Excavations on the southwest corner found that several large ceremonial buildings had burned around AD 1150. Next, a small mound and a new building on top were erected above this and rebuilt eight times over the next 100 years, creating the visible rise at the corner. In the 1730s, French priests built a chapel at this location for the Cahokia subtribe of the Illiniwek (Illinois) nation, who had come to this area in the early 1600s, long after the site had been abandoned. Several were buried near the chapel with French trade goods, and they apparently had a village on this First Terrace from about 1735-1752.