Prairie fires have been a significant environmental force on the Great Plains for thousands of years. Native peoples used prairie fire, which some tribes called the "red buffalo," to shape the prairie landscape. In the nineteenth century, however, a growing Euro-American presence altered the relationship between human residents and fire. A prairie fire meant something radically different to persons who brought to the region the concept of land ownership, the intent of permanent sedentary settlement, and a more extensive infrastructure than the Plains had ever known. A new era of settlement—one that included new notions of property and capital---is thus better understood through a study of prairie fire. Because they perceived prairie fires essentially as enemies, Euro-American settlers instinctively set out to eliminate them. Doing so played an important role in altering the landscape, allowing trees and shrubs to intrude into formerly treeless expanses and altering the grass. Such changes in turn rearranged centuries-old relationships between peoples and the Plains environment.

Beyond their effects on environmental relationships, there was an aesthetic and even mythic component to prairie fires. To many, fires represented the prairie's dangers. Thus controlling fire was symbolically a way to gain mastery over the land by defeating a natural force. Balancing this theme, however, was another—a sense of awe at the beauty of the prairies ablaze. As the land was plowed under and prairie fires became less of a threat, settlers adopted the beautiful fires as part of their regional identity—a link to the Great Plains past. However, prairie fires also continue to shape the modern Great Plains through controlled burns set to maintain the prairie, through occasional outbreaks of "wild" fires, and most often, paradoxically, through the force of their absence.