Fire Science -- U.S. History

Fire Science -- U.S. History

"Life creates oxygen, life creates combustibles, and life, through the agency of humanity, overwhelmingly creates the sparks of ignition" (Pyne, 2007).

Pyne goes on, in terms of what historical research is available on fire science, "There is almost no intellectual history of fire after the Enlightenment." There is "…almost no inquiry into fire as an organizing device for the human occupation of the planet" (Payne p. 273). The reason for this dearth of detail, Payne asserts, is that "There is no discipline of fire, so fire occupies nooks and crannies in other fields… [and yet] fire scholarship deserves better," Pyne continues (275). "We are uniquely fire creatures on a uniquely fire planet" (275).

Pyne's disappointment over the lack of available material on fire science notwithstanding, what is available vis-a-vis the history of fire science in the United States begins with the first known peoples to use fire -- the Native Americans. The Forest Encyclopedia (FE) traces the use of fire by Native Americans to the period of 12,500 -- 10,500 BP when the Clovis peoples used fire to hunt and produce "megafauna" (http://fire.forestencyclopedia.net). The Paleo-Indian peoples used fire for hunting (10,500 -- 9,500 BP) and Archaic Native Peoples used fire, according to the Forest Encyclopedia, between the periods 8,000 -- 2,800 BP, for hunting, clearing their fields, and maintaining "ecotones." Woodland peoples (2,800 -- 1,300 BP) prepared seed beds to encourage pioneer species through the use of fire, and the Mississippian Native Peoples used fire to clear their corn (maize) fields in the period 1,300 -- 400 BP ("BP" is "Before Present").

Gerald W. Williams, Historical Analyst with the USDA Forest Service, has published a volume of work titled "Aboriginal Use of Fire: Are There Any 'Natural' Plant Communities?" which is a valuable resource in this research. Other sources that are helpful and accurate will be used as well.

Williams writes that by the time the Europeans arrived on the North American continent, including fur traders, explorers and settlers seeking religious freedom from the oppressive Church of England, "millions of acres of 'natural' landscapes or 'wilderness' were already manipulated and maintained for human use" (Williams p. 3). Those maintained acres were not recognized by the first visitors, it is clear from accounts written by settlers; they saw "many dead trees 'littering' the landscape, Williams reports, but they did not realize the Indians had been managing their land through the use of fire science (controlled burns) for centuries.

On page 4 Williams quotes author and respected naturalist Daniel B. Botkin: "The Native Americans had three powerful technologies: fire, the ability to work wood into useful objects, and the bow and arrow. To claim that people with these technologies did not or could not create major changes in natural ecosystems can be taken as Western civilization's ignorance, chauvinism, and old prejudice against primitivism -- the noble but dumb savage."

Williams argues that "most" studies on how Indians used fire methods (fire science Native American style) are incomplete due to: lack of instances of ecosystem changes; lack of information on what tribe initiated fire and for what specific reason; "ignore (don't account for) regional/tribal variations in the use of fire"; rely on "hearsay or third party accounts"; did not specify the exact location of the fire.

That having been said, Williams has gathered an impressive volume of data from what he believes are reliable records; he writes (5) that Pacific Coast Indians "…rarely used fires in the ecosystems they were living" because their food came in large part from the Pacific Ocean. Still, "tribes set fires that…were not destructive of entire forests or ecosystems, relatively easy to control, and designed to encourage new growth of plant species" (Williams p. 6).

Williams quotes from sources that insist Indians didn't do anything specifically with reference to fire science, and from other sources (like professor / author Steve Pyne, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, whose writing was quoted earlier in this paper): Native Americans modified the North American Continent through the "…repeated, controlled, surface burns on a cycle of one to three years" (Williams quoting Pyne p. 6). Those planned fires occasionally got away from the Natives, Pyne writes, causing "occasional holocausts from escape fires and periodic conflagrations during times of drought" (p. 6). "Burned corpses on the prairie were far from rare," Pyne goes on. And the professor, who is one of the most respected fire science experts in America, asserts, "So extensive were the cumulative effects of these modifications that it may be said that the general consequence of the Indian occupation of the New World was to replace forested land with grassland or savannah"; at the very lease the Native Americans wished to "free [the forest] from underbrush," Pyne explains.

Meanwhile Williams (p. 8) references first person accounts ("by early settlers") about the cultural use of fire by the Kalapuya Tribe in the Willamette Valley. "…The Indians would set fire and burn off one side of the valley in the fall of each year," a settler is quoted (Williams uses research by historian John M. Cornutt). Continuing the account:

"This [the annual fires] kept the brush from crowding in and the streams open.

After they would fire in the fall, the squaws would get out and pick tarweed [madia] seed, which they were very fond of. The tarweed grew about two and a halve feet tall and would still be standing after the fire. The squaws would beat the seeds off into their baskets. Then they would grind them into a meal with mortar and pestle. They also beat the seeds to a pulp and made them into a mush, which they relished" (Cornutt 1971: 36).

Williams also quotes Robert Clark, an Indian historian, who also wrote about the Kalapuya Indians in the Willamette Valley. Clark discussed the Kalapuya's strategy of hunting by strategically disguising themselves in deer hides and rubbing sticks together, so the deer would be fooled and hence harvested. Clark alludes to the arrival of the Europeans with guns that made the deer much less tame and forced the Kalapuya to use fire to hunt deer. In 1814, the Kalapuya began burning the prairies forcing the deer "to graze on convenient hunting grounds, and they by this method also made it easy to collect wild honey, grasshoppers and crickets" (Williams quotes Clark on page 9 of Williams' manuscript). The insects were collected and made into a pemmican" with mortar and pestle.

Gerald Williams -- who has written numerous articles on Native Americans, fire, and other related issues -- published "References on the American Indian Use of Fire in Ecosystems" in 1994. In this article, the sociologist, social scientist, and USDA Forest Service professional lists the "documented reasons" that Native Americans used fire -- "intentional burning" -- to change ecosystems, the primitive and yet effective approach to fire science.

One: hunting -- Indians burned large areas to "divert big game" like bison, deer and elk, into smaller unburned areas for better hunting outside of tall brush and trees; animals like ducks and geese enjoyed munching on fresh new grass sprouts; two, crop management -- fire was used to clear areas for corn-planting and to "facilitate the gathering of acorns"; also, burning was used to harvest yucca, tarweed, and to prevent abandoned fields from growing over; three, Improve growth and yields -- in order to improve grasses for big game hunting and the planting of berries (especially raspberries, strawberries, and huckleberries); four, fireproof areas -- there are indications that fire was used to "protect certain medicine plans by clearing an area around the plants" and fire was used to clear areas around settlements; five, insect collection -- a "fire surround" was prepared to "collect and roast crickets, grasshoppers, Pandora moths in pine forests, and collect honey from bees"; six, pest management -- Indians learned they could control insect infestations (black flies, mosquitoes) and rodents with managed fires; seven, warfare -- Indians used controlled fires to "deprive the enemy of hiding places" and also used fire for "offensive reasons"; eight, economic extortion -- some tribes used a "scorched-earth" strategy to "deprive settlers and fur traders from easy access to big game and thus benefiting from being 'middlemen' in supplying pemmican and jerky" (Williams, 1994).

Several other fire science applications by Indians included (according to Williams' research): clearing areas for travel; felling trees; and clearing riparian areas to encourage new grass sprouts which benefited beaver and muskrats.

Settlers from Europe brought different fire science / fire management techniques to the New World, the Forest Encyclopedia explains. The Europeans' burning practices were in part brought across the ocean and in part were learned from the Native Americans (FE). Settlers used fire to collect wild foods, for hunting, to clear farmland, to produce "forage for wild game and grazing animals" and to "support their aesthetic preferences" as well as to "entertain themselves" (FE).

The name of Gifford Pinchot is well-known in fire science history; Pinchot, who founded the Forest Service, launched the "fire suppression movement" in the late 1890s (Fowler, 1999). Many foresters supported Pinchot's policies along with pulp, timber and paper companies, and in fact the U.S. Forest Service (commanded by Chief Forester Henry Graves) adopted "fire control" as the "principle duty of the agency" (Fowler). However there was plenty of opposition to Pinchot's strategy of suppressing fires, both from state and federal agencies that supported "light burning" and "Indian fires" policies. By 1910, Fowler writes in the Forest Encyclopedia, the Forest Service began experimenting with "prescribed fires" but concluded that prescribed fires were more "destructive' than useful.