The area has a population of 1.2 million people,[1] who live mostly in rural towns and cities separated by extensive farmland and the Shawnee National Forest.

The region was affiliated with the southern agricultural economy, based on enslaved African Americans as workers on major plantations, and rural culture.

With the rise of the Mississippian culture in the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys, tribal leaders organized thousands of workers to build complex urban areas featuring numerous large earthworks – pyramidal, ridgetop and conical mounds used for religious, political and ceremonial purposes.

The Illini left numerous artifacts, including burial sites, burned-out campfires along the bases of bluffs, pottery, flint implements, and weapons.

The earliest European settlers were concentrated along the Mississippi, Ohio, and Wabash rivers, which provided easy routes for travel and trade.

The settlements including Cahokia town, Kaskaskia and Chartres became important market villages and supply depots between Canada and the French ports on the lower Mississippi River.

On either bank of the rivers were states which, despite remaining loyal to the national government throughout the secession crisis, had numerous residents who, for reasons predominately rooted in racial ideologies, were sympathetic to the Southern rebellion (1860–65).

[10] Coal mining became an important industry in Southern Illinois around the start of the 20th century, with cities such as Harrisburg prospering, having a population of 16,000 people during the 1920s.

Farmers could not sell their crops and lost their land; families defaulted on home mortgage loans; and young people from the region began leaving for the cities to find work.

Marion has grown since 1970 and in the process has been selected for Illinois' first STAR Bonds District for the Millennium Development, a project designed for a city ten times its size.

[14] Populations among the smaller cities and towns have dropped as people moved to the Carbondale-Herrin-Marion combined statistical area and Metro East.

According to Hubbs,[citation needed] the nickname dates back to 1818, when a huge tract of land was purchased at the confluence of the rivers and its developers named it Cairo /ˈkɛəroʊ/.

Other settlements in the area were also given names with Egyptian, Greek, or Middle Eastern origins: The Southern Illinois University Salukis sports teams and towns such as Metropolis, Thebes, Dongola, Palestine, Lebanon, New Athens, Sparta, and Karnak show the influence of classical culture.

In addition, an exception was made for slaveholders who held long-term indentured servants or descendants of slaves in the area before it achieved statehood.

[citation needed] The Underground Railroad also operated in southern Illinois, moving nearly equally northward and southward with bounties available for returned slaves appealing to the residents there.

Directions to Underground Railroad travelers were coded in Bible verses or songs, and the story of Moses fleeing Egypt was certainly used as an analog to their own plight.

"[18] When Lincoln commissioned the Southern Illinois Democrat, John Alexander McClernand, as a brigadier general, he told him to "keep Egypt right side up".

Marshal David Phillips arrested several Democrats who allegedly belonged to the Knights, including men in respectable positions: Congressmen, state representatives, and judges.

The nickname supposedly arose from similarities of the events to the Bible story of Jacob's sons going to Egypt for grain to survive a famine.

[20] The nickname persisted through the 1890s, when, according to progressive journalist and Toledo mayor Brand Whitlock, members of the Illinois General Assembly whose districts lay south of the O&M Railway were called "Egyptians.

"[21] Belly dancer Farida Mazar Spyropoulos' appearance as "Little Egypt" at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago brought notoriety to the name, but she had no connection to the Illinois region.

Noted areas are Cahokia Mounds, the American Bottom, and East St. Louis, which has had a turbulent history related to industrialization and labor, immigration and the struggle for equal rights.

Located on the Wabash River, East-Central Southern Illinois is noted by the town of Salem, the birthplace of William Jennings Bryan, the G. I.

The western area, more closely related to the Ozarks of Missouri, is chiefly in southern Jackson, Union, northern Alexander and Johnson counties.

Fall is mild with lower humidity and can produce intermittent bouts of heavy rainfall with the first snow flurries usually forming in late November.

Winter storm systems, such as Alberta clippers and Panhandle hooks, can bring days of heavy freezing rain, ice pellets, and snowfall.

Seismographic mapping completed by geologists reveal that monoclines, anticlines, and synclines are present within the region; these signs suggest deformation during the Paleozoic, coincident to strike-slip faulting nearby.

Apples, peaches, grapes, are commonly found throughout Southern Illinois as well as the occasional sunflower, cotton, wheat, hay, and milo fields.

Additional growth has occurred with the local foods movement as Southern Illinois' climate allows for fruit and vegetable production.

Thus, settlers who came to Southern Illinois were from Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, with most of these being of northern English and Scots-Irish descent, who formed the last major migration from the British Isles to the colonies before the Revolutionary War, and settled mostly in the backcountry.