Le Grand Champ (French for "the big field") is an alluvial floodplain, also called a bottom, extending along the Mississippi River in Ste.

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 Grand Champ" or Big Field Bottom, which includes Kaskaskia Island.

Le Grand Champ was so named because it served as the main common agricultural land for Old Ste.

[3] At the time of European contact the most prominent Native American nation in the area were the Illiniwek who inhabited much of present-day Illinois and eastern Missouri.

This manner of land distribution was common in medieval Europe, and became the private possession of the individual holder.

[6] A number of crops were cultivated in the field: corn, pumpkins, wheat, oats, barley, flax, cotton, and tobacco.

Lacking steel implements, most of the farmers let their crops simply compete with weeds until harvest time.

The French welcomed Shawnee and Delaware tribes from Ohio and Indiana to settle south of Le Grand Champ in present-day Perry County to serve as a buffer against the Osage.

It was said that the Osage did not meet their match until American immigrants arrived, who regarded shooting Indians as being somewhat akin to squirrel hunting.

[7][8] Flooding has been a constant concern of the residents of Le Grand Champ Bottom ever since settlement began.

However, the size of the cultivated field is estimated to have consisted of roughly three thousand acres of tillable land.