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The Atfalati, also known as the Tualatin or Wapato Lake Indians were a tribe of the
who originally inhabited some 24 villages on the
in the northwest part of the U.S. the Atfalai also lived the hills around , along
and the , and possibly at .
The Atfalati spoke the
(Northern Kalapuya) language, which was one of the three .
Atfalati ranged around the valley, engaged in a hunter-gather lifestyle. Primary food stuffs included deer,
root, fish, berries, elk, and various nuts. To encourage the growth of the camas plant and maintain habitat beneficial to deer and elk, the group burned the valley floor to discourage the growth of forests, a common practice among the Kalapuya.
Before Euro-American contact, the Atfati were known for wearing adornment such a red feathers on the head. Both men and women had
earlobes and , hanging long beads and bright
from them. Compared to the peoples to the south, Atfati practiced a more severe form of , and compared to the peoples to the east of the
raised fewer horses. The Atfati kept , who could sometimes purchase their freedom with horses. The Atfalati lived in rectangular multi-family houses.
Euro-Americans began arriving in the Atfalati's homeland in the early 19th century, and settlers in the 1840s. As with the other Kalapuyan peoples, the arrival of Euro-Americans led to dramatic social disruptions. By the 1830s the Atfati had already begun to adopt Euro-American clothing styles. In the 1830s, diseases had decimated Native populations in the , including the Atfalati. The tribe had already experienced population decreased from
in 1782 and 1783. These upheavals diminished the Atfalati's ability to challenge white encroachment. It is estimated that the band was reduced to a population of around 600 in 1842, and had shrunk to only 60 in 1848.
By the 1850s, white settlers were rapidly populating the , and the United States government (represented by ,
in the ) negotiated treaties in 1851 with the Kalapuyans, including the Atfalati. Under the terms of a treaty of April 19, 1851, the Atfalatis ceded their lands in return for a small reservation at Wapato Lake as well as "money, clothing, blankets, tools, a few rifles, and a horse for each of their headmen--Kaicut, La Medicine, and Knolah." At the time of the treaty, there were 65 Atfalatis. The treaty resulted in the loss of much of the Atfalati's lands, but was preferable to removal east of the Cascade Mountains, which the government initially had demanded. This treaty, however, was never ratified.
Under continuing pressure, the government and Kalapuya renegotiated a treaty with , Dart's successor. This treaty, the
(also known as the Willamette Valley Treaty or Dayton Treaty) was signed January 4, 1855 and ratified by , on March 3, 1855 (10 Stat. 1143). Under the terms of the treaty, the indigenous peoples of the Willamette Valle agreed to remove to a
to be designated by the federal government. The government later designated the
in the western part of the Willamette Valley at the foothills of the
as the permanent reservation for a variety of tribes.
Following this, the Atf the
showed 60 members living at the Grand Ronde reservation and the
showed only 44; a 1914 Smithsonian Institution publication listed a single survivor living on the
in Washington. The degree to which the Atfalati assimilated with whites over time is not known.
, a wooden statue in honor of an Atfalati—Tualatin chief
, another band of the Kalapuya
Buan, Carolyn M. (1999). This Far-Off Sunset Land: A Pictorial History of Washington County, Oregon. Virginia Beach, VA: The Donning Company Publishers. pp. 17–22.  .
Robert H. Ruby, John A. Brown & Cary C. Collins, Atfalati, in A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest (3d ed. 2010, University of Oklahoma Press)The Biggest and Weirdest Maars on Earth
The Devil Mountain Lakes, the largest maar on Earth, are in Alaska's Seward Peninsula.
Credit: National Park Service
In Alaska, where the winter runs colder, the sun shines longer and the mountains rise taller than any other state, the Land of the Midnight Sun can claim another superlative: The biggest and strangest maars ever found on Earth.
Maars are craters left behind after violent volcanic steam explosions, sparked when rising magma runs into groundwater, which then blows up like a bomb.
&When water turns to steam, it expands its volume by 1,000 times,& said James Beget, a volcanologist at the Alaska Volcano Observatory and the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
are about 1,000 feet (300 meters) wide. Rarely, they reach a mile (1.6 kilometers) across. Their size is limited by fuel & the hot lava quickly boils off available water, shutting down the reaction.
But Alaska's enormous Devil Mountain Lakes maar is more than 5 miles (8 km) wide, by far the largest on Earth, Beget said. That's comparable in size to the calderas atop Hawaii's Kilauea volcano and Oregon's Crater Lake at Mount Mazama.
The maar is part of the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, and sits at the northern tip of the Seward Peninsula.The tundra was home to mammoths and, possibly, migrating Ice Age humans when the Devil Mountain maar blasted the landscape. Now, the region's bizarre lava flows draw scientists who study other planets, looking for analogues to eruptions on Mars.
Oh, my aching back-arc
The Bering Land Bridge's maar lakes, in the northern tip of the Seward Peninsula, are the largest maars on Earth.Credit: ESA
Along Alaska's southern boundary is a 1,200-mile-long (2,000 km) subduction zone, where one of Earth's tectonic plates dives beneath another. Above the plate boundary, a string of tall volcanoes punches through the crust, outlining the Aleutian Islands arc. The force of the collision also tugs and pulls on the crust, which can stretch and extend behind the plate boundary, opening space for magma to ascend. The phenomenon is called back-arc spreading.
&There's a zone hundreds of miles wide behind the subduction zone where you have small seamounts and terrestrial volcanoes going all the way up to Bering Land Bridge National Preserve,& Beget told OurAmazingPlanet. []
The Devil Mountain Lakes are just one of four oblate lakes at least 3 miles (5 km) wide that record thunderous maars eruptions, the youngest about 21,000 years ago, Beget said. The others are 40,000 to more than 100,000 years old.
What makes these maars so unusual is the collision of magma and ice, instead of magma and liquid water. At this spot, lava erupted under thick permafrost, a singular event yet to be found anywhere else on Earth.
'Pleistocene Pompeii'
Permafrost, for permanently frozen ground, is chilled by ice that fills the tiny spaces between sediment grains. During the last Ice Age, when the last maar in the area formed, the
could have been up to 325 feet (100 m) thick, Beget said. The ice created the perfect conditions for a whopping series of explosions.
Maars are usually small because magma quickly flashes water to steam. But with the permafrost, the 1,800-degree-Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius) molten rock could melt a little bit of ice at a time, keeping the steam explosion going strong, Beget explained.
Devil Mountain Lakes, Whitefish Lake and North and South Killeak lakes were all scoured out by hundreds of , scientists think. Researchers have discovered huge blocks of frozen ground that flew out of the craters, and thick clouds of ash dusted the region for miles. Pyroclastic surges (a fluid-like mix of lethally hot gas and rock) seared the ground for 2.5 to 3 miles (4 to 5 km) away from each eruption.
The ash buried a lush , and scientists have excavated the rock to examine perfectly preserved plants from when mammoths walked the Earth. &We see it as a Pleistocene Pompeii,& Beget said. The hummocky ground looked much like the high-latitude Arctic does today, with one plant community growing in the moist crevices between the small mounds and another on the dry tops.
Ongoing eruptions
The Lost Jim Lava Flow, a young pahoehoe lava flow in Alaska's Bering Land Bridge National Preserve.Credit: Bering Land Bridge National Preserve
Thought Beget said the earliest archaeological evidence for human habitation in Alaska is 13,000 years old, much younger than the maars, it's possible that
could have seen the spectacular eruptions because there are older human sites in North and South America. []
&We'd like to think that those people came across the Bering Land Bridge. There could be people that saw this eruption,& Beget said.
And the Seward Peninsula's volcanism didn't end with the maar explosions & its youngest lava, the Lost Jim flow near Imruk Lake, covered a wide swath of tundra some 3,000 years ago, he said. The region could erupt again in the future, Beget added.
&In any site like this, where you find multiple
and vents and lava flows and giant maars, you're almost certainly going to get another back-arc eruption, maybe in the Bering Sea, maybe closer to Nome or Kotzebue,& Beget said. &We can't know when or where such an eruption would occur.&
Maars on Mars
The ridge crossing the top of this image of Mars' Granicus Valles resembles ridges formed on Earth when lava erupts from fissures buried beneath thick layers of ice.Credit: Arizona State University
The Lost Jim lava flow is a smooth-surfaced pahoehoe flow that covers about 88 square miles (227 square km) with depths averaging 55 feet (16 m). There's even a lava tube that can be traced for 12 miles (19 km). Collapse pits pockmark the flow, evidence of melting permafrost patches, but there are no maars from the eruption. Because the climate was warmer and the flow erupted farther south than the Devil Mountain volcanics, there probably wasn't a thick permafrost layer to feed a steam explosion, Beget said.
In 2003, Beget and Jeff Kargel, an expert on Martian landforms, returned to the Bering Land Bridge Preserve to compare the Lost Jim lava flow with features Kargel has seen in images from Mars.
&There are some good examples of
and other volcanic landforms where ice played a big role in their formation,& Kargel told OurAmazingPlanet in an email interview. &The Elysium volcanic plateau and its flanks are particularly famous for maar craters, subglacial volcanoes and lahars (mud avalanches) produced by volcanic interaction with ground volatiles (presumably ice).&
Beget said looking for maars on Mars was a funny spin-off of his decades of research in the Seward Peninsula, one that confirms there's still much to be learned on Earth.
&The science of [the maars] is really quite unusual and interesting,& he said. &Even in our modern scientific world, we can still discover important new processes.&
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