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 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.
Haven’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.
You 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.
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.
This 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?
> 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.
Slash 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.
Many of the first people of what is now known by many as the United States prefer the label of "Indian" over the label "Native Americans".
A very excellent (if also very "edutainment") exploration of labels and the label of "Indian", based on conversation with people who identify as "Indians", can be viewed here:
The proper way to refer to the indigenous peoples of the America is honestly a pretty complicated topic. "American Indian" is still generally considered valid. In some cases it may even be more correct, like when referring to indigenous peoples from outside the modern United States. It's typically preferable to name specific groups though, as indigenous peoples weren't homogenous. Just "Indian" is pretty outdated, but you'll occasionally see it on things with a lot of historical baggage, like the BIA.
What about real Indian people? I understand it is a complicated topic and I have no problem discussing it, but as long as a comment does not contains insults, I think a comment should not be downvoted just because you disagree.
Sorry? 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.
The main issue here is that you made a joke about race. It wasn’t funny, and was extremely distasteful. If this is still lost on you, then I suggest you take a moment to educate yourself on the matter and consider why this was offensive to so many people.
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.