The Hidden Kalapuya Mounds of the Willamette Valley

Hidden across the Willamette Valley are ancient mounds most people never notice.They hold the story of a people—and a landscape—long changed. Beneath the fields and forests of the Willamette Valley lies a hidden history, one most people pass without ever seeing. Scattered across the landscape are quiet mounds—subtle rises in the earth that preserve traces of lives lived here for thousands of years. They are not monuments, but the remains of daily life: cooking fires, tools, food, and the rhythms of a people who knew this land intimately. Long before farms, towns, and roads, the valley was home to the Kalapuya. They shaped the land through knowledge passed down over generations—tending prairies, harvesting camas, and using fire to sustain a rich, balanced ecosystem. But in the early 1800s, that world began to disappear. Disease, displacement, and settlement changed the valley forever. This film tells the story of those changes—and of Chief Alquema, a Kalapuya leader who witnessed the loss of his people and homeland. Today, the land is still here. And if you know where to look, it still remembers. Researchers are now using technologies like LiDAR to uncover these hidden sites, revealing how people once lived across the valley. In this video: • History of the Kalapuya people • Oak savannas of the Willamette Valley • Camas harvesting and earth ovens • Archaeological research in the Calapooia watershed • How LiDAR reveals hidden landscapes • The story behind the valley’s mounds Sources and historical references include: • Gustavus Hines • Pierre-Jean De Smet • John Kirk Townsend • Wallis Nash • David Douglas • William Clark • Meriwether Lewis Research Credits Cody, Tia Rachelle, "LiDAR Predictive Modeling of Kalapuya Mound Sites in the Calapooia Watershed, Oregon" (2019). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 4863. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.6739 Music Credits Cylinder Five by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...