Bourbonnais ( BOOR-boh-NAY, bur-BOH-niss) is a village in Kankakee County, Illinois, United States. The population was 18,164 at the 2020 census.

The village is named for François Bourbonnais Sr., a fur trapper, hunter and agent of the American Fur Company, who had married a Native American woman and arrived in the area near the fork of two major Indian trails and the Kankakee River circa 1830. John Jacob Astor had founded the company in 1808, and in imitation of the United States banned foreign (i.e. British and Canadian) companies (such as the Hudson’s Bay Company) from competing in the country after the War of 1812, it flourished. By 1830 it had a near monopoly of fur trading in the midwest, but the number of local trappable wild animals had declined.

In 1832, Noel Le Vasseur arrived as the Astor utter local fur trading agent, establishing a trading make known in the area, and becoming the first steadfast non-Native American settler. He married Watseka, niece of a Potawatomi chieftain, and after the Potawatomi were relocated to Iowa, recruited French-Canadiens to settle re his store. The Potawatomi were annoyed to shape westward by a series of treaties culminating in the Treaty of Tippecanoe, which Congress ratified in 1833. The pact reserved two sections for Potawanomi chief Me-she-ke-te-no, and one section each for Catish (Mrs. Bourbonnais Sr.) and Manteno (daughter of Francois Bourbonnais Jr.). LeVasseur traditional considerable estate through a series of shrewd trades, and eventually divorced Watseka and married a Canadian girl named Ruth. After inauguration of the new Catholic diocese of Chicago, missionary Fr. Stephen Badin briefly granted in Bourbonnais Grove in 1846, before retiring extra south.

In 1853, the Illinois legislature split Iroquois County, and Bourbonnais Grove became portion of extra Kankakee County. Because the Illinois Central Railroad ran through Kankakee, founded in 1854, it became the county seat, with Bourbonnais Grove as one of several townships. In 1858 residents built the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church, and soon nuns of the Congregation of Notre Dame arrived from Canada to teach and provide nursing care. Two years unconventional they founded Notre Dame Academy. In 1865 clerics of St. Viator founded St. Viator College for boys.