Summary for Wildland Fire Seminar
Madeline Solomon
11 Nov. 2001
Anderson, M. Kat and Michael J. Moratto, 1996. Native American Land-Use Practices
and Ecological Impacts. Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project: final report to Congress, vol.
II, Assessments and scientific basis for management options. Davis: University of
California, Centers for Water and Wildland Resources.
This article gives an excellent overview of traditional Native American resource
use and land management practices in the Sierra Nevada. While relying on gathering,
hunting and fishing for their economic basis, Sierran Native Americans practiced various
horticultural techniques, “including burning, irrigating, pruning, selective harvesting,
sowing and weeding.” Fire, the most important, effective and widely used management
tool, was used for clearing brush, maintaining meadows and grasslands, improving
browse for deer, enhancing production of plant foods and materials used for basketry and
cordage, modifying forest understories, and reducing “fuel accumulations that might
otherwise sustain intense fires” and damage valued resources (pp. 192-193). Interviews
with Native American elders in the Sierra Nevada suggest that reducing the underbrush
and thereby preventing large, damaging fires was the most important reason for burning
the landscape (p. 196).
Euro-American immigration and settlement in the nineteenth century was
extremely disruptive to Native American societies in the Sierra Nevada. Investigating
traditional resource management and landscape burning practices thus relies primarily on
historical sources and oral histories from Native American elders. The extent and
ecological impacts of Native American land management practices, including burning, on
Sierra Nevada ecosystems in the more distant past remain controversial, despite the
authors’ assertion that Indian-set fires were “an integral disturbance factor in shaping
Sierra Nevada ecosystems” (p. 203).
Historical and ethnographic data indicate that at the time of historic contact (in the
early 1800s) there were about thirteen tribes speaking distinct languages in the Sierra
Nevada with a combined population of perhaps 90,000-100,000 people. Population
densities varied throughout the region. Occupations were highest in areas at 1,000-1,250
m (3,300-4,000 ft.) elevation and on the western rather than eastern side of the Sierra.
Archaeological evidence suggests that the periods 7500-6000 B.C., 1000 B.C.-A.D. 700,
and A.D. 1300-1800 were times of especially intensive occupation in the Sierra Nevada.
Unfortunately, little is known about Native American land management practices in the
Sierra Nevada during these earlier periods. Firewood collection alone may have
substantially decreased fuel loads in inhabited areas during periods of more intensive
occupation (pp. 195-196).
The authors provide detailed case studies of the uses of fire in managing materials
for producing basketry, food, and cordage. Sierran Native American basket weavers
particularly valued the young adventitious and epicormic shoots from native shrubs
including redbud, sourberry, hazelnut and various willow species for their length,
flexibility, straightness, uniformity, absence of lateral branches, and color. The weavers
needed large numbers of these young shoots for manufacturing the baskets that formed an
integral part of their material culture. Such shoots occur relatively infrequently on wild
shrubs; burning the shrubs increases the numbers of suitable shoots dramatically (Tables
9.1, 9.2, pp. 196-199). Traditionally, fires for basketry material were set at the bottoms of
slopes in the fall, after one or two rains, at intervals of one to several years.
Contemporary California Indian basket weavers similarly value young growth for
basketry materials, and often substitute the pruning of individual shrubs to produce small
quantities of desired materials in areas where land management policies prohibit
landscape burning.
Many different plants were managed with fire for optimal food production.
Burning berry bushes increased fruiting and eliminated older wood, thus thinning dense
shrubs and reducing insect damage. Sites from which greens and edible seeds were
gathered were burned to promote young palatable growth, enhance seed production,
recycle nutrients, keep areas open and free from invading shrubs and trees, and eliminate
plant detritus and competition from weeds. Burning in areas from which bulbs, corms and
tubers were collected not helped recycle nutrients, reduce competition from grasses and
shrubs, and keep areas open, but also increased the size and quantity of the edible
underground plant parts. Sierra Nevada Native Americans also burned mushroom patches
to promote better yields and quality. Periodic burning of plants used for cordage
promoted straighter and longer growth of usable materials and facilitated access for
harvesting.
Anderson and Moratto provide an insightful synthesis into the ecological
dynamics of Native American land management practices in the Sierra Nevada. They
emphasize that the Sierra Nevada was not an uninhabited wilderness at the time of first
European contact, and that Native Americans had consistently intervened in some
habitats for long periods, primarily through the use of intentional landscape fire, to
promote heterogeneity in a changing landscape. As this synthesis has relevance for
contemporary wildland management planning, as well as studying Native American
practices in the Sierra Nevada, it seems appropriate to quote the passage in full here (pp.
188-189):
The underlying management philosophy of Native Americans in
the Sierra Nevada was to continuously introduce small disturbance
regimes into various plant-community types, which created openings or
clearings. These openings invited the colonization of plant species that
could not grow in the surrounding dominant vegetation type. These
clearings represented a series of earlier successional stages within a more
homogeneous landscape. Rather than reflecting an unchanging system,
these landscapes were much more dynamic under the influence of human
disturbance than in their “natural” state.
The nature and intensity of human intervention varied both
geographically and diachronically. For example, some areas were subject
only to lightning fires; other areas experienced both lightning- and Indianset fires; and yet other areas were shaped largely by anthropogenic forces
(i.e., frequent Indian-set fires). The creation of specialized habitats
intensified plant-plant, plant-animal, animal-animal, human-animal, and
human-plant relationships, creating a highly interactive system that
ultimately changed vegetation patterns over time. Hence, the objective is
not to re-create exactly a static picture of historic landscapes, but rather to
investigate and understand the native cultural processes that drove
biological diversity and shaped various ecosystem states, and to unravel
the ecological principles embedded in ancient land-management practices.