Wildland Fire Before the 20Th Century; the Next Will Focus on Aspects of Wildland Fire Management in the 20Th Century
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Fire today ManagementVolume 60 • No. 3 • Summer 2000 WILDLAND FFIRE— AN AAMERICAN LEGACY United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service Editor’s note: This issue of Fire Management Today is the first of two special issues focusing on fire history and past fire management practices in the United States. The first issue addresses wildland fire before the 20th century; the next will focus on aspects of wildland fire management in the 20th century. Articles in this issue by Stephen W. Barrett, Hutch Brown, Stephen J. Pyne, and Gerald W. Williams discuss fire history and use in centuries past, exploring their implications for land managers today and in the decades to come. Frederic S. Remington, The Grass Fire, 1908 (oil on canvas). Artwork courtesy of the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX (1961.228). Fire Management Today is published by the Forest Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC. The Secretary of Agriculture has determined that the publication of this periodical is necessary in the transaction of the public business required by law of this Department. Subscriptions ($13.00 per year domestic, $16.25 per year foreign) may be obtained from New Orders, Superintendent of Documents, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250-7954. A subscription order form is available on the back cover. Fire Management Today is available on the World Wide Web at <http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/planning/firenote.htm>. Dan Glickman, Secretary April J. Baily U.S. Department of Agriculture General Manager Mike Dombeck, Chief Robert H. “Hutch” Brown, Ph.D. Forest Service Editor José Cruz, Director Gerald W. Williams, Ph.D. Fire and Aviation Management Issue Coordinator The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, political beliefs, sexual orientation, or marital or family status. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Persons with disabilities who require alternative means for communication of program information (Braille, large print, audiotape, etc.) should contact USDA’s TARGET Center at (202) 720-2600 (voice and TDD). To file a complaint of discrimination, write USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights, Room 326-W, Whitten Building, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250-9410 or call (202) 720-5964 (voice and TDD). USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer. Disclaimer: The use of trade, firm, or corporation names in this publication is for the information and convenience of the reader. Such use does not constitute an official endorsement of any product or service by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Individual authors are responsible for the technical accuracy of the material presented in Fire Management Today. Fire today Management Volume 60 • No. 3 • Summer 2000 On the Cover: CONTENTS Where Have All the Fires Gone? ............................... 4 Stephen J. Pyne Introduction to Aboriginal Fire Use in North America ................................................ 8 Gerald W. Williams Early Fire Use in Oregon ........................................ 13 Gerald W. Williams The Grass Fire (detail—the entire painting is shown on the facing Fire History Along the Ancient Lolo Trail................... 21 page), a 1908 painting by Frederic Stephen W. Barrett Remington, depicts a band of American Indians using fire on the Wildland Burning by American Indians in Virginia ...... 29 Great Plains against an enemy. In warfare, Indians used fires for such Hutch Brown purposes as covering a retreat, panicking an enemy into flight, Reintroducing Indian-Type Fire: Implications camouflaging an ambush, depriving for Land Managers ........................................... 40 an enemy of fodder for horses (in Gerald W. Williams the West), and destroying enemy villages and cropfields (in the East). New Automated System for Tracking Remington’s painting matches the depiction of Indian fire use by James Federal Excess Personal Property ....................... 49 Fenimore Cooper in his 1827 novel Roberta Burzynski, Jan Polasky, and Diana Grayson The Prairie (see the excerpt on page 28). Indian fire use, mostly for peaceful purposes, was so extensive HORT EATURES that it shaped ecosystems across S F North America. Guidelines for Contributors....................................... 7 The FIRE 21 symbol (shown below and on the cover) stands for the safe and effective use of Websites on Fire................................................... 12 wildland fire, now and throughout the 21st century. Its shape represents the fire triangle (oxygen, heat, and fuel). The three outer red triangles represent the basic functions of wildland Fire Use in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Prairie ...... 28 fire organizations (planning, operations, and aviation management), and the three critical aspects of wildland fire management (prevention, First Peoples First in Fire Shelter Use ..................... 39 suppression, and prescription). The black interior represents land affected by fire; the emerging green points symbolize the growth, restoration, Photo Contest for 2001 ........................................ 51 and sustainability associated with fire-adapted ecosystems. The flame represents fire itself as an ever-present force in nature. For more information on FIRE 21 and the science, research, and innovative thinking behind it, contact Mike Apicello, National Interagency Fire Center, 208-387-5460. Firefighter and public safety is our first priority. WHERE HAVE ALL THE FIRES GONE? Stephen J. Pyne n the United States, few places know as much fire today as they The fires that once flushed I did a century ago. Fires have fled the myriad landscapes of North America from regions like the Northeast were fires that people once set that formerly relied on them for farming and grazing. They have and no longer do. receded from the Great Plains, once near-annual seas of flame, ebbing and flowing with seasonal natural fire. Moreover, it is pro- The aboriginal lines and fields of tides. They burn in the South at foundly interactive. It burns in a fire inscribed a landscape mosaic only a fraction of their former context of general landscape (see Lewis and Ferguson (1988) for grandeur. They have faded from meddling by humans—hunting, a different terminology). Some the mountains and mesas, valleys foraging, planting—in ways that tiles were immense, some tiny. and basins of the West. They are shape both the flame and its Some experienced fire annually, even disappearing from yards and effects. So reliant are people on some on the scale of decades. In hearths. One can view the dim- their fire monopoly that what most years, fires burned to the ming panorama of fire in the same makes fire possible generally edge of the corridor or patch and way that observers at the close of makes human societies possible. then stopped, melting away before the 19th century viewed the What prevents one retards the damp understories, snow, or wet- specter of the vanishing American other. Places that escaped anthro- flushed greenery. But in other Indian. pogenic fire likely escaped fire years, when the land was groaning altogether. with excess fuels and parched by Missing Fires, droughts, fires kindled by intent or Missing Peoples Pre-Columbian Fire accident roared deep into the Practices landscape. People move and fire And with some cause: Those Did American Indians really burn propagates; humanity’s fiery reach missing fires and the missing far exceeds its grasp of the fire- peoples are linked. The fires that the land? Of course they did. All peoples do, even those committed stick. Remove those flames and the once flushed the myriad land- structure of even seldom-visited scapes of North America and have to industrial combustion, who disguise their fires in machines. forests eventually looks very faded away are not fires that were different. kindled by nature and suppressed, The issue is whether and how those fires affected the landscape. but rather fires that people once What Burning Meant set and no longer do. In some Much of the burning was system- places, lightning has filled the atic. Pre-Columbian peoples fired How effective were these burns? void. But mostly it has not, and along routes of travel, and they That, of course, depends. If the even where lightning has reas- burned patches where flame could land was fire prone, people could serted itself, it has introduced a help them extract some resource— easily seize control over it. They fire regime that can be quite camas, deer, huckleberries, maize. simply burned before natural distinct from those shaped by the The outcome was a kind of fire ignition arrived, sculpting new fire torch. foraging, even fire cultivating, regimes, forcing the biota to such that strips and patches adjust. The aboriginal firestick Anthropogenic (human-caused) burned as fuel became available. became a lever that, suitably sited, fire comes with a different seasonal But much burning resulted from could move whole landscapes, even signature and frequency than malice, play, war, accident, escapes, continents. The outcome was and sheer fire littering. The land particularly powerful where places Steve Pyne is a professor in the Biology and was peppered with human-inspired had the ingredients for fire but Society Program, Department of Biology, lacked a consistent spark. That Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. embers. 4 Fire Management Today people supplied. They made flame The aboriginal firestick