Читать книгу Hidden Realms, Lost Civilizations, and Beings from Other Worlds - Jerome Clark - Страница 11

Situated near the southern end of the Cascade range, in Siskiyou County, Mt. Shasta rises 14,161 feet (4,316 meters) above the landscape of northern California, 40 miles (64 kilometers) south of Oregon and midway between the Pacific Ocean and the Nevada border. It is a volcano which, according to geological evidence, erupts every 600 to 800 years. It has been alleged that the most recent eruption—or so some have inferred from the testimony of an observer looking to land from a ship at sea—occurred in 1786. The witnessed eruption, however, may not have been of Shasta; the issue is in dispute. (White people did not start settling in the area until 1827.) The lakes, rivers, and forests surrounding the mountain make Shasta a major tourist destination.

Whatever its distinctive beauty and natural features, Mt. Shasta is best known around the world for the curious lore associated with it. Its most celebrated legends, which owe more to conscious fabrication than to traditional folklore, are barely more than a century old. Older supernatural myths and tales, which come from the American Indian tribes who live or lived in the area, are just as interesting and in some ways more intriguing. For example, besides the ubiquitous belief in a race of supernatural, often invisible little people—a worldwide fairy tradition with cultural variations — natives spoke of their fear of cave-dwelling hairy giants, the Shupchers, who dispatched their victims by embracing and crushing them. As Bigfoot and Sasquatch such creatures, albeit minus murderous impulses, would survive, at least in supposition and testimony, into modern times.