Van Perdue The Nature Conservancy of Washington 217 Pine Street, Suite 1100 Seattle, Washington 98101 Land-Use and the Fort Lewis Prairies Van Perdue Abstract Human land use is at once responsible for the very existence of the western Washington prairies of the Puget trough and for their extensive degradation. Lessons learned from studying the results of various land uses may point the way to recovery of the prairies to something approximating their pre-1800 condition. Native American land use is likely responsible for existence of the prairies and for much of their character. Their manipulation of the land included frequent use of fire, along with various techniques for cultivating native plants. Their use of fire retarded the advance of conifers onto the open plains. Agricultural techniques may have been responsible for some of the distribution of native plants and perhaps even for introduction from the interior of food plants now thought to be native. Later arrivals have used the land in a greater variety of ways, many of which have been destructive of traditional prairie characteristics. Among the most destructive have been the suppression of fire and the introduction, both intentional and accidental, of plants which have out-competed native prairie vegetation. Other destructive uses include accelerating development, introduction of livestock and allowing it to overgraze, draining of former wetlands, and various military training activities. Establishment of Fort Lewis in 1916 likely retarded the destruction by ending development on the prairies. Various mission changes have had varying impacts on the prairies, but the overall result is easy to see in many places, where subdivisions have begun to arise outside installation boundaries, and where continued heavy grazing has caused displacement of native grasses. Fort Lewis authorities have in recent years begun to reintroduce the use of fire in the prairies as means of controlling Scotch broom. Some incidental consequences may include the retardation of conifer invasion and suppression of other invasives that are not adapted to cyclic burning. Introduction survey the changing character of human There is much conjecture about the land use and its effects on the shape of origin of the prairies of the Puget trough. the prairies remaining at Fort Lewis. Even so, there can be little objection to the notion that human use of the prairie The Nisquallies land has caused the prairies to endure The present-day Nisqually Indians and to take the shape that characterizes represent part of the legacy of Native them today. This paper attempts to Americans known to have populated the Nisqually delta long before the white V. Perdue Land-use of Fort Lewis 17 settlers arrived. Derived from a much this loveliness. Evergreen cones are all greater group known as the Salish about, whose lower branches caress people, they comprise but one of a large buttercup, larkspur, violet, strawberry number of tribes descended from the blossom, and other sweet flowers amid Salish. By the 13th century A.D., the grasses at their feet and whose tops evidence suggests the Salish were firmly are already reaching to the shoulders of in control of an area that had been their progenitors.”2 dominated by the earlier Marpole Lyrical though it is, this piece assumes culture. Before arrival of the whites, the beauty they beheld was the Nisqually villages existed at several handiwork of God unassisted by places on and near Fort Lewis.1 humans. Modern-day residents of the area have Careful thought and an examination of come to think of the Salish as living off various records indicate this view is the “spontaneous product of nature” flawed. The most obvious example is the until the white settlers came. In popular invasion of the prairies by conifer lore the Indians moved easily across the forests. Since suppression of fire land leaving it as their forbears had became national policy, evergreen found it. This presumes the landscape forests have taken over thousands of was left entirely to natural processes acres of western Washington prairie. until whites began to shape it to their One could infer that without human needs. intervention, nature would have replaced Such an attitude reveals itself in writings the prairies with forests thousands of published early in this century. Early years ago. newspaperman and historian Clarence There is another way to determine Bagley wrote, “Lying in the northern whether indigenous peoples manipulated angle formed by the Nisqually river and the environment before the Europeans the Sound is one of the world’s beauty arrived. The food cycle for the spots. No grand park of human creation Nisquallies, and indeed for many of the rivals its charm of undulating plain; its Salish groups, was one in which they silvery lakes with pebbly beaches, depended primarily upon the fruits of nestling among detached or winding Puget Sound and its associated streams groves whose vivid green of oak, maple, 3 and rivers. They spent winters along the alder and dogwood brightens the somber shores where salmon and shellfish were hues of the prevailing evergreens. The there for the taking and the water mass old gray oaks, with silver-threaded moderated temperatures. During the mosses pendant from every gnarled spring and summer they moved to limb, are almost coeval with the snow- established village areas on the prairies capped mountains off toward sunrise. to gather the resources available there.4 Here and there big pines and firs, parents of the younger brood that crowd each other for breath of air and ray of 2 Meeker, Ezra. Pioneer Reminiscences of Puget sunshine, stand sentinel guard over all Sound. 3 Haeberlin and Gunther. ibid. 4 ibid. See also Eells, Myron. The Indians of 1 Haeberlin, Herman Karl, and Gunther,Erna. Puget Sound: the Notebooks of Myron Eells, The Indians of Puget Sound. edited by George Pierre Castile. V. Perdue Land-use of Fort Lewis 18 The food resources of the prairies were or otherwise disturbed land. Once largely dependent upon deliberate established, the dense rhizome network burning. Fire benefits prairie forbs in allows the colony to easily survive the several ways. One of the primary burning of the tops after they have died benefits is that fire eliminates back in the fall. Thus, when fire competition. By removing seasonally removes the dead bracken tops and dead vegetation, fire increases the competing plant species, the bracken likelihood that the radicles of spreads into ever larger areas. Fire may germinating seed will reach mineral soil. even trigger rhizome growth. Since the Moreover, burning releases nutrients. Salish valued bracken as a food source it is likely they set fire to the dead tops to Settlers and early surveyors found three increase its area. particular plants in abundance in areas inhabited by the Nisquallies and other Fire benefits camas in less direct ways. Salish people. Bracken fern (Pteridium Its top growth, too, dies off in late aquilinum L.), and camas lilies summer, and burning does not damage (Camassia quamash L.) existed on the its deeply buried bulbs. On the other prairies, and nettles (Urtica dioica ssp. hand, because it is a bulb plant, burning Gracilis var. Lyalli (Wats.) Hitchc.) does not encourage its spread, it merely thrived in riparian areas that ran through reduces competition. It takes direct the prairies. All three of these were human intervention to expand the plant’s crucial to Salish culture. range. (Who is to say the Salish or even the Marpole did not introduce the camas University of Washington historian to the Puget trough?) The very act of Richard White says the best evidence for harvesting probably helped the prairie burning was the abundance of accidental spread of camas when natives bracken and camas, which dominated 5 accidentally split, dropped or discarded large areas. Both were so plentiful that bulbs. White argues that the Salish they were staples of the Indian diet. would soon discover this and add Natives ground bracken rhizomes into cultivation to their repertoire of flour that they used for bread, and they agricultural practices. Indian testimony ate the camas bulb fresh, dried, or verifies some cultivation was followed.7 preserved. This abundance was not For instance, they dug in plant refuse likely the product of chance but of the around tiger lilies and wild carrot. result of burning. Indeed, records maintained by Hudson’s Bay Company After the potato reached the Puget document prairie fires almost every year Sound region, Salish tribes adopted its in late summer and early autumn.6 cultivation with no particular help from the whites.8 Bracken here, as throughout much of its They correctly assumed that range, is a major pioneer of burned-over soils rich enough to support a vigorous growth of nettles would be good for growing potatoes. Wherever there is 5 White, Richard. Land Use, Environment, and Social Change: The Shaping of Island County, human settlement over extended periods Washington. of time, decomposing waste enriches 6 Journals of Occurrences at Muck Station and Tlithlow Station. Journals maintained by clerks employed by the Pugets Sound Agricultural 7 White. Ibid. Company. 8 ibid. V. Perdue Land-use of Fort Lewis 19 the local soils. Plant refuse, human and opening up the forest edge so hunters animal excrement, ashes from fires, and could see game over greater distances.13 shells and bones provide the surrounding Burning did open up the floor for new soils with significant amounts of understory growth on which deer nitrogen, phosphorous, and potash. browsed, but this was probably a side Over time these inhabited areas develop effect. soils much richer in plant nutrients than (While the Indians modified vegetation surrounding soils, and it is in just such patterns on the prairies, they clearly did locations that the early settlers and not stop their activities at the prairie surveyors found huge populations of edge.