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.

 

[beaglegun]

I planted native warm season grasses 20 years ago. If you dont burn, cedar and hedge apple and locusts will take over. Deer and turkey love the easy to get to, new growth in Spring. Burning is intimidating the first time you do it. You gotta really understand wind and humidity. Neighbors get nervous!

 

[NoWiser]

I’ve got a fair amount of burning to do this spring. I don’t love the stress, but I love everything else about it.

 

[jryoung]

This last weekend I was giving away a plastic shed in our local "free" group. Random dude shows up and without getting too deep in the weeda of our conversation that weaved many paths of habitat restoration, climate change, the history of the Santa Cruz mountain and this guy's work with Valerius Geist......he said the historical use of fire is well known with the tribes of California, but one of the key reasons some used it was to keep grizzly bears away so they ended up in much higher concentrations in areas that didn't burn.

I'm curious to dig into this concept a bit more, super random.