The Kickapoo people are an American Indian and Indigenous Mexican tribe originating in the southern Great Lakes region of the United States.

They were originally a Woodland group living in northwest Ohio and southern Michigan, in the area between Lake Erie and Lake Michigan. Oral tradition holds that they were once part of the same tribe as the Shawnee, but that they separated at some point.

As European colonists began moving inland from the East Coast, they were pushed into Wisconsin and Illinois.

By the mid-18th century, they had split into two groups, the Prairie Band, who lived along the Sangamon River in Illinois, and the Vermillion Band, east of the Wabash River in Indiana.

The Kickapoo had trading relationships with the French, but at the time of the American War for Independence, they favored the British, hoping to slow white encroachment on Indian lands.

Frequently allied with the Shawnee, the Kickapoo became involved with the social movement of Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh, rejecting assimilation in favor of a more traditional lifestyle. They were also involved in Tecumseh's War in 1811. Later, in 1832, a group of Kickapoos were involved in the Black Hawk War, along with groups of Sauks and Meskwakis (Fox). At the same time, some Ho-Chunk and Potawatomi warriors conducted raids against forts and colonies left relatively unprotected while the militia were engaged in the Black Hawk War. The Menominee and Dakota tribes supported the United States.

An 1819 treaty forced the Kickapoo to cede most of its holdings in Illinois, which consisted of nearly half of the current state, in exchange for a much smaller tract on the Osage River in Missouri.

Most of the Kickapoo were not in agreement with this treaty, particularly because the land they were being removed to was already occupied by the Osage, long-time enemies of the Kickapoo. Approximately half of the Kickapoo population moved further south, crossing the Red River in Spanish-controlled territory in what is now Texas. The U.S. government forced the return of several Kickapoo to their assigned land in Missouri, while others remained in Spanish-controlled areas, some migrating further south into Mexico.

Meanwhile, a remnant of Kickapoo led by Kennekuk, a nonviolent spiritual leader among the Kickapoo, had remained in Illinois. During the 1830s Indian removals, he led his group to their current tribal lands in Kansas, where he died of smallpox in 1852. The Kickapoo in Kansas were later joined by those who had remained in Indiana, as they were forced to cede their lands by white settlers.

In 1852, a large group of Kickapoo joined their brethren in Texas, some of these moving further south into Mexico, as well. Another party joined them in 1863. Some returned to Indian Territory, in what is now Oklahoma, while those who remained in Mexico were given a reservation in eastern Chihuahua.

Today, there are federally recognized Kickapoo communities in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, and the Mexican Kickapoo are closely tied to the Texas and Oklahoma communities, with groups migrating among the three communities regularly to maintain connections. The Texas and Mexican branches are the same nation, divided only by an international border, known as the Kickapoo of Coahuila/Texas.

The Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas is a federally recognized tribe based in Eagle Pass. Just under a thousand Kickapoo tribal members live on the Eagle Pass reservation and tribal lands in Nacimiento, Mexico. Ethnically related to the Meskwaki, Sauk, and Shawnee, members of the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas speak English, Spanish, and the Kickapoo language, as well as Kickapoo whistled speech.

The Mexican Kickapoo are binational, in that they live both in Mexico and in the United States. They were granted land at Hacienda del Nacimiento near Múzquiz, Coahuila, in 1850, while small groups of Kickapoo are in the Mexican states of Sonora and Durango. While they are affiliated with the federally recognized Kickapoo tribes in the United States, the U.S. government recognizes them as a distinct subgroup of the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, known as the Tribu Kikapú.

The Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma is headquartered in McLoud, Oklahoma, with its jurisdictional area in Oklahoma, Pottawatomie, and Lincoln counties. About 400 of its members speak the Kickapoo language.

The Kickapoo Tribe of Indians of the Kickapoo Reservation in Kansas is in Brown County, in the northeastern part of the state, headquartered in Horton. Most members of the Oklahoma tribe speak English.

The Kickapoo language is a dialect of the Fox language, similar to that used by the Sauk and Meskwaki. The Kickapoo in Mexico are known for their whistled speech, a system of whistled communication that allows for the exchange of an unlimited set of messages over long distances. It was begun in 1915 by Kickapoo children.

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