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Marauders, Murderers

In this cave, called Cave in Rock in Southern Illinois, we learned that marauding river pirates lured people in to rob them and kill them. In the years after that, in the 1800's, murderous gangs would do the same thing. I thought that was some interesting history, but husband and I were much more interested in the history of the Native Americans, the Shawnee, who had lived in that area. Typically, though, most of the historical information we could find on site started with the white settlers. For instance, one book we found said, "Cave in Rock was discovered by French explorers" in 17-something. We are to assume that Native Americans did not notice a very large cave opening along the banks of a major river before that time? I think not. One sign post, deep in the heart of the Shawnee forest at a place called Rim Rocks, did mention that the "Shawnee lived here briefly" for something like a hundred years before the "white settlers came", which we took as a euphemism for "came and killed off the Shawnee". I found this all more than disturbing--another Caucasian-centric history of America-- and am dead set on finding out more of the Shawnee history either online or at the library.