their land to settlers. The Treaty of Fort Harmar was signed in 1789 and established borders between some tribes and American states. The treaty stated tribes could impose their own justice on unlawful settlement of their territory and that settlers would not be protected by the U.S.

One year later President George Washington sent General Josiah Harmar with troops to capture the Miami capitol near present-day Fort Wayne, Ind. With the treaty in place, Miami Chief Little Turtle banded Illinois tribes together to fight this intrusion. The Native Americans attacked the troops and defeated them, twice.

Little Turtle’s War lasted four years and on Aug. 3, 1795, the Treaty of Greenville was signed, at Fort Greenville in Ohio, and Native Americans relinquished their land southeast of the Greenville Line.

The Kickapoo joined Shawnee Chief Tecumseh in another rebellion in 1809 and though some say the rebellion ended in 1811 many say it ended in 1813 when Tecumseh and his second-in-command Roundhead were killed fighting William Henry Harrison’s Army at the Battle of Thames.

Some of the Kickapoo tribe left Illinois and Indiana in 1819 but they returned a little over a decade later. In 1832, the tribe joined Sac Chief Black Hawk in a rebellion against the United States. The war ended very quickly, and Blackhawk was captured.

After the Blackhawk War ended, some of the Kickapoo Tribe left Illinois again for safety reasons as illustrated by an attack in Edgar County. In 1836, a band of 14 Native Americans were making their way up the Wabash when they wandered into Edgar County. The Native Americans had secured whiskey from the townspeople and camped within a quarter mile of Paris.

There were several residents angry with the Native Americans for coming into the county and around 60 men, mostly drunk, mounted their horses to go after the Native Americans. When they reached the camp, they shot and killed 12 of the Native Americans. The last two managed to run and were ultimately killed as well. Newspapers all across America picked this story up and ran it for many months.

By the end of the 1830s, the Kickapoo had ceded all their lands in Illinois and Indiana moving to places like Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Mexico. Native American artifacts are still found in the county. From farmers tilling their property to hikers, these found items are a nice way to connect with the original settlers of the land. The Kickapoo tribe still exists today on reservations in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas and land in Coahuila Mexico.