Des Moines is the capital and the most populous city in Iowa, United States. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small part of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines, which was shortened to "Des Moines" in 1857. It is located on, and named after, the Des Moines River, which likely was adapted from the early French name, Rivière des Moines, meaning "River of the Monks". The city's population was 214,133 as of the 2020 census. The six-county metropolitan area is ranked 83rd in terms of population in the United States with 699,292 residents according to the 2019 estimate by the United States Census Bureau, and is the largest metropolitan area fully located within the state.
Louis Jolliet was a French-Canadian explorer known for his discoveries in North America. In 1673, Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit Catholic priest and missionary, were the first non-Natives to explore and map the Upper Mississippi River.
Jacques Marquette, S.J., sometimes known as Père Marquette or James Marquette, was a French Jesuit missionary who founded Michigan's first European settlement, Sault Sainte Marie, and later founded Saint Ignace. In 1673, Marquette, with Louis Jolliet, an explorer born near Quebec City, was the first European to explore and map the northern portion of the Mississippi River Valley.
The Illinois Confederation, also referred to as the Illiniwek or Illini, were made up of 12 to 13 tribes who lived in the Mississippi River Valley. Eventually member tribes occupied an area reaching from Lake Michicigao (Michigan) to Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. The five main tribes were the Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Michigamea, Peoria, and Tamaroa. The name of the confederation was derived from the transliteration by French explorers of iliniwe to Illinois, more in keeping with the sounds of their own language. The tribes are estimated to have had tens of thousands of members, before the advancement of European contact in the 17th century that inhibited their growth and resulted in a marked decline in population.
The Kaskaskia were one of the indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands. They were one of about a dozen cognate tribes that made up the Illiniwek Confederation, also called the Illinois Confederation. Their longstanding homeland was in the Great Lakes region. Their first contact with Europeans reportedly occurred near present-day Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 1667 at a Jesuit mission station.
The Des Moines River is a tributary of the Mississippi River in the upper Midwestern United States that is approximately 525 miles (845 km) long from its farther headwaters. The largest river flowing across the state of Iowa, it rises in southern Minnesota and flows across Iowa from northwest to southeast, passing from the glaciated plains into the unglaciated hills near the capital city of Des Moines, named after the river, in the center of the state. The river continues to flow to a southeastern direction away from Des Moines, later flowing directly into the Mississippi River.
The Illinois Country —sometimes referred to as Upper Louisiana —was a vast region of New France claimed in the 1600s in what is now the Midwestern United States. While those names generally referred to the entire Upper Mississippi River watershed, French colonial settlement was concentrated along the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers in what is now the U.S. states of Illinois and Missouri, with outposts on the Wabash River in Indiana. Explored in 1673 from Green Bay to the Arkansas River by the Canadien expedition of Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, the area was claimed by France. It was settled primarily from the Pays d'en Haut in the context of the fur trade, and in the establishment of missions by French Catholic religious orders. Over time, the fur trade took some French to the far reaches of the Rocky Mountains, especially along the branches of the broad Missouri River valley. The French name, Pays des Ilinois, means "Land of the Illinois [plural]" and is a reference to the Illinois Confederation, a group of related Algonquian native peoples.
The Peoria are a Native American people. They are enrolled in the federally recognized Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma headquartered in Miami, Oklahoma.
The Wea were a Miami-Illinois-speaking Native American tribe originally located in western Indiana. Historically, they were described as either being closely related to the Miami Tribe or a sub-tribe of Miami.
Miami-Illinois, also known as Irenwa or Irenwe, is an indigenous Algonquian language spoken in the United States, primarily in Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, western Ohio and adjacent areas along the Mississippi River by the Miami and Wea as well as the tribes of the Illinois Confederation, including the Kaskaskia, Peoria, Tamaroa, and possibly Mitchigamea. The Myaamia (Miami) Nation of Indiana still practice and use their native heritage to teach young and old so they can keep their traditional language alive.
The Illinois–Indiana–Iowa League was a Minor League Baseball organization that operated for the better part of 60 seasons, with teams based in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska and Wisconsin. The league began play in 1901 and disbanded after the 1961 season. It was popularly known as the Three–I League and sometimes as the Three–Eye League.
Reuben Gold Thwaites was an American librarian and historical writer.
Catherine Carroll Shelley was a midwestern United States railroad heroine and the first woman in the United States to have a bridge named after her, the Kate Shelley High Bridge. She was also one of the few women to have a train named after her, the Kate Shelley 400.
Access Air was an airline based in Des Moines, Iowa, United States.
Jacques Gravier was a French Jesuit missionary in the New World. He founded the Illinois mission in 1696, where he administered to the several tribes of the territory. He was notable for his compilation of the most extensive dictionary of Kaskaskia Illinois-French among those made by French missionaries. In 1705 he was appointed Superior of the mission.
Jacques-François le Sueur, also known as François Eustache, Jacques François, and Jacques, was an 18th-century French Jesuit missionary and linguist, of the Abnaki missions in Canada.
The Mission of the Guardian Angel was a 17th-century Jesuit mission in the vicinity of what is now Chicago, Illinois. It was established in 1696 by Father François Pinet, a French Jesuit priest. The mission was abandoned by 1700; its exact location remains unknown.
