This study incorporates interests relating to history and anthropology, having as a starting point a certainty and a confirmation. The certainty has to do with the fact that historical explanations about the formation of a certain area or region must incorporate in their discourse the Indian people and their contexts; the confirmation relates to the irrelevance given to the construction of a history of the Indians in the 'Campos de Araraquara' (Araraquara Fields). Aiming at contributing to the study of the proto-historical and historical human settling in the so called 'Campos', this paper studies and analyses the historical, bibliographical, archaeological and ecological information relating to the area under study and to the Indian population which inhabited it. In this sense, a vast range of documents was analysed, including historical documentation left by agents of the colonial administration, chroniclers, travellers, priests and explorers, which, between the XVII and XIX centuries carried out their jobs in the region; bibliographical information pertaining to the regional historiography and data about 'paulista' archaeology in general and of the 'Campos de Araraquara' in particular, were also analysed. This area, geographically situated in the interior of the current state of São Paulo and bound by the rivers Tietê, Mogi-Guaçu, Grande and Paraná, is herein considered an area subject to investigation, due to the manner of its appearance in the documentation and São Paulo state cartography from the XVII to the XIX centuries. As a geographical area or physical space where human adaptation occurs, this region does not present an ecological homogeneity, but shows a variety of interlinked ecosystems, which include forests and 'cerrado' (a Brazilian type of vegetation: meadows covered with bushes and small trees with twisted branches). This led to the evaluation and verification that the human populations of the colonial and pre-colonial periods, developed adaptive strategies linked to exploration and management of a variety of resources. From the point of view of anthropology, a study of the archaeological writings and documents, confirmed by ethnographical projections, allowed for the discovery of clues, marks or signs that lead to the understanding of this area as a transit area and area of occupation for Indian people of different cultures. From the lithic vestiges, associated to groups that are exclusively hunters-collectors-fishermen to the ceramic vestiges of agriculture groups, the data points to the occupation of groups associated to the central and meridian traditions. In the historical sources, any mention of Indian peoples in the area does not appear in a different form, indicating the occupation and transit of different ethnical groups. While discussing the context of these different historical, ecological and archaeological registers, the study maps out this occupation, re-evaluating mistakes and distortions in the regional historiography.