While Pekin traces its origin to the 1824 arrival of Jonathan Tharp from Ohio, the future site of Pekin and its environs were home to Native American tribes during the long centuries, even millennia, prior to the arrival of European explorers and settlers. Pekin was established at the site of a Native American village of about 100 wigwams located on Gravel Ridge along the eastern shore of Pekin Lake (near the location of the Pekin Boat Club). Tharp, Pekin’s first European-American settler, built his cabin to the south of that village, at or very near the spot where the Brotherton Museum (the former Franklin School) stands today, at the foot of Broadway.

The Native Americans who lived along Gravel Ridge in the 1820s and 1830s were primarily Pottawatomi, but much of Tazewell County also was home to Kickapoo bands. In a letter dated in May 1812, Illinois Territorial Gov. Ninian Edwards wrote, “At Little Makina, a river on the south side of [the] Illinois, five leagues below Peoria, is a band, consisting of Kickapoos, Chippeways, Ottaways and Pottowottamies. They are called warriors, and their head man is Lebourse or Sulky. Their number is sixty men, all desperate fellows and great plunderers.”

While Sulky was a Kickapoo, his other name “Lebourse” is French, for he was, like many Native Americans in Illinois during that period, partly of French descent, even as his own band was made up of warriors from three other tribes besides the Kickapoo. The name of the river that Gov. Edwards mentions – “Little Makina” – might suggest that they were living on the shores of the Mackinaw River south of Pekin. The distance “five leagues below Peoria” indicates a spot about 17 miles downriver from Peoria Lake, which is the river distance between Peoria and Pekin, so “Little Makina” was probably the present mouth of the Mackinaw River. That means Sulky and his band were living at the future site of Pekin around May of 1812.

Other Kickapoo chiefs in Tazewell County included Machina, who lived near Mackinaw, and Pemwotam (or Pemwatome), whose village was at the northeast end of Peoria Lake in Fondulac Township, to the north of the McClugage Bridge. Gov. Edwards named Pemwotam in a letter dated July 21, 1812. On his raid of the Indian villages of Peoria Lake in Oct. 1812, Edwards destroyed Pemwotam’s Kickapoo village. In his 1879 “History of Tazewell County,” Charles C. Chapman gives a somewhat lengthy account of Edwards’ raid, describing the destruction of the Kickapoo village in Fondulac Township and of Pottawatomi chief Chequeneboc’s village in Woodford County.

Chapman also records several anecdotes of the famed Pottawatomi war chief Senachwine Petchaho (Znajjewan), who at times dwelt at or near Washington, Illinois. In an address to pioneer settlers around 1823, Senachwine lamented the decline of his people and injustices they had suffered:

“Some of my men say in our consultations, let us rise and wipe the palefaces from the face of the earth. I tell them no, the palefaces are too numerous. I can take every man, woman, and child I’ve got and place them in the hollow of my hand and hold them out at arm’s length. But when I want to count you palefaces I must go out in the big prairie, where timber ain’t in sight, and count the spears of grass, and I haven’t then told your numbers.”

Another Native American name that has long been associated with early Pekin history is that of Pottawatomi chief Shabbona, (Shaubena or Shabonee). When Tharp settled at the future site of Pekin, Shabbona’s camp was in the vicinity of Starved Rock, but Pekin pioneer historian William H. Bates indicates that around 1830 Shabbona and his family had set up a small village of Pottawatomi just south of Tharp’s cabin, between McLean Street and Broadway. During the Black Hawk War of 1832 Shabbona and his family were camped in northern Illinois.

A member of the Ottawa tribe, Shabbona was born about 1775, but his place of birth is uncertain. Chapman says Shabbona “was born at an Indian village on the Kankakee river, now in Will county,” but others say he was born in Ontario, Canada, or on the Maumee River in Ohio. Shabbona was a son of Opawana, nephew of the great Ottawa Chief Pontiac, and his father had fought alongside Pontiac in Pontiac’s War of 1763. His name comes from the Ottawa word zhaabne (related to the Pottawatomi word zhabné) which means “hardy” or “indomitable,” and interpreted by white settlers as “built like a bear.” The Ottawa originally lived in Ontario, Canada, but were driven out by the Iroquois, moving to Michigan and afterwards migrating with their kinsmen the Pottawatomi and Ojibwa to Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Around 1800, Shabbona married a daughter of an Illinois Pottawatomi chief named Spotka (Hanokula), upon whose death Shabbona succeeded as leader of their band. Shabbona also married Mimikwe or Miomex Zebequa ‘Po-ka-no-ka’ (Coconako), a daughter of Topinabe, a Michigan Pottawatomi chief. Pokanoka was Shabbona’s chief wife.

Chapman praises Shabbona as “The kind and generous Shaubena” and “that true and generous hearted chief.” Shabbona’s experiences in the War of 1812 had convinced him of the futility of armed resistance to white encroachment: for the rest of his life he strove to live in peace with the white settlers who were flooding into Illinois. Many Native Americans called him “the white man’s friend” – and they didn’t mean it as a compliment.

Together with fellow Pottawatomi leader Wabaunsee, Shabbona kept his tribe out of the Black Hawk War, despite two attempts of Sauk war leader Black Hawk to persuade him to join the fight. “On one of these occasions,” Chapman wrote, “When Black Hawk was trying to induce him and his band to join them and together make war upon the whites, when with their forces combined they would be an army that would outnumber the trees in the forest, Shaubena wisely replied ‘Aye; but the army of the palefaces would outnumber the leaves upon the trees in the forest.’ While Black Hawk was a prisoner at Jefferson Barracks he said, had it not been for Shaubena the whole Pottawatomie nation would have joined his standard, and he could have continued the war for years.”

The Black Hawk War was the last, desperate attempt of Native Americans living in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin to resist their displacement before the wave of encroaching white settlers. Though the war opened in April 1832 with a victory for Black Hawk caused by American incompetence at Stillman’s Run (in which Pekin co-founder Isaac Perkins was killed), Black Hawk’s efforts were futile and the war was over in months, having been nothing more than an occasion for whites and Indians to commit some brutal massacres upon each other. Black Hawk retreated to Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin, where he surrendered on 27 Aug. 1832. The war convinced Illinois’ leaders to expel Illinois’ remaining Native Americans from the state.

Chapman commented, “To Shaubena many of the early settlers of this county owe the preservation of their lives, for he was ever on the alert to save the whites.” But, Chapman said, “by saving the lives of the whites (he) endangered his own, for the Sacs and Foxes threatened to kill him, and made two attempts to execute his threats. They killed Pypeogee, his son, and Pyps, his nephew, and hunted him down as though he was a wild beast.” After the surrender of Black Hawk, for their alliance with the U.S. Shabbona and Wabaunsee were rejected by their people, who instead chose as their leader Kaltoo, Senachwine’s eldest son.

In the immediate aftermath of the Black Hawk War, new treaties were negotiated so Illinois would be cleared of all of its Native American tribes. The Pottawatomi of Indiana and Illinois, including those who had lived at Pekin, were deported to Nebraska and Kansas. The agonizing march of the Indiana bands is remembered as the Pottawatomi Trail of Death. Shabbona, however, was allowed to have a reservation of two sections of land at Shabbona’s Grove. Nevertheless, “by leaving it and going west for a short time the Government declared the reservation forfeited, and sold it the same time as other vacant land. Shaubena finding on his return his possessions gone, was very sad and broken down in spirit, and left the grove forever,” Chapman wrote.

The people of the town of Ottawa then bought him some land near Seneca in Grundy County, where Shabbona stayed until his death on July 17, 1859. “He was buried with great pomp in the cemetery at Morris,” Chapman wrote. His widow Pokanoka drowned in Mazen Creek, Grundy County, on Nov. 30, 1864, and she was laid by his side. In 1903 a large inscribed boulder was placed at their final resting place.

As a happy but love-overdue epilogue, after many years of litigation, earlier this year the U.S. Department of the Interior ruled that Shabbona’s land was never legally forfeited, and formally recognized Shabbona’s Grove as a reservation for his people, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation – Illinois’ first federally recognized Indian reservation.