The large field to the east was a plant collection site for Native Americans.
Prior to exploration of the Pacific Northwest region by Euro-Americans, the land was home to a multitude of native peoples. Numbered in the tens of thousands, there were nearly 100 different bands and tribes. The Kalapuya occupied the central Willamette Valley, and each band usually had a permanent camp along a river that was a tributary of the Willamette. The Chepenefa band of the Kalapuya occupied the Marys River watershed. The Kalapuya were hunter-gatherers who followed the cycles of the seasons gathering plant and animal resources that were abundant in the valley.
The seasonal cycle of hunting and gathering continued for thousands of years. Euro-American explorers and trappers arriving in the 18th Century unknowingly brought diseases against which the Native people had no immunity. Throughout the Oregon Territory, Native people were seriously affected by smallpox and malaria as early as the 1780s, nearly half a century before the arrival of Euro-American settlers.
This series of epidemics decimated the Kalapuya population and allowed some of the Klickitat, who normally lived in the Columbia River Region, to migrate south. By the time early Euro-American settlers reached the current Benton County area, they found limited numbers of both Kalapuya and Klickitats in the region. Their numbers and strength diminished, the Native people posed little resistance to the pioneers.
Later, the Kalapuya People occupied the Willamette Valley. The Kalapuya diet included camas, acorns, wapato, mammals, waterfowl, and other native plant species. These early People regularly burned the valleys to limit the intrusion of local conifers and hardwoods. Fire managed the valley's flora in sub-climax grasslands and oak groves to encourage the growth of food plants: camas, tarweed, white oaks; and tool and basket plants: hazel, rushes, and bear grass. Burning also provided better forage for game animals, better hunting, travel routes, and lowered fuel loads to reduce catastrophic wild fires. When early Euro-Americans reached this area, they found a managed landscape with clear land for crops and livestock pastures, abundantly rich soils, a mild climate, and abundant water.