Examining this pottery, scholars now speculate that the people identified with the distinctive Danner-Keating material culture and its possible Fort Meigs antecedent moved over time across the established trade networks between the Lake Erie settlements, Fort Ancient sites, and Huber phase Oneota settlements, and into the northern Illinois Valley. By the early 1600s, Danner-Keating appears in the same locations long occupied by the Huber phase, whom archaeologists believe were the historic Winnebago. Before long these Danner-Keating migrants replaced their hosts.49 It is almost certain that the bearers of this new Danner-Keating archaeological tradition were the historic Illinois and their Miami kinsmen.50
Was the invasion violent? It’s not clear.51 As we have seen, many Oneota peoples—Siouan-speakers and the ancestors of the Missouria, Ioway, and other groups—had recently moved west from the Illinois Valley to exploit the bison more intensively. The proto-Winnebago moved north out of the Illinois in the early 1600s. The southern Illinois Valley remained a vacant quarter in the wake of the Oneota-Mississippian violence between 1200 and 1400, and the new bison hunters saw the opportunity to seize it. The broad history is one of “replacement” or possibly “intermixture,” as the Illinois came to this region.52 But one thing is clear: the Illinois were colonizers.
In his study of the Cheyenne in the Great Plains, historian Elliott West tells how the Cheyenne moved out of the upper Mississippi Valley onto the Plains to exploit the bison in the 1800s, reenvisioning the region and giving it “a new meaning.” Committing fully to an equestrian lifestyle, they became the “called out people.” Of course, the Illinois were never equestrians, but their migration west in the early 1600s may have had a similar dynamic. They were committing to a new lifestyle, a new ecological resource, while invading a rich region, much of which had long been left vacant by climate change and violence. Like the Cheyenne’s migration, this was a bold, opportunistic process as they reenvisioned the tall grass and its possibilities.53
Over the course of the next generations, the Illinois-speakers colonized the whole region formerly occupied by the Oneota in modern-day Illinois. Moving into their new homeland, the Illinois adopted bison hunting as the basis of a radically new lifeway. Perhaps because the Illinois still spoke an Algonquian language at contact, French eyewitnesses often did not emphasize in their accounts how different the Illinois were from other Great Lakes Algonquians by that time. In fact, upon moving into the prairies, the Illinois embarked on a total transformation, becoming the only bison-based Algonquians, with many new cultural and economic practices.54
The Illinois newcomers perfected the seasonal lifeway previously established by the Oneota peoples. Like the Oneota, they were farmers, but evidence suggests they became more committed to hunting and abandoned less useful, less nutritious agricultural resources.55 At the same time, they became consummate bison people. While archaeological evidence suggests that they took advantage of various animals in their yearly cycle, it is clear that bison made up a great percentage of their subsistence. One study suggests that bison constituted 57 percent of the meat at a contact-era Illinois village. Deer and elk were another 30 percent, and fish and birds together constituted no more than 4 percent of the meat.56 Like the Oneota before them, the Illinois committed to the bison.
Bison hunting shaped the Illinois’s new lifeway. Descriptions of bison hunting in the post-contact period make it clear that this was a communal, cooperative, and well-organized enterprise. Unlike hunting for deer and other species, which was solitary and required stealthy stalking in the forest edges, bison were herd animals for which different strategies were required. Nonequestrians, the Illinois hunted bison in large groups, in carefully coordinated expeditions and by employing new tools for the prairie environment, especially fire.
Contact-era evidence of this new bison lifeway comes from several important eyewitness sources.57 For instance, Pierre-Charles de Liette, a commandant at Fort St. Louis des Illinois, an early French outpost in the Illinois Valley in the 1690s, went hunting with the Illinois and reported their technique. As he explained, the Illinois worked together in groups to slay a large number of the animals at a single time.
The next day we saw in a prairie a great herd of buffalos. A halt was called and two old men harangued the young men for half an hour, urging them to show their skill in shooting down all the buffalos that we saw, and to manage so as to make all those that they could not kill move toward us. After removing us to the nearest spot, they started out in two bands, running always at a trot. When they were about a quarter of a league from the animals, they all ran at full speed, and when within gunshot they fired several volleys and shot off an extraordinary number of arrows. A great number of buffalos remained on the ground, and they pursued the rest in such manner that they were driven toward us. Our old men butchered these.58
Explorer René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle gave another description, noting that fire was essential to the Illinois’s bison-hunting technique: “When they see a herd, they assemble in great numbers and set fire to the grass all round, with the exception of a few passages which they leave open, and at which they station themselves with their bows and arrows. In attempting to escape from the fire, the cattle are thus compelled to pass by these savages, who sometimes kill as many as two hundred in a single day.”59 As eyewitness descriptions make clear, this was a cooperative, shared enterprise. Liette also described how the Illinois ensured the success of their hunts by enforcing teamwork and punishing behavior that would threaten the group’s success.60
Other evidence from the contact period fleshes out our picture of communal bison hunts, which were at the center of the Illinois lifeway. The Illinois-language dictionary made by Jesuit Jacques Gravier in the 1690s gives the most interesting window into the Illinois’s subsistence.61 Of particular note are a number of Illinois words and phrases relating to bison hunting, which taken together help us understand the Illinois’s adaptation as pedestrian bison hunters in the tallgrass prairies. Like Liette’s description, Gravier’s dictionary suggests that Illinois hunters worked in large groups, sometimes embarking on long-range hunting expeditions of several days’ duration, echoing explorers in the 1680s who noted that the Illinois “went inland” on long journeys to hunt bison.62 Finally, the dictionary shows their important strategy of burning the prairie to encourage game and to corral the bison toward a kill site. Myriad words detail the use of fire in Illinois’s hunting.
Table 1. Bison-Hunting Vocabulary in Contact-Era Illinois Language
| Aiagamire8i | Fire is drawn from the other side of the prairie | 4 |
| Caki8re8i | Fire is everywhere in the prairies | 93 |
| Caticat8nama8a | Hunt close [to the village] and return with nothing | 103 |
| Chibicai88a | Hunt for a long time | 112 |
| C8r8er8ki irenans8ki | We still discover more bison | 139 |
| Inenans8a | Bison | 172 |
| Kicacat8i | Prairie: you don’t see anything but prairie | 181 |
| Kinta8aki8i; kinta8iki8i | Burned prairie | 205 |
| Ki8atere8 | Fire all around | 208 |
| Kipakinegab8aki irenans8ki | Bison taken standing up |
211
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