The article presents no evidence that the indians actually used fire for management. Without human meddling, lightning induced fires regularly clear out the understory and keep the forest healthy. I suspect that the indians simply allowed natural processes to keep the environment healthy. (Not that they could have controlled a raging forest fire.)
I suspect that burning the understory during calm weather helped reduce the number of lightening caused wildfires that destroyed forests. Early settlers found large numbers of trees with 4 and more feet diameter trunks in forests that were burned regularly. Also the Shenandoah Valley and later prairies north of the Green River around Kentucky (if I remember correctly) were burned regularly to maintain a “buffalo common” where all Indians could hunt at will. I read about this elsewhere.