So a while ago, I had posted a bit about how intentional burns were used in the Puget Sound area to maintain Oak-savanna ecosystems, and how the plants in such ecosystems are crucial for threatened species of native bees and fritillaries. However, I didn't link it to the specific native peoples in my area that have a history of doing so.
For the record, the Coast Salish peoples, among them the Nisqually, practiced intentional burning for a number of reasons. Here's one paper that talks about it, but there are many, many more:
Linda Storm, Daniela Shebitz, Evaluating the Purpose, Extent, and Ecological Restoration Applications of Indigenous Burning Practices in Sou
With an excerpt:
[Text: Fortunately, ethnohistoric and archival records provide important and useful qualitative evidence for the purposes, timing, and frequency of indigenous burning. For example, Cecelia Carpenter (1986: 17-18), a Nisqually tribal member and historian, describes prairie burning by the Nisqually people:
The information has been passed down to us by our Nisqually ancestors that for as many years as they could remember that during the fall of each year the vast prairie areas that lay on both sides of the lower segment of the Nisqually River were burned. By burning in the fall of the year at a time when the fall rains had begun, the likelihood of the fire getting out of hand and moving into the forests was minimal.
The main purpose [sic] of burning the thick layer of rich prairie grass was twofold. These prairies..., were each fall covered with a thick carpet of prairie grass, that, if left during the winter, would lay as a heavy carpet over the land prohibiting the spring crop of camas plants from pushing up to the sunlight.... The camas bulbs, as well as the tender shoots of the bracken ferns, which also thrived on the burned-over land, were two main sources of food of the traditional Nisqually people.
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Interestingly, I had earlier read a different account that said that a different group did burns in the early summer, before everything had dried completely out. I can't find that now, but it is interesting!
