October 27 Illinois History Minute

It’s October 27th, the day in 1832 when leaders of the Illinois Confederacy signed the treaty of Castor Hill. Under its terms, the five tribes remaining in the confederacy gave up their lands in Illinois and Missouri and moved to a reservation in eastern Kansas. There, they would be renamed the Peoria tribe, and be forced to move again, to Oklahoma in 1867.

On this day in 1838, an executive order from Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs formally expelled the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from his state. The order came after clashes between the state’s growing Mormon population and other settlers. The Mormons resettled in Illinois, where they built the city of Nauvoo on the banks of the Mississippi River. It would be their headquarters until the assassination of Mormon leader Joseph Smith in 1844.