Their past is one which the whites have grouped many different Indian peoples with, but the kickapoo indians are yet a distinct people. They originally lived in southern Michigan, northern Indiana and northern Ohio, but after the fur trade commenced the Beaver Wars started and they had a tremendous impact on the Kickapoo. It was the Iroquois League who forced the Kickapoo out of Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. The only location the Kickapoo felt was safe for them was up in northern Wisconsin near where present day Green Bay is situated. Huge Lake Michigan offered them protection from the Iroquois League, as did the Lake Superior Ojibwa. By 1700 the Three Fires Confederation had defeated the once formidable Iroquois League, and the Kickapoo left northern Wisconsin for southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois, with their Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi allies, to live there.
When the white English invaded the territory of the powerful Three Fires Confederation in the early 1750s (they invaded central Pennsylvania), a long war followed in which the Kickapoo participated in on the side of the Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi (the Three Fires Confederation), fighting against the white English. That long war (the Ohio War) lasted from 1755 to 1815. After the Americans had defeated the Three Fires Confederation, the Kickapoo and the other Indian allies of the Three Fires Confederation, the greedy Americans forced them to cede their remaining lands in the Ohio region, and relocate west of the Mississippi river. The first groups of Kickapoo Indians who ceded their lands to the greedy Americans and relocated westward, did so during the early 1820s. More groups of Kickapoo also ceded their lands and relocated westward later. During some point after relocating westward, some Kickapoo Indians made a decision to form strong ties with Mexico, as did other Indian nations who were forced by the United States to relocate westward.
Those other Indians were the Cherokee, Chippewa, Miami, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Seminole and the Shawnee. They would eventually be hired out by Mexico to fight the Lipan Apache, but after the white Texans declared their independence from Mexico, they shifted their war attentions on the Americans. From the mid 1830s to around 1880, the Indian alliance in Mexico now referred to as the Kickapoo but was a mixture of the Cherokee, Chippewa, Kickapoo, Miami, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Seminole and the Shawnee, from time to time sent their brave warriors from their Mexico strongholds near the southern Texas border to Mexico, up into south Texas and killed, raped and stole from the greedy Americans, as much as they could. By 1870 the Lipan Apache joined them and they commenced to send their brave warriors further up into northcentral Texas to wage war on the United States. The Americans were forced to illegally send their soldiers into Mexico to attempt to halt the guerilla war the Mexican Indian alliance was waging against the United States.
After the Americans massacred scores of Indians at the nacimiento massacre, the raids would eventually dwindle then completly stopped by the mid 1880s. It is one of the least known Indian Wars of the 19th century but it was a costly war. It can be compared to the 1755-1815 Ohio War, but it didn't match the number of casualties. The Three Fires Confederation and their allies, killed and wounded up to 30,000 white English during the long Ohio War. From the 1830s to the mid 1880s, the Three Fires Confederation, the Kickapoo and other Indian peoples who were allied with them, probably killed and wounded at the most, only a few thousand Americans. The number of livestock they destroyed or stole was huge. It was a very costly war to say the least.