Document

Title

Our Grandfather Fire: fire and the American Indian
Document Type: Book Chapter
Author(s): S. J. Pyne
Editor(s): S. J. Pyne
Publication Year: 1982

Cataloging Information

Keyword(s):
  • aborigines
  • agriculture
  • arid regions
  • barrens
  • broadcast burning
  • burning intervals
  • Canada
  • catastrophic fires
  • coastal plain
  • deserts
  • droughts
  • duff
  • ecosystem dynamics
  • ecotones
  • fertilizers
  • fire case histories
  • fire control
  • fire equipment
  • fire exclusion
  • fire protection
  • fire regimes
  • firefighting personnel
  • Florida
  • forest management
  • grasses
  • grasslands
  • habitat suitability
  • habitat types
  • histories
  • human caused fires
  • hunting
  • insects
  • integrated pest management
  • land use planning
  • landscape ecology
  • lightning caused fires
  • logging
  • mammals
  • mortality
  • mosaic
  • MYTHOLOGY
  • Native Americans
  • New England
  • pine forests
  • pine hardwood forests
  • prairies
  • precipitation
  • presettlement fires
  • presettlement vegetation
  • recreation
  • rivers
  • savannas
  • scorch
  • season of fire
  • slash
  • swamps
  • trees
  • understory vegetation
  • wilderness areas
  • wilderness fire management
  • wildfires
  • wildland fuels
Topic(s):
Region(s):
Record Maintained By:
TTRS Staff; http://talltimbers.org/fire-ecology-comments/
Record Last Modified: July 26, 2018
FRAMES Record Number: 43146
Tall Timbers Record Number: 18325
TTRS Location Status: Not in file
TTRS Call Number: Not in File
TTRS Abstract Status: Fair use, Okay, Reproduced by permission

This bibliographic record was either created or modified by the Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy and is provided without charge to promote research and education in Fire Ecology. The E.V. Komarek Fire Ecology Database is the intellectual property of the Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy.

Description

From the text... 'It is often assumed that the American Indian was incapable of greatly modifying his environment and that he would not have been much interested in doing so if he did have the capabilities. In fact, he possessed both the tool and the will to use it. That tool was fire. But even more than a wonderful instrument, without which most Indian economics would have collapsed, fire was a presence. To the tribes of the eastern United States it was known as Our Grandfather Fire.' ©1982 by Princeton University Press.

Citation:
Pyne, S. J. 1982. Our Grandfather Fire: fire and the American Indian, in SJ Pyne ed., Fire in America: a cultural history of wildland and rural fire. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, p. 71-83.