The modern day Village of Montour Falls is developed on the site of a former Seneca Indian village, Queanettquaga, informally known as Catherine's Town after a prominent Seneca Indian resident and leader, Queen Catharine Montour. Queen Catharine Montour's father (Peter Quebec) was a Mohawk Chief, and her mother (Margaret Montour Hunter) the daughter of an Oneida Chief. She would marry Seneca Indian Chief Thomas Htitson. Queen Catharine Montour's Seneca Tribe was a member of the Iroquois Confederacy. During America's War of Independence reprisals were sanctioned against tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy who had allied themselves with Great Britain. The infamous nearby Battle of Newtown, New York (August 1779) and the march that devastated Queanettquaga (and forty other Amerindian villages of the Finger Lakes) is known as the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition. In addition to burning Queen Catharine Montour's log palace, orchards were cut down, homes destroyed, livestock murdered and cropland salted. Residents of Catharine's Town dispersed to areas as far away as Niagara and Canada. Queen Catharine Montour (b. 1710, died February 20, 1804) is memorialized by a grave mound located on her namesake Catharine Trail within the Montour Falls village limits.