At Morrow Island the American Bottom is broken by the Mississippi River, and on the west side of the Mississippi River the alluvial plain continues as the "Le Grande Champ" or Big Field Bottom, which includes Kaskaskia Island.

South of Kaskaskia Island the alluvial flood plain continues on as the Bois Brule Bottom.

In the late 1770s and 1780s, remnants of the Illinois Nation, the Peoria tribe, left the east bank of the Mississippi River to escape British and American oppression, with some settling in New Ste.

A number of Métis and French colonial communities had been established just to the north of Bois Brule Bottom: Kaskaskia, Ste.

[2] The American Catholics chose to live separately from the French and Creoles in the district, and many had left the bottoms by 1820.

The land was level with thick gluey soil, which led to bayous, mosquitos, chills, malaria, typhoid and brain fever, to name a few of the maladies.

[11] In 1804 ownership of the territory of Upper Louisiana was transferred to the United States, and by the 1820s American settlers began pouring into the region.

Under French and Spanish colonial administration, each settler was required to build and maintain levees on his land.