The earliest excavations at the Brazil Site were done to save the human remains from being destroyed.

The Native Californians who occupied the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta during prehistoric times built their villages and camps on high ground, above the water. From here they could go out to fish, hunt, and collect seeds and other plant foods, according to the season. The archaeological remains of some of these prehistoric villages and camps have been found on the delta islands and on the banks of neighboring rivers.

One of these riverbank sites is CA-SAC-43, the Brazil Mound. During the prehistoric period, the site would have been situated on the higher ground along the Sacramento River, where the river makes a sharp bend. This area, now surrounded by housing developments and agricultural fields, must once have been near the boundary between delta marshland, riparian forest, oak woodland, grassland, and open river. This means that many kinds of food and other resources would have been available to the people who lived at the Brazil Site.

Even before they dug the basement for their house in 1924, Manuel Brazil and his family knew that the land they had purchased in a rural farming area on the north bank of the Sacramento River contained the remains of a prehistoric village. The soil here was a midden - black and rich and filled with artifacts of bone, stone, and shell. As they were to discover, the site was not only a village, but an ancient burial ground, as well. Once they began excavations for the basement, the Brazils found one Native American burial and then another, until they had removed the remains of seven people from the small area. After the house was built, the family planted fruit trees and shrubs around it, but the site remained otherwise undisturbed for more than a decade.

Then, in 1939, Manuel Brazil decided to expand the family house. Knowing that this work might disturb more of the human burials and artifacts, he asked archaeologists from nearby Sacramento Junior College to carry out a scientific study of the mound. A young instructor named Franklin Fenenga agreed to bring a field school of his students to excavate at the Brazil Site that fall. Archaeologists, students, and volunteers worked for over a month to remove more than 70 human burials. They made careful records for each, describing the body's position in the burial pit

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