Ethnohistorical Descriptions of Indian Burning Practices

American Indian Methods for Burning the Landscape

An early settler on the Coastal Plain described an Indian method for lighting a fire: “To prepare the ground they bruise the bark of the trees neare the roote, then do they scortch the roots with fire that grow no more…The next yeare with a crooked peece of wood, they beat up the woodes by the rootes, and in that moulds they plant their corne” (quoted in Hammett 1992).

A Jamestown settler, George Percy, wrote on April 28, 1607, “We marched to those smoakes and found that the Savages had beene there burning down grasse, as we thought either to make their plantation there, or else to give signes to bring their forces together, and so to give us battell” (quoted in Hammett 1992; cited in Brown 2000).

Some American Indian groups defined their territory as the area that is burned, recognizing unburned areas as being outside of their territory. The following quote from 1608 implies that Indians were most familiar with the places that were burned: Captain John Smith asked an Indian “what [is] beyond the mountains?…[and he answered] the sunne but of any thing els he knew nothing because the woods were not burnt” (quoted in Hammett 1992).

A passage from A Natural History of Virginia, written by William Byrd in 1737 describes the techniques Indians used to clear land on the Coastal Plain: “When the trees are full of sap, [they] skin about 3 or 4 feet of bark from the trunks, which causes them to dry up, so the foliage falls down…When the aforementioned trees have become quite withered by the removal of the bark, they then go and cut a broad strip from the nearest green trees, which are standing there [to a point] as far as they wish to clear, in order to prevent the whole forest from burning. They then set fire to the dry trees, which burn immediately. Thus in a short time a very large section of land can be cleared and made neatly available for planting” (quoted in Hammett 1992).

Seasons of Indian Fires

Ethnohistorical evidence suggests that, in many parts of the South, Indians purposely burned the land during the autumn and late winter or early spring. (Lightning typically ignites fires during the spring and summer. In the southeast today, the highest number of lightning-ignited fires are in August and September.) Mark Catesby, who traveled through the Carolinas in the 1720s wrote, “In February and March the inhabitants have a custom of burning the woods, which causes such a continual smoke, that not knowing the cause, it might be imagined to proceed from fog…an annual custom of the Indians in their huntings, of setting the woods on fire many miles in extent” (cited in Barden 1997).

Indians lit autumn and winter fires for farming and hunting. In the winter of 1701, John Lawson wrote, “…the woods being newly burnt and on fire in many places” (cited in Barden 1997). In 1709, during his travels through the Carolinas, Lawson wrote, “…at the coming in of the Winter…they burn the Woods, by setting Fire to the Leaves, and Wither’d Bent and Cross, which they do with a Match made of the black Moss that hangs on the Trees in Carolina, and is sometimes above 6 Foot Long. In Places, where this Moss is not found, (as towards the Mountains) they make Lintels of the Bark of Cypress beatn, which serves as well” (cited in Hammett 1992).

The following passage written by Le Page du Pratz about his travels through the southern Ozark Highlands in the 1720s describes early autumn burns: “We set out in the month of September, which is the best season of the year for beginning a journey in this country: in the first place, because, during the summer, the grass is too high for traveling; whereas in the month of September, the meadows, the grass of which is then dry, are set on fire, and the ground becomes smooth, and easy to walk on: and hence it is, that at this time, clouds of smoke are seen for several days together to extend over a long tack [sic] of country; sometimes to the extent of between 20 and 30 leagues in length [a league is variously 1.6 to 3.2 miles, usually estimated at about 3 miles], by 2 or 3 leagues in breadth, more or less, according as the wind sets, and is higher or lower” (cited in Foti and others 1999).

Environmental Effects of Indian Fires

In Second Visit to the United States of America published in 1849 Sir Charles Lyell wrote, “These hills [near Tuscaloosa, Alabama] were covered with longleaf pines, and the large proportion they bear to hardwoods is said to have been increased by the Indian practice of burning the grass” (cited in Stewart 2002).

This page provides a short sample of ethnohistorical descriptions of Indian burning practices. “The Eastern Woodlands” by Omer Stewart (2002) is a more extensive inventory of ethnohistorical literature.