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Composed originally of as many as twelve distinct bands, the Illini Confederation was a grouping of related tribes bound to each other through kinship and a common language and culture. Although not nearly as cohesive as the Iroquois League, their political unity was sufficient to dominate other tribes in the region. In most ways, Illini closely resembled the neighboring Miami. So much so, the French got them confused at first, although these two confederacies were hostile to each other before 1730. Both the Illini and Miami have characteristics which may link them with the region's earlier mound building cultures (Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian) The Illini did not recall a earlier migration from some other place, and the Kaskaskia chief,Jean Baptiste Ducoign informed George Rogers Clark in 1780 that it was his ancestors who had built the Great Mound at Cahokia and provided a fairly accurate description of the site's layout and purpose.

Whatever their connection with the mound builders, the Illini lifestyle in 1670 was a woodland culture similar to neighboring tribes. Their larger villages were gathering points for socializing and trade with the different bands coming and going without a fixed pattern. The locations chosen, however, were almost always in river valleys because of the richer soil for agriculture. After planting, the Illini usually separated to hunting villages and returned in the fall for harvest. More than their neighbors, the Illini depended on the large buffalo herds found on the northern Illinois prairies as a food source. Buffalo were so common there during the 1670s, the French took to calling them the "Illinois Ox." Annual buffalo hunts by the Illini were a large affairs conducted by their patrilineal clans involving up to 300 people. Without horses, the usual methods were the "surround" or firing the prairies to trap the huge animals. Although there many rivers in their homeland, the Illini were not especially fond of fish. Canoes were dugouts rather than the lighter birchbark variety used by the tribes in the northern Great Lakes.

Men were primarily hunters and warriors while women tended the fields and gathered. Beyond this division of labor, women had important roles as shamans and leadership roles which paralleled those of the men. Although not common, there was some soral polygamy (a man marries more than one sister). Punishment of a man for adultery was rare, but unfaithful wives were either mutilated or killed. Before 1670 traditional Illini enemies included the Pawnee, Dakota (Sioux), Winnebago and Osage. Afterwards, the list of enemies expanded to include the Iroquois, Fox, Sauk, Kickapoo, Shawnee, Mascouten, Ottawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Miami, Winnebago, Menominee, Chickasaw, Quapaw, Osage, Missouri, Iowa, and Dakota. Their only allies, besides the French, were themselves, and the French were little help to them after 1763. With a shrinking population to defend a homeland coveted by their neighbors, the result was predictable.

The destruction of the Illini after contact is one of the great tragedies in North American history. By the time American settlement reached them during the early 1800s, the Illini were nearly extinct and replaced by other tribes. For the most part, the blame for this could not be placed on a war with the Europeans or the Illini refusal to adapt themselves to a changing situation. Actually, few tribes had adapted as much or attached themselves more closely to the French. This made it easy to place responsibility for the fate of the Illini on their native enemies, or perhaps even nature itself, and for this reason, their sad story became a favorite romanticized explanation of the Native American's "ride into the sunset" to prepare the way for the advance of "civilization." However, stripped of this embellishment, the story of the Illini's decline is a chilling indication of how the European presence, regardless of purpose or intention, unleashed destructive forces upon North America's native peoples which reached far beyond the immediate areas of their colonization.

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