About Us 2
Indians and the Naming of Maquon

Probably the largest Indian Village in Knox County was near the present Village of Maquon and near Spoon River south of Maquon. At different times this village numbered several lodges and possibly several hundred inhabitants. They raised corn, beans, pumpkins, squash, and sunflowers in fertile soil, which observed in the 1970s appears to be different color and richer than neighboring soil. For many years after the Indians were driven from this country they returned at intervals to plant and raise their crops.

When Miss Jennie McKenney, in 1907, asked "Uncle" Bill Simkins if he had ever heard what tribe of Indians inhabited Maquon vicinity, he replied, "Potawat, " meaning Potawatomi. Miss McKenney said, "How do you know?" Mr. Simkins answered, "Saw them. " These Indians were of the Algonquin tongue, and it was from that language that the name Maquon emerged.

The river south of Maquon was of great importance to the Indian, and he called it A-ma-quon-sip-pi, Amaquon meaning mussel, or mussel shell. He used these shells as we do spoons for dipping food. The work sip-pi means river, thus Amaquonsippi meant Spoon River. Miss McKenney's paper read before the Knox County Historical Society in 1907 states, "The Indians named this stream Amaquonsippi because the bend in it at the mouth of French Creek, made the river, to them, shaped like their spoons." Of course, Maquon's white settlers, their ears not trained for the subtle beautiful Indian sounds, dropped all the syllables except Maquon -- and Maquon was translated into Spoon.

Now, Maquon in Knox County, bears the Indian name for spoon, and is the only village or city in the whole United States of America to carry the name Maquon -- the short of A-ma-quon-sip-pi.

Sacs, Foxes, and Kickapoos, also using Algonquin language, spelled "Algonkian" sometimes, inhabited this part of Illinois, and were of the Eastern Woodsmen Culture Group. The Kickapoos and Foxes were kind people, and very considerate. If a white man were in a wigwam talking, the rest would give respectful attention. Their children were required to act with deference to strangers. They did not hunt as extensively as some other tribes, but lived on corn, beans, berries, and other fruits gathered in the woods. A favorite dish was the wild potato, or penyon, as it was called.
This they found in the bottom lands. They speared and caught fish, and now and then secured a deer. The squaws did the work and it was not until they were aroused by injustice and unkindness that they became cruel and warlike. The Potawatomi tribe retained its identity better than the others.

Potawatomi language was simple, consisting of few words, made plain by significant gestures. Their names were long and full of vowels as: 

Horse ---------- Nan-ka-toka-shaw
Dog ------------ Co-co-sh
Baby ----------- Pap-poose
Pumpkin ------- Wam-pa-cum
Corn ----------- Ta-min
Tomahawk ----- Quimesockin
Bean ----------- Ko-Kees
Melons --------- Esh-kos-si-min

It was their custom to place the bodies of the dead in the forks and tops of trees, but after the advent of the white man they began burying them in the ground. One Indian cemetery was just east of Spoon River and about on the right-of-way of the Burlington Northern Railway.

Avery Dalton's first-hand knowledge of Indians and of early Knox County settlers was given to Miss McKenney for her Maquon history, written in 1907. Mr. Dalton told her that the principal Indian trails crossed a short distance south of the site of the Village of Maquon. A marker erected in 1939 in the park in the business district commemorates these trails to the Mississippi and to the Ohio Rivers. Historians speak of this as the Galena Trail. See picture of this marker below. 
The writer of this 1976 article heard Jennie McKenney Tobin tell of her interviews with elderly citizens at the turn of the century. These men and women knew why arrowheads and axes were found in abundance in this area, for they remembered conflicts between the Red-men and the white settlers. These "historians" located one scene of battle as being immediately over the line in Haw Creek Township, north of the east part of town. Red Chalk hill northeast of Maquon in Haw Creek provided red clay for Indian pottery, they said.

Maquon has long been recognized as the location of an Indian Mound, south, and a little west of the village. Mrs. Elsie Hartsook told the writer, at the time of the dedication of the Indian Trail marker in 1939, that in the past, archeologists had done a limited amount of excavating in the mound, finding Indian burial evidence. This is not documented.

Valuable collections of Indian relics are mute evidence of the existence of another people who had to give way to the onward advance of the white man.

— Mrs. Ruth Simkins Swearingen, March 7, 1976

Taken from the book "History of Maquon and Vicinity"
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