Although the Native American sites of Illinois do not look like Machu Picchu or Tikal, there is much to be learned about the Indigenous people of the state by visiting the museums even while the sites, if visible, are not overly dramatic. Indeed, it is the story of the pre-Columbian and Contact period societies that is the important historical lesson to be absorbed. The story is actually many histories – of the rise and fall of a great Mississippian civilization, of various Indian tribes negotiating their own space of the landscape with each other and at times in conditions of high aggression, and of the pressure and, ultimately, forced removal of native people by European settlers and the policies of a expansionist United States seeking to fulfill its “manifest destiny.” A visit to a good museum also will reveal the lifeways, beliefs, arts and crafts, and resourcefulness of Indigenous people. And in the absence of a site or museum, a didactic historical marker can be a worthwhile stop en route to other places

Springfield: Potawatomi Marker

Lewistown: Dickson Mounds State Museum, 10956 N Dickson Mounds Rd.

Kampsville: Center for American Archaeology Museum, 101 Broadway

cliff face north of Alton on River Road: Piasa Bird

Alton: 1814 Massacre Site Marker

Collinsville: Cahokia Mounds World Heritage Site

Lebanon (east of Route 4, between Emerald Mound Road and Midgley Neiss Rd, just west of Emerald Mound Grange R): Emerald Mound

Bunker Hill (on Bunker Hill Road/Illinois Route 159, 0.1 miles East North Street, on the right when traveling north, at the entrance of Mae Meissner Whitaker Park): historic marker