Kaskankaham

The Kaskankaham are the Kaskaskia, one of the Algonquian-speaking tribes of the Illinois Confederation; their name kaaskaaskia came from the Miami-Illinois word for a katydid. French missionaries met them near Green Bay in 1667, and six years later Jolliet and Marquette found them at the Grand Village of the Illinois.

In 1703 the French built a mission, fort and settlement at Kaskaskia, which grew into the capital of Upper Louisiana. Epidemics and wars cut the tribe down from several thousand to a few hundred.

After a Peoria warrior killed the Ottawa leader Pontiac in 1769, the Great Lakes tribes seized the Illinois valley. In 1778 George Rogers Clark captured Kaskaskia for the American rebels. The last Illinois lands were ceded in 1832, and the surviving Kaskaskia were removed to Kansas and merged into the Confederated Peoria.