Kickapoos,
An Algonquian tribe found by the
French missionaries, towards the close of the seventeenth century, on the
Wisconsin River.
They were great rovers; were closely allied to the Miamis; and in 1712 joined the Foxes in an attack upon
Detroit, and in wars long afterwards.
They were reduced in 1747 to about eighty warriors, and when the
English conquered
[
250]
Canada in 1763 there were about 100 Kickapoos on the
Wabash.
They joined
Pontiac in his conspiracy, but soon made peace; and in 1779 they joined
George Rogers Clarke in his expedition against the
British in the
Northwest.
Showing hostility to the
Americans, their settlement on the
Wabash was desolated in 1791; but they were not absolutely subdued until the treaty at
Greenville in 1795, after
Wayne's decisive victory, when they ceded a part of their land for a small annuity.
In the early part of the nineteenth century the Kickapoos made other cessions of territory; and in 1811 they joined
Tecumseh and fought the
Americans at
Tippecanoe.
In the
War of 1812 they were the friends of the
English; and afterwards a larger portion of them crossed the
Mississippi and seated themselves upon a tract of land on the
Osage River.
Some cultivated the soil, while others went southward as far as
Texas, in roving bands, plundering on all sides.
For some time
Texas suffered by these inroads; but in 1854 some of them, peaceably inclined, settled in
Kansas, when, becoming dissatisfied, many of them went off to
Mexico, where they opposed the depredations of the Apaches.
In 1899 there were 237 Kickapoos at the Pottawattomie and Great Nehama agency in
Kansas, and 246 Mexican Kickapoos at the
Sac and
Fox agency in
Oklahoma.
