Lost Towns of Illinois - Piankashawtown, Illinois.

Piankashawtown was a former Indian village of significance in Edwards County, Illinois.

On the government's 1809 land survey, Piankashawtown was located on section 16, town one south, range ten east, four miles north-northwest of present-day Albion, Illinois. 

It was located immediately on the old Transcontinental Buffalo Trace (trail) that passes through and connects Vincennes, Kaskaskia and St. Louis, Missouri.

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The trace came up through Kentucky, crossed Indiana and passed through Illinois, to where East St. Louis ends at the Mississippi River. It is, after all, transcontinental, so the trace picks up somewhere on the west bank of the Mississippi. Herds of bison  numbered in the thousands at times.  Chicago as a Hunting Post.

We have the testimony of the earliest settlers that Piankashawtown was a village of considerable importance as late as 1815. At about this time, the Piankashaw Indians were removed thirty or forty miles to the north.

Farmers have plowed up many implements, guns and weapons. Even now (in 1880), one can trace for a considerable distance the old deep-cut trail where buffalo, Indian, explorers, priests, hunters, traders and soldiers tramped for successive generations. 

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.