Some time before 1650, possibly a century or more, the Illinois Confederacy seems to have been a powerful nation but in the latter half of the 17th century this was a tradition rather than fact. The Confederacy appears to have engaged in no united action after 1650.
The Illini at that time were in the plant-raising [stage] of [culture] and possessed only the dog as a domesticated animal. Like many other plant-raisers, the families deserted the village for the hunt after the corn was hilled and again after the harvest.
Dress
Men went naked in summer except for mocassins. At times a [breech cloth] was worn; in winter buffalo skin robes were added and belts, leg bands and leggings on occasion.
Women when working apparently wore only a girdle ([breech cloth]), at other times a wrap-around skirt of skin with a belt passing over one shoulder and under the opposite arm. The skirt dates back to Hopewellian times and was used during the [Mississippi] [period] in Indiana and probably in Illinois. The bosom was covered with a deerskin wrap. Hair was worn long and fastened behind the head.
[Economy]
Labor was divided between the men and the women (and children). Men did the hunting, fighting and made the weapons. The women (and children) did the other work—the housework, planting and harvesting the crops, dressing deer and buffalo skins, making twine from [bast], weaving cloth and, on the hunt, carrying the house parts and setting up the camp.
Buffalo meat was preserved by drying and smoking it over a fire in the hunting camp. Vegetable foods, corn, beans and squash were dried or parched and buried in containers or in lined pits in the ground and covered over. Watermelons, muskmelons (?), gourds and tobacco were also grown. Wild strawberries, paw paws, pecans, lotus roots, wild tubers, grapes and plums formed part of their diet.
The winter buffalo hunt usually took place a long way from the village. The hunting units each consisted of several families under a rigid police system and regulation to prevent the herd from being stampeded by an over-eager [family] before all were amply provided with meat. Violations of hunting regulations were punished by destruction of the offender’s property to which no resistance was ever attempted. The group surrounded the herd, at times encircling it with fires made at intervals near which the hunters stood and killed the stampeding animals. At times as many as 120 buffalo were killed in a day. The women cut out the tongues, skinned the animals, and, peeling off the sides of meat, dried and smoked them on wooden grates over a slow fire. The smoked sides were carried back to the village on the back, or when practicable in [dugout] boats. Carcasses and bones were left on the hunting grounds. Other animals were stalked by one or two hunters. Dog meat was considered a great delicacy.
Fish were caught in nets, by hook and line, speared or shot with bow and arrow. They were dried for preservation. Maple trees were tapped late in the winter, the sap caught in bark containers and made into a maple drink or reduced by boiling to syrup and sugar. Corn was ground into meal and baked into bread, or prepared as hominy.