La Main Cassee, known as "The Broken Hand," was a fearless Sauk chief and a true friend of the American cause during the Revolutionary War. His village occupied these and adjacent grounds and withstood a British war party on its way to attack General George Rogers Clark in 1779. In 1780, the Sauk and Fox villages here were burned by Colonel John Montgomery with an allied army of Americans and Spaniards in the westernmost campaign of the Revolutionary War.