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Indians in California (and it sounds like many other places in the US too) burned annually for a plethora of reasons. I'm learning about this in https://www.ucp
by leafmeal 6y ago
Indians in California (and it sounds like many other places in the US too) burned annually for a plethora of reasons. I'm learning about this in https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520280434/tending-the-wild https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520280434/tending-the-wild which explains how native Californians actively maintained the landscape.
From what I remember from reading, burning
- increased growth of grasses in spring to feed native grazers
- encouraged fresh shoots from plants to grow long and straight which made them useful for basket material and arrows
- kept meadows open and barren of trees which encouraged grazing and made hunting easier
- captured and cooked insects such as grasshoppers for food
As California has suffered so much recently from wild fires, we're learning how seasonal burning was also import for preventing catastrophic fires.
Places like Yosemite were described by early white settlers as resembling a park, with large, spaced trees and grass beneath. You could see from one end of the valley floor to the other. With modern fire suppression, this is impossible, and many of the once vast meadows are now filling with encroaching pines.
This barely scratches the surface of how fire was used to manage land resources by California Indians. I highly recommend this book if you're interested in Native American practices, California history, land management, and native plants.
- beamatronic 6y agoI guess you can have fire-managed, healthy forests OR permanent human dwelling structures but not both at the same time.
- maxerickson 6y agoDecades of fuel build up tends to make fires a bigger threat to structures.
- gen220 6y agoYou can have both. See the useful links at the bottom of this page [0], here [1], and here [2]. It requires ingenuity and discipline to maintain a S.A.F.E. zone, but it’s not impossible. I remember reading but can not find a link about how people experimented with different landscape strategies (I think in Canada?) to see which techniques worked best. The best strategies were able to withstand the worst varieties of fires. In short, “we” know what works, but applying the knowledge is expensive and works only for individuals. It’s hard for the government to compel people living in wood cabins to get a metal roof and to clear a hundred foot perimeter of forest. [0]: https://www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/get-ready/fire-resistant-landscaping/ https://www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/get-re... [1]: https://www.thisoldhouse.com/platform/amp/landscaping/21015539/firesafe-landscaping-defensible-space https://www.thisoldhouse.com/platform/amp/landscaping/210155... [2]: https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_journals/2016/rmrs_2016_smith_a001.pdf https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_journals/2016/rmrs_2016_smith_...
- toomanybeersies 6y agoNo, you either have both or neither. Fuel management, through controlled burns, herbicides, and mechanical removal, plus maintaining fire breaks and exclusion zones, is what makes it possible to have permanent structures.
- mlillie 6y agoThanks for bringing up this book. Everyone who lives in California and thinks about nature needs to check out Tending the Wild.
- OnlyOneCannolo 6y agoWhich one? The book? The short film? Something else?
- leafmeal 6y agoPresumably the book I linked to in the original post: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520280434/tending-the-wild https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520280434/tending-the-wild
- aphroz 6y agoI did not know there were Indians doing agriculture in California, I thought they were more active in the Silicon Valley.
- ozborn 6y agoThe parent post is referring to Native Americans in California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_Californ...
- aphroz 6y agoI was being sarcastic, I thought non-native American people stopped calling native Americans "Indians". Btw love the downvotes (sarcasm).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- supercucumber 6y agoSarcasm or not, your post is racially insensitive, hence the downvotes.
- aphroz 6y agoSorry? I am pointing the fact that I thought it was at minima "outdated", if not racist to reffer to native american as indians, the downvotes comes from people thinking it is ok to call them indians and I am being too sensitive to raise this issue. Anyway I think HN is a good source of information, and I enjoy it, but there is something that is probably inherit to all vote based online platform that turns social online interactions in the same way, interesting fact. I will stay a passive user when my karma reaches 0. Peace. https://youtu.be/7VyfP0AkQbw https://youtu.be/7VyfP0AkQbw
- supercucumber 6y ago
- gdubs 6y agoHaven’t read this one, adding to the list, thanks! Oaks are pretty fire resistant, and support a lot of game — so those wide open spaces were actually oak savanna. Big prairies with one or two oaks per acre. In fact, Oregon — now known for its Douglas Fir — was wide open oak savanna, due to fire management practices of native Americans.
- peteretep 6y agoThis sounds like recasting the well understood, documented, and widely practised “slash and burn[0]” as some kind of “Native American Earth Wisdom”. What am I missing? 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash-and-burn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash-and-burn
- smcl 6y agoFrom that wiki page: > After about three to five years, the plot's productivity decreases > due to depletion of nutrients along with weed and pest invasion, > causing the farmers to abandon the field and move over to a new area. It sounds like the Native Americans weren't farming the land to exhaustion then moving on and repeating the process elsewhere. They were just burning an area and letting it return "naturally" (yes I know that sounds weird). I imagine that it was also not performed on quite the same scale as it is in recent times in, say, the Amazon.
- toomanybeersies 6y agoSlash and burn is a method of stripping the established vegetation in an area and replacing it with monocrops or grazing animals. Indigenous cultures tended to burn forests and then allow them to regrow, with the aim of promoting the growth of endemic plant species for a variety of benefits. Modern slash and burn strips the land of nutrients and biodiversity.