Ahteewatomee: A Kickapoo Woman

Oil painting on canvas: Ahteewatomee, a Kickapoo Woman. She is wearing a peach-colored garment with gray pattern and thread material around her neck. Red paint marks on her chin, ears, nose, cheeks, forehead, and between center part of hair on head.

Pressed by the Iroquois and other tribes from the East and North, the Kickapoo left their ancestral lands for southwestern Wisconsin. Now pressed by the Sioux from the West, the Kickapoo moved into Illinois and western Indiana. The Kickapoo arrived in McLean County as early as 1735 and built a large settlement, the Grand Village of the Kickapoo, in what is now eastern McLean County.

By the early 1830s the Kickapoo were no longer living in central Illinois. Treaties provided the Kickapoo with reservation lands in Kansas, where their descendants still reside today.