Native Californian Fire Use
What we Know About Indigenous Use of Fire in California
There is significant evidence for fire use by Indigenous Peoples in northern California. However, for central and southern California, Europeans were more effective in disrupting Native culture. By the time anthropologists finally took an interest in documenting evidence from surviving Native peoples in the early 1900s, several generations had passed since Native fire use was outlawed in 1792 by Spanish Governor Arrillaga. Consequently, the details of precisely why, where, and how burning was done in central and southern California have been long lost.
However, we have been able to glean some information from Spanish journals. The most numerous journal descriptions of fire use after 1789 come from entries about the Chumash, a rich tribal group that occupied the coastal plains and mountains from Malibu to San Luis Obispo. There are repeated references to burned grassland areas along the coastal plain in Chumash territory.
Based on the journals and what we know about the Chumash diet, fire was definitely used to increase sources of food. A major portion of their diet consisted of seeds, painstakingly collected every year. To encourage the growth of such seeds, the Chumash likely burned sections of the coastal plain at different intervals.
Besides the Spanish journals, there has been interesting archeological evidence suggesting this must have been the case. Archeologist Phil Orr discovered 12 quarts of red maids seed (Calandrinia spp.), called khutash in Chumash, associated with a 600-year-old burial on Santa Rosa Island off the coast of Santa Barbara.
Similar finds have been made on the mainland. Chia (Salvia columbariae) and tarweed (Deinandra fasciculata) seeds were also collected in great volumes. Think about that for a moment - 12 quarts of tiny seeds about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.
Such volumes would be impossible to collect today in large part because much of the landscape upon which they grew is now developed. Secondly, the germination of these plants is encouraged by fire. Actively burning the coastal plain would have likely provided the necessary conditions for their abundant growth.
Plants with underground bulbs, corms (Dichelostemma spp.), and tubers that were food sources for the Chumash, have explosive post fire blooms, making them easier to locate. According to early 1900s accounts, burning was also done to assist in hunting small game, especially rabbits.
However, regarding backcountry chaparral, there is no evidence that the Chumash or other Indigenous People actively burned wildlands far distant from villages. The ecological proof for this is the chaparral's continued existence on the landscape - chaparral can not survive high fire frequencies.
Based on decades of research, the chaparral's Indigenous fire return interval was approximately 30 to 150 years or more with large fires occurring 2-3 times per century, likely due to accidental ignitions. This existed for thousands of years as Native Americans created a localized relationship with the chaparral. Once villages were established and the population reached a dynamic range in line with the environment's carrying capacity, burning activity focused mostly on areas and plant communities already modified near villages.
Since most Indigenous fire use occurred where they lived along the coastal plain, these once rich landscapes have now disappeared under shopping malls, freeways, and housing developments. Today's urban areas are the exact places where Indigenous cultures thrived and where cultural burning occurred.
The natural fire return interval for chaparral, however, prior to the arrival of humans, may more commonly have been a century or more in some places. This longer interval is based on the fact that naturally caused fires are the result of lightning. Most of California has some of the lowest lightning frequencies in North America. As a result, fires were likely rare occurrences on the landscape.
After Europeans arrived, fire frequencies were reduced for a time as Indigenous fire use disappeared. But then, as ranchers started burning to expand grazing land, fire frequencies picked up again, ultimately leading to today's dangerously high rate of fire and loss of fragile, shrubland habitat due to a growing human population and the warming climate.
Red maids (Calandrinia ciliata) is a somewhat common, low-growing herbaceous plant in open areas.
Chia (Salvia columbariae) is realtively uncommon until after fires.
Tarweed (Deinandra fasciculata) is a common plant in coastal sage scrub habitat.
Creating Grasslands
For central and southern California, all the historical references refer to Indigenous burning in open, grassland areas (as opposed to chaparral) near villages, usually in late summer. It is highly likely that most of these areas were originally covered by sage scrub and chaparral prior to the application of repeated fire. Even though sage scrub can tolerate more fire than chaparral, it is still vulnerable to type conversion if enough fire is applied. So, it is important to realize these grasslands were a product of human activity, rather than natural processes.
These lands served coastal, Indigenous Peoples well until the mission period between 1769 and 1833. During this period and into modern time, the open landscape was impacted by two overwhelming European invaders - livestock and non-native weeds and grasses. Livestock have been allowed to overgraze and consequently destroy native ecosystems. Invasive, non-native weeds have filled the void.
The agrarian love for pastures and open fields has helped foster the misconception that broad grasslands were always present along the coastal valleys and plains of California. In this view, native shrubs are viewed as invaders when in fact they are merely recolonizing areas that had been type converted after thousands of years of human activity. While grasslands were definitely present, especially in areas with clay soils, many open areas we see today are result of human efforts to manipulate the landscape.
Remnants of sage scrub can be found along the central coast of California. After repeated burning and overgrazing, many of these ecosystems have been eliminated and transformed into non-native weedlands (below).
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What were once oak woodlands with an understory of sage scrub are now barely functioning ecosystems, with most oaks decades old. Oak saplings are quickly eaten by cattle.
The lush, green chaparral covered mountains contrast with the grassy, light brown coastal hills and plain of Santa Barbara below. What land hasn't been developed has long been converted to non-native grasslands through burning and over grazing.
Why Claims About Indigenous Fire Are Misguided and can lead to Environmental Damage
After nearly every large wildfire, news articles frequently promote the notion that if we just used fire like we think Indigenous Peoples did, we could prevent large wildfires from occurring. To support such a perspective, inaccurate comparisons are often made between California and other areas that have completely different climates and habitats such as the lightning-saturated landscapes of subtropical Florida, Southwestern US, and Baja California. The science is clear - large, high-intensity wildfires have been part of the California landscape for hundreds of thousands of years. Native Americans certainly used fire, but there is no evidence such use had any impact on the occurrence of large wildfires in the region.
1. North America is Not the Same Place it was Thousands of Years Ago.
Modern society has radically altered the North American natural environment. The place would be unrecognizable to past Indigenous Peoples. One of the most significant changes is making the landscape more flammable.
First, highly flammable, non-native grasses and weeds have invaded nearly every corner of California AND are often encouraged to spread by fire. As these invasive species spread, they compromise native habitats and increase the flammability of the landscape.
Secondly, there are now tens of millions of people on the landscape, lighting fires by accident and on purpose. This has dramatically increased fire frequency, threatening many native habitats with elimination.
Finally, human-caused climate change is not only drying the landscape and hence making it more flammable, it is causing shifts in vegetation communities. It is predicted that over the next century much of the chaparral in southern California will be seriously compromised by type conversion. The current sky island conifer forests, like those in the San Bernardino National Forest, will likely no longer exist. Artificially adding more fire to the landscape via prescribed burns will only accelerate the process.
2. Large, High-intensity Wildfires have Always Occurred in California.
There is no evidence that Indigenous Peoples were ever able to prevent large fires through their burning practices. In fact, there is a story told by a Kumeyaay elder about a tremendous fire in the Laguna Mountains, eastern San Diego County, California, that burned about the time of Columbus. This caused a band of several hundred to migrate into the desert where they ended up living for many generations (Odens 1971).
Large fires are driven by drought, high temperatures, low humidity, and wind, not the habitat (“fuel"). The same conditions apply to modern societies - clearing habitat through the artificial use of fire consistently fails to prevent large, catastrophic wildfires. Please see our It's About the Wind page for additional details.
In an attempt to promote logging and habitat destruction under the guise of wildfire prevention, fire agencies, US Forest Service funded scientists, and politicians falsely claim that large fires never occurred in the past due to the purposeful burning by Indigenous Peoples. Such a claim is based on self-interest and political motivations rather than science.
Large wildfire in the autumn of 1795 shown in the Santa Barbara mountains in a painting by Russell A. Ruiz (1925-1988).
3. Most Natural Habitats Suffer From Too Much Fire Rather Than Not Enough.
California is one of the world's most biodiverse regions on earth. The variety of habitats is astounding. And each one of these habitats has a unique relationship with fire. Adding more fire to many of these habitats, especially the pacific northwest rain forests, the chaparral, coastal sage scrub, and fragile desert plant communities, will cause significant ecological damage. Research on this subject relating to shrublands is available on our Too Much Fire page.
4. We Don't Know.
For many Indigenous Peoples, colonization was effective in extinguishing large amounts of cultural knowledge. This is especially true in southern California. For the most part, when, where, and how the multitude of Native cultures used fire has been lost. As a consequence, much of what is claimed is speculation and embellishment.
5. Prescribed Fire - One More Management Abuse Against Nature.
Nearly every action taken in North America to "manage" Nature has been destructive. Yet, regarding artificially adding more fire to the landscape through "prescribed burning," we are told that this time will be different.
History is not comforting.
- National Park administrators conducted predator control programs to kill every mountain lion, wolf, and grizzly bear they could find to make the
parks safe for visitors. As a consequence, many species were pushed to near extinction.
- State and federal agencies pursued an oak tree eradication program in California to open up the land for more "useful" purposes. Flammable,
invasive weeds now fill the void and beloved oak trees are growing increasingly uncommon.
- Native grasses were ripped out of the ground to dry farm millions of acres in and around Oklahoma. The Dustbowl was created.
- Attempts to "reforest" after logging or wildfires have mostly ended up creating mismanaged, highly flammable tree farms. As a result, few, naturally
functioning forests below 7,000 feet in elevation exist in California today.
And yet again we are told that our latest "management" strategy will work. All we have to do is artificially add fire to the forest, to the land, to solve our wildfire problem. This translates in the media as "everywhere," no matter the relevancy: in Malibu where there are no forests; in chaparral that's already threatened by too much fire; in forests, no matter their natural fire return pattern, to make them park-like as many imagine in their bucolic dreams of the English-like countryside. The fact that the once beautiful Sherwood Forest in England, with dense thickets and huge trees, has long since vanished due to "management," doesn't seem to register.
The important point to remember regarding the use of prescribe fire is what typically happens prior to laying fire on the ground to prepare a site for burning - logging, masticating (grinding) shrubland habitat, and significant soil disturbance. This is far from what Native Americans did on the land.
Considering all the claims about how critical human intervention is when it comes to using fire to keep ecosystems healthy, one question should always come to mind: How did Nature, our forests, our shrublands, ever survive without us?
Traditional Ecological Knowledge is History, Not Science
Despite claims by some professional organizations, such as the Association for Fire Ecology, that traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is science, it fails to meet the most basic principles of objective analysis.
Science is one of the few tools we have to eliminate bias, self-interest, and embellishment, behaviors all humans exhibit. No matter what an idea is, or where it came from, it must be subject to the same objective analysis as any other idea. It must be able to be challenged. Unfortunately, traditional ecological knowledge in relation to fire use has become unquestionable dogma. It has also been subsumed by identity politics. The professional and personal costs of challenging this dogma can be significant.
Unquestionable dogma is not science.
When the TEK dogma is challenged, it becomes quickly apparent that it fails to account for many variables that did not exist centuries ago as mentioned above: the invasion of flammable, non-native weeds, climate change, increased ignition sources, and an increasing human population.
Failure to acknowledge that frequent fire in native shrublands has eliminated, and continues to eliminate, habitat and biodiversity, is another blind spot; a vulnerability that can have serious consequences if it influences land management practices. This is especially true for native shrublands and understory habitat in forests.
There is no scientific support for the notion that Indigenous Peoples carefully used fire to ecologically manage habitat across the broad landscape. And what is claimed to be known about Indigenous fire use centuries ago is problematic – direct knowledge of fire use by tribal groups today is often separated by many generations, making it subject to exaggeration and personal bias.
What the evidence does show is that fire was used by Indigenous Peoples in California as it was by other humans across the world – to modify the landscape to suit their survival needs. In fact, there is strong evidence that many shrubland plant communities were eliminated through excessive Indigenous fire use.
The destruction of habitat under the guise of fire protection. Photo shows a "brush-crusher" roller that is pulled up and down a slope that destroys all in its path. Upper left, the result of a masticator that has chewed up an old-growth stand of manzanita chaparral. Upper right, a masticator chewing up chaparral habitat. Lower left, a prescribed burn in Cuyamaca State Park that destroyed the rich, pyrogenic habitat of Ceanothus and pine saplings to be replaced by plantation trees.
REFERENCES
Bendix, J. 2002. Pre-European fire in California chaparral. In, Vale, T.R. (ed) Fire, Native Peoples, and the Natural Landscape. Island Press.
"It would be reasonable to summarize the impact of native Californian fire in the following terms: a variety of Native cultures made sophisticated use of fire, both to favor edible species and to facilitate ( directly or indirectly) hunting. The scale of fire use was so limited, however, that the bulk of the chaparral as we know it evolved under a natural, lightning-dependent fire regime. Undoubtedly, anthropogenic fire did have some ecological impacts, but those impacts were spatially limited to the immediate surroundings of population centers and to the preexisting (i.e., quasinatural) ecotones. Because of the limited spatial extent of anthropogenic burning, the overall chaparral environment was unchanged by the cessation of native burning, as evidenced by the static nature of the stratigraphic record."
Bendix, J., Hartnett, J.J. 2018. Asynchronous lightning and Santa Ana winds highlight human role in southern California fire regimes. Environmental Research Letters 13, 074024.
Erlandson, J.M.and K. Bartoy. 1995. Cabrillo, the Chumash, and old-world diseases. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 17: 153-173.
Greenlee, J.M. and J.H. Langenheim. 1990. Historic fire regimes and their relation to vegetation patterns in the Monterey Bay area of California. The American Midland Naturalist 124: 239-253.
Odens, P. 1971. The Indians and I. Imperial Printers, El Centro, California
Timbrook, J., J.R. Johnson, D.D. Earle. 1982. Vegetation Burning by the Chumash. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 4: 163-186.
Research showing that climate overrides the influence of humans on fire at the regional scale:
In R.S. Vachula et al. 2019. Climate exceeded human management as the dominant control of fire at the regional scale in California's Sierra Nevada. Environmental Research Letters 14 104011.
"Our data suggest that though human management can influence local fire, a warmer and drier climate controls large-scale area burned... Our record indicates that (1) climate changes influenced burning at all spatial scales, (2) Native American influences appear to have been limited to local scales, but (3) high Miwok populations resulted in fire even during periods of climate conditions unfavorable to fires..."
The impact of human-caused burning on the landscape has been demonstrated throughout the world. Here are two papers that have described the phenomenon:
In Bowman, D. and S.G. Haberle. Paradise burnt: How colonizing humans transform landscapes with fire. PNAS 107: 21234-21235."The report by McWethy et al. 2010 provides incontrovertible evidence that anthropogenic burning transformed temperate forested landscapes on the South Island of New Zealand. They show that Polynesian (Maori) firing commenced shortly after colonization around A.D. 1280 and transformed 40% of the original forest cover of the island to grassland and fern-shrubland."
In Schworer, C., D. Colombaroli, P. Kaltenrieder, F. Rey, and W. Tinner. 2015. Early human impact (5000-3000 BC) affects mountain forest dynamics in the Alps. Journal of Ecology 103: 281-295.
"Fire was used by Neolithic people to create pastures at timberline and clear forests for arable farming in the valley. This had a significant, long-term effect on the mountain vegetation and a negative impact on keystone forest species such as Abies alba, Larix decidua and Pinus cembra."
Other papers of Interest:
Broughton, J.M. 1997. Widening diet breadth, declining foraging efficiency, and prehistoric harvest pressure: ichthyofaunal evidence from Emeryville Shellmound, California. Antiquity 71: 845-62.
Haley, B.D. and L.R. Wilcoxon. 1997. Anthropology and the Making of the Chumash Tradition. Current Anthropology 38, #5: 761-794.