Nature Bulletin No. 233-A   June 4, 1966
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Seymour Simon, President
Roland F. Eisenbeis, Supt. of Conservation

****:ILLINOIS - THE SUCKER STATE

In pioneer days, when rivers were the main arteries of travel, all 
commerce of the entire western country passed by the shores of Illinois 
on the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers -- to New Orleans, to St. Louis 
and up the Missouri River to the west and northwest, or up the 
Mississippi to the north country. Lake Michigan, penetrating deep into 
the heart of the continent, was another decisive factor. From it there 
was an easy portage into the Des Plaines River and thence by way of 
the Illinois River to the Mississippi. Today, all these rivers have been 
converted into great inland waterways as vital to our commerce as they 
were to the Mound Builder, the Indian, the explorer, the fur trader and 
the pioneer settler.

The principal overland routes also crossed Illinois, which is 385 miles 
long from north to south. The northern routes to the northwest had to 
pass around the southern tip of Lake Michigan. The Old National 
Road, through Pittsburgh to St. Louis, cut across the state. These 
overland trails were naturally followed by the railroads and paved 
highways with the result that Chicago is now the greatest 
transportation center in the world.

Illinois is called the Prairie State because the great central portion, flat 
and fertile, was tall-grass prairie except for belts of timber along the 
rivers and creeks -- a heritage of the glaciers that once covered nearly 
all of the state. Actually, it is the meeting place between what were 
originally unbroken forests to the east, and the vast prairie country to 
the west. We find here the western limit of such eastern trees as the 
tulip, or yellow poplar, beech, chestnut and sassafras. It is also the 
transition zone between the plant and animal life of the south and that 
of the north. In southern Illinois, cotton is grown and we find such 
typically southern trees as cypress, persimmon, pecan and the gums. 
At the upper end of the state we find plants common to the north 
woods, including such trees as tamarack, white pine, arbor vitae and 
paper birch.

The state is richly endowed. It has fertile soils, an ideal climate, and 
important mineral resources. Illinois stands at the top or near the top, 
among the states, in all of the five great occupations of mankind: 
agriculture, mining, manufacturing, transportation and trade.

People from Illinois are still called "Suckers" in some localities of 
neighboring states. There are several legends about the origin of this 
nickname. One is that on our prairies, during hot dry summers, the 
early travelers obtained water by sucking it up through straws thrust 
down into "crawfish" holes. Another is based upon the fact that the 
first settlements, other than those of the early French at Cahokia and 
Kaskaskia, were made in the extreme southern portion and mainly by 
relatively poor people from tobacco-growing southern states. A tobacco 
plant commonly sends up sprouts around the main stem. These 
"suckers" are stripped off and thrown away. Hence, because these 
emigrants had left their home states and come to the Illinois 
wilderness "to perish", they were derisively called "Suckers".

The most plausible explanation dates from the opening of the first lead 
mine, in 1824, about a mile north of Galena. By 1827 there were 6 or 
7 thousand people in that area, most of them from the settlements in 
southern Illinois and from the lead-mining district in southwestern 
Missouri. The Illinois men came up the Mississippi on steamboats in 
the spring and went back down to their homes each fall. The 
Missourians jeeringly named them "Suckers" because the sucker is one 
of the few common fish that migrates upstream each spring.

Take your choice, sucker!