Talk:Illinois Territory in the War of 1812

Renaming and rewrite needed


Probably few folks are watching this very obscure article, but here goes. Anyone know of any reliable sources that use the term "Peoria War"? I have found none. The original article was certainly based on this self-published website, an amateur, unreliable (Roger's Rangers!), and unreferenced history. This in understandable: back when the article was started, Wikipedia was still coming up with guidelines about reliable sources, and many questionable sources were used just because they were available online.

In reality, there was no "Peoria War". The events described in this article were part of the far western theater of the War of 1812. There were numerous small expeditions by Americans and Native Americans to control the Upper Mississippi and the Illinois and Indiana Territories. We have articles on some of these operations, such as the Siege of Prairie du Chien of July 1814.

So this article must be renamed and repurposed. What should be the scope? The current focus of the article -- the 1813 Peoria expedition -- was a minor affair. Should this article remain about that, or be about all operations in the Peoria area? Or wider? Illinois in the War of 1812? Illinois Territory in the War of 1812? Something else? —Kevin Myers 15:40, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I have this on my watchlist although my only edit appears to be to express confusion about who these Roger's Rangers were. Unsourced articles are subject to severe editing. Searching for sources on Google is complicated by the street called War Memorial Drive in Peoria but I haven't seen any new sources yet. Rmhermen (talk) 19:12, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Don't we have articles like Illinois in the Civil War? I think it could be renamed to the former if someone is willing to add a bit on the other operations conducted in Illinois at that time. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:07, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
 * We also have Indiana in the War of 1812. Here, I went with Illinois Territory in the War of 1812, since that covers both Illinois and Wisconsin, which we'll want to address in this article. —Kevin Myers 20:33, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I put in a request to have that map improved at the Graphics Lab. Rmhermen (talk) 14:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I wrote a section in the Ninian Edwards article on the Peoria War (Ninian Edwards). It covers these events in more detail than this article does. All information comes from Robert P. Howard (1988), Mostly Good and Competent Men: Illinois Governors, 1818–1988, Illinois Issues and the Illinois State Historical Society, 42–43. I cannot remember if the term Peoria War is used in that book, or if I used the term because it was in an already-existing article. The book is not available for me to check it right now. Fishal (talk) 05:59, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Along the same lines, and perhaps more importantly, there are a couple dozen pages that link to Peoria War (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere&target=Peoria+War). If the term Peoria War is unsourced and unattested, should all those links be changed? Fishal (talk) 13:55, 13 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, the term "Peoria War" should not appear in any Wikipedia article, since it is unsourced and unattested. I removed a few of those links, but don't have time to do them all. I think you'll usually be able to keep a link to this article with a change in wording. —Kevin Myers 04:26, 16 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Most of them seem to be found in infoboxes, anyway - a reasonably simple thing to fix. Thanks for setting the record straight... maybe someday the error's proliferation across the Internet can also be cleared up  :).  Fishal (talk) 04:16, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

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