Lines on the Land
Effects of Native Fires on Grasslands
Henry Abbott, of the U.S. Railroad survey "credits Indians with excavating water holes and firing the landscape to foster the growth of grass for their horses" as shown here along the Klamath River and Upper Klamath Lake in Southern Oregon. (Reports of Explorations and Surveys, to ascertain the most practicable and economic route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, made under the direction of the Secretary of War in 1854-5. Washington, D.C., 1857. Plate IV, Vol. 6, facing p.69. Caption citation: William G. Robbins, "Landscape and Environment: Ecological Change in the Intermontane Northwest," Pacific Northwest Quarterly Vol. 84, No. 4 (October 1993), p.145.)