How Natives Used Fire

[COEngineer]

I have read about and heard about how indigenous people around the world used fire, but never really understood it until I saw it in action on Meateater, of all places:

 

[reallyoldman]

I have read about and heard about how indigenous people around the world used fire, but never really understood it until I saw it in action on Meateater, of all places:

Thanks for posting this. This fire practice was being used in the several countries I have hunted and it made me little nervous, at night when it was not very far from camp.....toasted old guys were a very real possibility. Rinalla does a good job.

 

[KMO385]

Thanks for posting this. This fire practice was being used in the several countries I have hunted and it made me little nervous, at night when it was not very far from camp.....toasted old guys were a very real possibility. Rinalla does a good job.

I talked to a really old Florida cowboy from central Florida when I was teenager and also read about it in college, where flicking matches where ever on your drive or ride checking cattle was a common. I still remember the cowboy saying " the neighbors didn't mind, it all had to burn to keep the grasslands open. Windy or not, dry or wet it all burned the way god intended."

 

[Nick87]

Thanks for sharing. Pretty interesting.

 

[KMO385]

Thanks for sharing. Pretty interesting.

I live in the tallgrass prairie region of Kansas where native tribes would burn to attract game animals and eventually for grazing there horse. It seems the social and popular notion is they did it in the spring. However I've read some studies that think it was done in the late summer to stimulate new green growth over the fall and winter for same reasons. As a hunter I see a lot of deer on late summer fall burn regrowth. I tend to believe the later, though I sure they did both.

 

[TX Trophy Hunter]

In Arizona and New Mexico there were historically 2 distinct fire seasons in ponderosa pine forests that can be distinguished by viewing the position of fire scars in relation to the growth rings in old trees. One occurred in the late summer in association with the monsoon thunderstorms, and the other occurred in the fall when the Apaches lit fires to stimulate new growth to attract game.

I was on a fire on the Colville reservation in Washington a few years ago and one of the tribe members told me that his ancestors would light fires as they followed the salmon runs on the Columbia river. The fires would run to the top of the canyon then die out, and when they returned a few months later there would be more game in the burns.