Use of Fire by Prehistoric Native American Cultures

Clovis Indians (12,500-10,500 BP [Before Present]) and Paleo-Indians (10,500-9,500 BP) may have used fire to manage the landscape, but it is not clear how much their burning practices changed the habitats where they lived. Scientific evidence suggests that major transitions in southern environments were occurring due to climate change during the Clovis and Paleo-Indian cultural periods. The frequencies and intensities of natural fires varied across the region, as they have throughout the Quartenary (the past 2-3 million years) (Christensen 1981; Delcourt 1978). Analyses of charcoal content in soils indicate an increase in the frequency of fires coinciding with the migration of people into the region, but it is difficult to know whether the fires were ignited by lightning or by people. The earliest American Indian migrants may have used fire to collect nuts, to prepare patches of useful pioneer plant species, and in communal hunts. They may have intentionally burned the landscape during the fall and winter when smaller mobile bands congregated in larger hunting parties to capture mastodon, bison, and caribou. Among other firing techniques, Clovis and Paleo-Indian hunter-gatherers may have used ring fires to trap game within a circle where they could be more easily hunted and point firesto drive game to a point, or natural barrier such as water where they could be captured more easily (Hammett 1992). Presumably, the use of fire for hunting of megafauna ceased when the Ice Age ended around 12,500-10,000 BP with the gradual warming and drying of the climate and the disappearance of megafauna (Fagan 1991).

Archaic Indians (8,000-2,800BP), such as the groups who inhabited the Little Tennessee River Valley (Chapman and others 1982), may have used fire – along with other practices – to create and maintain ecotones. Ecotones are transition areas between two types of ecosystems. Ecotones and early-succession ecosystems often support useful plants and animals. Indians probably burned patches of the landscape during the seasons of the year when smaller assemblages of people gathered together in larger congregations to socialize, trade, hunt, and forage. Indians may have used low-intensity fires for hunting to prevent damage to the skins of game animals (Hammett 1992). Archaic Indians began diversifying subsistence strategies to include the exploitation of resources such as nuts, seed-bearing grasses, grey squirrels and white-tailed deer in forests, grasslands, and ecotones (Fagan 1991). The Archaic tradition is characterized by primary forest efficiency, or the gradual but dramatic increase in efficiency of food production.

Woodland Indians (2,800-1,300BP) may have deliberately used fire to maintain disturbed habitats to encourage economic plants, and to prepare seed beds (Fagan 1991). A cultural transition took place in the Woodland period from mobile, hunting-gathering groups to settled communities as Woodlands Indians began domesticating plants that are native to the South. Woodland Indians settled in river valleys and alluvial plains where the soil was fertile and the habitat supported plant cultivation.

Mississippian Indians (1,300-400BP) may have used fire to modify more extensive tracts of the landscape. Mississippian Indians used fire to maintain larger areas of disturbed habitat to produce maize that was introduced from MesoAmerica around AD1600- 800. They may have used fire to clear the larger settlement grounds that were needed to accommodate growing populations. They may also have used fire to clear areas where they could construct political centers such as those represented by the Indian mounds scattered around the East from the Mississippi River to the Carolina Coastal Plain. As many as 1.5 to 2 million Indians lived in the South during the Mississippian Period (Carroll and others 2002). Population densities were higher in the southern and coastal areas and along major rivers (Stanturf and others 2002). Fire was prominent in the myths and rituals of Southeastern Indians in the Mississippian Period. Ceremonial fires were approached with reverence as sacred representatives of the Sun and the Upper World (Carroll and others 2002). The following are some other reasons Mississippian Indians set fires:

• Fell trees
• Clear travel routes
• Increase visibility
• Clear habitats of predatory animals
• Create the environmental conditions preferred by game animals
• Reduce insect pests and collect edible insects
• Encourage production of wild seeds and economic plants (e.g., berries, medicinals)
• Facilitate collection of forest products (e.g., berries, nuts, and seeds) 
• Prepare planting sites
• Protect sites from wildfires
• Send messages via ‘smoke signals’
• Create resource diversity
• Maintain preferred ecosystems
• Fight battles
• Extort wealth
• For pleasure and amusement

The First Peoples and Cherokee Mountains pages in the Environmental History section of the Encyclopedia of Southern Appalachian Forest Ecosystems also have information about prehistoric and historic Native Americans.