Crater Lake, Oregon, USA: How Geology Used and Corrected an Earliest Known Audience’s Mythical Description of a Volcanic Eruption
Kevin R. Henke
September 15, 2022
Crater Lake is an interesting volcanic feature in the US state of Oregon. It even appears on the Oregon state quarter. Back in 1865, soldier William Colvig independently heard several Klamath Native Americans describe their tribe’s account of how the volcanic lake formed (Sieh and LeVay 1998, p. 37). The account is here. The Chief of the Underworld came out of the top of a large mountain. He fell in love with a Native American maiden, but she refused to go with him into the underworld. The chief went into a rage and shook the Earth. Fire came from his mouth. Hot rock and ash fell from the sky. The medicine men declared that only a human sacrifice could end his rage. However, no one volunteered. So, two medicine men climbed the mountain and threw themselves into the flaming vent. The Chief of the Above World, seeing the events from Mt. Shasta, approved of the sacrifice. He drove the Chief of the Underworld back underground and collapsed the mountain on top of him. The high mountain was gone. Over many years, rain fell and a lake formed in the large hole (Sieh and LeVay 1998, p. 37).
The volcano was called Mount Mazama and before the eruption its summit was at about 3,700 meters above sea level (Egan et al. 2015, p. 1054). Human remains and artifacts have been found in the volcanic ash left by the eruption (Sieh and LeVay 1998, p. 37). So, we know that humans were there to witness the event. Using chemical analyses, the ash layer was located in the Greenland ice sheet. Counting of the annual ice layers provided an eruption date of 7627 +/- 150 years old (2-sigma) (Zdanowicz et al. 1999). Radiocarbon analyses of organic matter associated with the ash dated the eruption at 7,682 to 7,584 years before present (“present” = 1950 AD; 95.4% confidence) (Egan et al. 2015). (Young-Earth creationists are wrong to use their inconsistent Biblical interpretations to try to date these events; Henke 2022ao; Henke 2022do). Anyway, this is one of the oldest oral traditions in the world. Of course, there’s no reason to believe that the Chief of the Underworld or the Chief of the Above World ever existed and many of the other details in the story are questionable. However, the Klamath myth did get at least one claim correct. Crater Lake is misnamed. It’s not a crater, but a volcanic caldera. That is, the volcano collapsed during the eruption. It did not explode outward. This is another case where the details of a story from an “earliest known audience” are more unreliable myth than history. However, geologists and archeologists did at least confirm that the ancestors of the Klamath tribe witnessed the formation of Crater Lake and that they correctly identified it as a caldera.
The Mount Mazama story is yet another example of how geology, archeology and other sciences are absolutely necessary to confirm and correct traditions about the past. Contrary to Mr. Lundahl’s essays in this debate, claims from “earliest known audiences” and “collective memories”, by themselves, don’t provide reliable history. People tend to exaggerate and invent details over time. Furthermore, in comparison to the Klamath story, there’s not a shred of evidence that Genesis 3 ever happened and Hypotheses #3 and #4 continue to be the best explanations for these Bible verses (Henke 2022a; Henke 2022b).
References:
Egan, J., R. Staff, and J. Blackford. 2015. “A High-Precision Age Estimate of the Holocene Plinian Eruption of Mount Mazama, Oregon, USA”, The Holocene, v. 25, n. 7, pp. 1054-1067.
Sieh, K. and S. LeVay. 1998. The Earth in Turmoil: Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Their Impact on Humankind: W.H. Freeman and Company: New York, USA, 324pp.
Zdanowicz, C.M., G.A. Zielinski, and M.S. Germani. 1999. “Mount Mazama Eruption: Calendrical Age Verified and Atmospheric Impact Assessed”, Geology, v. 27, n. 7, pp. 621-624.