The Ozette Prairies of Olympic National Park - Natural Resources ...

Prairie was not surveyed (see Table 6). While the word “burn” does not appear in Ozette wetlands, at the
south end of Ahlstrom’s Prairie there are the words “clearing” and “slashing” next to M.J. Boyle’s name.
Slash is the residue left after the clearing of woody plants. The piles are often burned called “slash/burning”
(see Figure 33). The wetlands are outlined in a solid, shaded block, and the block contains numerous
parallel lines indicating an opening of grass on the plat map (see Figure 34). The most interesting
information to be revealed in the 1895 GLO survey is that M.J. Boyle who lived on, what became known
as Ahlstrom’s Prairie, was identified as a Weberhard. Weberhard is an Ozette Indian family name. The
survey notes entry between sections 25 and 26 at 20.00 chains is: “Set a stake, 7 ft. long, for a corner of
lands claimed by M.J. Boyle a Weberhard (an Indian). Note. This is not the Charley Weberhard, who is
recognized by the Department, as holding land claim, adjoining the Ozette Village.” The areas designated
“burn” in these GLO surveys and plat maps included acreage in and around Manny’s Prairie, West
Prairie, and Sand Pt. Prairie (see Figures 34, 35, and 36). We do not know whether these fires were set by
Indians or by white settlers (Ahlstrom, Klock, and Person all confirmed that early settlers burned like the
Indians did) but this is to some extent a moot point since the settlers, by their own accounts, were simply
mimicking what the Indians had done, and, like the Indians, wanted to keep the wetlands open.
Makah tribal members interviewed between 2002 and 2007 claimed that in former times the
wetlands were burned. When asked which wetlands were burned, they could remember only Ts’oo-yuhs
Prairie, which is on the Makah Reservation and was more easily accessible to their ancestors in the late
1800s and early 1900s than the Ozette Prairies proper. Six Makah individuals—Pat Boachup, Greg Colfax,
John Ides, Sadie Johnson, Melissa Peterson, and Gary Ray—along with Kate McCarty, a non-Indian married
to a Makah man, were told by Makah elders that setting fires in Ts’oo-yuhs Prairie was a traditional
practice to enhance bog cranberries and Indian tea, improve hunting, and to keep the forest from encroaching.
Additionally, Helma Ward, a Makah elder interviewed by ethnobotanist Steven Gill (2005) in
the early 1980s, said that the cranberry bogs at Ts’oo-yuhs were burned every ten years.
Table 6. 1895 General Land Offi ce Survey of Township 31 North, Range 16 West
Focusing on the Ozette Prairies
Wetland Annotation
Ahlstrom’s Prairie is located in
portions of sections 25, 26, and 36
of T31NR16W.
Rooses Prairie is located in section
25 of T31NR16W.
In the 1895 survey, while surveying the section line between sections 25 and 26,
the surveyor notes that he enters marsh at 50.60 chains; at 62.80 chains he enters
slashing; at 64.75 chains leaves the slashing and enters a clearing; at 65.30 chains
he passes within a hundred feet of M.J. Boyle’s house; at 67.27 chains he leaves the
clearing; and at 73.16 chains leaves marsh.
The only survey done in this area was the south boundary of the Ozette Indian
Reservation. The transit line for the boundary passed through the narrowest
portion of the prairie complex and the only notations were entering marshy
land at 15.25 chains and leaving marshy land at 29.90 chains.
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