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

to advance onto the Ozette Prairies. In a newspaper article published February 15, 1940, Jack Henson
reported: that “Keller said that from the best information he can gather, at one time there were many
hundreds of elk around the [Ozette] lake. There were so many that instead of the dense underbrush that
is there now the vegetation had been browsed down like it is on the upper Hoh river. About fifty years
ago [circa 1890] hide and teeth hunters entered the district and killed the animals off. The hides were
shipped out of the country by sailing schooners from a trading post at the mouth of the Ozette river. The
hides were sent to the market to be tanned for leather. The animals were slaughtered like the buffalo of
the plains. To prove this contention Keller said that the late Walter Ferguson, who half a century ago operated
a trading post at the mouth of the Ozette river, told him he saw a band of 250 elk in Swan Bay, Lake
Ozette, one day and killed 70 of them that day. Early in the nineties there was a large influx of homesteaders
into the area and they also killed many of the elk for food and for the hides.”
Another explanation might be that the climate is changing becoming warmer and drier over the
last century due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Geographer Cathy Whitlock (pers. comm. 2009)
says, “Climate change may have provided the backdrop that enable colonization and rapid growth of
seedlings in the absence of anthropogenic fires.” Studies are needed to document changes in temperature
and precipitation over the last one hundred years.
Indian Use and Burning of the Ozette Prairies
A large section of the report was devoted to documenting the Makah historical use of the Ozette
Prairies. It is significant that the Ozette, Ts’oo-yuhs, and Wuh-uhch’ wetlands are all situated at or near
Makah village sites. These findings are corroborated by the documentation of the cultural importance
and key locations of other prairies and wetlands to other tribes on the western Olympic Peninsula such
as the Quileute (Powell 2002) (see Appendix 6). Furthermore, the Makah have access to large bays (Neah
and Mukkaw Bay) and the Ozette river with its abundant marine and fresh water resources. Although
considerable evidence for use has been assembled, there are large gaps in our knowledge of the cultural
significance of the Ozette Prairies to the indigenous people. We are at a disadvantage because the Ozette
people were forced to move so early from their homeland and relocate to the Makah Reservation or other
areas. Furthermore, no archaeology has been done on the Ozette Prairies or other wetlands within the
Ozette traditional territory (Dave Conca pers. comm. 2007). Without this work, it has not been possible
to assemble a complete regional picture of how the Ozette Prairies fit into the annual resource utilization
scheme of the Ozette people.
Critics of the scenario that Indians burned the wetlands often claim that the wetlands were too
wet to be easily ignited or to carry a fire. But the Makah had the capability to fell individual conifers with
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