- ROLE OF FIRE IN CALIFORNIA PINE FORESTS 5 
Huntington’s investigations (13) of big trees (Sequoia washingtoni- 
ana) enable us to carry the fire history even further into the past 
than the study of the relatively short-lived pines, firs, and cedars. 
Although the fire history depicted by the big trees is fragmentary 
indeed, it is shown that back as far as 245 A.D. fires occurred in the 
pine region in restricted localities in which the big tree is found. 
Whether these early fires were light or heavy there is no way of 
determining, the records on surviving trees merely indicating that 
fires occurred. The fact that a forest of a sort was able to survive 
these frequently recurring fires would indicate that most of them were 
in all probability light surface fires. 
CAUSES OF EARLIEST FIRES 
The causes of the fires of the past are, in most cases, not known. 
Fire records for 10 years in the California pine region show an average 
of 350 lightning fires every year, andshow also that even under system- 
atic fire protection some have attained enormoussize (23). For the 10- 
year period ended 1920 an area of 415,000 acres was burned over by 
fires from that cause. The zone in which lightning fires are known 
to occur embraces an area of nearly 11,000,000 acres, and coincides 
in general with the commercially important portions of the California 
pine region. It seems evident that lightning must have been an 
important cause of forest fires in the past as it is to-day. Exam- 
ination of felled trees discloses lightning scars dating back as 
far as the occurrence of fire scars themselves. Natural agencies, 
therefore, have been a big factor in the occurrence of fires and in 
molding the condition of the present virgin forests. 
The forests were long inhabited by the Indian, a user of fire, and 
he also has been a cause of forest fires. A persistent tradition, much 
discussed in the last quarter century, holds that it was the regular 
practice of the Indian to fire the forests as frequently as fire would 
run through them (78). On this hypothesis much has been said and 
written extolling this primitive race as the original foresters and 
uardians of our forest resources. Without reciting in detail the con- 
icting statements of fact and surmise on the Indian as an agency 
responsible for forest fires, it may be said that in some parts of the 
pine region he undoubtedly fired the forests or at least regarded forest 
fires with equanimity, titlile in other parts of the region the evidence 
is just as conclusive that he regarded forest fires with fear and did not 
deliberately set them. In any event, his motive had nothing to do 
with the forest as a growing timber crop. It was to his interest 
to prevent the growth of brush and reproduction which would hinder 
aut in hunting, and this purpose was admirably served by the use 
of fire. 
The advent of the white man, particularly the influx during the 
forty-nine gold rush, brought an additional risk. The written his- 
torical records of the period, though extraordinarily meager on this 
uestion, indicate that the early miner was the cause of many forest 
res. He, like the Indian, had little interest in the forest as a growing 
crop. Along the Mother Lode, where the camps were located at the 
lower edge of the yellow-pine belt, the supply of virgin timber was com- 
pletely removed for mining purposes, and mostly during the sixties. 
