Delaware Town - Lexington Twp.

In 1829, John Boone Thompson, son of Revolutionary War veteran William Thompson, moved his family from Kentucky to Lexington Township in McLean County. Settling on the northern banks of the Mackinaw River, Thompson found an abandoned village. Thompson incorporated many of the buildings and other structures into his own homestead, using them as stables for animals and storage.

This map shows the location of the John Boone Thompson
farm. From the 1866 atlas.

Thompson's Gravestone
Cooper Cemetery, Fairbury, IL

Thompson had stumbled upon a recently abandoned village of Delaware Native Americans. The Delaware were a group of indigenous people who lived around the Delaware River watershed, around present day New Jersey, Delaware, Philadelphia, and New York City. They were called the Delaware by Europeans because they lived around the Delaware River, but were also called the Lenni and Lenape people. 

Pushed by European settlement, the Delaware people had been gradually moving west since the 1720's. By the 1820s, groups from Ohio and Indiana were moving towards Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas. Most of them passed through southern Illinois and temporarily settled around present day Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

A small band broke off along the way and settled near a Kickapoo Village up the Mackinaw River, near present day Pleasant Hill. The leader of this tribe was Murck. The Delaware village was noted by federal surveyors in 1824, but the only recorded interaction between the Delaware people and European settlers occurred in 1827. 

1824 Federal Survey,

In a 1880 Pantagraph article, J. Burnham provides a detailed description of the village based on interviews with early European settlers:

"This village consisted of from 50 to 75 habitations, and contained a 'council house' and the Indian dancing ground. These Indian houses were a little better than the ordinary wigwams of the Western tribes. The Delawares had lived so long upon the border settlements that their habits were a strange mixture of barbarism and civilization. 

Their corn fields were in and near the village, and occupied several acres - from four to six it is estimated. They also raised pumpkins and beans. There appears to have been two or three hundred of these Delawares, and they all lived at this village on friendly terms with the Kickapoos, but under their own ruler.

There was a graveyard near the village whose site is still shown. Here were several well preserved graves as late as 1829 or 1830. What is quite remarkable, a few were graced with the cross emblem of the Roman Catholic faith in which some of these Indians had been instructed."

By 1828, the Delaware had left McLean County. They formally ceded their land to the U.S. federal government in September 1829. Today, the Delaware village and farms are plowed over. The Delaware graveyard is probably long gone. The location of the village is about 4 miles north of Cooksville on the north side of the Mackinaw River. 

Interestingly, Towanda, Illinois may have gotten its name from Towanda, Pennsylvania. Towanda is a Delaware term signifying "place where we bury the dead." 

Location:

Township & Section: Lexington, Sec. 36

GIS (click on numbers to view on Google Maps): 40.587955, -88.702915

Sources: 

• Burnham, J.H. (1880, November 29). Indian History: Some Account of the Delaware Indian Town in Lexington Township. Pantagraph, p. 2.
• Burnham, J.H. (1881, December 13). Is it Etnataek? Pantagraph, p. 2. 
• Duis, E. (1874). The Good Old Times in McLean County Containing 261 Sketches of Early Settlers. Bloomington, IL: Leader Publishing & Printing House.
• Illinois State Archives. Federal Township Plats of Illinois, 1804-1891. 
• Roberts, M.H., & WInter, E.J. (1976). Towanda, McLean County: 1826-1976. Towanda, IL: Towanda Sesquicentennial Committee.
• Safiran, Edward. (1985). Historic Indians of McLean County: 1755-1835. In McLean County Historical Essays (edited by John L. Allaman & Ronald Baker). Normal, IL: Central Illinois Historical Press.
• Temple, Wayne. (1958). Indian Villages of the Illinois Country (Illinois State Museum Scientific Papers, v. 2, no. 2). Springfield, IL: Illinois State Museum.
• University of Illinois Library, Digital Collections. (2000, July 18). Delaware Village in Federal Land Survey. Originally from W.W. Walters, Heart of the Cornbelt & McLean County Historical Society.