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

nutrients. And it does something to create the balance to give you a big harvest of
cranberries (pers. comm. 2003).
Sadie Johnson, Makah, learned about burning Ts’oo-yuhs Prairie from both sets of grand-
Figure 42. Sadie Johnson, Makah, on the left, with her daughter Yvonne Wilke, and grandson Corbett.
Photograph by Kat Anderson, 2007.
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parents, all of whom
once lived in the Ozette
village (see Figure 42):
“There was burning of
the land—only the cranberry
marsh. There was
talk about that when I
was young. I remember
them talking about it so
that the cranberries and
the Indian tea would
grow, you know, grow
right” (pers. comm.
2002).
Gary Ray, Makah, (pers.
comm. 2007) learned from Lewis Trettivick that “the Makah used to burn the Ts’oo-yuhs bog to make the
cranberries better.” Trettivick was married to a Makah woman for many years.
The Ozette Prairies were also burned to enhance the growth of cranberries, just as Ts’oo-yuhs
Prairie was. Both wetland areas have tree encroachment problems and both sites have bogs that contain
cranberries and Indian tea. Anthropologist Elizabeth Colson (1941-1944) interviewed Alice Kalappa
(Makah) in the early 1940s about Ozette Settlements and she remembered former burning (see quote in
appendix 3).
Eighty-five-year-old John H. Ides (Makah) reflected on this notion:
“I imagine that they might have had the same thing there at Ozette. Because Ozette is similar to
what the Ts’oo-yuhs Valley is. If Ozette [Prairies] had some [cranberries] it would be the same procedures
of growing.... My father [Perry Ides] said that a long time ago that they used to burn the cranberries for
harvest. They would burn portions of it too, you know, lay hay on there I guess and then burn the cranberries.
And they said that kept cranberries going.... When they burned they burned the whole bog. It
was an ancient method of rejuvenating the earth” (Ides pers. comm. 2006).