Kanakuk. A Kickapoo prophet.
When the Kickapoo in 1819 ceded their lands, covering nearly half the
state of Illinois, they could not go to the reservation asaigned to them
in Missouri because it was still occupied by the hostile Osage. Half the
tribe emigrated instead to Spanish territory in Texas, and the rest were
ready to follow when the Government agents intervened, endeavoring to
induce them to remove to Missouri.
Kanakuk, inspired with the ideas that had moved
Tenskwatawa, exhorted them to remain where they were, promising that if
they lived worthily, abandoning their native superstitions, avoiding
quarrels among themselves and infractions of the white man's law, and
resisting the seduction of alcohol, they would at last inherit a land of
plenty clear of enemies. He was accepted as the chief of the remnant who
remained in Illinois, and many of the
Potawatomi of Michigan
became his disciples. He displayed a chart of the path, leading through
fire and water, which the virtuous must pursue to reach the "happy hunting
grounds," and furnished his followers with prayer-sticks graven with
religious symbols. When in the end the Kickapoo were removed to Kansas he
accompanied them and remained their chief, still keeping drink away from
them, until he died of smallpox in 1852.
