f the Des Moines; the
Cohakias that east of the present village of Cohokia in Illinois; the
Kaskaskias that east of the town of that name; the Tamarois had their
village nearly central between Cahokia and Kaskaskia; the Piankeshaws
near Vincennes; the Weas up the Wabash; the Miamies on the head waters
of the Miami of the Lakes, on St. Joseph's river and at Chicago. The
Piankeshaws, Weas and Miamies, must at this time have hunted south
towards and on the Ohio. The Peorias, another band of the same nation,
lived and hunted on the Illinois river: The Mascos or Mascontins, called
by the French _gens des prairies_, lived and hunted on the great
prairies, between the Wabash and Illinois rivers. All these different
bands of the Minneway nation, spoke the language of the present Miamies,
and the whole considered themselves as one and the same people; yet from
their local situation, and having no standard to go by, their language
became broken up into different dialects. These Indians, the Minneways,
were attacked by a general confederacy of other nations, such as the
Sauks and Foxes, resident at Green Bay and on the Ouisconsin; the Sioux,
whose frontiers extended south to the river des Moines: the Chippeways,
Ottoways, and Potawatimies from the lakes, and also the Cherokees and
Choctaws from the south. The war continued for a great many years and
until that great nation the Minneways were destroyed, except a few
Miamies and Weas on the Wabash, and a few who are scattered among
strangers. Of the Kaskaskias, owing to their wars and their fondness for
spiritous liquors, there now (1826) remain but thirty or forty
souls;--of the Peorias near St. Genevieve ten or fifteen; of the
Piankeshaws forty or fifty. The Miamies are the most numerous; a few
years ago they consisted of about four hundred souls. There do not exist
at the present day (1826) more than five hundred souls of the once great
and powerful Minneway or Illini nation. These Indians, the Minneways,
are said to have been very cruel to their prisoners, not unfrequently
burning them. I have heard of a certain family among the Miamies who
were called man-eaters, as they were accustomed to make a feast of human
flesh when a prisoner was killed. For these enormities, the Sauks and
Foxes, when they took any of the Minneways prisoners, gave them up to
their women to be buffeted to death. They speak also of the Mascontins
with abhorrence, on account of their cruelties. The Sauks and