Hi all. I don't have any answers to these questions about Native American ancestors in southern Illinois, but as you all know any/everything is fair game for our list, as long as it's related to genealogy in Williamson County and doesn't include lots of nasty insults directed at anyone in particular. :> I did some research for a friend a couple of years ago, and below are a couple of the websites that I found useful in trying to track down Cherokee info in the area. The first one is out-of-date, I think, but both of these have some book titles that might end up being useful to you if you're trying to track Trail of Tears/Cherokee info in the area... http://www.kirch.net/personal/melodie.html http://www.allthingscherokee.com/genealogy_booksandsoftware.html Also if you check out the IL History Project (address below), and scroll about halfway down, there are a bunch of links to info about Native Americans in Illinois. I've always wondered if many of the supposedly-Cherokee ancestors in southern IL were really from the Kaskaskia, Tamaroa, Peoria, etc tribes, and somehow the stories have just gotten mixed-up as they were passed down. There were lots of Native Americans in IL, and you assume therefore lots of people of Native American descent, whether they know it or not, and maybe some are Cherokee and some aren't?? Anyway, I never had much luck with the Native American research for my friend, but I did keep these links, so I hope they might be more helpful to someone else... http://www.rootsweb.com/~ilhistor/links.html Angela