Tamaroa

The Tamaroa were one of the Illinois peoples, living along the Mississippi near its junctions with the Missouri and Illinois rivers. Their villages occupied rich river bottomlands at a meeting place of waterways leading toward the Great Lakes, the northern plains and the Gulf. The Tamaroa shared language and customs with neighbouring Illinois communities, who also combined village farming with seasonal hunting.

Near the end of the seventeenth century French missionaries established a mission beside a Tamaroa village. Cahokia people joined them there, while traders also came to the river settlement. Around 1703 the Tamaroa moved to join the Kaskaskia farther downstream. Disease and warfare took a heavy toll on the Illinois peoples during the eighteenth century, drawing their surviving communities together in new settlements.