American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Anthropologists have long been interested in the cultures and customs of the aboriginal inhabitants of North America, and investigators have long sought to determine the type of society utilized by the American Indian, concentrating mainly on their origin and degree of civilization. The development of modem ecology, however, spawned new areas of interest and both anthropologists and biologists became aware of the fact that American Indian culture involved not only a type of civilization, but an intimate relationship with and an unsurpassed knowledge of the land on which he lived. This ability to coexist with nature was never 50 evident as it has become within the past fifteen years, as a result of the deteriorating environment modern society has produced. Society has finally realized the preciousness of natural habitats and begun to develop a "back-to-nature" attitude with emphasis on the preservation of our natural resources. This new attitude has brought with it the realization that, before the coming of the white man, the American Indian had learned to live in harmony with nature and actually shaped the forests and prairies to his own benefits with little detrimental effect on the land. How he was able to do this has been a subject of controversy for many years and a subject that modern ecologists have found difficult to digest. Today there is little doubt that the Indians were able to maintain their environment through the use of fire. Evidence is presented in the from of prescribed burning now being instituted in most U.S. parks and forests. The following discussion is a brief survey of the use of fire by American Indians as fire ecologists, and the ultimate decision to return to tradition.