Do tree-ring fire-scar records adequately reflect Native American settlement and land use?

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-2291732/v1

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Do tree-ring fire-scar records adequately reflect Native American settlement and land use?

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2291732/v1

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Background: Past burning by Native Americans can be analyzed from tree-ring fire-scar records (FSRs) via dendrochronological methods. However, the degree to which FSRs have adequately captured the varied locations where Native Americans burned landscapes, at both local and regional scales, remains largely unknown. Also unassessed is whether individual studies utilizing FSRs provide adequate spatial contextualization of FSR sites alongside Native American geography (e.g. settlements, travel corridors) to facilitate understanding of spatial relationships between fire and settlement. This paper assesses (1) the representativeness of FSR sites with respect to Native American settlement (circa 1760-1820) in eastern North America, (2) whether FSR-based studies provide adequate contextualization of their study sites with respect to settlement, and (3) spatial relationships between settlement and fire frequency gleaned from available FSRs.

Results: Many locations with past Native American settlement are not represented by FSRs, and few individual studies provide locations of settlement to compare with FSR site locations. Available FSRs suggest that fire was most frequent at intermediate distances (i.e. 100-150 km) from villages, and least frequent near villages. This trend may be due to the clearing of nearby trees or deliberate burns away from villages for various purposes, but within a reasonable distance for access.

Conclusions: Future FSR development should target locations near former settlement to increase spatial balance, and researchers should provide better description (textual or cartographic) of Native American geography to characterize how proximate and in what environments cultural burning occurred. Such efforts will refine understanding of spatial locations and extent of burning. This study underscores the need to develop and share FSRs in locations where past cultural burning occurred before such samples disappear.

cultural burning

dendrochronology

eastern North America

fire history

fire scars

Native American

North American Fire Scar Network

sampling

The geographic extent and role of Native American land use in modifying past forests in eastern North America remains a contested issue (Whitney 1996; Bowman et al. 2011; Abrams and Nowacki 2020). Native Americans have utilized various strategies to boost the productivity of the land, such as via in-place promotion of perennial plant species, creation of habitats for game, and transplantation of favored plant species (Doolittle 2002; Abrams and Nowacki 2008; Smith 2011). Most importantly, Native Americans ignited low-intensity surface fires in forests, woodlands, and grasslands for the many benefits it provided with respect to food procurement and travel (Williams 2000), unlike current forest management that maximizes for maximizing number of trees and forest products. Understanding cultural burning by Native Americans has major implications for modern forest management and policy decisions. It relates to broader debates over whether to preserve lands in an unmanaged state or conserve lands via sustainable human use (Foreman 2014), and whether to manage lands to promote carbon sequestration (e.g. Oswald et al., 2020) or mimic cultural burning to restore fire-dependent ecological communities (e.g. Ryan et al., 2013). Researchers have implicated suppression of cultural burning in the decline of drought- and fire-tolerant trees (e.g. oak, Quercus spp.) and increase in drought- and fire-intolerant trees (e.g. maple, Acer spp.) throughout eastern North America (Abrams 1998; Nowacki and Abrams 2008), but other causes have also been considered (McEwan et al. 2011; Hanberry et al. 2020). For Native American communities, past cultural fire regimes can inform present-day management on their territories to counteract post-colonial alterations to ecosystems, support traditional plants, reestablish sovereignty over their land, and foster community wellbeing (Adlam et al. 2022).

Providing physical evidence of past cultural burning, tree-ring fire-scar records (FSRs) have allowed researchers to establish fire chronologies, estimate fire return intervals, and determine the seasonality of fire during Native American occupation (Abrams et al. 2022; Margolis et al. 2022). As summarized by Margolis et al. (2022), fire scars result from non-lethal injuries to tree trunks that kill the cambial cells that are covered by subsequent growth; fire scars typically occur in low- to moderate-severity fires, or along the outskirts of high-severity fires. Findings from fire-scar chronologies suggest cultural burning in eastern North America with fire return intervals as low as roughly 3 to 6 years, as ascertained in a meta-analysis (Abrams et al. 2022). If estimated from an unbiased sample, these intervals may be viewed as maximum estimates in locations where frequent low-severity fires occur, since such fires may injure few to no trees, and since fire scars are rare from consecutive annual burns due to lower fuel loads in the second year (McEwan et al. 2007). However, elsewhere studies have suggested that fire return intervals are artificially short due to bias in sampling procedures that favors fire-scarred trees (Baker and Ehle 2001) and fire-prone vegetation types (Matlack 2013). In the eastern US, the presence of fire scars where lightning ignitions are rare year-round, as well as scars during the dormant season when lightning is uncommon, suggest anthropogenic ignition sources. FSRs complement other historical and physical records in studying Native American use of fire such as fossil pollen (e.g. Munoz & Gajewski, 2010), fossil charcoal (e.g. Oswald et al., 2020), firsthand historical accounts (e.g. Scherjon et al., 2015; Tulowiecki et al., 2020), and early land survey records (e.g. Fulton II & Yansa, 2019).

Recently efforts have compiled FSRs into the North American Fire-Scar Network (NAFSN; Margolis et al., 2022). Margolis et al. (2022) explored the spatial representativeness of records in the NAFSN with respect to environmental conditions such as forest type, elevation, slope, aspect, elevation, and climate variables. In a more limited analysis, the same paper informally compared the locations of FSRs to Native American geography, such as the location of former Indigenous territories and date of land-use transitions from Indigenous to white tenure. However, their analysis lacked analysis at a finer spatial resolution, e.g. a comparison of the locations of FSR sites with contemporaneous Native American settlement locations, to reveal whether FSRs collectively and adequately represent locations near and far from settlement.

Understanding the geography of cultural burning requires description of Native American settlement (e.g. villages, camps, travel corridors) relative to FSRs, both at continental scales (captured by an entire fire-scar network) and at local scales (captured in individual fire-scar studies). Geographic contextualization relative to Native American settlement would serve to develop better understanding of where burning occurred: such as whether burning occurred close to population centers and travel routes, and whether burning was typified by selective patch burning or broadcast burning over large geographic extents. For example, one model of burning proposes that burning occurred most frequently near Native American villages and within barrens driven by geology or other microsite characteristics (Matlack 2013); other studies have proposed the “yard and corridor” model whereby burning occurred away from villages in patches that were connected by travel corridors similarly maintained by fire (Lewis and Ferguson 1988; Larson et al. 2021). Better geographic contextualization of FSR-based results relative to Native American settlement would also help quantify the geographic extent of cultural burning.

In this paper, we first assess whether FSRs in the NAFSN are located close to Native American settlement and across a range of Native American territories, prior to their dispossession by Euro-Americans. We then assess whether studies using or developing FSRs provide adequate geographic contextualization of their study sites with respect to Native American geography. Finally, we assess what relationships exist between Native American settlement and fire frequency as gleaned from available FSR-based studies. As a case study we focus on circa late 18th and early 19th century Native American settlement since cultural burning during this time is reasonably expected to be captured in FSRs, and since research has mapped features of Native American settlement such as village locations during this time. The study region is eastern North America defined as temperate forest and northern mixed woods of the eastern United States and southeastern Canada (Omernik 1987; United States Environmental Protection Agency 2022). We are not aware of any review of FSRs and related studies making such an investigation.

We hypothesize that FSRs do not collectively capture cultural burning near settlement, and that individual studies utilizing FSRs do not adequately contextualize their study sites against Native American settlement features. A past synthesis paper has called for improved data on past human fire regimes to accommodate cross-cultural analysis globally and to enhance understanding of different cultures’ use of fire (Bowman et al. 2011). In that light, should this study’s hypotheses be accepted, it would motivate targeted development of FSRs in former Native American territories underrepresented by the fire-scar record, and improved description of Native American geography in future studies using such records.

Analysis 1: Assessing whether locations of FSR sites are near Native American settlement

To assess geographic coverage of NAFSN sites relative to Native American settlement, we compared within GIS software the locations of late 18th and early 19th century Native American villages to contemporaneous FSR sites in eastern North America. All GIS work was performed using ArcGIS Pro 2.8.0 (Esri 2021).

Dictated by the best available sources on Native American geography, we made two comparisons between Native American village locations and FSR sites (Fig. 1). For the first, we used maps of villages circa 1760–1790 CE (n = 377) covering most of eastern North America from Cappon (1976). For the second, we used a map of villages circa 1810 CE (n = 318) from Tanner (1987) focused upon the Great Lakes region of the US and Canada, but still within eastern temperate and northern mixed woods. The map authors compiled the maps from government documents, primary-source materials, and other scholarly works. Also recorded was the cultural affiliation of each village, which were provided in all maps. The maps of villages circa 1760–1790 from Cappon (1976) showed only principal villages in some regions and exhaustive village locations in other regions, so we treated the source as a sample of village locations capturing general regional patterns in Native American settlement. The map of villages circa 1810 from Tanner (1987) plotted agricultural and fishing villages. We scanned the maps, georeferenced them, and digitized village locations from them using GIS software. We did not pursue additional sources to map exact locations of village sites, but positional error relative to the regional extent of analysis was believed to be low (< 5 km). As inferred from village names, it is assumed that in some cases the village locations represented movement of the same community over time. We chose these sources after consulting numerous other map atlases on Native American history (e.g. Barnes, 2010; Prucha, 1990; Treuer, 2014; Waldman, 2009).

We downloaded FSR site locations in published and unpublished studies from NAFSN (Margolis and Guiterman 2022), which also contained metadata on FSR sites such as year of first tree ring, number of trees sampled, geographic area (ha) for each site, and primary study linked to each site. FSR sites were linked to both published studies and unpublished work. We selected FSR sites that were contemporaneous with villages mapped: for the first comparison we selected FSR sites recording 1760–1790 (n = 275), and for the second we selected FSR sites recording 1800–1820 (n = 310). The sites were all within eastern temperate forests plus northern mixed woods, since no FSR sites outside of this area were the most proximate to any villages within the study area.

To compare and describe how proximate FSR sites were to Native American villages, we calculated the distance between each village and the nearest FSR, from which we calculated descriptive statistics for all village sites, and statistics separately for each culture affiliated with a set of villages. The latter helped quantify which cultures were potentially more represented or less represented by FSRs. This work was performed to calculate distance between FSR sites and villages both for the 1760–1790 period in eastern North America and the 1800–1820 period in the Great Lakes region.

We also performed inferential spatial statistics with ArcGIS Pro software (Esri 2021) to infer statistically-significant geographic clusters and spatial autocorrelation in the FSR sites recording from 1760–1790 and 1800–1820 separately. We used hot spot analysis using the Getis-Ord Gi* statistic (Getis and Ord 1992) in ArcGIS Pro software to detect clusters. This analysis was performed by counting the number of FSR sites within hexagonal grid cells spanning the study area prior to performing the hot spot analysis; we tested whether significant clusters existed at five scales using different hexagonal grid cell sizes: 1000 km², 2000 km², 3000 km², 4000 km², and 5000 km². Also using the counts of FSR sites per hexagon, we calculated Moran’s I (Moran 1950), a measure of the degree of spatial autocorrelation in the dataset, ranging from − 1 (perfect negative spatial autocorrelation) to + 1 (perfect positive spatial autocorrelation). These spatial statistics require a conceptualization of geographical “neighbors” in their calculation; for both the hot spot analysis and Moran’s I calculations, hexagonal grid cells were considered neighbors if their boundaries touched. Both Getis-Ord Gi* and Moran’s I utilize randomization null hypothesis procedures to generate p-values to test for significance in hot-spot or autocorrelation values.

Analysis 2: Examining whether FSR-based studies represent Native American geography

We examined primary studies linked to FSR records in the NAFSN database (Table 1), treating them as a sample of studies to assess the degree to which such studies describe or map Native American geography. We focused on peer-reviewed articles, short technical reports, and conference proceedings that analyzed individual sites or sites across a local to small regional geographic extent, as it would be expected that such studies would be able to describe Native American geography relative to their relatively few FSR sites. We excluded large regional- to continental-extent analyses given the challenges of adequately describing Native American geography across wide swaths of land. Also excluded were Master’s theses and PhD dissertations. We obtained all primary studies associated with each FSR site within the study area in the NAFSN database except for one study (with an FSR with two tree samples), equaling 55 total studies; after excluding theses, dissertations, and large regional- to continental-extent analyses, 45 studies remained (Table 1).

Table 1

Studies analyzed or providing fire-scar record (FSR) data for Analyses 1, 2, and 3. BC = book chapter, CP = conference proceedings, D = Ph.D. dissertation, JA = journal article, MT = Master’s thesis, TR = technical report (a) Eastern US, 1760–1790
			Including in Analysis 3? n sites published with fire-scar dates
Study	Type	Included in Analysis 2?	1760–1790, eastern North Am.	1800–1820, Great Lakes
(Abadir et al. 2019)	JA	Yes	2	-
(Aldrich et al. 2010)	JA	Yes	1	-
(Aldrich et al. 2014)	JA	Yes	2	-
(Brose et al. 2013)	JA	Yes	3	-
(DeWeese 2007)	D	No	3	-
(Dey and Guyette 1996b)	TR	Yes	1	-
(Dey and Guyette 1996c)	TR	Yes	1	-
(Dey and Guyette 1996a)	TR	Yes	1	-
(Dey et al. 2004)	TR	Yes	1	-
(Feathers 2010)	MT	No	2	-
(Flatley et al. 2013)	JA	Yes	3	-
(Guyette and Cutter 1991)	JA	Yes	1	-
(Guyette and Dey 1995a)	TR	Yes	1	-
(Guyette and Dey 1995b)	TR	Yes	1	-
(Guyette and Dey 1997)	CP	Yes	1	-
(Guyette and McGinnes, Jr. 1982)	JA	Yes	1	-
(Guyette and Spetich 2003)	JA	Yes	3	-
(Guyette and Stambaugh 2004)	CP	Yes	1	-
(Guyette et al. 1995)	TR	Yes	1	-
(Guyette et al. 2016)	JA	Yes	4	4
(Guyette 1995)	TR	No	20	-
(Guyette et al. 2006a)	JA	No	0	-
(Guyette et al. 2006b)	JA	Yes	3	-
(Harley et al. 2012)	JA	Yes	1	-
(Howard et al. 2021)	JA	Yes	1	-
(Huffman and Platt 2014)	TR	No	1	-
(Hutchinson et al. 2019)	JA	Yes	2	-
(Kipfmueller et al. 2017)	JA	Yes	1	1
(Kipfmueller 2019a)	TR	No	1	1
(Kipfmueller 2019b)	TR	No	2	2
(LaForest 2012)	D	No	3	-
(Larson et al. 2021)	JA	Yes	3	3
(Leys et al. 2019)	JA	Yes	1	1
(Marschall et al. 2016)	JA	Yes	2	-
(Marschall et al. 2019)	JA	Yes	9	-
(Martin 2019)	MT	No	2	3
(McEwan et al. 2014)	JA	Yes	1	-
(Meunier and Shea 2020)	JA	Yes	15	19
(Meunier et al. 2019)	JA	Yes	0	-
(Muzika et al. 2015)	JA	Yes	7	7
(Rother et al. 2020)	JA	Yes	1	-
(Saladyga and Standlee 2018)	JA	Yes	0	-
(Shumway et al. 2001)	JA	Yes	1	-
(Stambaugh and Guyette 2006)	JA	Yes	1	-
(Stambaugh and Guyette 2008)	JA	Yes	7	-
(Stambaugh et al. 2013)	JA	Yes	3	-
(Stambaugh et al. 2016)	JA	Yes	4	-
(Stambaugh et al. 2017)	JA	Yes	1	-
(Stambaugh et al. 2020)	JA	Yes	3	-
(Stambaugh et al. 2011a)	JA	Yes	1	-
(Stambaugh et al. 2018a)	JA	Yes	7	-
(Stambaugh et al. 2011b)	JA	Yes	1	-
(Stambaugh et al. 2018b)	BC	No	2	-
(Waito et al. 2018)	JA	Yes	0	-
(White and Harley 2016)	JA	Yes	2	-

Analysis 1: Locations of NAFSN sites relative to Native American settlement

FSR sites in the NAFSN were found to be geographically clustered and distant from major areas of Historic-period Native American settlement (Fig. 1; Fig. 2). Using eastern North America as a study area during the 1760–1790 period, village sites were a median of 137 km from nearest FSR site with a range of 9 to 326 km. Using the Great Lakes region as a study area during the 1800–1820 period, village sites were a median of 145 km from nearest FSR site, with a range of 1 to 325 km. Table 2 breaks down these distances by cultural affiliation of villages for each geographic area and corresponding time period. Generally speaking, the northern Great Lakes, southern Appalachians, and central Pennsylvania regions had the greatest geographic correspondence between village sites and fire site during 1760–1790. Conversely, the southern Great Lakes region exhibited the poorest geographic correspondence during 1760–1790, since this area was populated with numerous Native American villages yet possessed virtually no FSR sites. The Great Lakes region 1800–1820 exhibited similar characteristics, in that villages and FSR sites were more proximate in the northern Great Lakes region but less so in the southern Great Lakes region.

Table 2. Distance between North American Fire Scar Network (NAFSN) sites and Native American villages for (a) the entire eastern US 1760-1790 and (b) the upper Midwestern US 1800-1820. Number of villages do not sum to the value reported in “ALL”, since some villages were multiethnic communities.

(a) Eastern US, 1760-1790

Culture	State(s) and/or province(s)	n villages	Minimum (km)	Maximum (km)	Mean (km)	Median (km)
Bidai	TX	2	106	177	141	141
Caddo	AR, LA, TX	13	19	207	123	125
Cayuga	NY, ON	7	69	197	113	103
Cherokee	AL, GA, NC, SC, TN	18	9	158	68	58
Chickamauga	AL, GA, TN	6	48	61	54	54
Chickasaw	MS	1	294	294	294	294
Chippewa	MI, MN, OH, ON, PA, WI	41	11	323	117	71
Choctaw	MS	11	80	231	149	162
Conestoga	PA	1	81	81	81	81
Delaware	IN, MO, NY, OH, PA	45	25	326	174	200
Fox	IA, WI	3	23	63	46	52
Illinois	IL	2	128	169	148	148
Iroquois	NY, ON, PA	13	29	203	94	69
Kickapoo	IL, IN	4	139	264	195	188
Lower Creek	AL, GA	5	94	134	114	120
Menominee	WI	4	54	148	85	69
Miami	IN, OH	6	270	322	304	307
Mingo	OH	6	148	243	184	180
Mohawk	ON	2	203	235	219	219
Moravian	MI, OH, ON, PA	21	45	306	176	218
Munsee	MI, OH, ON, PA	6	44	307	100	60
Oneida	NY	4	74	180	152	176
Onondaga	NY	4	140	162	147	142
Ottawa	MI, OH	13	14	322	192	232
Piankasha	IN	2	113	114	114	114
Potowatomi	IL, IN, MI, WI	25	64	307	225	240
Quapaw	AR	1	173	173	173	173
Sauk	WI	1	16	16	16	16
Seminole	FL	4	20	168	130	165
Seneca	NY, OH, PA	39	32	286	100	99
Shawnee	IN, MO, OH	33	45	318	170	183
Sioux	MN	7	74	225	127	125
Stockbridge	NY	1	171	171	171	171
Tuscarora	NY, PA	10	73	213	142	121
Tutelo	NY	1	68	68	68	68
Upper Creek	AL	5	100	145	126	137
Wea	IN	4	168	256	212	213
Winnebago	WI	3	38	111	65	45
Wyandot	MI, OH, ON	12	194	324	267	272
Yuchi	FL	1	163	163	163	163
(Unknown)	OH, PA	4	18	206	143	174
ALL		377	9	326	148	137

(b) Upper Midwestern US, 1800-1820

Culture	State(s) and/or province(s)	n villages	Minimum (km)	Maximum (km)	Mean (km)	Median (km)
Algonquin	QC	1	112	112	112	112
Cayuga	NY, ON	2	105	224	164	164
Dakota	MN	10	75	225	160	156
Delaware	IN, NY, OH, ON	20	57	287	195	226
Huron	QC	1	227	227	227	227
Iowa	IA	1	38	38	38	38
Iroquois	NY, QC	3	87	112	99	99
Kaskaskia	IL, MO	3	118	149	133	132
Kickapoo	IL, IN, MO	10	174	254	207	202
Menominee	IL, WI	14	33	144	81	77
Mesquakie	IA	8	29	89	59	58
Miami	IN, OH	10	256	322	295	293
Missisauga	MI, OH, ON	14	76	255	174	175
Mohawk	OH, ON	3	144	303	224	224
Moravian	OH, ON	2	220	294	257	257
Munsee	IN, OH, ON	3	260	303	279	276
Nanticoke	IN	1	229	229	229	229
Ojibwa	IL, MI, MN, ON, WI	101	1	319	112	93
Oneida	NY, ON	2	180	217	198	198
Onondaga	NY, ON	3	140	206	168	158
Ottawa	IL, MI, OH, WI	34	15	325	138	117
Piankashaw	IL	1	150	150	150	150
Potawatomi	IL, IN, MI, WI	50	93	320	217	238
Sauk	IL	3	56	145	102	105
Seneca	NY, OH, ON, PA	17	64	282	143	127
Shawnee	IN, MI, MO, OH	10	57	299	176	200
Tuscarora	NY, ON	2	200	217	209	209
Wea	IN	4	162	201	176	171
Winnebago	IL, WI	17	10	117	77	81
Wyandot	MI, OH, ON	10	193	305	252	245
(Unknown)	NY	2	171	180	175	175
ALL		318	1	325	154	145

At all resolutions tested (i.e. hexagonal grid cells 1000–5000 km²), we found significant hot spots and positive spatial autocorrelation in FSR sites. These results occurred for FSR sites recording from 1760–1790 and from 1800–1820. At all resolutions, we found significant hot spots (p < 0.05) in north-central Pennsylvania, southeastern Missouri, and the upper Midwest; at finer resolutions, hot spots additionally existed in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina (Fig. 1). For both time periods and geographic areas analyzed, results also suggest significant (p < 0.001) but weak positive spatial autocorrelation at all resolutions tested, with Moran’s I values ranging from + 0.05 (at 5000 km² hexagon size, both areas and time periods) to + 0.21 (at 2000 km² hexagon size, Great Lakes region, 1800–1820) and + 0.27 (at 2000 km² hexagon size, eastern North America, 1760–1790).

Analysis 2: FSR-based studies and Native American geography

A total of 45 studies met our criteria for examination to assess the degree to which studies represent Native American geography. The publication dates ranged from 1982 to 2021 with a median date of 2014. Included were 36 peer-reviewed journal articles, 7 technical reports, and 2 conference proceedings. Virtually all studies gave detailed FSR site locations via a map or geographic coordinates to afford another researcher the ability to independently map the site locations to compare with Native American settlement (e.g. in a regional synthesis or meta-analysis).

Roughly three-quarters (75.6%) of studies included a map depicting FSR site locations. However, while most studies described general Native American history or settlement areas (summarized below), virtually no studies mapped Native American geography. Just one study (2.2%) mapped a single Historic-period Cherokee settlement in their study area relative to their FSR sites (Guyette et al. 2006b), and one study (2.2%) superimposed a Historic-period canoe travel route upon an oblique aerial photo that also showed FSR site locations (Larson et al. 2021). With respect to travel routes, some studies described them in the body of the publication but did not symbolize nor label them in any map; for example, often a river that appeared in a map was described in the text as a travel corridor. No study included a map of archaeological sites. Given these results, no studies in our sample served as exemplars with respect to cartographic presentation of Native American geography.

While features of Native American geography were rarely presented in maps, they were more often described in the introduction, study area, and/or discussion of studies. Over three-quarters (77.8%) of studies described general Native American history in their study area, and nearly two-thirds (64.4%) described specific cultures. Still, just over one-half (51.1%) of studies described general Native American settlement areas (e.g. village clusters, along lakes, along major rivers) relative to their FSR sites, and only 11.1% described specific Native American settlements by name. A total of 28.9% of studies described specific Historic-period travel routes, typically describing a river as a travel corridor. Just 20% of studies quantified distance to nearest settlement area or specific settlement (e.g. a village or camp), and 11.1% quantified distance to nearest travel route. A few studies described FSR sites as being near or “on” travel routes without estimating the actual distance, and a few studies that described river travel corridors without quantifying distance to them still provided a map that could allow the reader to estimate the distance. While not directly quantified, we observed that of those studies offering some description of Native American history or geography, roughly half gave this description in the introduction and/or study area section(s), whereas the other half relegated the description to results or discussion sections typically when interpreting changes in mean fire return intervals with respect to changing settlement patterns. Study area sections often focused on vegetation, topography, climate, soil conditions, and white settlement surrounding FSR sites rather than Native American geography or history. According to our criteria, one-fifth (20.0%) of studies made no explicit description or reference to Native Americans, their history, nor geography, though they may have loosely discussed anthropogenic ignition sources prior to widespread Euro-American settlement.

Only two studies (4.4%) exhibited all seven criteria related to describing facets of Native American settlement within the text body of the publication. One of these exemplars described their study sites as 40 km southwest of an Ojibwe village and 60 km of the Menominee River (implied as a travel corridor), and detailed other cultures along with population estimates and their land-use strategies (Guyette et al. 2016). The other study described Caddo and Natchez settlements including one 30 km from their study area, as well as the Red River historic travel route 10 km east, also providing population estimates (Stambaugh et al. 2011a).

Analysis 3: Relationships between fire frequency, FSR site characteristics, and proximity to villages

We counted the number of years with at least one fire scar recorded for 143 FSR sites across 51 studies (Fig. 3) in eastern North America between 1760–1790, and for 41 FSR sites across 10 studies (not shown) in the Great Lakes region between 1800–1820. The number of fires at eastern North American sites 1760–1790 ranged from 0 to 15 fires with a median of 3 fires (1 every 10 years); 87% of sites possessed at least one fire scar. The number of fires at Great Lakes FSR sites 1800–1820 ranged from 0 to 11 fires with a median of 2 fires (1 every 15 years); 80% of sites here possessed at least one fire scar. The number of trees sampled at each eastern North American site 1760–1790 ranged from 2 to 149 trees with a median of 22.5 trees; excluding one extreme outlier (i.e. 42,430 ha), the area sampled ranged from 1 to 300 ha with a median of 84 ha. The number of trees sampled at each Great Lakes site 1800–1820 ranged from 5 to 129 trees with a median of 20 trees; the area sampled ranged from 1 to 300 ha with a median of 22 ha. Virtually all sites recorded scars on oak (Quercus spp.) or pine (Pinus spp.) trees.

While the overall performance of the GAM (n = 127) that modeled fire frequency from 1760–1790 in eastern North America was not strong (R² = 0.141, deviance explained = 17.3%), it discovered significant relationships (p < 0.05) between fire frequency and three of four independent variables, including distance to nearest Native American settlement. Fire frequency was positively and linearly related to number of tree samples at a site (p = 0.002; Fig. 4a), and negatively and linearly related to year of first ring in tree samples at a site (p = 0.002; Fig. 4b). Collectively these results showed that sampling influences number of fires recorded: older fire-scar chronologies with more tree samples recorded more fires 1760–1790. After controlling for site sampling variability via number of trees and year of earliest ring, a significant nonlinear relationship between number of fires and distance to nearest Native American (p = 0.031; Fig. 4c) was detected. Fire frequency was modeled to be least frequent near Native American settlement, but with a peak in frequency around 150 km from settlement. In comparison to the previously described model, the GAM for the Great Lakes region 1800–1820 did not detect any significant relationships (p > 0.05) even as least-significant independent variables were dropped one-by-one. Note that the sample size for this model was only n = 33.

This study produced three key findings. First, FSR sites are typically located far from major centers of Native American population (i.e. villages). Second, FSR-based studies typically do not provide ample geographic contextualization of their FSR sites relative to Native American settlement. Third, FSR sites that do exist suggest that cultural burning was most frequent at intermediate distances (i.e, 100–150 km) away from Native American settlement areas. Moreover, this research has implications for other types of proxy records.

Improving geographic representation of Native American fire regimes via FSR site selection

This study suggests that FSR sites are located sub-optimally with respect to Historic-period Native American settlement, oftentimes far from core settlement areas in hinterland regions (Fig. 1; Fig. 2; Table 2). This study echoes calls from previous studies to expand the network of FSR sites both geographically and temporally (Margolis et al. 2022), and the network of tree-ring sites more broadly (Zhao et al. 2018), before trees and data they possess are lost to time. It furthermore reinforces calls for more systematic sampling of eastern forests to determine the exact location and frequency of cultural burning (Matlack 2013). The study proposes targeted sampling in areas closer to Native American settlement in the eastern US, especially in the southern Great Lakes region, to fill in knowledge gaps regarding cultural fire regimes.

Locating trees capable of producing FSRs that predate Euro-American settlement is challenging in the eastern US due to various reasons, particularly near Native American villages. These include, in part, comprehensive tree harvesting before 1920, limited longevity before decay of some eastern tree species, and the requirement of developing FSRs from stumps or tree slabs rather than tree cores. For instance, the southern Great Lakes region hosted numerous Native American villages circa 1760–1810 (Fig. 1), yet these areas correspond to heavily agricultural regions today (Dewitz 2021). Moreover, characteristics of Native American land use itself likely limited the possibility of discovering fire-scarred trees or tree remnants close to villages. Native Americans cleared large areas via burning near villages for building materials and the creation of agricultural fields, and used fire near villages to promote berry and nut production (Day 1953; Stewart 2002; Abrams and Nowacki 2008). Fire may have scarred veteran trees near settlement that did not survive into the present day. However, one dendrochronology study of growth releases in remnant > 400-yr old white oak just 2 km from Historic period Native American settlement in northwestern Pennsylvania noted growth releases every 11 year during Native American occupation purportedly due to burning, since fire scars and soil charcoal at the study site were noted (Ruffner and Abrams 2002). Creation of grasslands and savannas with low tree density via cultural burning would further limit the number of fire-scarred trees to sample today near past settlements. If Native American land use occurred along a tree density gradient from lowest density near villages to highest density far from villages, then survivor trees capable of developing FSRs would ostensibly be more probable far from villages.

Nevertheless, researchers have used modeling to locate old-growth forests (Therrell and Stahle 1998) and “ancient” trees (Nolan et al. 2022) as a function of land use, topographic, and/or soil variables; such approaches could be useful for identifying old trees in areas where Native American land use once occurred. Further overlaying such predictions with accessible lands (e.g. USGS Gap Analysis Project, 2018) may refine where FSRs can be developed proximate to former Native American settlement. Moreover, Pederson (2010) provides practical advice on identifying deciduous trees ≥ 250 years old which could be useful in conjunction with aforementioned predictive modeling approaches; in some locations, this age threshold would capture late Historic-period Native American settlement prior to dispossession as of the writing of this paper. A recent paper discovered red pine (Pinus resinosa) stumps with tree rings dating to 1370 just 30 km from a Native American village site and a few km from a travel corridor (Marschall et al. 2022). One author of this paper has observed white oak (Quercus alba) slabs near former Seneca Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) settlement with fire scars from the first half of the 18th century in western New York State, in an area that is predominantly agricultural today.

We envision future work into understanding the spatial dimensions of Native American land use and its impacts as multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary efforts that incorporate understanding of Native American geography from other disciplines. Furthermore, to de-colonialize approaches toward understanding Native American land use, physical scientists using FSRs should engage and collaborate with Indigenous possessors of traditional knowledge in participatory research. Such collaboration may lead to new hypotheses to test regarding the location of past Native American land use including cultural burning, in turn influencing the selection of new FSR sites. Previous and current workshops uniting traditional and western knowledge have been to develop frameworks to manage wildland fuels and fire (Frank K. Lake et al. 2017), and research has revealed nuances of cultural fire regimes (e.g. its frequency, intensity, purpose, and location) using mixed methods that included oral histories (Steen-Adams et al. 2019), though these typically are conducted in the western US where traditional ecological knowledge has been better maintained.

Improving representation of Native American geography in FSR-based studies

FSR-based studies oftentimes do not provide adequate representation of Native American geography in their studies, which would afford a more robust interpretation of where cultural burning occurred relative to settlement. Researchers should at least strive to compare their results to known locations of Native American settlement (e.g., villages, campsites, travel routes) at finer spatial and temporal resolution. This study highlighted a few publications (Stambaugh et al. 2011a; Guyette et al. 2016) that presented a more exhaustive treatment of Native American geography and history alongside FSR-based findings. Other noteworthy examples not analyzed in this study, which more robustly cover Native American geography, include a FSR-based study that mapped Native American travel routes alongside FSR sites and provided a description of the nearest Native American settlement (Marschall et al., 2022); and a dendrochronology study (i.e. of tree growth-releases purportedly due to fire) that provided a large-scale map of their study site alongside prehistoric- and Historic-period Native American villages, campsites, and mounds (Ruffner and Abrams 2002).

Datasets on archaeological sites, or publications on Native American towns or travel routes, exist throughout much of eastern North America, which could be incorporated into FSR-based studies. Finer spatiotemporal resolution records of Native American sites can be gleaned from various sources, such as state historic preservation offices, museum records, and published literature. For example, in a study of pre-Euro-American forests and Seneca Iroquois settlement in western New York State, Fulton and Yansa (2019) synthesized archaeological records, archaeology survey reports, and ethnohistorical accounts to develop a database of known villages and other important Native American sites circa 1000 to 1779, for comparison with quantitative analysis of land survey records. For more coarser spatiotemporal resolution maps or data on Native American settlement, examples include mapped Contact-era sites (Grumet 1995) throughout the northeastern US, population density circa 1500 (Milner and Chaplin 2010), prehistoric settlement phases circa 900–1540 (Anderson 1991), and gridded population estimates at time-steps over the last 13,000 years in North America based on radiocarbon-dated sites (Chaput et al. 2015). Locations of radiocarbon-dated archaeological sites are available from the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database, but exact locations of sites are kept confidential (Martindale et al. 2022). In addition to those used in this study (Cappon 1976; Tanner 1987), numerous map atlases on Native American history also exist (e.g. Barnes, 2010; Prucha, 1990; Treuer, 2014; Waldman, 2009). Resources also exist for mapping Native American trails or travel routes: for example, works in the eastern US have mapped trails for Pennsylvania (Wallace 1965), Ohio (Mills 1914), New York State (Morgan 1901), New England (Russell 1980), the southeastern United States (Myer 1928), and the New York City area (Bolton 1922).

Relationships between fire frequency and proximity to Native American settlement

Comparisons between village locations and fire histories gathered from FSR-based studies suggest that anthropogenic burning occurred far (e.g. ≥100 km) from core settlement areas (Fig. 4c). While based on spatially imbalanced samples, this result contradicts studies of similar time periods that suggested burning or related land management practices occurred 10–20 km around villages (Black et al. 2006; Munoz et al. 2014; Tulowiecki and Larsen 2015). Native Americans may have conducted cultural burning far from settlement as a conscious land use decision, for example to reduce risk and create travel corridors. Big-game hunting at long distances could have conferred a higher rate of caloric return compared to hunting for small game near settlement (Grimstead 2012). Furthermore, firewood collection for cooking and heating around settlements by traditional peoples consumes a high amount of wood near settlement (Gerard-Little 2017; Markwith and Paudel 2022), and therefore cultural burning of wildlands in areas near settlement might threaten to consume this fuel source. Equally, trees may have been cleared around villages, removing the evidence of nearby burns and creating an erroneous outcome for the analysis. Developing FSRs closer to settlement would help refine understanding of where cultural burning occurred relative to settlement.

The elevated number of fires at long distances from Native American villages may not be due to Native American land use nor natural causes, but due to Euro-American burning. Those NAFSN sites recording fires from early Euro-American settlement were likely those in the Appalachian Mountain region of Virginia and Pennsylvania. However, locations existed with elevated fire frequencies both far from Native American settlement and nowhere near white settlement within the eastern US (e.g. southeastern Missouri), supporting the notion that Native Americans practiced long-distance burning or that their fires burned for long distances. Also worth noting is that even after displacement or abandonment, Native American burning occurred in areas with early white settlement: for example, after the displacement of the Seneca Iroquois in 1779 in western New York State, early white settlers directly observed Native American burning in 1795 for drive game during hunting (Doty 1905). Nevertheless, development of more FSRs is necessary since these findings may be driven by the unique spatial arrangement of existing FSR sites relative to Native American villages.

Implications for other proxy records

This study focused on the geographic representativeness of FSR sites relative to Native American settlement patterns. While this study did not examine other proxy data in the physical sciences, records such as fossil charcoal or pollen may exhibit similar issues of spatial bias relative to past Native American settlement. For example, unlike populated areas circa 1500 (Milner and Chaplin 2010), the distribution of palynological records of fossil charcoal in the Global Paleofire Database (Power et al. 2010) are spatially clustered especially in southern New England US states. Fossil pollen records in the Neotoma Paleoecology Database (Williams et al. 2018), while more abundant and geographically distributed compared to charcoal records, still show clustering in New England and the upper Midwestern US states and sparseness elsewhere. Such bias and representativeness issues have implications for other studies using paleorecords to suggest that Indigenous land use had no regional-extent influence upon vegetation patterns (e.g. Gajewski et al., 2019). Formal studies into the relationships between proxy records including paleorecords would better reveal the representativeness of such records relative to different eras and facets of Indigenous settlement.

This study revealed issues regarding the geographic distribution of FSR sites relative to Historic-period Native American settlement, as well as regarding the representation of Native American geography in FSR-based studies. FSR sites collectively suggest that Native Americans practiced cultural burning away from settlement areas. This study calls for research to spatialize Native American geography before, during, and after the research process in order to ascertain cultural fire regimes closer to past settlement, to provide greater geographic contextualization of results, to quantify the geographic extent of past cultural burning, and to confirm or refute models of where burning occurred.

FSR = fire scar record, GAM = generalized additive model, NAFSN = North American Fire Scar Network

Availability of data and materials: GIS-format data layers on approximate Native American village locations are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Authors’ contributions: SJT, BBH, and MDA conceived the paper. SJT performed analyses and led the writing of the paper. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Do tree-ring fire-scar records adequately reflect Native American settlement and land use?

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Abstract

Figures

Background

Methods

Analysis 1: Assessing whether locations of FSR sites are near Native American settlement

Analysis 2: Examining whether FSR-based studies represent Native American geography

Results

Analysis 1: Locations of NAFSN sites relative to Native American settlement

Analysis 2: FSR-based studies and Native American geography

Analysis 3: Relationships between fire frequency, FSR site characteristics, and proximity to villages

Discussion

Improving geographic representation of Native American fire regimes via FSR site selection

Improving representation of Native American geography in FSR-based studies

Relationships between fire frequency and proximity to Native American settlement

Implications for other proxy records

Conclusion

Abbreviations

Declarations

References

Status:

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