Illinois Confederation (Illiniwek)
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40 free Illinois Confederation (Illiniwek) trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Long before Illinois was a state, its prairies and river valleys belonged to the Illiniwek, a family of closely related tribes also known as the Illinois Confederation. They hunted bison on foot, raised corn in riverside villages and built a trading network that reached far beyond their homeland. The state still carries their name. This quiz gathers the best fun facts about the Illiniwek: what they ate, how they built their homes, the games they played, the spirits they honoured and what happened when French explorers and missionaries arrived in their country. Later questions follow the tribes through war, disease and removal to the Peoria Tribe that represents their descendants. It is written for students, teachers and curious families, so the early questions are friendly for kids and the harder ones reward anyone who knows Midwestern history. Every answer comes with a short explanation that adds one more fact worth retelling.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which fruit from Africa, brought to North America by Spanish colonists, did Illinois women grow beside corn and beans?
Watermelons
Watermelons were an important Illinois crop, and archaeologists found their remains at the great Kaskaskia village on the Illinois River.
Q 02At a 1673 feast in a Peoria village, two French explorers refused which meat that the Illinois prized as a delicacy?
Dog
Dog was the third of four courses, and the hosts simply carried it away and brought bison when their guests would not eat it.
Q 03Which field sport did the Illinois play on open prairie with walnut rackets laced with sinew and a wooden ball?
Lacrosse
Lacrosse teams drew players of both sexes from different villages, and the Illinois played toward a single goal set in the middle of the field.
Q 04The Peoria Tribe, home to descendants of the Illinois Confederation, is based in a town called Miami in which state?
Oklahoma
Oklahoma became home in 1867, when the Peoria left an earlier reservation for Indian Territory, and the town of Miami there is named for the related Miami Tribe.
Q 05Which Great Lakes city takes its name from a Miami-Illinois word for a wild relative of onion and garlic?
Chicago
Chicago was first written down as Checagou by the explorer La Salle around 1679, and a later French traveller noted how thickly the wild garlic grew there.
Q 06The French missionary who visited the Illinois in 1673 wrote that their name meant which phrase in their language?
The men
The men was his translation, but linguists trace the name to an Illinois verb meaning that someone speaks in the ordinary way.
Q 07Which Ottawa war leader, famous for a 1763 uprising against the British, was killed by a Peoria warrior in 1769?
Pontiac
Pontiac was clubbed and stabbed near Cahokia by a warrior apparently avenging his uncle, a Peoria chief Pontiac had wounded three years earlier.
Q 08What are the dome-shaped winter lodges called that Illinois women covered with reed mats and carried between villages?
Wigwams
Wigwams sheltered one or two families through winter, while summer villages held longhouses big enough for as many as ten.
Q 09Kaskaskia chief Jean Baptiste Ducoigne smoked a peace pipe with which Founding Father, then governor of Virginia?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson kept writing to the chief afterwards, and Ducoigne's son and successor was called Louis Jefferson Ducoigne.
Q 10In 1725 an Illinois chief of the Michigamea and five other leaders sailed to which European capital to meet the king?
Paris
Paris was the goal of the voyage: the chiefs met the young Louis XV, and their dances at a theatre moved the composer Rameau to write a harpsichord piece.
Q 11On which sandstone butte above the Illinois River did the explorer La Salle have Fort St. Louis built?
Starved Rock
Starved Rock takes its name from a later legend in which a band of Illinois, besieged on the summit, ran out of food and water.
Q 12Illinois villagers greeted French explorers in 1673 by offering which feathered tobacco pipe as a token of peace?
Calumet
Calumet in hand, a traveller could pass safely through strange nations, and the Illinois danced with one to seal alliances or end disputes.
Q 13Illinois women and children wore paint of which colour on their cheeks, first made from the mineral ochre?
Red
Red paint later came from vermilion bought from French traders, and it was also used to fill in the tattoos on arms and torsos.
Q 21Illinois women tilled their fields with hoes made by lashing which part of a bison to a long wooden handle?
Shoulder blade
Shoulder blade hoes did more than weed gardens, since they also dug holes, and one found at the great Kaskaskia village is over a foot long.
Q 22Which river animals supplied the shells that Illinois cooks used as spoons and to scrape corn kernels from the cob?
Mussels
Mussels were gathered from rivers and creeks near the villages, and the biggest shells were turned into hoes.
Q 23Illinois women played a betting game by tossing painted stones of which fruit and catching them in a small bowl?
Plums
Plums gave the Illinois their dice, since each stone was painted on one side only and a throw was scored by the faces that landed upward.
Q 14From the trunks of which tall tree did the Illinois hollow out dugout canoes up to fifty feet long?
Cottonwood
Cottonwood dugouts were so heavy that the Illinois pushed them along with poles instead of paddles, and a household might own three.
Q 15Which rivals, armed with guns from Dutch traders, destroyed the great Kaskaskia village on the Illinois River in 1680?
The Iroquois
The Iroquois had gone to war for the fur trade once their own hunting grounds were emptied, and their guns routed most tribes they fought.
Q 16Which Jesuit priest explored the Mississippi in 1673 and founded the first Catholic mission in the Illinois Country?
Jacques Marquette
Jacques Marquette had studied the Illinois language beforehand in the hope of such a mission, and he died soon after opening it in 1675.
Q 17Illinois drummers stretched buckskin over which vessel, half filled with water, to make a drum?
A clay pot
A clay pot drum beat time for dances and signalled war parties setting out, while healers shook a gourd rattle filled with glass beads.
Q 18In autumn, Illinois hunters trapped bison herds inside a C-shaped ring of what, then shot the animals as they fled?
Fire
Fire worked because dry prairie grass burns fast, and hunters waited at the open end of the ring for the bison to bolt.
Q 19Illinois healers treated the bite of which prairie reptile with a root said to cure the swelling by the next day?
Rattlesnake
Rattlesnake bites happened every year yet troubled the Illinois little, a French trader wrote, and the cure may have been the plant called rattlesnake master.
Q 20Two prized wooden bowls from the Illinois people, one with brass tacks for eyes, are carved to look like which animal?
Beaver
Beaver bowls stand on four legs with flat tails, and they are among the few Illinois wood carvings to survive in museum collections.
Q 24What did the Illinois call the personal guardian spirit that a teenager sought by fasting alone in the wilderness?
Manitou
A manitou could come to girls as well as boys, and anyone whose spirit taught them healing medicines became a shaman.
Q 25The village of Kaskaskia, named for an Illinois tribe, has been reachable by road only through which state since 1881?
Missouri
Missouri holds the only road in because the Mississippi jumped to a new channel east of the village, which had been the first Illinois state capital.
Q 26Which lieutenant of La Salle, nicknamed Iron Hand for his metal prosthesis, built Fort St. Louis among the Illinois?
Henri de Tonti
Henri de Tonti lost the hand to a grenade and wore a gloved hook, which led some tribes to believe he had special powers.
Q 27The Miami-Illinois language belongs to which large family that also includes Cree, Blackfoot and Cheyenne?
Algonquian
Algonquian speech tied the Illinois so closely to the Miami that the two peoples could easily understand each other, differing mostly in accent.
Q 28The Kaskaskia, one of the main Illinois tribes, take their name from an old Miami-Illinois word for which insect?
Katydid
Katydid was kaaskaaskia in the old language, and a missionary's word list from about 1700 already gives the word as both an insect and the tribe.
Q 29Which sports body named Chief Illiniwek in 2005 among college mascots that it judged hostile or abusive?
The NCAA
The NCAA limited postseason play for schools that kept such mascots, and the University of Illinois retired the Chief in February 2007.
Q 30Which decoration for moccasins, not found in their own territory, did the Illinois get by trading with northern tribes?
Porcupine quills
Porcupine quills were dyed and stitched onto moccasins and headbands until glass beads from French traders took their place.