History
The History of Fire and the Human Use of Fire in the Northern Rockies

History
The History of Fire and the Human Use of Fire in the Northern Rockies

History
The History of Fire in the Northern Rockies

In the decades following the Hellgate Treaty, the tribes had by no means been marginalized yet, and western Montana was still contested terrain. And it was also still a regularly burned terrain. but enormous change was on the horizon brought on by the gold rush, the Mullan Road, boom towns like Bannock and Virginia City, and non-Indian settlments in places like the Bitterroot Valley.


My Image

Victor's Camp, Hell Gate Ronde, John Mix Stanley, 1853
Yale University Art Gallery | Credit: Yale University Art Gallery

For the first two decades after the Hellgate Treaty, Salish and Pend d’Oreille people continued to exercise some degree of political and economic power in western Montana, and they lived much as they had in preceding decades — albeit amid steadily dwindling populations of bison and other game. And the tribes continued to manage the land, including off-reservation areas, with fire. Non-Indian population was low, and industrial development was virtually absent due to the lack of easy ways of transporting goods to and from national and international markets. Indeed, native people continue to control numerous key nexuses, such as ferries on major rivers, in that early economic landscape.

But some important shifts began to happen with the discovery of gold in Montana in 1864, and with the ending of the civil war in 1865. Shortly before, the Mullan Road had been built — a rough wagon track running from Fort Walla Walla to Fort Benton. Settlers began to come into Montana — not only to boom towns like Bannock and Virginia City, but also to places like the Bitterroot Valley in order to grow crops and raise livestock to supply the miners. Encroachment on tribal lands increased, and so did the threats and actual violence against those who exercised their off-reservation hunting and fishing rights, let alone those who burned the land in the traditional way. As historian William Farr has noted, in 1869 a grand jury of Montana’s Third Judicial District “met to address Blackfeet depredations and the threat of ‘roving Indians.’ White settlers accused the Pend d'Oreilles of stealing horses, setting prairie fires, and possibly even committing murder while on their way to hunt on the Yellowstone. The grand jury, hoping to call attention to the ‘exposed condition of the people,’ concluded its report with a recommendation to both the military and the Office of Indian Affairs: ‘Their passage throughout settled valleys should be prohibited by the authorities.’ ”i
My Image

Tipis at New Perce Pass

But for the tribes, who throughout the nineteenth century continued to subsist primarily by their traditional ways of life, the off-reservation rights guaranteed by the treaty were vitally important, and they fiercely resisted these pressures. Salish, Pend d’Oreille, and Kootenai people — in large tribal parties, in small family groups, and as individual people — continued to move across their vast but intimately familiar territories, hunting, gathering plants, fishing, grazing their horses, visiting other tribes and the places and placenames they had used from the beginning of human history.

And they also continued to use fire — if perhaps in gradually less expansive ways — as an integral part of that way of life, shaping the landscape and nurturing the plants and animals upon which they depended. Some of the evidence for this can be found in the tree rings examined in recent years by forest scientists. In study after study, they have generally found a consistent record of burning throughout the nineteenth century in western Montana.ii

In addition, the federal government’s presence in western Montana was also relatively minimal, including on the Flathead Reservation itself, where the “Jocko Agency” consisted of little more than the agent, a clerk, and a few employees. Through most of the 1860s and 1870s, the government operation did little for the Indian people it was supposed to be serving, but on the other hand, it also exercised little repressive control over them. The agent and his small crew could do little to stop tribal leaders and the warriors alongside them on their way to buffalo — or on their way to light fires.

In the decades following the Hellgate Treaty, the tribes had by no means been marginalized yet, and western Montana was still contested terrain. And it was also still a regularly burned terrain.

__________________
i William Farr, “Going to Buffalo: Indian Hunting Migrations across the Rocky Mountains. Part 2, Civilian Permits, Army Escorts,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 54 (1) (Spring 2004), 26-44.

ii See, for example, S.F. Arno, H.Y. Smith, and M.A. Krebs. Old growth ponderosa pine and western larch stand structures: Influences of pre-1900 fires and fire exclusion (USDA Forest Service Intermountain Research Station, Research Paper INT-495. Ogden, UT: USFS, 1997), S.W. Barrett, S.F. Arno, and J.P. Menakis, Fire Episodes in the Inland Northwest, 1540-1940, Based on Fire History Data (USDA Forest Service Intermountain Research Station, General Technical Report INT-370. Ogden, UT: USFS, 1997), and Stephen F. Arno, The Historical Role of Fire on the Bitterroot National Forest (USDA Forest Service Intermountain Research Station, Research Paper INT-187. Ogden, UT: USFS, December 1976).

In the decades following the Hellgate Treaty, the tribes had by no means been marginalized yet, and western Montana was still contested terrain. And it was also still a regularly burned terrain. but enormous change was on the horizon brought on by the gold rush, the Mullan Road, boom towns like Bannock and Virginia City, and non-Indian settlments in places like the Bitterroot Valley.


My Image

Victor's Camp, Hell Gate Ronde, John Mix Stanley, 1853
Yale University Art Gallery | Credit: Yale University Art Gallery

For the first two decades after the Hellgate Treaty, Salish and Pend d’Oreille people continued to exercise some degree of political and economic power in western Montana, and they lived much as they had in preceding decades — albeit amid steadily dwindling populations of bison and other game. And the tribes continued to manage the land, including off-reservation areas, with fire. Non-Indian population was low, and industrial development was virtually absent due to the lack of easy ways of transporting goods to and from national and international markets. Indeed, native people continue to control numerous key nexuses, such as ferries on major rivers, in that early economic landscape.

But some important shifts began to happen with the discovery of gold in Montana in 1864, and with the ending of the civil war in 1865. Shortly before, the Mullan Road had been built — a rough wagon track running from Fort Walla Walla to Fort Benton. Settlers began to come into Montana — not only to boom towns like Bannock and Virginia City, but also to places like the Bitterroot Valley in order to grow crops and raise livestock to supply the miners. Encroachment on tribal lands increased, and so did the threats and actual violence against those who exercised their off-reservation hunting and fishing rights, let alone those who burned the land in the traditional way. As historian William Farr has noted, in 1869 a grand jury of Montana’s Third Judicial District “met to address Blackfeet depredations and the threat of ‘roving Indians.’ White settlers accused the Pend d'Oreilles of stealing horses, setting prairie fires, and possibly even committing murder while on their way to hunt on the Yellowstone. The grand jury, hoping to call attention to the ‘exposed condition of the people,’ concluded its report with a recommendation to both the military and the Office of Indian Affairs: ‘Their passage throughout settled valleys should be prohibited by the authorities.’ ”i
My Image

Tipis at New Perce Pass

But for the tribes, who throughout the nineteenth century continued to subsist primarily by their traditional ways of life, the off-reservation rights guaranteed by the treaty were vitally important, and they fiercely resisted these pressures. Salish, Pend d’Oreille, and Kootenai people — in large tribal parties, in small family groups, and as individual people — continued to move across their vast but intimately familiar territories, hunting, gathering plants, fishing, grazing their horses, visiting other tribes and the places and placenames they had used from the beginning of human history.

And they also continued to use fire — if perhaps in gradually less expansive ways — as an integral part of that way of life, shaping the landscape and nurturing the plants and animals upon which they depended. Some of the evidence for this can be found in the tree rings examined in recent years by forest scientists. In study after study, they have generally found a consistent record of burning throughout the nineteenth century in western Montana.ii

In addition, the federal government’s presence in western Montana was also relatively minimal, including on the Flathead Reservation itself, where the “Jocko Agency” consisted of little more than the agent, a clerk, and a few employees. Through most of the 1860s and 1870s, the government operation did little for the Indian people it was supposed to be serving, but on the other hand, it also exercised little repressive control over them. The agent and his small crew could do little to stop tribal leaders and the warriors alongside them on their way to buffalo — or on their way to light fires.

In the decades following the Hellgate Treaty, the tribes had by no means been marginalized yet, and western Montana was still contested terrain. And it was also still a regularly burned terrain.

__________________
i William Farr, “Going to Buffalo: Indian Hunting Migrations across the Rocky Mountains. Part 2, Civilian Permits, Army Escorts,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 54 (1) (Spring 2004), 26-44.

ii See, for example, S.F. Arno, H.Y. Smith, and M.A. Krebs. Old growth ponderosa pine and western larch stand structures: Influences of pre-1900 fires and fire exclusion (USDA Forest Service Intermountain Research Station, Research Paper INT-495. Ogden, UT: USFS, 1997), S.W. Barrett, S.F. Arno, and J.P. Menakis, Fire Episodes in the Inland Northwest, 1540-1940, Based on Fire History Data (USDA Forest Service Intermountain Research Station, General Technical Report INT-370. Ogden, UT: USFS, 1997), and Stephen F. Arno, The Historical Role of Fire on the Bitterroot National Forest (USDA Forest Service Intermountain Research Station, Research Paper INT-187. Ogden, UT: USFS, December 1976).

In the decades following the Hellgate Treaty, the tribes had by no means been marginalized yet, and western Montana was still contested terrain. And it was also still a regularly burned terrain. but enormous change was on the horizon brought on by the gold rush, the Mullan Road, boom towns like Bannock and Virginia City, and non-Indian settlments in places like the Bitterroot Valley.


My Image

Victor's Camp, Hell Gate Ronde, John Mix Stanley, 1853
Yale University Art Gallery | Credit: Yale University Art Gallery

For the first two decades after the Hellgate Treaty, Salish and Pend d’Oreille people continued to exercise some degree of political and economic power in western Montana, and they lived much as they had in preceding decades — albeit amid steadily dwindling populations of bison and other game. And the tribes continued to manage the land, including off-reservation areas, with fire. Non-Indian population was low, and industrial development was virtually absent due to the lack of easy ways of transporting goods to and from national and international markets. Indeed, native people continue to control numerous key nexuses, such as ferries on major rivers, in that early economic landscape.

But some important shifts began to happen with the discovery of gold in Montana in 1864, and with the ending of the civil war in 1865. Shortly before, the Mullan Road had been built — a rough wagon track running from Fort Walla Walla to Fort Benton. Settlers began to come into Montana — not only to boom towns like Bannock and Virginia City, but also to places like the Bitterroot Valley in order to grow crops and raise livestock to supply the miners. Encroachment on tribal lands increased, and so did the threats and actual violence against those who exercised their off-reservation hunting and fishing rights, let alone those who burned the land in the traditional way. As historian William Farr has noted, in 1869 a grand jury of Montana’s Third Judicial District “met to address Blackfeet depredations and the threat of ‘roving Indians.’ White settlers accused the Pend d'Oreilles of stealing horses, setting prairie fires, and possibly even committing murder while on their way to hunt on the Yellowstone. The grand jury, hoping to call attention to the ‘exposed condition of the people,’ concluded its report with a recommendation to both the military and the Office of Indian Affairs: ‘Their passage throughout settled valleys should be prohibited by the authorities.’ ”i
My Image

Tipis at New Perce Pass

But for the tribes, who throughout the nineteenth century continued to subsist primarily by their traditional ways of life, the off-reservation rights guaranteed by the treaty were vitally important, and they fiercely resisted these pressures. Salish, Pend d’Oreille, and Kootenai people — in large tribal parties, in small family groups, and as individual people — continued to move across their vast but intimately familiar territories, hunting, gathering plants, fishing, grazing their horses, visiting other tribes and the places and placenames they had used from the beginning of human history.

And they also continued to use fire — if perhaps in gradually less expansive ways — as an integral part of that way of life, shaping the landscape and nurturing the plants and animals upon which they depended. Some of the evidence for this can be found in the tree rings examined in recent years by forest scientists. In study after study, they have generally found a consistent record of burning throughout the nineteenth century in western Montana.ii

In addition, the federal government’s presence in western Montana was also relatively minimal, including on the Flathead Reservation itself, where the “Jocko Agency” consisted of little more than the agent, a clerk, and a few employees. Through most of the 1860s and 1870s, the government operation did little for the Indian people it was supposed to be serving, but on the other hand, it also exercised little repressive control over them. The agent and his small crew could do little to stop tribal leaders and the warriors alongside them on their way to buffalo — or on their way to light fires.

In the decades following the Hellgate Treaty, the tribes had by no means been marginalized yet, and western Montana was still contested terrain. And it was also still a regularly burned terrain.

__________________
i William Farr, “Going to Buffalo: Indian Hunting Migrations across the Rocky Mountains. Part 2, Civilian Permits, Army Escorts,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 54 (1) (Spring 2004), 26-44.

ii See, for example, S.F. Arno, H.Y. Smith, and M.A. Krebs. Old growth ponderosa pine and western larch stand structures: Influences of pre-1900 fires and fire exclusion (USDA Forest Service Intermountain Research Station, Research Paper INT-495. Ogden, UT: USFS, 1997), S.W. Barrett, S.F. Arno, and J.P. Menakis, Fire Episodes in the Inland Northwest, 1540-1940, Based on Fire History Data (USDA Forest Service Intermountain Research Station, General Technical Report INT-370. Ogden, UT: USFS, 1997), and Stephen F. Arno, The Historical Role of Fire on the Bitterroot National Forest (USDA Forest Service Intermountain Research Station, Research Paper INT-187. Ogden, UT: USFS, December 1976).