In the 1860s, the tallgrass prairies of the Osage Plains stretched for miles and, sustained by periodic fires for approximately 5,000 years before European settlement, once covered about 78 percent of Bates County, Missouri. Creeks and rivers in the area supported bur oaks and post oaks, fire-tolerant trees able to withstand the regular prairie fires, and by the mid-1860s small homesteads and family farms were scattered across the prairie, benefiting from the rich sod and winding waterways while tallgrass prairie and its fires remained an important part of settlers' lives. During the Battle of Island Mound, the prairie and wetlands along the Marais-des-Cygnes River became crucial to the fighting, the first time black troops faced combat in the Civil War. On Oct. 29, 1862, after a day of skirmishes between Southern guerrillas and the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, Southern forces set the prairie ablaze and drove the Kansas troops back to the Toothman Farm. The Kansans answered by setting a back fire that burned away the grasses feeding the Southern fire, creating a blackline that stopped the flames and protected their camp at the Toothman farm. The prairie fires brought chaos and confusion to the fighting, later remembered as a hellish backdrop of smoke and flame during hand-to-hand combat.