https://phys.org/news/2025-04-native-american-earthquake-history-northeastern.html Phys.org Topics * Week's top * Latest news * Unread news * Subscribe [ ] Science X Account [ ] [ ] [*] Remember me Sign In Click here to sign in with or Forget Password? Not a member? Sign up Learn more * Nanotechnology * Physics * Earth * Astronomy & Space * Chemistry * Biology * Other Sciences * Medical Xpress Medicine * Tech Xplore Technology [INS::INS] * * share this! * 90 * Tweet * Share * Email 1. Home 2. Earth 3. Earth Sciences * * * --------------------------------------------------------------------- April 18, 2025 The GIST Editors' notes This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: fact-checked trusted source proofread Native American names extend the earthquake history of northeastern North America by Seismological Society of America Native American names extend the earthquake history of northeastern North America Mount Nashoba, now a popular ski area, is the "hill that shakes." Credit: John Phelan/ Wikimedia Commons In 1638, an earthquake in what is now New Hampshire and Plymouth, Massachusetts, left colonists stumbling from the strong shaking and water sloshing out of the pots used by Native Americans to cook a midday meal along the St. Lawrence River, according to contemporaneous reports. When Roger Williams, founder of the Rhode Island colony, talked with local Native Americans, he reported that the younger tribe members were surprised by the earthquake. But older tribe members said they had felt similar shaking four times in the past 80 years. In his talk at the Seismological Society of America's Annual Meeting, Boston College seismologist John Ebel urged his colleagues to collect more information about past earthquakes in eastern North America from Native American stories and languages. Although it might not feel like earthquake country to a Californian, for example, northeastern North America experiences regular seismic activity and has hosted large earthquakes in the past. Written records of these earthquakes include the past 400 years, but Ebel said extending this record further into the past with the help of Native American knowledge can help scientists better understand earthquake hazards in the area. Sometimes the clues to past seismic activity are in Native American place names, Ebel said. There's Moodus, Connecticut, for instance. Moodus comes from an Algonquian dialect and means "place of noises." For hundreds of years, people have heard "booms"--as if echoing in an underground cavern--in the area. Ebel said the Moodus noises are similar to those he heard as a graduate student camping in the Mojave Desert following a magnitude 5.1 earthquake. [INS::INS] "The Moodus noises sounded like distant thunder or a boom coming up from the ground, very similar to what I heard from the California aftershocks several years before," said Ebel, who noted that modern seismic instruments have recorded earthquake swarms in Moodus. "So the 'place of noises' means that they were hearing earthquakes long before Europeans came to that locality." Then there's the regular small earthquake activity in the northwest suburbs of Boston, where Ebel and his colleagues have been monitoring since the mid-1970s. "I was going through books one day looking for information on historical earthquakes there, and I came across this WPA guide from the 1930s, and it's talking about Route 2, which runs right through that area, and it goes right near a hill called Mount Nashoba," he recalled. The guide included "a little translation that said Nashoba is from an Indian word that means 'hill that shakes.' So now I've got all of these little earthquakes, and right in the center of it is a place with an ancient name that means hill that shakes," Ebel said. Researching which tribes in the region have a word for earthquake could be useful, "because that would suggest that earthquakes were a rather repetitive thing," he noted. His early searches indicate that the Seneca, Cayuga, Natick and Mi'kmaq tribes all have a word for earthquake. Ebel said interdisciplinary research with ethnologists with more detailed knowledge about Native American languages and narratives could be very helpful to seismologists looking to extend the northeastern North America earthquake record into pre-colonial times. "If there are legends that preserve information about probable earthquakes, for instance, it might be possible to define some sort of estimate of [shaking] intensity from the descriptions in the stories," he suggested. Provided by Seismological Society of America Citation: Native American names extend the earthquake history of northeastern North America (2025, April 18) retrieved 22 April 2025 from https://phys.org/news/ 2025-04-native-american-earthquake-history-northeastern.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. 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Apr 21, 2025 [gif] How activity in Earth's mantle led the ancient ancestors of elephants, giraffes, and humans into Asia and Africa Apr 21, 2025 Load comments (0) Get Instant Summarized Text (Gist) Native American oral histories and place names provide evidence of significant earthquakes in northeastern North America prior to European colonization. Terms such as "place of noises" and "hill that shakes" indicate repeated seismic activity, and several tribes have specific words for earthquakes. Integrating Indigenous knowledge can extend and enhance the regional earthquake record beyond the past 400 years. This summary was automatically generated using LLM. Full disclaimer Let us know if there is a problem with our content Use this form if you have come across a typo, inaccuracy or would like to send an edit request for the content on this page. For general inquiries, please use our contact form. For general feedback, use the public comments section below (please adhere to guidelines). 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