The Giants of Ancient Tennessee

John Haywood (1753-1826) was a historian known as the "father of Tennessee history." These days, he might be best known for documenting giant skeletons found in Tennessee, as well as popularizing the "Tennessee Pygmies."

In Haywood's 1823 work, The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, he documented several unique discoveries. These include giant skeletons found in Tennessee, particularly in and around White County.

Haywood devoted a section to the giant skeletons found in Tennessee in his book. The entire section (Chapter VIII, section 1) is printed below:

First, then—Of their Size.

This is ascertained by the length and dimensions of the skeletons which are found in East and West Tennessee. These will prove demonstratively, that the ancient inhabitants of this country, either the primitive or secondary settlers, were of gigantic stature, compared with the present races of Indians. 

On the farm of Mr. John Miller, of White county, are a number of small graves, and also many large ones, the bones in which show that the bodies to which they belonged, when alive, must have been, seven feet high and upwards.

About the year 18l4, Mr. Lawrence found, is Scarborough's cave, which is on the Calfkiller river, a branch of the Cany Fork, about 12 or 15 miles from Sparta, in a little room in the cave, many human bones of a monstrous size. He took a jaw bone and applied it to his own face, and when his chin touched the concave of the chin bone, the hinder ends of the jaw bone did not touch the skin of his face on either side. He took a thigh bone, and applied the upper end of it to his own hip joint, and the lower end reached four inches below the knee joint. Mr. Andrew Bryan saw a grave opened about 4 miles northwardly from Sparta, on the Calfkiller fork. He took a thigh bone, and raising up his knee, he applied the knee joint of the bone to the extreme length of his own knee, and the upper end of the bone passed out behind him as far as the full width of his body. Mr. Lawrence is about 5 feet, 10 inches, high, and Mr. Bryan about 5 feet, 9. Mr. Sharp Whitley was in a cave near the place, where Mr. Bryan saw the graves opened. In it were many of these bones. The sculls lie plentifully in it, and all the other bones of the human body; all in proportion, and of monstrous size. Human bones were taken out of a mound on Tennessee river, below Kingston, which Mr. Brown saw measured, by Mr. Simms. The thigh bones of those skeletons, when applied to Mr. Simms's thigh, were an inch and a half longer than his, from the point of his hip to his knee : supposing the whole frame to have been in the same Proportion, the body it belonged to must have been seven feet high or upwards. Many bones in the mounds there, are of equal size. Suppose a man seven or eight feet high, that is from 18 inches to 2 feet taller than men of the common size; suppose the body broader in the same proportion, also his arms and legs; would he not be entitled to the name of giant? Col. William Sheppard, late of North Carolina, in the year 1807, dug up, on the plantation of Col. Joel Lewis, 2 miles from Nashville, the jaw bones of a man, which easily covered the whole chin and jaw of Col. Lewis, a man of large size. Some years afterwards, Mr. Cassady dug up a skeleton from under a small mound near the large one at Bledsoe's lick, in Sumner county, which measured little short of seven feet in length. Human bones have been dug up at the plantation where Judge Overton now lives, in Davidson county, four miles southwestwardly from Nashville, making a cellar. These bones were of extraordinary size. The under jaw bone of one skeleton very easily slipped over the jaw of Mr. Childress, a stout man, full fleshed, very robust and considerably over the common size. These bones were dug up within the traces of ancient walls, in the form of a square of two or three hundred yards in length, situated near an excellent, never failing spring of pure and well tasted water. The spring was enclosed within the walls. A great number of skeletons was found within the enclosure, a few feet below the surface of the earth. On the outer side were the traces of an old ditch and rampart, thrown up on the inside. Some small mounds were also within the enclosure.

At the plantation of Mr. William Sheppard, in the county of Giles, eleven and a half miles north of Pulaski, on the east side of the creek, is a cave, with several rooms. The first 45 feet wide, and 27 long; 4 feet deep; the upper part of solid and even rock. Into this cave was a passage, which had been so artfully covered, that it escaped detection till lately. A flat stone, three feet wide and four feet long, rested upon the ground, and inclining against the cave, closed part of the mouth. At the end of this, and on the side of the mouth left open, is another stone rolled, which filling this also, closed the whole mouth. When these rocks were removed, and the cave opened, on the inside of the eave were found several bones—the jawbone of a child, the arm bone of a man, the sculls and thigh bones of men. The whole bottom of the cave was covered with flat stones of a bluish hue, being closely joined together, and of different forms and sizes. They formed the floor of the cave. Upon the floor the bones were laid. The hat of Mr. Egbert Sheppard, seven inches wide and eight inches long, but just covered and slipped over one of the sculls.

At the mouth of Obed's river, on the point between It and the Cumberland river, which is high ground, certain persons, in digging, struck, a little below the surface, four stones standing upright, and so placed in relation to each other, as to form a square or box, which enclosed a skeleton, placed on its feet in an erect posture. The scull was large enough to go over the head of a man of common size. The thigh bones applied to those of a man of ordinary stature, reached from the joint of his hip to the calf of his leg. 

About ten miles from Sparta, in White county, a conical mound was lately opened, and in the centre of it was found a skeleton eight feet in length. With it was found a stone of the flint kind, very hard, with two flat sides, having in the centre circular hollows exactly accommodated to the balls of the thumb and fore finger. This stone was an inch and a half in diameter, the form exactly circular. It was about one third of an inch thick, and made smooth and flat, for rolling, like a grindstone, to the form of which, indeed, the whole stone was assimilated. When placed upon the floor, it would roll for a considerable time without falling. The whole surface was smooth and well-polished, and must have been cut and made smooth by some hard metallic instrument. No doubt it was buried with the deceased, because for some reason he had set a great value on it in his lifetime, and had excelled in some accomplishment to which it related. The colour of the stone was a dingy white, inclining to a darkish yellow. At the side of this skeleton were also found two flat stones, about six inches long, two and a half wide at the lower part, and about one and a half at the upper end, widening in the shape of an axe or hatchet from the upper to the lower end. The thickness of the stone, about one tenth of an inch. An inch below the upper end, exactly equidistant from the lateral edges, a small hole is neatly bored through each stone, so that by a string run through, the stone might be suspended off the sides or from the neck as ornaments. One of these stones is the common limestone. The other is semitransparent, so as to be darkened by the hand placed behind it; and resembles in texture those stalactical formations, like white stone, which are made in the bottoms of caves by the dripping of water. When broken, there appears a grain running from one flat side to the other, like the shootings of ice or saltpetre, of a whitish colour inclining to yellow. The latter stones are too thin and slender, for any operation upon other substances, and must have been purely ornamental. The first described stone must have been intended for rolling. For why take so much pains to make it circular, if to be used in flinging? Or why, if for the, latter purpose, so much pains taken to make excavations adapted to the thumb and finger. The conjecture seems to be a probable one, that it was used in some game played upon the same principles as that called ninepins; and the little round balls, like marbles, but of a larger size, were so disposed as that the rolling stone should pass through them. Such globular stone, it is already stated, was found in a mound in Maury county. With this large skeleton were also found eight beads and a human tooth. The beads were circular, and of a bulbous form. The largest about one fourth of an inch in diameter; the others smaller. The greater part of them tumescent from the edge to the centre, at which a hole was perforated for a string to pass through and to connect them. The inner sides were hard and white, like lime indurated by some chemical process. The outside was a thin coal of black crust, very much resembling Japan. When we reflect, that the Scythian nations between the Danube and the Tonias, as late as within one century of the Christian era; were of a size which astonished the southern inhabitants of Europe and Asia; that they scalped their enemy; that they buried their dead in heaps of earth thrown over them, with such articles as were deemed by the deceased most valuable in his lifetime; and that their tumuli, or barrows, are yet to be seen in the plains towards the upper part of the Irish and Jenesee, and from the banks of the Volga to the lake Baikal; we cannot refrain from the conclusion, that this skeleton belonged to a human body of the same race, education and notions with those who lived on the Volga, Tonais and Obey. The same unknown cause which, in the course of 2000 years has reduced the size of the ancient Scythians and their tribes, the Gauls, and Germans, and Sarmatians, has produced the same effects here. The descendants of these giants, both in the old and new world, agree with each other in bulk, as their ancestors did with each other, which proves a uniform cause operating equally both in the old and new world. The decrease in bulk seems to have kept pace everywhere with the increase of warm, temperature, and with the abbreviation of longevity. The giants of Hebron and Gath, and those of Laconia and Italy, whose large skeletons to this day attest that there they formerly dwelt, compared with those now found in West Tennessee, demonstrate that a change of climate, or of some other cause, has worked a remarkable change in the human system; and with respect to the mammoth, the megalonix, and other animals, has either extinguished or driven them into other and far distant latitudes. Nature, as it grows in age, is less vigorous than at the beginning, and in its early age it was; its productions correspond with its debility, and the time must come, when she, like all her productions, will give up the ghost and work no more. But the principal use we have to make of the skeleton before us, is to discover, first, that he came from a cold or northern climate, and not from the south, as the primitive aborigines did, for men of large stature were never found within the tropics. Secondly, that he must have come from the north of Europe or of Asia, because of the similarity of customs already remarked: and thirdly, that be probably belonged to those northern tribes, which some centuries ago exterminated the nations which had come from the south, and were settled upon the Cumberland and its waters.

With this skeleton was found another nearly of the same size, with the top of his head flat, and his eyes placed apparently in the upper part of his forehead. The Aztecs or Mexicans represent their principal divinities, as their hieroglyphical manuscripts prove, with a head much more flattened than any which have been seen amongst the Caribs, and they never disfigured the heads of their children. But many of the southern tribes have adopted the barbarous custom of pressing the heads of their children between two boards, in imitation, no doubt, of the Mexican form, which, in their estimation was beautiful, or in some way advantageous. And here it may not be amiss to mention, that the Chilians, who lived as far to the south of the equator, as formerly did the Scythians, Goths, Vandals, Gauls and Germans, so remarkable in ancient times for their stature, did on the other side of it, were men of large stature. 

One remark may be of some use in the drawing of inferences from the preceding facts. The skeletons, we find, are entire under conical mounds, or in part consumed by fire, and under such mounds, or entire in shallow graves, with flat rocks placed on the edges, at the sides, and at the head and feet, or are entire, above the common surface, and in the conical mounds enclosed in rocks placed together in the form of a box, or stand erect in such boxes, with the head some depth below the surface. To burn and cover with a mound, is Hindooic, Grecian, and belonging to the ancient countries of Asia Minor, and probably belonged to the aborigines of America, properly so called. To cover the entire body, is Scythic. To bury in graves, or in boxes is Ethiopic, Egyptian, and in part Hebraic, the Hebrews having learned it during their residence in Egypt, though they did not generally adopt it. It may be concluded that the mounds over entire bodies, are Scythic; graves and boxes, Hebraic; and boxes in the mounds, Hebraic and Scythic; and of course, that the unconsumed skeletons, we see here, are either pure Scythians or Hebrew Scythians, whilst all others are Hindooic, or in other words aboriginal. The large men of the world have always been found in the north, and they have often invaded and broken up the people of the south. They have never been found in the south; nor have the people of the south ever broken up their settlements there, and marched upon those of the north, to expel them from their possessions, to make room for themselves. The men who deposited the skeletons we are now contemplating, were of northern growth, and they came to the south to drive away the inhabitants whom they found there, and to seat themselves in their possessions.

Haywood, John. Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee up to the First Settlements Therein by the White People in the Year 1768. Nashville: Printed by George Wilson, 1823.

In my July 2020 book, Giants: Men of Renown, I take an in-depth look at the stories of giants from around the globe, including giant skeletons found in Tennessee. Visit the publisher's website, Adventure Unlimited Press, to order your copy today. Also available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers.