It is a little known and hardly publicized fact that Native Americans used fire to manage the extent of forest and grasslands. The landscape was manipulated for hundreds (if not thousands) of years by the hand of man. Not quite as pristine as most believed and were taught.
The best thing about the “west” is the relative absence of LIBs...now and then. That lends itself to more civility, sanity and freedom.
Ain’t that the truth! I spent many of my formative years in Wintun/Modoc country of N. California, and was well aware of that. In the case there, it wasn’t for planting, but to keep large brush & encroaching scrub down. That encouraged growth of new browse & increased the amount of transition forest areas for better hunting.
Also, though, when ‘slash and burn agriculture’ is mentioned in social studies, the implications are not mentioned, and the kids never think about it. The impression left is that small plots around a village had brush burned off of them for planting of ‘the three sisters’, and all lived in peace and harmony, at one with Nature, until the Evil White Man came.
Yup. There is a good book on the subject with regards to where I live now (New England), ‘Changes in the Land’. A little preachy at times, but a solid look at how natives tamed the landscape here. Early settlers were impressed by the park-like landscape (tall massive trees, little undergrowth), then a generation later wondered why it became a brambly, thorny thicket.
Easier to attract browsing herbivores like deer to new growth and a LOT easier to shoot them with a bow and arrow if you don’t have thick vegetation in the way.