Rather than renewing calls for a traditional approach to forest management that incorporated cultural burning, a traumatized U.S. Lake says that on one tragic day, 78 firefighters were killed by the blaze. Known as the “Big Blowup” or simply the “Great Fires of 1910,” this multi-state conflagration consumed more than 3 million acres and leveled entire towns. The answer came in 1910 with one of the largest wildfires in American history. “The question was, ‘Do we burn like the heathen Indians or do we protect our forests and timber interests?’” says Lake. Opponents of light-burning dubbed it “Paiute forestry,” meant as an insulting reference to the Paiute Indians of Nevada and California. In the early 20th century, some forestry scientists were calling for a return to the Indigenous practices of “light-burning” to keep fuel supplies low. The trouble with fire suppression laws is that they create a buildup of “fuel” in the forests, fallen trees and drought-ridden undergrowth that feed and spread a wildfire.
#INDIAN BURN SERIES#
Throughout the late-19th and early 20th century, millions of acres were destroyed by a series of deadly wildfires, many caused by sparks thrown from the new transcontinental railroad.
Not everyone agreed that outlawing cultural and other controlled burns was best for America’s forests. “Europe had thousands of years of agriculture and they used fire very widely, but it was a mark of ‘primitivism.’ To be modern and rational, you had to find an alternative to fire.” “Europe’s elites treated their own farmers and pastoralists and their knowledge of fire with the same disdain,” says Pyne. Successive waves of colonists brought the same dismissive attitude toward the benefits of controlled burns, even though European farmers and herdsmen had practiced it for centuries.
“With attention to the widespread damage which results to the public from burning of the fields, customary up to now among both the Christian and Gentile Indians in this country, whose childishness has been unduly tolerated,” wrote Don José Joaquín de Arrillaga, “I see myself required to have the foresight to prohibit for the future…, if it be necessary, of the rigors of the law all kinds of burnings, not only in the vicinity of the towns, but even at the most remote distances … o uproot this very harmful practice of setting fire to pastureland.” Other tribes used fire to herd grasshoppers, a tasty delicacy. These prairie fires-miles-long conflagrations that raged across dry grasslands-were an effective way to drive large herds of buffalo in a desired direction. The tribes of the northern Great Plains were some of the few to light very large fires rather than smaller, contained burns. And in the spring, they’d light fires in the woods to push the animals back into the prairie. In the fall, they’d burn the grass to drive animals back into the woods where the tribe overwintered. For example, some tribes would open up patches of grassland inside forested landscapes that drew herds of deer and elk to the protein-rich new growth every spring.
It’s well-established that native peoples used fire to both drive and attract game herds. READ MORE: Why America's Deadliest Wildfire Is Largely Forgotten Multiple Different Uses of Indigenous FireĪnthropologists have identified at least 70 different uses of fire among Indigenous and aboriginal peoples, including clearing travel routes, long-distance signaling, reducing pest populations like rodents and insects, and hunting. “When you prescribe it, you’re getting the right dose to maintain the abundance of productivity of all ecosystem services to support the ecology in your culture.” “ links back to the tribal philosophy of fire as medicine,” says Lake. While those types of natural fires have always existed, Indigenous people have also practiced what’s known as “cultural burning,” the intentional lighting of smaller, controlled fires to provide a desired cultural service, such as promoting the health of vegetation and animals that provide food, clothing, ceremonial items and more. The hugely destructive seasonal wildfires that consume millions of acres of forest across the Western United States every year are mostly triggered when lightning strikes a stand of trees that’s dangerously dry from late-summer heat or drought. Thick smoke from multiple forest fires shrouds iconic El Capitan, right, and the granite walls of Yosemite Valley on Septemin Yosemite National Park, California.īrian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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