Yeti, Sasquatch & Hairy Giants

by David Hatcher Childress

  Sir Francis Drake anchored in the same harbor in 1578, also reporting men of great stature, whom he described as being well over seven feet tall. Anthony Knyvet, who took part in an expedition to the Strait of Magellan in 1592, wrote of having seen Patagonians from ten to twelve feet in height, and of having measured several bodies of the same size at Port Desire. Several skeletons ten or eleven feet long were discovered in 1615 by two crewman from the Dutch schooner Wilhelm Schouten.45

  By this time, the existence of a race of giants seemed well established, however, for nearly one hundred fifty years after this last sighting, no other reports were made of these Patagonian Giants. Other natives of Patagonia were of normal size, but they did insist that giants lived in the interior of the land.

  When Commodore Byron visited the Strait of Magellan in 1764, he reported sighting some natives on horseback who waved at his party. Byron later wrote in his log that the chief of these natives “was of a gigantic stature and seemed to realize the tales of monsters in a human shape: he had the skin of some wild beast thrown over his shoulder.” 45

  A historic drawing of Lord Byron and the Patagonian giants.

  Upon meeting with five hundred more of these giants, each taller than the tallest of the British, one of Byron’s officers wrote,”... some of them are certainly nine feet, if they do not exceed it. The commodore, who is very near six feet, could but just reach the top of one of their heads, which he attempted, on tiptoe; and there were several taller than him on whom the experiment was tried.” 45 Although most people overestimate the height of a person who is taller than they are, and a man of Byron’s height could probably only reach up to about eight feet, the race his group encountered was definitely of incredible height.

  A Patagonian giant compared with Byron and Fedor Machnov.

  These sightings were the last recorded of the Patagonian Giants. To this day, no one has identified who these giants were, and some doubt that they even existed. Some who believe the stories feel that they lived somewhere in the interior of Patagonia, rarely coming to the coast.

  It is interesting to note that in 1895 a discovery was made of the reportedly fresh skin of a giant ground sloth (Mylodon) in a cave at Consuelo cove at Last Hope Inlet, on the western coast of Patagonia. These creatures stood about fifteen feet tall, and were thought to have been extinct for 30,000 years. But this skin was rolled up and carefully buried in a cave which also contained human remains, including a mummy!32 Evidence suggested that ground sloths were actually penned in in the cave, fed and later slaughtered. Did ancient (or not-so-ancient) man actually domesticate giant ground sloths in Patagonia? What sort of man would do this—perhaps one of great stature?

  One interesting tribe that lived in Tierra del Fuego at the time of the European discovery was the Onas. They were quite an unusual bunch, wearing no clothes, but covering themselves with mud to keep warm. Somewhat taller than average Indians at nearly six feet, they often wore a piece of wood on the top of their head, giving them extra height. This custom may have started in imitation of the Patagonian Giants, but their tradition claims they dressed like this to frighten their own women, to keep them in line.

  According to an ancient legend among the Onas, in an earlier time, the tribe’s women managed the society and educated the children. There was a conspiracy among the women to keep the men afraid of them and their power, until one man discovered the women’s trick, and the tables were turned. Now it is the men who keep the women in fear.

  But back to the actual giants: did they really exist? In 1925 a group of amateur “investigators” destroyed one of the most important finds of its kind. Digging into an Indian mound at Walkerton, Indiana, they had unearthed the skeletons of eight prehistoric humans, ranging from eight to almost nine feet tall, all wearing substantial copper armor. Unfortunately, the evidence was scattered and lost.53

  Author Ivan T. Sanderson relates a story from a letter he received from an engineer who was stationed on the Aleutian island of Shemya during World War Two. While building an airstrip, his crew bulldozed a group of hills, discovering under several sedimentary layers what appeared to be a graveyard of seemingly human remains, consisting of crania and long leg bones. The crania measured from 22 to 24 inches from base to crown. Since an adult skull normally measures about eight inches from back to front, such a large crania would imply an immense size for a normally proportioned human. Furthermore, every skull was said to have been neatly trepanned!69

  Sanderson tried to gather further proof, eventually receiving a letter from another member of the unit who confirmed the report. The letters both indicated that the Smithsonian Institution had collected the remains, yet nothing else was heard. Sanderson seems to be convinced that it was not a hoax, but wondered why the Smithsonian would not release the data. To quote him, “.. .is it that these people cannot face rewriting all the textbooks?”

  In 1833, soldiers digging a pit for a powder magazine at Lompoc Rancho, California, hacked their way through a layer of cemented gravel and came up with the skeleton of a man about twelve feet tall. The skeleton was surrounded by carved shells, huge stone axes, and blocks of porphyry covered with unintelligible symbols. The giant was also noteworthy in another respect: he had a double row of teeth, both upper and lower.52 When local Indians began to attach a religious significance to the skeleton and artifacts, the authorities ordered it secretly buried; it is now lost to science.

  Researchers Brad Steiger and Ron Calais report in their book Mysteries of Time and Space94 that in 1895, a party of miners working near Bridalveil Falls, California, found the tomb of a woman whose skeletal remains indicated that she had stood six feet, eight inches in height. The corpse had been wrapped in animal skins and covered with a fine gray powder. She was clutching a child to her breast.

  They also report that in 1898, scientists excavating in Death Valley found the fossilized remains of a giant female who stood seven feet, six inches and whose spine bore several extra “buttons” at its base, indicating that the woman and her unknown people were endowed with a tail-like appendage.94

  Steiger and Calais also relate that the Dallas Morning News on July 30, 1974, carried a story of the discovery of the skeleton of a seven-foot woman sealed in a cave at the crest of a high mesa near the hamlet of Chalk Mountain, Texas.94

  Also in Texas, at the Paluxy River site, creationist researcher Dr. Clifford Burdick claims to have found evidence of dinosaurs and man walking together in the many fossilized footprints in the sandstone of the river. The human tracks, found in situ with the tracks of a tyrannosaurus rex, are said by conservative geologists to be over 80 million years old. The creationists feel that these, and all fossils, are only five to six thousand years old (and the truth is probably somewhere between these two figures). The fossilized “human” footprints are of an enormous size, indicating that these ancient people were literal giants. They may have been over 10 feet tall, and there can be no doubt that they had very big feet!94

  There are legends of giants all over the world, from China and Pacific Islands to Africa and the Americas, but what we really require is proof. Perhaps the bones of giants have been found, or even better, perhaps giants exist even today!

  An old print of of the English giant William Evans.

  CHAPTER 2

  GIANTS AMONG US

  The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.

  —Jimmy Johnson

  There are Giants in the Earth

  Giants have long caught the fascination of mankind, with a revival of “giant consciousness” in Europe taking place in the middle ages. Some scientists and historians at that time argued that there must still be a race of giants somewhere in the world, since the legends were so numerous. When early settlers began to excavate some of the mounds found in the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, they discovered bones of what they deemed a former race of giants.

  A race of giants became associated with the huge North American pyramids at the Il
linois site of Cahokia along the Mississippi River. Cahokia is only one of hundreds, even thousands of pyramids throughout the central United States.

  At Cahokia, sheets of copper, plates of mica, shells and turquoise have all been found at burials. These various materials all originate from vastly separated areas of the Midwest.

  Furthermore, some rather interesting skeletons and artifacts have been discovered in many mounds throughout the Midwest:

  •In his book, The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, author John Haywood describes “very large” bones found in stone graves in Williamson County, Tennessee, in 1821. In White County, an “ancient fortification” contained skeletons of gigantic stature averaging at least seven feet in length.

  •Giant skeletons were found in the mid- 1800s near Rutland and Rodman, New York. J.N. DeHart, M.D., found vertebrae “larger than those of the present type” in Wisconsin mounds in 1876. W.H.R. Lykins uncovered skull bones “of great size and thickness” in mounds of the Kansas City area in 1877.

  •George W Hill, M.D., dug out a skeleton “of unusual size” in a mound of Ashland County, Ohio. In 1879, a nine-foot, eight-inch skeleton was excavated from a mound near Brewersville, Indiana. (Indianapolis News, Nov. 10, 1975)

  •A six-foot, six-inch skeleton was found in a Utah mound. This was at least a foot taller than the average Indian height in the area, and these natives—what few there were of them—were not mound builders.

  •"A skeleton which is reported to have been of enormous dimensions” was found in a clay coffin, with a sandstone slab containing hieroglyphics, during mound explorations by a Dr. Everhart near Zanesville, Ohio. (American Antiquarian, v.3, 1880, page 61)

  •Ten skeletons “of both sexes and of gigantic size” were taken from a mound at Warren, Minnesota, in 1883. (St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 23, 1883)

  •A skeleton “seven feet six inches long, and nineteen inches across the chest” was removed from a massive stone structure that was likened to a temple chamber within a mound in Kanawha County, West Virginia, in 1884. (American Antiquarian, v. 6, 1884, 133f. Cyrus Thomas, Report on Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology, 12th Annual Report, Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology, 1890-91)

  •A large mound near Gastersville, Pennsylvania, contained “a kind of vault... in which was discovered the skeleton of a giant measuring seven feet two inches ... On the stones which covered the vault were carved inscriptions...” (American Antiquarian, v. 7, 1885, 52f)

  •In Minnesota, in 1888, remains were discovered of seven skeletons “seven to eight feet tall.” (St. Paul Pioneer Press, June 29, 1888)

  •A mound near Toledo, Ohio, held 20 skeletons, seated and facing east, with jaws and teeth “twice as large as those of present day people,” and beside each was a large bowl with “curiously wrought hieroglyphical figures.” (Chicago Record, Oct. 24, 1895; cited by Ron G. Dobbins, NEARA Journal, v. 13, fall 1978)

  •The skeleton of “a huge man” was uncovered at the Beckley farm, Lake Koronis, Minnesota; while at Moose Island and Pine City, bones of other giants came to light. (St. Paul Globe, Aug. 12, 1896)36,58,60

  •A decayed human skeleton claimed by eyewitnesses to measure around 3.28 metres (10 feet 9 inches tall), was unearthed by laborers while ploughing a vineyard in November 1856 in East Wheeling, now in West Virginia. (The Forbidden Land, 1971, Robert Lyman)

  •A 9’ 11” (3.02 meters) skeleton was unearthed in 1928 by a farmer digging a pit to bury trash in Tensas Parish, Louisiana near Waterproof. In 1931 a 10’ 2” (3.1 meters) skeleton was unearthed by a boy burying his dog in 1933 in nearby Madison Parish. (The Forbidden Land, 1971, Robert Lyman)

  A curious statement about the Susquehannock Indians was made by Captain John Smith in the 1694 edition of his book The General History of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles (and quoted in the 1936 book Archaeological Studies of the Susquehannock Indians of Pennsylvania by Donald Kudzow) who says:

  Sixty of those Susquehannocks [an English name for the Andastes] came to us... [S]uch great and well proportioned men are seldom seen, for they seemed like giants to the English. ...These are the strangest people of all those countries both in language and attire. As for their language, it well matched their proportions, sounding from them like a voice in a vault. Their attire is the skins of bears and wolves, some have cassocks made of bears heads and skins... The half sleeves coming to the elbows were the heads of bears, with their arms coming through the open mouth. ... [F]or a jewel, one had the head of a wolf hanging from a chain... with a club suitable to his greatness sufficient to beat out ones’ brains. Five of their chief wereowances [leading chiefs] came aboard us... the greatest of them his hair, the one side was long and the other shorn close with a ridge over his crown like a cock’s comb. ...The calf of whose leg was of a yard around, and all the rest of his limbs so comparable to that proportion that he seemed the goodliest man we ever beheld!

  The Susquehannocks lived in farming villages and used canoes to fish and navigate the Susquehanna River, which is named after them. They had a series of wars with the Iroquois League and their population diminished and, ultimately, their tribal identity vanished. Today we know little about them and it is thought that surviving Susquehannock merged with the Delaware, Tuscarora, Oneida, and the Oklahoma Seneca.

  Giants Discovered Out in the Wild West

  A large number of reports of giant skeletons being excavated or discovered in the western United States and Mexico were published in newspapers of magazines of the 1800s and 1900s.

  Nebraska was the burial site of other giant bones. In William Cody’s 1879 autobiography, Buffalo Bill,46 Cody tells a very interesting story. He and his companions were five miles above Ogallala on the South Platte when a Pawnee Indian came to the camp with the bones of a giant. The surgeon of the group pronounced one of the giant bones to be a human thighbone, and the Pawnee then told a curious legend.

  According to Buffalo Bill’s own account, “The Indians claimed that the bones they had found were those of a person belonging to a race of people who a long time ago lived in this country. That there was once a race of men on the earth whose size was about three times that of an ordinary man, and they were so swift and powerful that they could run along-side of a buffalo, and taking the animal in one arm could tear off a leg and eat the meat as they walked.

  “These giants denied the existence of a Great Spirit so he caused a great rain-storm to come, and the water kept rising higher and higher so that it drove those proud and conceited giants from the low grounds to the hills, and thence to the mountains, but at last even the mountain tops were submerged, and then those mammoth men were all drowned. After the flood had subsided, the Great Spirit came to the conclusion that he had made man too large and powerful, and that he would therefore correct the mistake by creating a race of men of smaller size and less strength. This is the reason, say the Indians, that modern men are small and not like the giants of old, and they claim that this story is a matter of Indian history, which has been handed down among them from time immemorial.”46

  A Giant with a Double Row of Teeth

  In his book Stranger Than Science,52 Frank Edwards describes how, in 1833, soldiers digging a pit for a powder magazine at Lompock Rancho (near San Luis Obispo) hacked their way through a layer of cemented gravel and came up with the skeleton of a man about twelve feet tall. The skeleton was surrounded by carved shells, huge stone axes, and blocks of porphyry covered with unintelligible symbols. The giant was noteworthy in still another respect: he had a double row of teeth, both upper and lower.52 When local Indians began to attach a religious significance to the skeleton and artifacts, the authorities ordered it secretly buried, so it is lost to science.

  Edwards also mentions that another giant man was found off the California coast on Santa Rosa Island in the 1800s. He also had a double row of teeth. These giants may have been the ones who roasted the dwarf mammoths on the island thousands of years ago.52

  Two turbaned gia
nts in India (unknown height).

  Early reports from Jesuit missionaries along the Colorado River described the Yuma Indians as literal giants. In September of 1700, Father Kino was exploring the area and was hailed by thousands of Yumans, who greeted him in peace as he rode along the southern section of the Colorado River.

  Mongolian giant, circa 1922.

  Says Charles Polzer in his book A Kino Guide, “The Yumans were gigantic in stature, and one of them was the largest Indian (the famed priest who built early missions from northern Mexico to California) had ever seen. It must have been a little nerve-wracking to be the willing captive of such giants. But Padre Kino’s own good will and understanding of the Indian ways won a whole new nation in friendship.”61

  In the theory that mankind has been getting progressively shorter over history, mainly due to constant warfare, the Yumans may have been the descendents of a race of giants, and by the 1700s were still quite tall by normal standards of the time. Today the Yumans are of normal height, as far as I know.

  Another interesting tale of California giants comes from Choral Pepper. Choral, with her husband Jack, published Desert Magazine in the 1960s and wrote books up until the 1980s. She was also a friend of Erle Stanley Gardner who wrote many of the Perry Mason novels, as well as many of the scripts for the television show starring Raymond Burr.