Peoria people

[3] In 1867 their descendants moved to Indian Territory with remnants of related tribes and were assigned land in present-day Ottawa County, Oklahoma.

[9] The Peoria were one of the many Illinois tribes encountered by early French explorers, Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet.

[10] After 1763 France ceded its Illinois Country and other territories east of the Mississippi River to the British, who had defeated them in the Seven Years' War.

Genevieve and St. Louis were founded in that era by French colonists from east of the river who did not want to live under British Protestant rule.

[11] The US pressed for Indian Removal from areas desired by European-American settlers, who kept pushing west, and President Andrew Jackson signed the act of that name in 1830.

[2] The confederation included the last members and descendants of the Cahokia, Moingwena, Michigamea and Tamaroa tribes, who had assimilated with the Peoria many year before.

[12] In 1851, an Indian agent reported that the Peoria and the Kaskaskia, along with their allies, had intermarried among themselves and among white people to such an extent that they had practically lost their tribal identities.

Allotments were made to enrolled heads of households over the next few years, to extinguish Indian claims and enable the territories to be admitted as a state.

In 1907, after admission of Oklahoma, any "surplus" land as determined by the US in former Confederated Peoria territory was transferred to Ottawa County, which could sell it.

The federal government changed its approach during the President Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, after realizing the adverse effects of those actions.

[8] During the 1950s, the US government changed policies again, promoting Indian termination to end its special relationship with tribes that it believed were ready to be independent.

Tribal members objected and began the process to regain federal recognition, because it provided important education and welfare benefits.