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Native American Cultural Burning and the Shaping of American Quail Country

Story by Jenny Nguyen-Wheatley

Virgin. Pristine. Untouched. These words have long romanticized the image of the American wilderness at European contact – a wilderness ripe for discovery, brimming with life, and seemingly untouched by human hands. To European explorers, this boundless, fertile expanse was nothing short of divine providence. It was, to them, the New Eden.

But this vision was never true. The sprawling forests, open savannas, and teeming prairies that greeted Europeans were not untouched wilderness – they were the work of human hands. For thousands of years, Native Americans shaped the landscape with purpose. Through fire and agriculture, they created an ecosystem balanced between chaos and harmony. If it was Eden, it was a cultivated Eden.

In North America, the men of king and country could not attribute the vast “park-like” wilderness to be the work of the few “naked savages.” That these primitive people had meticulously shaped and cultivated their environments was inconceivable. Subsequent scholars, artists, and politicians – Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Cole, Theodore Roosevelt – only reinforced this romantic view of the American wilderness, a misconception that fueled centuries of myth and misunderstanding.

The science community, too, long dismissed the Native American. In Forgotten Fires: Native Americans and the Transient Wilderness, American anthropologist Omer C. Stewart argued: “Most botanists and ecologists ignore the American Indian as an important ecological force ... This is unfortunate and leads to error. For at least 10,000 years, probably 25,000 years, and possibly for 100,000 years, Indians have occupied the New World. Their influence on the vegetation has been important.”

As science and history reveal, the American wilderness was no accident. It was, in part, a product of Indigenous ingenuity.

CULTURAL BURNING

Prescribed burning is a modern conservation tool – but its roots stretch back thousands of years to Indigenous cultural burning practices. In examining human artifacts in North America, historians and scholars suggest the use of fire for land management, called “cultural burning,” dates further back than recorded history. A proponent of this theory, Stewart proposed that the North American wilderness would not have looked the way it did to early Europeans had the land not been subjected to generations of human-made fires.

“That Indians burned established prairies, or at least maintained them, appears to be true beyond question,” Stewart wrote.

The deep history of cultural burning is evident in archaeological records, dating back to the earliest human inhabitants of North America.

During the Paleo (~10,000–8,000 B.C.) and Archaic (~8,000–1,000 B.C.) epochs, hunter-gatherer societies strategically used fire to enhance their hunting and survival practices. They employed fire to drive, concentrate, and attract game to specific areas, creating more efficient hunting opportunities. Fire was also used to improve pastures for wildlife, fostering the growth of plants favored by animals, and to clear densely vegetated areas, making it easier to track prey and navigate the terrain.

Indigenous peoples continued to hunt and fish during the Woodland (~1,000 B.C-800 A.D) and Mississippian (~800-1650 A.D.) period, but agriculture soon became widespread, in part by the domestication of corn. The Forest History Society suggests that the increased reliance on agriculture prompted extensive clearing and thinning of forests in the Northeast and Southeast. Meanwhile, in present-day Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, tribes of the southern and northern Plains curbed the spread of trees using fire. This practice supported the bison herds they hunted, improved pasturelands for their horses, and removed potential cover for enemy forces.

From East to West, techniques such as tree girdling and cultural burning shaped and maintained the Eden that early European explorers described so vividly in their reports. These widespread practices, as argued by Stewart, challenge the narrative that the land was “empty” prior to European arrival.

QUAIL, A SOUTHERN FIREBIRD

It is no accident that the fire-dependent stands of longleaf pine that stretched from Virginia into eastern Texas once held some of the best bobwhite habitat in the country. Lightning-induced fires, along with intentional burns by Native American tribes, played a pivotal role in maintaining these habitats. These fires encouraged the growth of grasses and forbs that attracted invertebrates.

Nicknamed the “firebird,” northern bobwhite quail are closely tied to longleaf pine habitat. These ecosystems provide open spaces for chick mobility, shrubby cover for escape and thermal protection, and an abundance of seeds, invertebrates, and vegetation for forage. According to Dr. James Martin, a professor at the Gamebird and Managed Ecosystems Lab at the University of Georgia, prescribed burning is the most effective management practice for creating and sustaining these ideal conditions.

Today, however, quail habitat in the South faces significant threats. Urban sprawl and decades of timber production have transformed once-open, fire-maintained longleaf pine landscapes into densely-planted loblolly pine forests, often suppressed of fire. Not only are new plantings of longleaf pine necessary to restoring quail in the South, the return of prescribed fire is another piece of the puzzle to maintaining the early successional habitat that quail need.

Consequently, in areas where prescribed burning is regularly practiced, reports show that bobwhites are doing well. In the Southeast, a two-year burning interval during non-breeding season has been optimal for maintaining bobwhites, Dr. Martin notes.

PRAIRIE FIRE

The tallgrass prairie of central North America is one of the most threatened ecosystems in the world. Once stretching from Illinois to Texas and covering most of the Midwest and south-central Canada, experts estimate that only 1-2% of the tallgrass prairie’s historic range remains today. In Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas, bobwhites thrived in tallgrass oak savanna – ecosystems intricately tied to fire.

“Native Americans burned for so many reasons,” explains Gerry Steinauer, botanist for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. “Much of the Midwest would be woodland if not for the Native Americans’ use of fire.”

Beginning as early as the 1500s, Native American populations saw drastic declines as smallpox and other European-introduced diseases spread over the continent. Interestingly, despite the prairies’ loss of its original land managers, historical data in Nebraska shows a temporary spike in prairie fires in the mid-1800s.

“When settlers began populating the country, they were pretty sloppy with fire,” Steinauer says. And after settlement, the availability of cropland as a winter food source and more shrubby cover likely allowed bobwhites to expand their range westward. However, in recent decades, biologists and land managers across the Midwest have noticed a sharp decline in bobwhite populations.

The decline of the tallgrass prairie has been driven by multiple factors. Large-scale conversion of prairie land to farmland has transformed once-diverse habitats into monocultures. Changing agricultural practices, such as the shift away from crops like wheat and milo that provided quail-friendly cover, have compounded the issue. Decades of fire suppression have also allowed trees and invasive grasses – like smooth brome and tall fescue – to overtake grasslands, further diminishing habitat quality. “There are fewer wildflowers and beneficial grasses available, and the ground cover is now too dense for chick movement,” Steinauer notes.

Across the Great Plains, tree encroachment, mainly eastern red cedar, is now further driving the need for prescribed burning.

“In Nebraska, periodic, patchy fires every 3-5 years help create and maintain excellent habitat for bobwhites,” says John Laux, Habitat Protection Programs Manager for Quail Forever and Pheasants Forever.

In places like the Kansas Flint Hills, prescribed burning has a long history dating back to early settlement. In areas where fires occur every few years, quail populations continue to hold on. However, in regions where burning is conducted annually to improve rangeland for livestock, quail have suffered.

“In the Kansas Flint Hills, millions of acres of rangeland are burned every spring to combat woody encroachment and improve range conditions for livestock. Unfortunately, annual burning at that scale eliminates nearly all the residual cover that bobwhites and other grassland birds use for nesting,” says Laux, emphasizing the need for balance between burning frequency, seasonality, and specific habitat needs.

Since time immemorial, fire has been a critical element on the American landscape. The bountiful New World wilderness that early Europeans encountered was not an anomaly, and in the present day, places where bobwhites hold on are no accident. It’s a result of land managers picking up where Native American tradition left off and returning fire to the land. If we want to keep the firebird’s call alive, we must keep the fire itself burning.

Photography by Gerry Steinauer.

This story originally appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Quail Forever Journal