Weanling Colt

In the historic era, the area of the Willamette Valley that makes up modern-day Albany was inhabited by one of the tribes of the Kalapuya a Penutian-speaking, Native American people. The Kalapuya had named the area Takenah, a Kalapuyan word used to describe the deep pool at the confluence of the Calapooia and Willamette rivers. A variation of the place name can also be written as Tekenah. The Kalapuya population in the valley was between 4,000 and 20,000 before contact with Europeans, but they suffered high mortality from new infectious diseases introduced shortly afterward. The tribes were decimated by a smallpox epidemic that raged through the Pacific Northwest in 1782–83.