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Indian fire use: deflating the legend

Authors:
F
or many years, the importance
of fire use by American Indians
in altering North American
ecosystems was underappreciated
or ignored. Now, there seems to be
an opposite trend, as exemplified in
the pages of Fire Management
Today (Summer 2004, volume
64[3]).* It is common now to read
or hear statements to the effect
that American Indians fired land-
scapes everywhere and all the time,
so there is no such thing as a “nat-
ural” ecosystem. A myth of human
manipulation everywhere in pre-
Columbus America is replacing the
equally erroneous myth of a totally
pristine wilderness.
We believe that it is time to deflate
the rapidly spreading myth that
American Indians altered all land-
scapes by means of fire. In short,
we believe that the case for land-
scape-level fire use by American
Indians has been dramatically over-
stated and overextrapolated.
Scant Historical
Record
Early-day accounts by Euro-
Americans provide a weak basis for
interpreting precontact Indian cul-
tures. As Williams (2004) points out
in Fire Management Today,
“European explorers and settlers
rarely saw or understood the cause-
Volume 65 • No. 3 • Summer 2005
31
Stephen W. Barrett is a consulting fire
ecologist based in Kalispell, MT; Thomas W.
Swetnam is a Professor of Dendrochronology
at the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ,
and Director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring
Research at the university; and William L.
Baker is a Professor of Geography at the
University of Wyoming, Laramie WY.
INDIAN FIRE USE:
D
EFLATING THE LEGEND
Stephen W. Barrett, Thomas W. Swetnam, William L. Baker
The case for landscape-level fire use by American
Indians in all parts of North America has been
dramatically overstated.
Lightning activity over the town of Thompson, Manitoba, Canada, where extreme weather
conditions sparked a number of wildfires in 2003. In presettlement times, did lightning
fires maintain most fire regimes in the West—or was it fires set by American Indians?
Photo: Ministry of Natural Resources, Fire Management Centre, Dryden, ON 2003.
* The Summer 2004 issue of Fire Management Today (volume 64[3]) contains several articles on fire use by
American Indians: Karl Brauneis, “Fire Use During the Great Sioux War,” pp. 4–9; Gerald W. Williams, “American
Indian Fire Use in the Arid West,” pp. 10–14; Jon E. Keeley, “American Indian Influence on Fire Regimes in
California’s Coastal Ranges,” pp. 15–16; and Hutch Brown, “Reports of American Indian Fire Use in the East,”
pp. 17–22.
Fire Management Today
32
and-effect relationships between tra-
ditional Indian land use practices and
the landscapes they found.” Clearly,
their anecdotal vignettes were often
heavily biased (Baker 2002). They do
not bear out Williams’ (2004) sweep-
ing assertions that:
“ecological impacts were exten-
sive,”
“Indians carefully chose where
and when to burn,”
“most of the acres burned were
[likely] due to Indian-set fires,”
and
“[i]t seems highly unlikely that
the extensive fire effects observed
in the presettlement West, espe-
cially at lower elevations, can be
attributed to lightning.”
Such general assertions are based
on a scant historical record.
Williams (2004) repeats Pyne’s
(1982) overgeneralization that “the
modification of the American conti-
nent by fire at the hands of
[American Indians] was the result of
repeated, controlled surface burns
on a cycle of one to three years.”
The certitude and vast geographic
sweep of this statement (“the
American continent”) is unjustified.
The vast majority of written and
oral accounts by Euro-Americans
are not dispassionate observations
of the presettlement West, but
rather anecdotes fraught with
uncertainty, subjective opinion, and
bias (Baker 2002). For instance,
many early travelers evidently did
not recognize lightning as a major
cause of fires in the West, and
many Euro-Americans might have
therefore erroneously attributed
fires to Indians, or perhaps they did
so out of racism (Bahre 1994; Kaye
and Swetnam 1999).
Most oral history and biological evi-
dence of Indian fire use has been
irretrievably lost with the passage
of time (Baker 2002; Barrett and
Arno 1999; Kaye and Swetnam
1999). What little remains seems
woefully inadequate for deriving
the overly broad conclusions pre-
sented by Williams (2002, 2004)
and Pyne (1982).
Physical Record
We prefer to address the issue from
scientific and ecological perspec-
tives. To date, we have conducted
the only studies that provide statis-
tically based empirical data from
tree rings to supplement informa-
tion from oral and written accounts
(Barrett and Arno 1982; Kaye and
Swetnam 1999). The evidence cer-
tainly suggests that both purposeful
and unintentional burning by
American Indians occurred in par-
ticular places and times, but not on
scales as extensive or as continuous
as some would suggest.
Burning occurred in some locales,
apparently with some predictability,
such as in well-traveled valleys of
the Northern Rockies (Barrett and
Arno 1982, 1999). However, Indian
fires might have been less frequent
in other areas, even those dominat-
ed by ponderosa pine forests.
In the dry ponderosa forests of the
Southwest, for example, purposeful
burning seems to have been highly
localized and unpredictable (Kaye
and Swetnam 1999; Swetnam and
Baisan 1996; Swetnam and others
2001). Moreover, purposeful burn-
ing was probably rare to absent in
wet or cold forest types, where cli-
mate seems to be the limiting fac-
tor for fire regimes (Agee 1993;
Baker 2003; Barrett and others
1991; Buechling and Baker 2004;
Johnson and Larsen 1991).
Role of Lightning
Lightning fires, including onsite
ignitions and fires spreading from
other areas, were well capable of
maintaining most fire regimes in
the West.* In remote locations in
the Southwest and adjacent areas in
Mexico, for example, fire history
studies have found no perceptible
decline in fire frequency after the
removal of American Indians in the
late 1800s (Swetnam and others
2001). In those landscapes, lightning
fires continued to burn well into the
20th century, particularly in areas
without intensive livestock grazing
and organized fire suppression.
Even where onsite ignitions were
rare, free-ranging (and potentially
long-burning) lightning fires pre-
sumably contributed to many site
fire histories. Because modern soci-
ety has little experience with
unhindered fires, some writers
seem to incorrectly assume that
* Although Barrett and Arno (1982) might have inadver-
tently contributed to the “inadequate lightning” myth,
those authors were referring only to lightning potential
in the context of wilderness restoration.
The vast majority of written and oral accounts on
Indian fire use are anecdotes fraught with
uncertainty, subjective opinion, and bias.
Lightning fires, including
onsite ignitions and
lightning fires spreading
from other areas,
were well capable of
maintaining most fire
regimes in the West.
Volume 65 • No. 3 • Summer 2005
33
site fire history depended on local
ignition sources.
Contrary Evidence
If Indian fire use was indeed ubiq-
uitous, how does one explain the
broad mix of presettlement fire
regimes (Arno 1980; Agee 1993;
Barrett and Arno 1999; Swetnam
and Baisan 1996)? In the Inland
Northwest, for example, up to 10
different regimes have been identi-
fied (Barrett 2004; Morgan and oth-
ers 1998). Clearly, presettlement
fires ranged from low-severity
underburns to high-severity crown
fires, and site fire frequencies
ranged from less than 10 years to
greater than 500 years.
In our view, writers such as
Williams (2002, 2004) and Pyne
(1982) often create the misimpres-
sion that Indians burned every last
acre of the West. Consider, for
instance, the suggestive title of
Williams’ (2002) article, “Aboriginal
Use of Fire: Are There Any ‘Natural’
Plant Communities?” Yet most
early-day accounts suggest that
Indian fire use occurred largely in
grasslands and adjacent dry forests.
For perspective, consider that dry
forest types comprise only about 25
percent of the forested terrain in
the Northern Rockies (Barrett
2004). The remainder supported
widely varying forest structure,
composition, and fire regimes, with
scant evidence of Indian-set fires.
Speculative Venture
Empirical evidence might allow us
to infer which ecosystems and
which geographic locales might
have been most affected by Indian-
set fires. However, the ecological
evidence suggests that such fires
were probably rare or absent in
many areas.
Fire practices also likely differed
among tribes. Factors influencing
fire use probably included environ-
mental variables (such as vegeta-
tion types and climate change),
evolving lifeways (for example,
before and after the acquisition of
horses), shifting tribal territories,
and demographic changes (such as
depopulation by disease).
Regrettably, most accounts of
Indian fire use are vignettes allow-
ing little more than speculation
about the spatial and temporal
scales of burning (Baker 2002).
Consequently, describing Indians’
role in presettlement fire regimes
will remain a highly speculative
venture for ecologists and histori-
ans alike.
References
Agee, J.K. 1993. Fire ecology of Pacific
Northwest forests. Washington, DC:
Island Press.
Bahre, C.J. 1985. Wildfire in southeastern
Arizona between 1859 and 1890. Desert
Plants. 7: 190–194.
Baker, W.L. 2002. Indians and fire in the
Rocky Mountains: The wilderness hypoth-
esis renewed. In: Vale, T.R.(ed.). Fire,
native peoples, and the natural landscape.
Washington, DC: Island Press: 41–76.
Baker, W.L. 2003. Fires and climate in
forested landscapes of the U.S. Rocky
Mountains. In: Veblen, T.T.; Baker, W.L.;
Montenegro, G.; Swetnam, T.W. (eds.).
Fire and climate change in temperate
ecosystems of the western Americas.
Ecol. Studies 160. New York: Springer-
Verlag: 120–157.
Barrett, S.W. 2004. Fire regimes in the
Northern Rockies. Fire Management
Today. 64(2): 32–38.
Barrett, S.W.; Arno, S.F. 1982. Indian fires
as an ecological influence in the
Northern Rockies. Journal of Forestry.
80(10): 647–650.
Barrett, S.W.; Arno, S. F. 1999. Indian fires
in the Northern Rockies: Ethnohistory
and ecology. In: Boyd, R.T. (ed.). Indians,
fire and land in the Pacific Northwest.
Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University
Press: 50–64.
Barrett, S.W.; Arno, S.F.; Key, C.H. 1991.
Fire regimes of western larch–lodgepole
pine forests in Glacier National Park,
Montana. Canadian Journal of Forest
Research. 21: 1711–1720.
Bessie, W.C.; Johnson, E.A. 1995. The rela-
tive importance of fuels and weather on
fire behavior in subalpine forests.
Ecology. 76: 747–762.
Buechling, A.; Baker, W.L. 2004. A fire his-
tory from tree rings in a high-elevation
forest of Rocky Mountain National Park.
Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 34:
1259–1273.
Johnson, E.A.; Larsen, C.P.S. 1991.
Climatically induced change in fire fre-
quency in the southern Canadian
Rockies. Ecology. 7(1): 194–201.
Kaye, M.W.; Swetnam, T.W. 1999. An assess-
ment of fire, climate, and Apache history
in the Sacramento Mountains, New
Mexico. Physical Geography. 20(4):
305–330.
Pyne, S.J. 1982. Fire in America: A cultural
history of wildland and rural fire.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Morgan, P.; Bunting, S.; Black, A.; Merril,
T.; Barrett, S.W. 1998. Fire regimes in the
Interior Columbia River Basin: Past and
present. In: Fire management under fire
(adapting to change). Proceedings of the
Interior West Fire Council Meeting and
Program; 1–4 November 1994; Coeur
d’Alene, ID. Fairfield, WA: International
Association of Wildland Fire: 77–82.
Swetnam, T.W.; Baisan, C.H. 1996.
Historical fire regime patterns in the
Southwestern United States since A.D.
1700. In: Allen, C.D. (ed.). Fire effects in
southwestern forests. Proceedings of the
Second La Mesa Fire Symposium; 29–31
March 1994; Los Alamos, NM. Gen. Tech.
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Fire—Southern Oscillation relations in
the Southwestern United States. Science.
249: 1017–1020.
Swetnam, T.W.; Baisan, C.H.; Kaib, J.M.
2001. Forest fire histories in the sky
islands of La Frontera. In: Webster, G.L.;
Bahre, C.J. (eds.). Changing plant life of
La Frontera: Observations on vegetation
in the United States/Mexico borderlands.
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Mexico Press: 95–119.
Describing the Indian role in presettlement fire
regimes will remain a highly speculative venture
for ecologists and historians alike.
Fire Management Today
34
Williams, G.W. 2002. Aboriginal use of fire:
Are there any “natural” plant communi-
ties? In: Kay, C. (ed.). Wilderness and
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Williams, G.W. 2004. American Indian fire
use in the arid West. Fire Management
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Additional Reading
Editor’s note: The following works also pertain to the debate over practices and
ecological impacts associated with fire use by American Indians.
Boyd, R., ed. Indians, fire, and the land in the Pacific Northwest.
Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press.
Lewis, H.T.; Ferguson, T.A. 1988. Yards, corridors, and mosaics:
How to burn a boreal forest. Human Ecology. 16(1): 57–77.
Stewart, O. 2002. Forgotten fires: Native Americans and the tran-
sient wilderness. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
Pyne, S. 2001. Fire: A brief history. Seattle, WA: University of
Washington Press.
Pyne, S. 2003. Review of Thomas Vale, ed., Fire, Native Peoples,
and the Natural Landscape. Restoration Ecology. 11(2): 257–259.
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IntroductionScale in EcologySome Implications of Scale in Historical EcologyScales in Time and Space InteractConclusions: Dealing with ScaleCoda: Scaling Conservation and Management in a Changing WorldReferences
Article
The importance of fire as an ecological disturbance in the Northern Rockies is well accepted. Lightning is generally thought to have been the main source of ignition prior to settlement by Europeans. But writings of explorers and pioneers mention deliberate burning by Indians frequently enough to warrant an investigation of its importance. Interviews with descendants of Native Americans and of pioneer settlers in western Montana suggest that Indian burning was widespread, had many purposes, but was generally unsystematic. Fire chronologies based upon scars on old-growth trees indicate that fire intervals within similar forest types were shortest near Indian-use zones. Comparisons of presettlement fire intervals with those calculated from modern lightning-fire records suggest that Indian-caused fires substantially augmented lightning fires over large areas. As dependence on lightning fires alone may not create or perpetuate certain desirable plant communities or stand conditions, prescribed burning may be needed.
Fires and climate in forested landscapes of the U.S. Rocky Mountains Fire and climate change in temperate ecosystems of the western Americas
  • W L Baker
  • T T Veblen
  • W L Baker
  • G Montenegro
  • T W Swetnam
Baker, W.L. 2003. Fires and climate in forested landscapes of the U.S. Rocky Mountains. In: Veblen, T.T.; Baker, W.L.; Montenegro, G.; Swetnam, T.W. (eds.). Fire and climate change in temperate ecosystems of the western Americas. Ecol. Studies 160. New York: Springer-Verlag: 120–157