24 Feb 2008, 1:40pm
Cultural Landscapes
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Before The Wilderness: Environmental Management by Native Californians

Blackburn, Thomas C. and Kat Anderson, eds. Before The Wilderness: Environmental Management by Native Californians. 1993. Malki Press - Ballena Press

Selected Excerpts:

CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION: MANAGING THE DOMESTICATED ENVIRONMENT

By Thomas Blackburn and Kat Anderson

We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills and the winding streams with tangled growth as ‘wild.’ Only to the white man was nature a`wilderness’ and …the land ‘infested’ with ‘wild’ animals and `savage’ people [Standing Bear, Ogalala Sioux, quoted in Nash 1982].

I have no difficulty in accepting certain spiritual entities in the landscape as domesticated, for the purpose of understanding human action. In the Cape York Peninsula such entities and forces lose their domesticatory qualities when humans are removed from the landscape, and interaction ceases. It is only then that the entire landscape in all its empirical and non-empirical diversity is considered by Aboriginal people to have ‘come wild’ and, thus, to have become potentially dangerous for humans who have lost the practical knowledge for ‘correct’ (i.e., authorized) interaction [Chase 1989:47-8].

During the last two decades, a quiet but nonetheless significant transformation has been occurring in the study of past and present human subsistence systems, and consequently in our understanding of such related (and possibly interrelated) issues as changes in demographic factors, the evolution of complex social and political forms, and the origins and spread of specialized agroecosystems dependent upon domesticated species of plants and animals. A new appreciation for the diversity and potential complexity of nonagricultural economies, in conjunction with a better understanding of the often sophisticated systems of traditional knowledge upon which they are based, has led to a growing recognition that the rigid and rather monolithic conceptual dichotomy traditionally drawn between the seemingly passive `food procurement’ lifestyle of ‘hunter-gatherers’ and the apparently more active `food production’ adaptation of ‘agriculturalists’ is inadequate, overly simplistic, and dangerously misleading. Instead, human adaptive systems increasingly are being seen as occurring along a complex gradient and/or continuum, involving more and more intensive interaction between people and their environment, progressively greater inputs of human energy per area of land, and an expanding capacity to modify or transform natural ecosystems (e.g., Harris 1989)…

Some papers [in this volume] focus rather narrowly on particular techniques of resource utilization or on the micromanagement of individual species, while others discuss the broad management of entire plant communities, resource groups, or populations. Although the evidence that is adduced by the various authors is occasionally fragmentary, and too often more suggestive than decisive, the cumulative effect is compelling, and the final conclusion that emerges seems inescapable and unequivocal: the extremely rich, diverse, and apparently `wild’ landscape that so impressed Europeans at the time of contact-and which traditionally has been viewed as a `natural, untrammeled wilderness’ ever since-was to some extent actually a product of (and more importantly dependent upon) deliberate human intervention. In other words, particular habitats-in a number of important respects-had been domesticated…

However, we believe that it is important to emphasize the fact that the level of environmental management that was achieved in California-in contrast to that present in Australia-was such that native peoples did not simply exercise a certain degree of `control’ over specific resources or `modify the ecology’ of particular biological communities. Instead, the domesticatory process here seems to have reached the point where important features of major ecosystems had developed as a result of human intervention, and many habitats (e.g., coastal prairies, black oak savannas, and dry montane meadows) were deliberately maintained by, and essentially dependent upon, ongoing human activities of various kinds. In fact, the various essays in this volume strongly suggest that the vertical structure, spatial extent, and species composition of the various plant communities that early European visitors to California found so remarkably fecund were largely maintained and regenerated over time as a result of constant, purposive human intervention. When that intervention ceased, a process of environmental change began that led to a gradual decline in the number, range, and diversity of many of the native species and habitat types that once flourished here. When elders today are asked why the rich resource base and fertile landscape that they remember as having existed in the past has changed so drastically, they are apt to respond by saying simply, “No one is gathering anymore.” The idea that human use ensures an abundance of plant and animal life appears to have been an ancient one in the minds of native peoples.

The most powerful, effective, and widely employed tool in the native repertoire for directly manipulating the environment was undoubtedly fire. Indigenous groups used fire for a variety of purposes, including stimulating new plant growth and inducing early stages of succession; creating and sustaining vegetational mosaics with numerous ecotones beneficial to animal life; controlling plant diseases and insect infestations; increasing the frequency and range of useful plant species; eliciting desirable plant growth characteristics; minimizing the severity and number of uncontrolled wildfires; and facilitating hunting by the reduction of undergrowth. However, several other techniques capable of significantly modifying the habitat also appear to have been employed by various Native California societies. These included (but were not necessarily limited to) the following activities: the sowing or broadcasting of seeds; the transplantation of shrubs or small trees to new locations; the construction of ditches and the diversion of water for irrigation purposes; the pruning and coppicing of plants to encourage particular patterns of growth; the weeding and tillage of specific plant communities; and the construction of water diversion structures for erosion control. We believe that additional management techniques involving direct environmental interaction almost certainly will be identified through future research…

2. SOME EXPLANATIONS FOR THE RISE OF CULTURAL COMPLEXITY IN NATIVE CALIFORNIA WITH COMMENTS ON PROTO-AGRICULTURE AND AGRICULTURE

By Lowell J. Bean And Harry W. Lawton

Current anthropological interest in hunter-gatherer ecology and research findings on hunters and gatherers in marginal-subsistence environments of Australia, South Africa, and the Great Basin of the United States have brought renewed attention to the California Indians. Anthropologists are finally coming to a realization that cultural development in California was extraordinarily rich and complex despite what would appear to have been the limitations of the native economic system.

Henry Lewis’s paper (1973, and this volume) on burning patterns in northern California represents an extremely important new contribution to our knowledge of California’s hunting and gathering economy. Lewis has employed a systems approach to present the first geographically broad and ecologically oriented demonstration of a primary means of environmental manipulation used by northern California Indian groups to increase plant and animal resources. In fact, it seems probable in view of Lewis’s findings that burning was the most significant environmental manipulation employed by California Indians…

3. PATTERNS OF INDIAN BURNING IN CALIFORNIA:ECOLOGY AND ETHNOHISTORY

By Henry T. Lewis

It would be difficult to find a reason why the Indians (of California) should care one way or another if the forest burned. It is quite something else again to contend that the Indians used fire systematically to “improve” the forest. Improve it for what purpose?… Yet this fantastic idea has been and still is put forth time and again… [C.R Clar, California Government and Forestry 1959:7].

There seems little question that Indians across the United States used fire as a land-management tool… The California Indians probably molded the Sierra landscape with fire for more than 3,000 years [V.R. Johnston, 'The Ecology of Fire 1970a:81, 85].

-Our kind of people never used the plow… All they used to do was burn the brush at various places, so that some good things will grow up… they do not set fire for nothing, it is for something that they set fire for [quotation from an Indian informant in J.P. Harrington, Tobacco Among the Karok Indians of California 1932:63].

Indigenous uses of fire and the consequent effects upon the environments of California have been discussed in terms which, at one extreme, see the Indian as a noble, primitive conservationist and, at the other, as a careless or indifferent incendiary. Unfortunately, the varied ethnographic references to aboriginal burning often note little more than that Indians did in fact set fire to California’s grass, chaparral, and forest lands. Consequently, the evidence supports either position depending upon one’s predisposition for finding an aboriginal fire ecologist or a primitive pyromaniac.

The three comments quoted above represent different perspectives on the significance and aims of aboriginal burning in California. Regrettably, there are very few which even mention the third view presented, that of the native participants. Largely as a consequence of this, the arguments presented here purposefully avoid the question of whether or not California Indians were ecologically aware or environmentally indifferent as to the impact of fire on local habitats. Because California Indians no longer burn tracts of forest, brush, and grassland such questions are probably impossible to answer. In any event, it is not the motivations, whatever they may have been, that I am concerned with but, rather, what can be reconstructed regarding effects of aboriginal burning on some of the environments of historic and prehistoric California. At the same time, is it possible to formulate the broad outline of ecological relationships that must have been involved?

The most fundamental assumption which underlies the following argument is simply that hunter-gatherers are necessarily responsive to local environmental fluctuations and perturbations, whether natural or man-made. Like men everywhere, hunter-gatherers cannot long ignore disruptions which adversely effect their day-to-day subsistence. However, because their subsistence strategies are more directly and immediately linked to environmental imperatives, they must soon make accommodations or else become one more evolutionary failure. We do not have to drag forth Rousseauean assumptions that hunter-gatherers do (or in the past did) live in “primeval harmony” with nature, or that they possess mystic insights about the workings of natural phenomena. The argument simply assumes that men must sooner or later, with varying degrees of effectiveness, adjust to their surroundings. The various strategies of hunting and gathering-whether adapted to dry deserts, the subarctic, or tropical forests-require that it be sooner rather than later. How part of such an adaptation obtained, involving the use of fire in the woodland-grass, chaparral, and forest lands of California, is the subject of this paper…

4. VEGETATION BURNING BY THE CHUMASH

By Jan Timbrook, John R Johnson, And David D. Earle

The question of whether aboriginal hunting-gathering peoples of California modified their environments by periodic burning of vegetation has been widely discussed, both by anthropologists and by geographers. Several tribes used fire in hunting, with such techniques as rabbit drives; to improve forage for game animals which would then be hunted; and to increase the availability of certain plants for direct use by humans (Lewis 1973). Bean and Lawton (1973:xxxvi) proposed that burning was part of a sophisticated technological inventory of energy extraction processes which supported the high population density and cultural complexity of aboriginal California. In their view, true agriculture was not adopted by most peoples in the state because it would have been not only unnecessary but a step backward in efficiency.

Plant geographers have suggested that the evolution and distribution of certain vegetation types in southern California have been greatly influenced by human activities, among which European introduction of plant species and grazing animals are only the most recent. It is thought by some that frequent burning by prehistoric Californians sustained a parklike landscape with grass and scattered oak trees, and that chaparral has invaded these areas since burning was suppressed after Spanish colonization in the 19th century (Aschmann 1959, 1976:41).

Actual documentation of burning of vegetation by Indians has been confined primarily to northern California (Lewis 1973; Sampson 1944), and complaints have been voiced regarding the lack of information available about southern California Mission groups or about pre-European practices (Bean and Lawton 1973:xxi-xxii; O’Connell 1974:118). Aschmann (1959) had assumed from plant distributions that these coastal groups did burn the local vegetation, but he could produce no documentation from early Spanish historical sources. Jonathan Sauer (1977:383) also stated that there was no historical evidence of vegetation burning by the Chumash.

Historical accounts describing burning in early times by Indians the southern California coast are indeed extant, although they are n widely known. They suggest that purposeful burning of some types native vegetation was a regular occurrence among the Chumash Indians the Santa Barbara Channel region during the late 18th century, that practice was suppressed in the Mission Period, and that it had long faded from cultural memory by the late 19th and early 20th centuries when ethnographic data were collected from Chumash survivors.

The early accounts of vegetation modification by the Chumash are significant because they provide information useful in reconstructing pre-Hispanic landscape. This knowledge is valuable to foresters, botanists, geographers, and ecologists, as well as to anthropologists and archaeologists.

The Chumash are of particular interest because of their population density, sedentary existence, and complexity of socio-political organization which was far closer to the chiefdom level than to the band (Anderson 1978:6). As a relatively complex nonagricultural group, the Chumash example can serve as a way of evaluating Bean and Lawton’s hypotheses about environmental manipulation and cultural complexity aboriginal California (1973:xxxv-xxxvii). It may also provide important comparative evidence for discussions of similar human behavior in different times and places on a worldwide basis.

It is therefore the purpose of this paper to call attention to the ethnohistoric evidence which shows that the Chumash did deliberately use fire in ways which may have had pronounced long-term environmental effects, and to demonstrate that encouragement of growth of certain plant resources was the principal reason for the practice of burning…

5. NATIVE CALIFORNIANS AS ANCIENT AND CONTEMPORARY CULTIVATORS

By Kat Anderson

-The California Indians were highly accomplished practical botanists, perhaps as knowledgeable about subtle differences in form, color, and behavior as some university professors who have spent their adult lives reading and making field observations. But they were also knowledgeable in a different way-a way directed at understanding nature in such a manner as to use it without destroying it [Heizer and Elsasser 1980].

California has been sculpted by prehistoric human hands, as well by earthquakes, lava flows, floods, lightning fires, and windstorms. Just as channel overflows revitalized the sandbar willow, California sycamore, and valley oak habitats, Native Americans-through the pattern and timing of harvests, as well as through the burning, pruning, weeding, and planting of places-favored certain mixtures and frequencies of plant and animal species.

Yet almost everywhere that Westerners have gone, they have underestimated the skill, ingenuity, and capability for shaping the landscape of the peoples they have displaced. Many of California’s landscapes, which were culturally affected to a considerable extent, refute the idea that Native Americans “lived lightly on the land.” However, the realization that parts of California bear the imprint of former human cultures does not necessarily imply that the land was therefore “corrupted” or “soiled.” That self-defeating attitude keeps us from exploring a Native American partnership with nature that left the resource base intact, despite the fact that there were effects from human action that were beneficial to native cultures.

The long centuries (lasting at least 12,000 years) of successful adaptation to life in California suggests that certain tribal approaches to land use were far more sophisticated than Westerners suspect. When one talks with elders in various tribes today, it becomes clear that there was a realm, pattern, and scale to human use that was suited to wild places, accessible through the ancient knowledge of those elders’ ancestors. This paper attempts to look seriously at some of the possibilities for wilderness living suggested by Native American ways…

6. ‘THE BASKET IS IN THE ROOTS, THAT’S WHERE IT BEGINS’

By David W. Peri And Scott M. Patterson

7. CONTEMPORARY CALIFORNIA INDIAN BASKET WEAVERS AND THE ENVIRONMENT

By Bev Ortiz

8. MANAGING OAKS AND THE ACORN CROP

By Helen McCarthy

It is well established that foods made from acorns originally provided an essential dietary component (i.e., a staple) for the First People of California (Kroeber 1925; Gifford 1939; Baumhoff 1963; Basgall 1987), and acorn, as many now refer to it, still continues to make an important contribution to the contemporary expression of traditional culture. It is offered as a specially featured dish at family celebrations, at tribal gatherings, and at Big Times, and it is also often served as a healing and soothing food to elders or others who are ill. Thus it is worthwhile, in considering the role of Native Californians as environmental managers, to examine the strategies and practices that pertain to their management of the acorn crop, since it may readily be assumed that people will develop the means to both maximize and protect those resources and products which are critical for their survival. This paper explores a number of such potential strategies, and at the same time reviews the relevant biological characteristics of oaks in order to better understand and evaluate the potential effects of these strategies. The data are drawn from both the statewide ethnographic literature and from my own research, which has been carried out in the southcentral Sierra Nevada region with Mono and Chukchansi peoples…

9. QUALITY FOOD: THE QUEST FOR PINE NUTS IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

By Glenn Farris

10. BOW STAVES HARVESTED FROM JUNIPER TREES BY INDIANS OF NEVADA

By Philip J. Wilke

Investigation of numerous scarred juniper (Juniperus osteoperma) trees in western Nevada, from which it is concluded Indians took wood for the manufacture of archery bows, necessitated a review of the literature on Great Basin bows and the materials from which they were made. The goal was to better understand the significance of these trees and the relationship of the industry represented by them to the manufacture of bows in the area as a whole. Use of horn, antler, and bone for bow stave material is discussed elsewhere (Wilke 1988). In this paper, I discuss the use of various woods for bow staves in the Great Basin and adjacent regions. I then discuss the harvesting of wood for bow staves from still-living juniper trees in western Nevada, and offer ideas about the exchange of wooden bow staves or completed bows from this region to other regions. Finally, I speculate on the relationships between bowyers and the trees from which they took their bow staves, and assess stave harvesting and tree regrowth as these phenomena relate to the concept of aboriginal resource management…

11. FUEL USE AND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE STUDY OF LAND MANAGEMENT IN PREHISTORIC CALIFORNIA AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR A RESEARCH PROGRAM

By Chester King

Wood was used for fuel by California Indians and was an important resource. Wood was burned to process food in hearths, ovens, and parching trays, to heat rocks used to boil water in baskets, and to heat houses and sweat lodges. During some time periods and in some regions, wood was also used to fire grave pits, to cremate the dead, and/or to burn offerings. Wood fires were also used to provide light and heat for outdoor ceremonies.

The use of wood fuels and the management of wood fuel resources by protohistoric and prehistoric societies are topics which have not as yet been adequately studied. Obtaining and using wood fuels was of vital importance to most human societies in the past, and significant amounts of time and effort were expended by the members of such societies. Many archaeological sites contain large quantities of charcoal from wood that was carbonized when plants were burned as fuel. Although prehistoric and protohistoric wood fuel use and management have recently been studied using ethnographic, historical, and archaeological data in the highlands of Peru (Johannessen and Hastorf 1990), I know of no systematic studies of the prehistoric use of wood fuels by North American groups.

The use of wood as fuel by prehistoric Californians can be studied y employing ethnographic, historical, and archaeological data; by developing experiments and models to measure sustainable yields of fuel woods from different landscapes; and by designing experiments to measure the amounts of wood used for different purposes. The management of stands of fuel sources by California Indians may have caused significant changes in the size and composition of vegetation communities. This paper presents some of the background to fuel uses of wood by the Chumash and Yokuts Indians of southcentral California and discussed lines of research which will allow us to measure the effects of fuel management strategies on native vegetation.

12. RITUAL MANAGEMENT OF SALMONID FISH RESOURCES IN CALIFORNIA

By Sean L. Swezey and Robert F. Heizer

13. AGRICULTURE AMONG THE PAIUTE OF OWENS VALLEY

By Harry W. Lawton, Philip J. Wilke, Mary DeDecker, and William M Mason

14. KUMEYAAY PLANT HUSBANDRY: FIRE, WATER, AND EROSION CONTROL SYSTEMS

By Florence Shipek

In this paper, I will describe Kumeyaay erosion control systems, which included complex techniques of controlled burning. These systems were combined with several methods of water management to maintain ground waters close to valley surfaces, and to keep the many springs and surface streams at usable levels for the complex Kumeyaay plant husbandry-corn agriculture systems. These highly effective systems were probably developed over the course of several thousand years by people gradually learning to adapt to the very erratic, semiarid climate of Southern California. I will start by summarizing the Kumeyaay plant husbandry-agricultural system (Shipek 1989), and then describe its relationship to erosion control and water management. Although each technique will be presented separately, in actual operation all techniques were used jointly and coordinated to achieve the desired effects.

This paper is based upon data collected between 1959 and 1965, primarily from Kumeyaay elders and plant specialists between 80 and 110 years of age, who had avoided the European invasion as much as possible by remaining in the Alta California mountains or fleeing to the northern Baja California Kumeyaay mountain villages. Their information was corroborated by data found in accounts written by Spanish, Mexican, and early American settlers, who described the land as they first saw it, as well as the changes which occurred after they took control, believing incorrectly that they were dealing with a “wild natural land.”

15. IN RETROSPECT

By Henry T. Lewis

This world… ever was, and is,
And shall be, ever-living Fire,
In measures being kindled
And in measures going out.
Heraclitus [c.540 - c.480 B.C.]

A former student, reflecting on how long ago it had been assigned as required reading in a seminar of mine, described Patterns of Indian Burning in California as “an historical piece.” While far from being as historically early as the publications of Omer C. Stewart on Indian uses of fire to alter the environment (1951 etc.), it did represent a second attempt to generate anthropological interest in the topic of hunter-gatherer uses of habitat burning in North America. As an “historical piece,” the ecological interpretations are somewhat dated and more limited than would now be the case. At the same time, studies now being done go much further in placing the use of fire within the broader context of traditional ecological knowledge and practice-of which habitat burning is merely a part, albeit an extremely important part (e.g., see Anderson 1988, 1991a, 1991b, and other papers within this volume).

As a result of the republication of Patterns here (with only minor editorial corrections), I thought I should provide a retrospective on the ideas, events, and contexts which first led to my thinking about the topic and subsequently to researching and writing it up…

 
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