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Gladys Hagen, age 13, of Decatur, Ill., for her question:

WHERE DID ILLINOIS GET ITS NAME?

Illinois became the 21st state in the United States on Dec. 3, 1818. The name is from the Indian word "Illiniwek," which means "the superior men."

Louis Joliet, a French explorer, and Jacques Marquette, a French Jesuit missionary, were the first white men in the Illinois area. They arrivea in 1673. The French settlers who followed them named the region Illinois, which was their pronunciation of the word "Iliiniwek."

Marquette founded a mission in 1675 where present day Kaskaskia is located. Five years later, a French explorer named Robert Cavelier built Fort Crevecoeur at the foot of Peoria Lake on the Illinois River.

The entire region was included in the French province of Louisiana. The French continued to have friendly relations with the Illinois Indians, but they made no serious efforts to colonize the area.

The area was given to the British in 1763 after the French and Indian War, through the Treaty of Paris. But because of an Indian rebellion, the British had to wait two years before they could take control.

Virginians started to move into the Illinois area about 1769, and in 1774 the British attached the area to the province of Quebec.

In 1778, during the American Revolution, a Virginian force captured the British garrisons at Kaskaskia and Cahokia. All territory north of the Ohio River was annexed by Virginia the same year.

By the terms of the treaty ending the Revolution, jurisdiction over the Illinois region passed to the government of the U.S. Virginia ceded its claims to the area in 1784 and Massachusetts and Connecticut, which had colonial charters authorizing expansion to the west, gave up their rights in 1785.

In 1800, the Northwest Territory, including 111inois, was established. The Illinois Territory, made up of the present day state plus parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota, was organized in 1809. The present state boundaries were set in 1818 with the extra Illinois Territory being added to Michigan.


Many Illinois settlers had moved in from the South and, because of this, there was strong pro slavery sentiment in the new state. A proslavery majority in the legislature asked for a convention to amena the Constitution in 1823. In 1824, however, the electorate defeated the slavery suggestion with a large negative vote.

About 500 Indians, under the leadership of the Sauk chief, Black Hawk, fought a futile war against the whites in northern Illinois in 1832. After their defeat, the Indians were expelled from the state.

Many emigrants moved to Illinois from New England and the middle Atlantic states during the next few years, and the economy boomed.

Many places in Illinois honor Abraham Lincoln. In Springfield there is the Lincoln Home National Historic Site, encompassing the only house Lincoln owned, a reproduction of the village where Lincoln lived from 1831 to 1837, the Lincoln Law Offices and the Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site.

 

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