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

happened “yearly or whenever it was necessary.” John H. Ides stated every one to five years. Gill (1984:5),
who interviewed Makah elder Helma Ward in the 1980s, reported that “[f]ormerly the cranberry marsh at
Tsues [Ts’oo-yuhs] was burned every ten years or so to maintain cranberry production.”
A reasonable way to interpret these varying frequencies is that they are referring to different
localities or goals and may therefore all be accurate. Annual burning, for example, would not make sense
for patches of berries. Scientific studies confirm that berry production in salal and various species of western
huckleberries is generally delayed for at least three to five years after fire (Martin 1979; Nancy Turner
pers. comm. 2007), which points to an ideal burning frequency of once every 5 to 10 years for berry
patches. On the other side of the scale, more frequent burning may well have been necessary for inhibiting
tree encroachment at the periphery of the wetlands or for greening up the forage for Roosevelt elk,
black-tail deer, and black bears in certain areas. It is quite plausible, then, that different parts of the Ozette
Prairies experienced different fire-return intervals, varying from once a year to once every 10 years. In this
regard, the following observation by Emil Person
seems germane:
Figure 44. Emil Person with his grandaughter. Photograph by
Kat Anderson, 2007.
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“The Indians probably burned portions each year. I
don’t think that they burned the whole prairie
each year. I think that they burned every year, but
they always burned small areas. If you burned the
whole thing off then you wouldn’t have any area
for the deer to come back or the elk to come back to
because it would be all black. If you burned small
areas off you would still have the areas where the
deer could have food and you could still get them”
(pers. comm. 2006).
Limitations of the Interview Data
None of the consultants interviewed witnessed
burning firsthand through direct observation in the
Ozette Prairies and therefore, their knowledge is secondhand. People do not remember everything accurately
and this could lead to error in interpretation. If one person said their relatives or the Indians
burned in coastal wetlands we would probably have some doubt. But, as person after person (both