The Elbert County Tribune

INDIAN EARTHQUAKE THEORY
Red Men Believe Center of Earth Is Filled with Compressed Hot Lava.

Maj. Cicero Newell tells why there are such things as earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanoes. The major learned these things from Dakota Indians, says the Seattle Times.

"When I lived among the Dakotas," said he, "I found men who, like Buddha, gave seven years of their lives to prayer and fasting, that they might become more pure in the sight of God, or the Great Spirit, as they called that being. After they have proved themselves before their people by performing so-called miracles, such as holding their hands and arms in boiling water and not being burned, shot with poisoned arrows and not harmed, bitten by rattlesnakes and not poisoned, and many other tests that I have witnessed, they are accepted as holy or wise men. The Indians believe that they can get the word direct from God, or the Great Spirit, the same as the wise men and seers of old used to do. I have asked these intelligences to tell me about the cause of the earthquakes and tidal waves, and they explain it like this:

"They say volcanoes are the safety valves of the earth. That the rim of the earth is gradually cooling. As it cools it contracts, making the pressure on the hot lava in the interior greater. At last something must give way, this rim must crack open, or the volcanoes must burst forth and emit this compressed lava.

"Sometimes it is relieved in one way, sometimes in another. Should the earth crack in midocean, where the crust is usually thinner, then the waters of the ocean fill in and there is a great explosion as the water strikes this great bed of hot lava. Large masses of the rim are thrown up and islands appear. Sometimes they stay on the surface of the ocean, sometimes they fall back and are again covered with water, but the upheaval so lifts the water that a great wave is started for the shore that carries death and destruction in its way.

"Many of the old safety valves in the earth are now closing up; only a few remain. The crust is becoming so thick that the cooling process is more slow."