The
people had more than one village. They would leave their home village to
hunt and plant crops some distance away, but they always returned to the
first village to, "re establish (or re mark)" their hunting
grounds.
For
centuries the cooperating tribes honored that tradition. On one occasion
the tribe returned to their permanent village to find white men,
children and women living there. The people had heard rumors of, but
never met a white person without a boat, or a white woman with children
before. The family in question were afraid, but the Indians harmed them
not.
According
to grandma, the tribes befriended white people. When they saw that the
white people were scared, they backed off and let them be. Later the
women helped the family build a, "Dugout" with a sod roof and
permitted the family to stay and showed them how to help farm the land.
That
brings up another related story about Indian housing, to counteract the
rumors:
The
Indians Did Not Live In Teepees
Village
houses were like, "Hogans" as she described them, similar to
the ones later saw used by the Hopi tribe in Arizona Territory, not
teepees as seen in movies, not even close.
At
fish camp their shelters were different. They built mound shaped abodes
of flexible limbs and covered them with animal skins. Those shelters
could be broken down and moved within minutes.
The
houses in the villages were more permanent. All they had to do with the
dugouts was replenish three feet of sod on the roof and they were ready
to move in. They were warm in winter and cool in summer.
The
Indians saw what they called, (translated "stick house") much
later on. More white men came and pushed the Indians out, built
sawmills, widened trails, and began to build, first log houses, and as
the sawmills were built in Illinois, "stick villages" began to
appear.
Anger
built up between the Indians and the whites, fights erupted, and
soldiers often came to stop the fighting. Pressured by encroachment of
enemies from the north and east, and by white people from the east and
south, and with fierce and terrible enemies to the west, some Indians
decided to make a stand and fight for their land and their rights.
