> It's infuriating to me that Native Americans who lived here for thousands of years before they were colonized had this figured out Which tribes do you mean?

> It's infuriating to me that Native Americans who lived here for thousands of years before they were colonized had this figured out Which tribes do you mean? Some were in the plains, some were in the forests, and many more were nomadic over vast areas. There were - and still are - many peoples with wildly different lives, cultures, and understanding encompassing the millions of square miles that make up North America. Don't call us "colonized" as you imagine we're all the same. To address your specific point, the "figured out" part was the fact that fires could only be detected by sight (or smell if close enough) so they burned regularly without a massive build up of fuel. In present times, we detect and stop fires until we can't and then catastrophe occurs.