HISTORY. 



95 



resulted in the almost total extinction of the Illinois nations, 



—Nic, 81, 82. 



Pontiac was a remarkably good-looking man ; nice in 

 his person, and distinguished by taste in his dress. His 

 complexion was very light, approaching that of the whites. 

 His origin is uncertain. Some suppose him to have been an 

 Ottawa, others a Miami ; but, on the best authority, he is 

 stated to have been a Nipissing. — Ih., p. 82. 



The rapid extermination of the Illinois nations of Indians 

 affords a vivid illustration of the warlike tastes, the litigious 

 disposition, and of the habits of the northern Indians, as well 

 as a sad moral lesson on the decay and extinction of races and 



nations. 



At the time when La Sale undertook his great project of 

 the discovery of the Missisippi, in 1679, the Illinois were a 

 populous and powerful nation. They had, at that time, suf- 

 fered greatly in the recent and long-continued w^arfare with 

 their eastern neighbors, the Iroquois, which had not yet 

 terminated. The accounts given at that time represented 

 that one village on the Illinois river contained, conjecturally, 

 ten thousand. Charlevoix mentions only four bands : the 

 Tamaroas, at the mouth of the Missouri ; the Moingonas, 

 at the Des Moins River, as now called ; the Kaskaskias and 

 Kaokias, upon and south of the Illinois river. The Michi- 

 gamis and Peorias were, no doubt (certainly the first), of this 

 nation ; but whether distinct tribes, or divisions of one or more 

 of the other tribes, may be doubtful. The desolating war of 

 the Iroquois gave a severe shock to the Illinois, from which they 

 never recovered. About seventy years after this period, the 

 combined forces of the Sauks, Foxes, Sioux, and Kickapoos, 

 in 1752, made a descent by the river, as already related, upon 

 a village of the Missigamis, and killed a large number ; and, 

 a few years afterward, the murder of Pontiac, a renowned 



