An unofficial mission statement posted on the museum's website says that it "offers visitors an adventure in 18th century history, when the 'Illinois Country' was home to French voyageurs and native Potawatomi.

"[1] The Des Plaines River island where this museum is built was used in the 18th century, prior to active occupation of the land by the new United States of America, by French-speaking Chicago-area coureurs de bois as a place to camp, store, and exchange goods used in the North American fur trade.

The technologies used by Native Americans and their fur-trader visitors to hunt, fish, grow crops, and obtain furs and pelts are the focus of the museum.

Many of the furs bought and sold here were stored in caches; when enough of them were gathered they would be tied into bales and sent by canoe to Montreal or southward, down the Des Plaines and Illinois, to New Orleans.

[1] Today's Isle a la Cache Museum includes reconstructions of the longhouses and other camp structures that once housed trade participants here.