Fire, Native Peoples, and the Natural Landscape

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For nearly two centuries, the creation myth for the United States imagined European settlers arriving on the shores of a vast, uncharted wilderness. Over the last two decades, however, a contrary vision has emerged, one which sees the country's roots not in a state of "pristine" nature but rather in a "human-modified landscape" over which native peoples exerted vast control.Fire, Native Peoples, and the Natural Landscape seeks a middle ground between those conflicting paradigms, offering a critical, research-based assessment of the role of Native Americans in modifying the landscapes of pre-European America. Contributors focus on the western United States and look at the question of fire regimes, the single human impact which could have altered the environment at a broad, landscape scale, and which could have been important in almost any part of the West. Each of the seven chapters is written by a different author about a different subregion of the West, evaluating the question of whether the fire regimes extant at the time of European contact were the product of natural factors or whether ignitions by Native Americans fundamentally changed those regimes.An introductory essay offers context for the regional chapters, and a concluding section compares results from the various regions and highlights patterns both common to the West as a whole and distinctive for various parts of the western states. The final section also relates the findings to policy questions concerning the management of natural areas, particularly on federal lands, and of the "naturalness" of the pre-European western landscape.

Fire, Native Peoples, and the Natural Landscape Review

Pages are dropping out of this book as I read it, but I'm loving the back and forth of contrasting theories on the influence of native peoples on the landscapes of the western United States. It seems to me that the scholarship in this book is a bit slanted toward the idea that the influences of Native Americans on the western landscape (using fire) were limited and localized. I believe this is pretty close to the truth, but I suspect that others may disagree, as it appears to be a controversial topic that engages a desire on the part of many to advocate the dignity of aboriginal cultures, even to the point of envisioning those cultures as "civilizations". For others, the mere suggestion that hard evidence might be overshadowed by any cause--however noble--is offensive.

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