Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
6,000 years ago, this may make it the second earliest eruption
recorded in legend, after Çatal Hüyük. Shasta was considered to
be the centre of creation, the Great Spirit having created it out of
ice and snow from heaven. Using the resulting heap as a stepping
stone, he created the flora and fauna of the earth. Shasta retains
its religious significance, being the base for dozens of New Age
sects, an alleged ufo landing place, and the way into the fifth
dimension. It is also a very popular ski resort.
Further north in the Cascades chain is Mount St Helens,
which erupted with such violence in 1980. This too enters Native
American legend, which explains something of its eruptive
nature, and that of its neighbouring volcanoes. Legend follows
the typical pattern of quarrels among gods or spirits over land
or love, in the case of the Cascades range the love being that for
the beautiful Loowit, who was fought over by two young Indian
nobles, Pahto and Wy'east. Becoming furious at the devastation
the quarrel had caused - the shaking of the earth and the creation
of the Cascades - the chief of the gods struck his sons down.
Pahto became what is now Mount Adams, Wy'east became
Mount Hood, and Loowit was transformed into Mount St
Helens, originally 'Louwala-Clough', translated as 'Smoking
Mountain'. And so the legends go on. In Wyoming, the Devil's
Tower, a column of lava isolated by erosion, has vertical stria-
tions believed to have been the claw marks of a bear chasing
young girls.
Other legends from the Americas include the Peruvian
story of the volcano Misti, near Arequipa, which was plugged
with ice by the sun god as a punishment for pouring lava across
the landscape. Bringing legend forward into the modern world,
Huaynaputina, a neighbouring volcano to Misti, erupted in ad
1600 and covered Arequipa with ash. At this turbulent interface
between religions, Christians and pagans alike feared the end
of the world, and human and animal sacrifices were made in
appeasement. But why had Misti not erupted in sympathy, the
Christians asked? The reason they gave was because the Spaniards
had baptised Misti and renamed it San Francisco. Paganism and
Christianity made equal use of volcanic activity to defend their
Mount St Helens
erupting in 1980.
