In the fall of 1899 various Northern California newspapers pondered the question of the causes of forest fires, especially during fall. The San Jose Mercury News blamed it on hunters. The Oroville Register stated it was the cattlemen who set the fires every fall. Susanville’s Lassen Advocate chimed in with this response: “Over this way it is the custom to charge the sheepmen with the forest fires. Some of the fires are doubtless due these different agencies, but not all of them. An old hunter “a man who has lived long in the mountains” tells us many fires are set by Indians. He says that in seasons when deer are numerous, as they have been in this season, they may be found in numbers where the underbrush has been burned off, disporting in the soft warm ashes and fall easy victims to the Indian hunters.”