* Many native tribes in the Northeast and Southwest still recount legends of the red-haired giants and how their ancestors fought long and terrible wars against the giants when they first encountered them in North America nearly 15,000 years ago.
* Others, such as the Aztecs and Mayans record their encounters with a race of giants to the north when they ventured out on exploratory expeditions.
On February 9, 1890, the American newspaper “The New York Times” published an article, describing, in great detail, the amazing archaeological discovery of what they called “a race of indigenous Indian giants.”
The article details that after a series of excavations carried out in an old Native American cemetery, located in the city of Pleasantville (New York), experts managed to unearth up to 50 skeletons, whose height ranged from 2.2 meters to 2 meters and a half, which means quite striking proportions.
Who were these giants that the history books have overlooked? They have been discovered on almost every continent.
In the US State of Nevada, the story of the Paiute natives’ wars against the red-haired giant men went from being a local myth to a scientific reality in 1924, when the Lovelock Caves were excavated.
At one time, Lovelock Cave was known as Horseshoe Cave, due to its U-shaped interior.
The cavern – located about 20 miles south of the modern city of Lovelock, Nevada, is approximately 40 feet deep and 60 feet wide.
It is a very old cave which pre-dates humans on this continent.
In prehistoric times it lay beneath a gigantic inland lake called Lahontan that covered most of western Nevada.
Geologists determined that the cavern was formed by lake currents and wave action.
The legend
The Paiutes, a tribe of North American Indians native to parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona, told early white settlers of their ancestors’ battles with a ferocious race of red-haired, white giants.
According to the Paiutes, the giants were already living in the area when they arrived.
The Paiutes called the giants “Si-Te-Cah,” which literally means “tule eaters.”
The tule is a fibrous water plant, from which the giants wove rafts to escape the continuous attacks of the Paiutes.
They used the rafts to navigate across what was left of Lake Lahontan.
According to the Paiutes, the red-haired giants were as tall as 12 feet and were a cruel, unapproachable people who killed and ate captured Paiutes for food.
The Paiutes told the first settlers that after many years of warfare, all the tribes in the area finally came together to get rid of the giants.
One day, while chasing the few remaining red-haired enemies, the giants, escaping; They took refuge in a cave. The tribal warriors demanded that their enemy come out and fight, but the giants flatly refused to leave their sanctuary.
Frustrated at not defeating their enemy with honor, the tribal chiefs had the warriors then set the entrance to the cavern on fire with a brush, in an attempt to force the giants out of the cave.
The few who did come out were attacked and killed instantly with volleys of arrows. The giants that remained inside the cavern were suffocated.
Later, an earthquake struck the region and the cave entrance collapsed, leaving just enough space for bats to enter and make their home.
The excavation
Thousands of years later, the cave was rediscovered and found to be filled with bat guano almost 6 feet deep. Decomposing bat guano becomes saltpeter, the main ingredient in gunpowder, and was highly valuable.
Therefore, in 1911, a company was created specifically for the exploitation of guano. As the mining operation progressed, skeletons and fossils were found.
The guano was mined nearly 13 years before archaeologists were notified of the finds. Unfortunately, by then many of the artifacts had been accidentally destroyed or simply thrown away.
What the scientific researchers were able to recover, however, was astounding: more than 10,000 artifacts were unearthed, including the mummified remains of two red-haired giants – a 20-foot-tall female, a male over 8 feet tall. .
Many of the artifacts (but not the giant ones) can be seen at the small natural history museum located in Winnemucca, Nevada.
The confirmation of the myth
As the excavation of the cave progressed, the archaeologists came to the inescapable conclusion that the Paiutes myth was no myth at all, but rather the truth.
What led them to their realization was the discovery of many broken arrows that had been shot into the cave and a dark layer of burned material beneath the overlying sections of guano.
Among the thousands of artifacts recovered from this site by an unknown people is what some scientists are convinced is a calendar: a donut-shaped stone with exactly 365 notches carved along its outer edge and 52 corresponding notches along the inside.
But that was not to be the final chapter for the red-haired giants in Nevada.
In February and June of 1931, two large skeletons were found on the bed of the Humboldt Dry Lake near Lovelock, Nevada.
One of the skeletons measuring 8.5 meters in height and was later described as having been wrapped in a rubber-coated cloth, similar to Egyptian mummies.
In the early 20th century, archaeologists found thousands of artifacts inside the cave, prompting a lengthy excavation and speculation that the Paiute legend was real, for among other surprising artifacts—which would largely end up in private collections—bones with cannibalism marks, 16-inch sandals, and skulls with reddish hair were unearthed.
Numerous legends of various Native American tribes, from the Comanches in the north to the Manteños in the south, tell of a mysterious race of white-skinned giants who were wiped out from the face of the earth.
Choctaw
In his book “History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Natchez Indians” (1899), Horatio Bardwell Cushman writes: “Choctaw lore tells that long ago a race of giants inhabited what is now the State of Tennessee, some beings with whom their ancestors fought when they migrated from the west… Their tradition states that the Nahullo were of impressive stature.”
Cushman says that, over time, the term “Nahullo” became common to designate all white people, but that it was originally used specifically to designate a race of white giants with whom the Choctaw came into deadly contact after cross the Mississippi River.
Comanche
In 1857, Chief Vibrant Lightning of the Comanches, an Amerindian tribe of the Great Plains, declared the following about an ancient race of white giants: “Innumerable moons ago, a race of white men, ten feet tall, and much more prosperous and powerful than any pale face now living here, it inhabited a large part of the nation, stretching from where the sun rises to where it sets. Their fortifications crowned the tops of the mountains, protecting their cities located in the intermediate valleys. They exceeded any other nation that has flourished before or since. They were a brave, haughty, and warlike race, to whom the white men of today would be only pygmies.”
The chief explained that when this race became too vain and forgot about justice and mercy, the Great Spirit annihilated them, leaving only the mounds that are still visible on the North American plateaus as a legacy of their society.
“It was a brave, haughty, and warlike race, to whom the white men of today would be only pygmies.”
Navajo
Yates also mentions beings known as “starnake” by the Navajo: “A majestic race of white giants endowed with mining technology who dominated western North America, enslaving lesser tribes. They either died out or returned to the skies.”
Aztec
In Mexica mythology, with the Legend of the Suns, it is said that the Quinametzin were humanity created during the Rainy Sun. Its ruler, according to some versions of the myth, was the god Tláloc, who was responsible for being the sun that shone during the third cosmogonic epoch, which ended when Quetzalcóatl made it rain down fire and the Quinametzin burned to death.
The Quinametzin were credited with being the builders of the city of Teotihuacan and Tlachihualtépetl, on which the main temple to the Feathered Serpent was built in Cholula. The Tlaxcalans recounted that, in times close to the Spanish Conquest, they themselves had fought against the last Quinametzin.
Blanket
In 1864, Pedro Cieza de León, a conquistador, but above all, a chronicler and historian of the Andean world, wrote in his “Crónica del Perú” how the native Manteña culture (in what today would become modern Ecuador) described a legendary race of giants:
“There are reports concerning giants in Peru, who would have arrived on the coast at the point of Santa Elena. The natives had been dismayed to see a boat made of reeds wash up on their shores with a cargo of creatures so tall that from the knee to the ground they were as big as a man of good stature. Their limbs were in proportion to the misshapen size of their bodies, and their heads were a monstrous thing to see, with hair that hung down to their shoulders. His eyes were as big as small saucers.”
In his chronicle, León says that the degenerate sexual habits of the giants were repugnant to the natives, so “heaven” eventually exterminated them.
