There certainly were (and still are, for that matter, see the American Indian Center of Chicago for example). Who the principal population was varies over time however. In the early 1600s, the southern end of Lake Michigan was home to the Myaamiaki - the Miami. The area around St. Joseph, Michigan is considered Sakiwayungi - the Coming Out Place - the place of origins for the Miami people. During the mid-1600s, a war with the Haudenosaunee (the Iroquois) drove the Miami west and north and they took refuge among the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) in southeastern Wisconsin. This is Europeans, specifically the French, first make note of encountering the Miami, though Miami oral traditions indicate that the actual first meeting took place earlier by some Miami who were in Wendat (Huron) territory to the northeast. The French accounts of this refugee community put its population at 20,000 which comports with later estimates for the entire Miami population.

During the latter half of the 1600s, these refugee communities and their allies, freshly armed by the French, launch a counter-offensive against the Haudenosaunee and push them back across the Scioto River in Ohio. As the Miami push east, they initially resettled in their homeland, founding - among others - the village of Checagou by 1688. Later, they shifted their main villages to the occupy the Wabash River valley in the 1700s. By this time, the original six sub-populations of the Miami had become just three: the Atchatchakangouen in the north, the Wea in the center, and the Piankashaw in the south (map). Later the Wea and Piankashaw would become independent nations; the modern Miami are primarily descended from the Atchatchakangouen.

As the Miami vacated the area around southern Lake Michigan, the Potawatomi occupied it instead, claiming the land for the Niswi-mishkodewin - the Council of Three Fires, the confederacy formed by the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi. The Potawatomi were involved with 1821 Treaty of Chicago and the 1833 Treaty of Chicago. While the Potawatomi and the Miami are closely related people and speak a similar language (more on that in a bit), there are some notable differences between their cultures. Generally speaking, the Miami in the period of the 1600s-1700s were more sedentary their their northern relations, and relied more heavily on agriculture (the Potawatomi at this time were generally too far north for reliable maize agriculture, but did occupy an area with abundant wild rice). In addition to maize agriculture, the Miami adopted a few other Mississippi traits from their neighbors to the south and west, such as the rectangular wattle-and-daub houses, like those seen in this reconstruction of Kincaid, a Mississippian site in southern Illinois (unlike the Mississippians, the Miami didn't construct platform mounds for their buildings). When on their winter hunting trips, the Miami used round wigwams covered in reed-mats, which is more similar to the sort of housing the Potawatomi were using on a regular basis (until log cabins became widely adopted by both groups).

Most of Illinois when Europeans first arrived in the area was occupied by the Inoka (Illinois) Confederacy. While Inoka is their own name for themselves, they received the name Illinois as a French adaption of the name given to them by the members of the Niswi-mishkodewin. This name means "Speaks in the usual manner" a reference to the fact the the language of the Inoka was very similar to that of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi. The language of the Inoka is also nearly identical to that of the Miami, and currently they're classed as the two major dialects of the Miami-Illinois language. This is sometimes referred as the Miami-Peoria language after the Peewaalia (Peoria), one of the prominent constituents of the Inoka confederacy. Other members of the confederacy include the Kaskaskia, the Tamaroa, the Michigamea, and the Cahokia. This last one will probably sound familiar. An early missionary settlement was named after them, and from the name of that settlement, the great Mississippian city of Cahokia got its modern name. The Inoka probably don't have strong connections to the Mississippians who built Cahokia, though the Inoka ancestors would have had contact with the Cahokians, at least as much as the Miami did. While there was probably a multiethnic components to the Cahokian population, the majority were likely Dhegiha - ancestors of the Osage, Kansa, Quapaw, Ponca, and Omaha.

You'll find that many things in this area are named Calumet (for example, Calumet City, Purdue Calumet in Hammond, or the Calumet River) . This is because the area around here was home to the Calumet region Native Americans which includes various tribes. Here's a lengthy article from the University of Chicago discussing these groups: http://calumetquarter.uchicago.edu/2014/historic-native-americans-of-the-calumet-region