Pisticoui

Pisticoui is an early French name for the Fox River, which flows south through lakes and prairie country to meet the Illinois River. Its waters drain a broad region west of Lake Michigan. The Jesuit traveler Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix described the river in the early eighteenth century as coming from Mascouten country, and noted a fall near its mouth called the Coal Fall because coal was found nearby. Rivers like this connected the communities of the interior with the greater Mississippi system.