Holly Welker, age 15, of Decatur, Ill., for her question:
WHO WERE THE FIRST WHITE SETTLERS IN ILLINOIS?
The Illinois region was once the home of prehistoric Indians called Mound Builders. Then, through the years, many different tribes of Indians lived in the territory. The first two white men to enter the area were Father Jacques Marquette and an explorer named Louis Joliet who arrived in 1672.
Marquette and Joliet were sent by Louis de Buade, the governor of the French colonies in what is now Canada. The two set out to trace the Mississippi River and they traveled south along the western boundary of what is now Illinois, and later northward on the Illinois River.
In 1699, French priests of the Seminary of Foreign Missions founded a mission in Cahokia, a fur trading post. This was the first permanent town in the Illinois region. Jesuit priests then founded Kaskaskia in 1703. These two towns became the chief centers of French life in the area.
In 1717, Illinois became part of the French colony of Louisiana. That same year, a Scottish financial promoter in Paris named John Law organized a company that brought some French colonists to Illinois.
The French built Fort de Chartres in 1720, about 20 miles northwest of Kaskaskia on the east bank of the Mississippi River. The French then fought the British, who claimed all the territory extending inland from their Atlantic colonies. They aided Pontiac, a chief who started an Indian rebellion against the British in 1763.
Later that year, the British defeated the French, and France gave up the Illinois region to Great Britain. After the French defeat, the British failed to make friends with the French settlers in Illinois. Many of the French soon moved west across the Mississippi.
Only about 1,000 white persons lived in the Illinois region before the Revolutionary War. They included missionaries, fur traders, a few settlers and English troops.
During the Revolutionary War, a Virginian named George Rogers Clark and a band of frontiersmen called the Big Knives captured Kaskaskia and Cahokia from the English. As a result, the region became a county of Virginia. Many soldiers who had helped Clark in this area returned as settlers after the war. Other settlers came from Kentucky, Maryland, Tennessee and Virginia.
In 1784, Virginia gave the Illinois region to the national government. It did so because Maryland refused to ratify the Articles of Confederation unless Virginia and other states that held western lands gave them up.
In the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Congress made the Illinois region part of the Northwest Territory.
In 1800, Illinois became part of the Indiana Territory by an act of Congress.
In 1809, Congress made Illinois a territory.
In 1818, on December 3, Illinois became the 21st state of the United States.