From the early 1680s the land was controlled by the Miami Confederacy, including the Illini and Kickapoo, until the Iroquois and Meskwaki drove them out in the early 1700s. The Potawatomi then expanded across northern Illinois, and in the 1830s they kept a camp in what is now Arlington Heights, used for six weeks a year as they moved between summer and winter grounds. In the 1833 Treaty of Chicago they ceded the land to the United States, which bought it for about 15 cents an acre and resold it to white settlers for $1.25. Potawatomi who returned to honor their ancestors found their old villages and burial sites destroyed for farming, and their descendants now live on a reservation in Mayetta, Kansas.
More about Arlington Heights
Rand Road and Arlington Heights Road follow old Native trails. Frederick T. Miner set up a trading post in the township, and the cabins near it became known as West Wheeling. In 1837 Asa Dunton, who built one of the first cabins at Deer Grove, registered land claims for himself and two sons, and in 1845 his son William brought his bride, Almeda Wood, to a house he built beside the Potawatomi trail, which became Dunton's Road and is now Arlington Heights Road. West Wheeling became known as Dunton, and William Dunton persuaded the Illinois and Wisconsin Railroad to build through his land, selling it 16 acres in 1853. After several name changes the town officially became Arlington Heights in 1874.
Sources
Wikipedia: Arlington Heights, Illinois