• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for 1995 BLUESTEM AND TUSSOCK FIRE AND PASTORALISM IN THE FLINT HILLS OF KANSAS AND THE TUSSOCK GRASSLANDS OF NEW ZEALAND James F. Hoy Emporia State University Thomas D. Isern North Dakota State University - Main Campus Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Hoy, James F. and Isern, Thomas D., "BLUESTEM AND TUSSOCK FIRE AND PASTORALISM IN THE FLINT HILLS OF KANSAS AND THE TUSSOCK GRASSLANDS OF NEW ZEALAND" (1995). Great Plains Quarterly. 1018. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1018 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. BLUESTEM AND TUSSOCK FIRE AND PASTORALISM IN THE FLINT HILLS OF KANSAS AND THE TUSSOCK GRASSLANDS OF NEW ZEALAND JAMES F. HOY AND THOMAS D. ISERN The ghost of Lady Barker haunts public dis­ The spectacle of pasture burning in the Flint course on the question of burning tussock Hills of Kansas is no less prepossessing than its grassland in New Zealand. The image of this parallel in New Zealand. Modern observers gentle English woman, author of the Canter­ often speak of the beauty of nighttime prairie bury classic Station Life in New Zealand, trans­ fires in the Flint Hills: the orange glow in the formed into a pastoral pyromaniac professing sky, swirling billows of scarlet smoke, ribbons "the exceeding joy of 'burning,'" is compel­ of golden flame moving sinuously across hill­ ling. She contests with friends over who can sides. But early reports from the tallgrass set the most magnificent blaze, exults at soli­ prairie, such as Baptist missionary Isaac tary cabbage trees exploding into flame, and McCoy's in 1830, more often expressed awe at regrets that she was not there to see the first the "sublime" flames that leapt twenty feet blaze rage across the plains. Of this ritual, she into the air and left apparent devastation in says, she and her friends "never were allowed their wake. Horses would stampede, grown men to have half enough of it" before the spring fall to their knees in prayer, and women go burning season passed. 1 mad when confronted with the fearsome sight of a nighttime fire, recalled an unknown trav­ eler to Kansas in the 1850s: James F. Hoy is professor of English at Emporia State University. Thomas D. Isern is professor of history Seen from a distance it looked as if the and director of the Institute for Regional Studies at flames came out of the earth. The reflec­ North Dakota State University. He completed his research on the tussock grasslands as a Fulbright Scholar tion on the sky, particularly when the sky in New Zealand. Both writers have published many was overcast, added to the terror. ... When accounts of farming, ranching, and rural life on the a man has seen a prairie fire at night, infu­ Plains. riated by a wind, with half of the sky for a background, and the whole earth, appar­ ently, for its field of action, everything he [GPQ 15 (Summer 1995): 169-841 sees after that looks a bit tame.2 169 170 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1995 FIG. 1. Flint Hills, Chase County, Kansas. Courtesy of Kansas State Historical Society. THE Two ENVIRONMENTS The Flint Hills, including their southern extension into Oklahoma, where they are des­ In visual spectacle, pastoral practice, sci­ ignated the Osage Hills (or, more simply, The entific development, and public discourse, Osage), represent the remnant of a native there are powerful parallels between burning tall grass prairie that once reached from tussock grassland on the South Island of New Canada down to Texas, from Kansas back to Zealand and burning tallgrass prairie in the Indiana and Kentucky. The Kansas portion of Flint Hills of Kansas. The two situations are the Hills begins near Nebraska in Marshall by no means identical: there are variations in County and extends south in a band roughly detail and in concept, owing to differing nat­ fifty miles wide bisecting the eastern half of ural conditions, pastoral systems, and human the state. The Bluestem Grazing Region, cultural influences. The parallels are, never­ which includes the Flint Hills proper as well theless, so striking as to suggest telling pat­ as native pasture land to the east of the Hills, terns in human adaptation to, transformation encompasses all or part of seventeen counties. of, and thought about subhumid grasslands The veins and nodules of flint (or chert} that devoted to grazing. give the Hills their name were first recorded in BLUESTEM AND TUSSOCK 171 FIG . 2. Montane tussock grassland on the South Island of New Zealand. A musterer overlooks the flats of the Tasman River, Glentanner Station , 1953. Photograph courtesy of National Archives, Head Office, Wellington, New Zealand, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Series 6330 "OA" Black and White Prints 43026. 1806 by explorer Zebulon Pike: "Passed very ance some ten to twelve thousand years ago, ruff flint hills today. My feet blistered and very at the end of the last ice age.3 sore." The dominant rock in the Flint Hills, The dominant native grasses in the Flint however, is limestone, deposited by an inland Hills are big bluestem (named for its seedstem, sea from the Permian period some 300 million which sometimes exceeds nine feet in height; years ago. Because the Flint Hills were formed it is also called turkey-foot from the shape of by erosion, not upheaval, peaks do not tower the terminal end of the seedstem), little above the surrounding countryside, although bluestem (whose seedstem is around two feet their relief, in silhouette, can be striking and tall), Indian grass (named for its feathery seed­ the slopes of some hillsides steep. Outcroppings head), and switch grass. Other grasses, par­ of limestone give the Hills a bench-like or ticularly side-oats grama and buffalo grass (on terraced appearance, with hilltop ridges some­ the thinner or disturbed ground), are also com­ times extending for miles, the grass-covered mon in the Flint Hills. Bluestem is an espe­ sides sloping down and away to tree-lined cially powerful feed grass in spring and early banks of clear-water streams in the valleys. summer when its leaves contain not only high The Flint Hills assumed their present appear- levels of protein (which puts flesh on a steer) 172 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1995 but also calcium (from the soluble limestone, ity, with annual rainfall just over twenty which increases a steer's bone growth, thereby inches. West of the plains are the downlands, promoting an even greater rate of gain). In or hill country, and west of them the moun­ late summer, however, bluestem begins to tains. The plains and downlands were short transfer energy from its leaves to its roots tussock country, burned over by early pas­ (sometimes extending nearly a dozen feet into toralists. Subsequently, having been taken in the ground); thus, it has little nutritive value freehold, they were planted to exotic grasses, in fall and winter. and cut into paddocks bounded by fences and Because its bluestem grass provides an ex­ gorse hedges. The high country was, and re­ tremely economical rate of gain and requires mains, tall tussock country, now developed by no fertilizer or reseeding, the Flint Hills re­ overseeding and fertilization. Pastoralism here gion has long been prized for custom grazing commenced with burning, and the practice of transient cattle. Yearlings raised elsewhere persists to a limited degree. The more remote are brought in for the grazing season, running sections are given over to Merino flocks, some from mid-April to mid-October, then shipped strictly for wool production. Rainfall in the on to feed lots or occasionally directly to the high country may approach forty inches, but packers. Resident herds and yearlings brought slope, altitude, and thin soils-graywacke and to the Flint Hills for the fall and winter must schist-based- contribute to marginality. Pas­ have tame grasses on which to graze and be fed toral runholders occupy the Crown lands of hay and protein supplements. the high country under lease with consider­ Partly because of the terrain's rockiness and able security of tenure. 5 partly because large portions of the Flint Hills Dominant species of the short-tussock lands were sold in blocks rather than homesteaded, were fescue tussock (Festuca novae zealandiae) much of the native grass was preserved from and silver tussock (Poa caespitosa), grasses of the plow. By the early 1880s, when many of tussock habit some eighteen inches tall. Domi­ the bottom lands along Flint Hills streams had nant species of the tall-tussock lands include been turned into fields, the open range of the snow grass (Danthonia raoulii var. flavescens) uplands was being grazed both by locally owned and red tussock (Danthonia raoulii vat. rubra) , cattle and herds brought in from outside the three feet or more in height. The tussock habit region. At the end of the decade, fencing of of these species is important to defining con­ upland pastures was well under way, as was the ditions for the use of fire in the region and for practice of custom grazing whereby a local differentiation from the situation in the Flint entrepreneur, sometimes known as a "pasture­ Hills. The tussocks, spaced inches or feet apart, man," would lease land from an absentee provide shelter in a micro-environment for owner, then sublease it to a cattle owner, or lesser inter-tussock species, native and exotic.

Load more

  17

Copy Link