French Prairie

French Prairie is located in Marion County, Oregon, United States, in the Willamette Valley between the Willamette River and the Pudding River, north of Salem. The prairie area roughly corresponds to the traditional land of the Kalapuya people much decimated by pandemics during the 1830s. The fertile land would become highly contended for. The area was subsequently named after some of the earliest settlers of that part of the Oregon Country, French Canadian/Métis people who were mostly former employees of the Hudson's Bay Company. "French Prairie" naming was first captured in writing in the early 1850s by a French Consul to California visiting Oregon. Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant referred to the area as "les prairies françaises". French Prairie is also known as an early Métis settlement in the Pacific Northwest history.