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no, early europeans who first settled in California believed the practice was primitive. later generations would continue: > In a 1918 letter, a district range
by test098 3y ago
no, early europeans who first settled in California believed the practice was primitive. later generations would continue:
> In a 1918 letter, a district ranger at Klamath National Forest wrote to his supervisor that the US Forest Service’s most important duty was to keep fires to a minimum, but “renegade whites and Indians” were setting fires “for pure cussedness”, not caring whether the fires harmed others.
> He suggested that the solution was “to kill them off, every time you catch one sneaking around in the brush like a coyote, take a shot at him”. He also suggested hiring a female missionary who had “gained the confidence” of Indigenous people to convince them to adopt settler theories about fire.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-california-law-affirms-indigenous-right-to-controlled-burns https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-california-law-...
- chrisco255 3y agoAgain, pointing out to an opinion by one group or individual among white people is not a universal thing. It might shock you to hear this, but white people commonly disagree about various approaches to problem solving and politics. Controlled burning has been used in the South by white people since the early 1800s: https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/19091 https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/19091, where "it was quickly adopted from the Indians by early European settlers". One ranger in California in 1918 does not speak for an entire race for God's sake. That should be obvious.
- drekipus 3y agoWell this isn't as fun as a narrative, so I'm not listening! /s
- 2devnull 3y agoArson wasn’t invented until Ronald Reagan was elected so surely setting “fire for pure cussedness” couldn’t have been a reference to arson in your n=1 anecdote which nicely proved to parent point you seem to take issue with.