A Pygmy Tribe in Ancient Tennessee?
The “Tennessee Pygmies” have held a prominent position in what skeptics like to call “archaeological folklore” since the 1820s. Due to the discovery of an enormous amount of the skeletal remains of small-statured people throughout the Cumberland Plateau region of Tennessee and Kentucky, it was once widely believed that a tribe of pygmies inhabited the area in the prehistoric past.
Where it Began
To start, we need to go all the way back to 1820, when it all began. The first mention of the Tennessee Pygmies can be traced back to an article in the Nashville Whigin their July 5, 1820 edition:
On the farm of Turner Lane, Esq., five miles south east of Sparta, on the waters of the Caney Fork of Cumberland, and on other farms adjacent, have lately been found, small graves, sunk into the earth from one foot to eighteen inches below the surface. They are about ten inches broad and eighteen inches long, having a flag limestone rock at each of the ends and sides, and covered with the same species of rock. In these graves are found scull bones, about three inches in diameter, nearly sound: the other bones being proportionally small. Between two and three hundred of these graves have been discovered. In every tomb, yet opened, was found a small black earthen pot, about one pint in capacity, containing a small conch-shell, undecayed, of a grey colour on the exterior and red within, and as transparent as this species of shell is usually found. The pot, when broken, exhibits numerous white specks of round shining particles...
At Mr. Anderson’s, two miles and a half in a southwestwardly direction from the farm of Mr. Lane, were found other skeletons of the same dimensions, in tombs constructed upon the same plan, and of similar materials. One at least, it is said, was observed to have teeth, and all the bones belonging to the human body.
The facts above stated are attested by Mr. Lane, of White County, who has seen the skeletons very often; by his son, Jacob A. Lane, Esq. of Sparta, in the same county, and by another son, Alexander Lane, Esq., a student at law, who all say they can be verified by all the inhabitants in the vicinity of the farm of Mr. Lane. Mr. Lane the father, who is a man of observation, gives it as his decided opinion, that these are the skeletons of adult persons – He founds his opinion upon the solidity of the bones of the heads, and also upon the fact, of the sutures of the sculls being entirely closed and solid.
The trees growing where they were found, are of as great size and age as any in the surrounding forest. The small graves at Mr. Lane’s are arranged, but at Mr. Anderson’s there is a large burying ground full of them, without any order as to position. That the bones are human, Mr. Lane thinks there can be no doubt, and that they are not the bones of children, he thinks unquestionable.
...The rocks which inclose them, are thin blue limestone, and not of that neighborhood originally, all the limestone in the vicinity being of a grey colour. Here is a mystery that baffles conjecture, and puts all experience at defiance. The stories of the pigmies of Herodotus, on the borders of Ethiopia and the Red Sea, and those of Homer in India, have always been treated as fables, which, in the days of those men, entered into most of their written compositions. At this day, we must outstrip credulity itself, to belief in the real existence of pigmy men. How could a nation of pigmy men, not exceeding eighteen inches in stature, build habitations, clear the forest, cultivate the soil, defend themselves against the ravages of the hawk and eagle, the wolf and the panther?
John Haywood
No one did more to popularize the notion of the Tennessee Pygmies as historian John Haywood who wrote of them extensively in his book Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee. The following is an excerpt from the book, pages 202–206:
On Saturday the 29th of July, Mr. Lane went to Captain Simon Doyles's, the place where Mr. Anderson formerly lived, to search there for further discoveries. He and those "who were with him, opened two small graves. The first 18 inches long ; about 12 inches broad. It contained the little bones, pieces of part of one tooth, and other things contained in package No. 3. The second grave was 2 feet long, 1 inches wide, and 15 inches deep. It contained the bones, teeth, vessel and shells enclosed in package No. 3, This person was laid upon the right side, with his head to the south, and his face to the east. The body lay north and south, and the thigh bones east an4 west. The legs were then laid back, so as to form an angle with the thighs, of about 30 degrees. All this could be clearly ascertained by a cautious and careful examination of the bones, which, although plainly to be seen, yet nevertheless were so decayed, that they would crumble at the slightest touch. Nor could they possibly lift the bones, in any sounder condition than as they were presented to view in the package. The underside of the scull, as it was in the grave, was sounder and stronger than that which was uppermost. The scull which was in the grave last opened, could not possibly be raised, for the graves were all full of dirt, as closely bound together as any other ground outside the grave; and when the scull is discovered, the probability is, that a hole will break into it on the upper part. The concave is perfectly hollow, but the earth could not be removed from about; it, without crumbling it down as fast as the earth was removed. The concave diameter Mr. Lane measured. It was about 5 inches. Some small scraps of it (No.3) he sent. The socket of the eye was perceptible; the knettings of the head were visible. The chin, the size and strength of the teeth, and the size and curvature of the ribs, were all apparent. The graves lie promiscuously through the farm of Mr. Lane. But at Mr. Anderson's, where Captain Doyle now lives, there is a large and closely connected burying ground, all of the description already given ; and there are others of the same description four miles south of Sparta. Mr. Anderson formerly opened many of them: Capt. Doyle, the present owner, has opened several of them; and they both say, they believe hundreds might be found there. There is no discernible rising on the surface of the earth by reason of these graves; but they are found by striking an iron tool into the ground so deep as to strike the covering rock. This rock being then removed, the grave can be easily discovered by the edges of the side and end rocks. On Tuesday the first of August, 1820, Mr. Lane, in company with his son, Jacob A. Lane, Esquire made further searches in the burying ground at Capt. Doyle’s, formerly Mr. Anderson's. They opened another small grave, just 22 inches long, made after the usual form, and took out of it the bones and little trinkets in package No. 4. This skeleton lay on its back, with its feet drawn up, so as to raise its knees about 4 inches above the bottom of the grave. The head was raised above the bottom of the grave also, so as to cause the chin to lie on the breast. They measure the skeleton carefully, as it lay in the grave, and found it to be, from a little below the ankle joints to the top of the scull, 2 feet, 10 inches, taking care to measure the limbs as they meandered, and making sufficient allowance for the reclining of the head; at any rate, it was not above three feet high. Its head was to the east, the face to the west. This grave was 4 feet from the one last mentioned. The little round shell found in this grave, with two little holes, a cross and mid two circles cut in it, is what was not seen in any other grave they had opened, that is to say the cross and circles were not. Three vessels were in the grave, but all broken down, so that they were not worth preserving. Five feet from the grave just opened, they opened another. It was large, constructed after the manner of a coffin, the head 14 inches broad, the elbows 22 inches, and the foot 10 inches. The sides and ends were lined with flag rock, after the manner of the small graves, but not quite so deep, it being only 12 inches. In this grave lay a person 5 feet, 5 inches, high; the head to the west, and the feet to the east. They uncovered the bones of this skeleton from head to foot, without moving any bone, until they had a full view of the entire skeleton. It was not shrouded, for its mouth was extended, wide open, and was full of teeth. The arms lay along the sides; ribs were broad and flat, and more than double the size of those of the pigmies. The head was longer, the eyes much wider asunder, the forehead much higher above the eyebrows, and the under jaw measured just one inch longer, at each side, than the little one sent to Nashville. They laid them together, and ascertained the exact difference. The collar bone, the arm, thigh and leg bones, of this being, appeared strong, beyond what they expected from that size of human bones. The elbows, knee and ankle joints, were much larger than was expected. After they had measured it, and satisfied themselves of its true position, they raised many of the bones, particularly the head, all the limbs, some few joints of the back bone, some ribs, and the broad flat bones at the bottom of the lower chest. The scull had not a fracture, except the top of the right cheek bone, which they undesignedly struck off. The limbs were all lying in their proper posture, with joint to its joint, and bone to its socket. When they raised the scull, a great number of hairs were found sticking to it, which seemed to be the hairs of the head of the person interred. They were fine and straights and of a bright silver grey. These bones they laid back in the grave, covered them with the former covering, rocks, and then with earth. No vessels or trinkets were found with this skeleton; and from the great dissimilarity in the shapes of their heads, the size and make of their ribs, the great disproportion between the size of the joints and the bones of their limbs, they seemed to belong to very different tribes of people. The heads of the pigmies appeared larger upon inspection, than they had supposed them to be; and upon finding the bones in package No. 1, no person in the neighbourhood, who had formerly seen the little graves opened, could believe that this was of the same kind, owing to its size; but in that they must have been mistaken, for the graves are the same in every particular, though when measured they seem to be a few inches longer in length and breadth than was at first imagined, for it had been five or six years since they had seen any of them. Nor could they have yet believed otherwise, had they not searched out new ones, and reduced them to actual measurement They have attended to a circumstance now, which before had not been thought of, namely: that the body, as laid in the grave, with its limbs, particularly the legs and thighs, were laid crooked, so as to reduce the length; and being a person of two feet ten inches high, or perhaps as high as three feet, into a grave of two feet long. But, continues Mr. Lane, from the great number of graves of this description and size, which we found here, and amongst them all, but one of a larger size, it seems to be intimated, that there hath been a race of people here in ancient times, whose height was from two feet, ten inches to three feet; and that they have addicted themselves to strong superstitions, is indubitable.
More Reports
Though many tried to debunk the idea of an ancient pygmy tribe in Tennessee (a topic that will be discussed in further blog posts) the belief remained strong into the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. TheNew York Times ran a piece titled “Tennessee Pygmies” on March 24, 1876:
Prehistoric America must have been an exceedingly curious and interesting country. Its forest were filled with mastodons, megatheriums and other large and lively beasts, any one of which thought nothing of scratching himself on the sharp pinnacles of a convenient Gothic church, and so toppling it over on its scores of helpless pew-holders. In the Mississippi Valley, the industrious mound-builders were constantly throwing up gigantic mole-hills, and planting them with earthen pots and copper hatchets, in the vain expectation that the seed thus sown would yield enormous crops of kitchen-ware and carpenter's tools. In Kentucky, the giants to whom the bones recently discovered in a Kentucky cave are said to have belonged, strode loftily along the turnpikes, kicking the Indians and the mound-builders contemptuously out of the way; and finally, in Tennessee, a race of pygmies was continually holding political meetings and resolving that mastodons, mound-builders, and giants' should be promptly abolished, and that the size of the inhabitants of this country should be made and kept commensurate with - its commercial necessities.
It is rather odd that the existence of the Tennessee pygmies of prehistoric America was until recently never suspected. The name of the mastodon has long been familiar to every person who is in the least degree addicted to fossils. His remains, in the shape of a plaster-of-Paris skeleton, with the artist's same stamped in forehead, are exhibited in every respectable museum, and inspire the youth of America with bitter regret that the animal so beautifully adapted for experiments with red-pepper lozenges has gone where the small boy ceases to trouble and the nomadic circus is at rest. The mound-builders have been the subject of scores of learned essays, in which their identity with the Aztecs, the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Welsh, and the lost tribes of Israel has been triumphantly show; and of the exact height and probable capacity for whisky of the Kentucky giants, we have had careful and presumably accurate statistics. The discovery of the pygmies is, however, so very recent, that no one has as yet framed any theory whatever to account for their origin, and to explain their complete extinction.
When the Kentucky giants were discovered, it was natural that the State pride of the people of Tennessee should be somewhat hurt. The Tennesseans, however, did not sit down and. content themselves with reviling the Kentuckians and insinuating doubts as to the alleged character of the gigantic bones. - They promptly proceeded to find rival bones of still greater merit, and their industry has been rewarded by their discovery of a grave-yard containing the skeletons of seventy-five thousand pygmies of the average height of three feet each. What are the three eight-toot giants of Kentucky, in comparison with so great a cloud of pygmies? If we may judge from the price usually paid by circus managers for living- giants a and dwarfs, a three-foot dwarf is decidedly more valuable than an eight-foot giant, and it the same standard governs the price of fossils, the seventy-five thousand Tennessee pygmies are worth fully twenty-five thousand times as much as the three Kentucky giants. While the Kentuckians can present their giants to three eminent scientific men, and thus obtain three distinct scientific reports certifying to the enormous interest and value of fossil giants, the Tennesseans can supply every scientific man in this country and in Europe with a fossil dwarf, and so secure testimonials without number to the unequaled excellence of Tennessee pygmies. Indeed, if the discoverers of the pygmies will only employ some astute piano-maker who is an expert in testimonials, to obtain for the fossil dwarfs the recognition of the scientific world, there is not a living scientific person who will not sign a certificate setting forth his admiration for the beauty and durability of the pygmies, and his determination to use none but those of the celebrated Tennessee graveyard for the rest of his professional life.
At what period these pygmies flourished, what they accomplished, and by what means they were induced to retire simultaneously to their crave-yard, can only be conjectured. They may have been the identical pygmies that, according to the Greek legend, waged war with the cranes. If so, the cranes must have proved too powerful for them.
This is hardly probable,' and any modern Tennessean who has attempted to keep chickens in the neighborhood of a family of citizens of African descent, will scornfully refuse to believe that pygmies of three feet in height could not kill cranes on their roost with at least as much success as is achieved by the African small boy when invading the midnight hen-house.
We must wait for farther discoveries before it will be safe to decide whether the pygmies were contemporary with the giants and whether they preceded the mound-builder. The bare fact that they once existed is all is all that we can now safely affirm of them; but doubtless by the time that every home in the country is ornamented by a fossil pygmy, and every newspaper publishes extracts from the certificates of scientific persons who are overwhelmed with admiration of the vast superiority of the Tennessee to those of all rival communities, we shall be in the possession of information which will enable us to know at least as much of the pygmies as we now know of the mastodon and the mound-builders.
Several months earlier, The Shippensburg Newsran this piece in their October 23, 1875 issue:
At Sparta, Tenn., graves of pygmies have been found with headstones and pottery. The skeleton of one pygmy was twenty-six laches long, the thigh bones being little thicker than a man's finger.
It is supposed that a race of these little beings existed long before the birth of William Allen, of Ohio.
A Later Find
An additional discovery, that corroborated the finds of the 1820s supposedly occurred in Coffee County, Tennessee.The Grange Advance(Red Wing, Minnesota) reported the following on March 29, 1876:
[Woodbury (Tenn.) Press.]
An ancient graveyard of vast proportions has been found in Coffee County. It is similar to those found in White county and other places in Tennessee, but is vastly more extensive, and shows that the race of pygmies who once inhabited this country were very numerous. The same peculiarities of position observed in the White county graves are found in these. The writer of the letter says:
Some considerable excitement and curiosity took place a few days since near Hillsboro, Coffee County, on James Brown's farm. A man was ploughing in a field which has been cultivated many years, ploughing up a man's skull and other bones. After making further examination they found that there were about six acres in the graveyard. They were buried in a sitting or standing position. Their bones show that they were a dwarf race of people, about three feet high. It is estimated that there were about 75,000 to 100,000 buried there.
These are but a few examples of the writings regarding strange finds of small-statured people in Tennessee. Are the Tennessee Pygmies a case of “archeological folklore” and/or pseudoarcheology as skeptics claim? Or, is there something more to consider?
