Masheena: A Kickapoo

Oil painting: Masheena, A Kickapoo. The painting is a bust portrait of a Native American holding a prayer stick. He is wearing a tan shirt, multiple necklaces, and has short black hair.

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.