Giants & Dwarves

Giants and dwarves. An ancient odd couple. From fantasy novels to 1800s newspaper stories, the two go hand in hand.

My fascination with stories of ancient giants introduced me to supposed tribes of little people in ancient America. Specifically, John Haywood’s Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee opened my eyes to the enigma. His book covers in depth both enormous and diminutive skeletal finds in Middle Tennessee.

But what really stuck out to me in my years of research into the ancient giants that walked the earth are reports from North America of burial mounds that contained the remains of both giants and dwarves. Over the years I have read a number of accounts of mound excavations that yielded these strange discoveries.

"Graves of Dwarves Found"

A Massachusetts newspaper, the North Adams Transcript, ran a piece titled “Graves of Dwarves Found” on October 24, 1899:

"Workmen terracing King hill, an old landmark of northwestern Missouri, which is to be converted into a residence suburb of St. Joseph, have unearthed a prehistoric cemetery. The remains of a race of dwarfs not allied with any tribe known to have inhabited this territory and unaccounted for by Indian legendary repose on the summit of King hill, which rises abruptly from the Missouri river bottom to a height of 600 feet at a point just north and distant about 300 yards from the packing house district and stockyards of South St. Joseph.

"A feature remarkable in itself and especially marked in connection with the dwarfish remnants of prehistoric man found in this summit is the discovery of human bones, evidently those of a giant, probably more than seven feet tall and big boned, says the Chicago Record.

"Low, flat heels, with small intelligence and marked animal propensities characterized this people. Heavy jaws and strong, well preserved teeth carry the record of their lives forward. Brutes, human, but inhumane, self-reliant, they were savages of a lower order than any we know today. Yet they honored their dead. Shells such as are found on the banks of many inland streets, plentiful on the sand bars of the Missouri overlooked by King hill and stones of unusual hues, worthless in the commercial marts of today, the playthings of children, were deposited in the graves, collections gathered in loving tribute to the memory of those unknown, even in race, to the historians of today.

"The ravage which time has wrought has left but fragmentary parts of the skeleton, which crumble into ashes upon exposure and handling. The big plow and the scrapers, with the trampling of horses, usually crush the brittle forms until it is difficult to restore them to human semblance. One of the plows recently overturned a bunch of human hair, which, however, fell to pieces upon being handled. As preserved, it presents the unmistakable evidence of hair from the head of a human being, although much of it has fallen into fine powder." [Emphasis mine.]

Giants and Dwarves Found

The Wilkes-Barre Record on had this report in their August 5, 1907 edition:

"A remarkable prehistoric burying ground has been cut into by railroad graders east of here and the remains of what appears to be a pigmy race have been discovered. The burying ground is now a great deposit of gravel, and it is in this that the bones are found. In the neighborhood of fifty skeletons so far have been unearthed. These are of a race of dwarfs about four feet tall, and physicians have pronounced them the remains of adults, not children. The burials took place with the bodies standing or sitting, not lying down.

"One of the skeletons is that of a giant more than eight feet high. Near this skeleton were found a number of copper implements, as well as several of bone. In one of the graves were two copper idols about eight inches tall. The University of South Dakota is expected to send an archaeologist to investigate the finds." [Emphasis mine.]

These are just a few discoveries of giants and dwarves found together in the same burial place. An ancient odd couple in this strange place that was ancient America.

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