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The Giants of Ancient Tennessee

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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 numbe...
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The Nahullo

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Horatio Bardwell “H.B.” Cushman (1822–1904) was the son of missionaries to the Choctaw nation. His parents, Calvin and Laura, left their home in Massachusetts in 1820 and moved to Mississippi to minister to the Choctaw people. Cushman, who was raised among the Choctaw, considered them to be his earliest and most faithful friends. Having grown up with the Choctaw, and having a great affinity for them, Cushman became acquainted with their history, legends, and customs. In 1899, he published History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Natchez Indians; the book sheds much light on the traditions of the native inhabitants of the southeastern United States. In his work, Cushman wrote about the Nahullo giants of Choctaw legend. There is also a legend of mammoths and their extinction: An ancient Choctaw tradition attributes the origin of the prairies along the western banks of the Tombigbee River, to some huge animals (mammoths) that existed there at the advent of their ancestors from the west t...
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The Wa-gas

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In her book To the American Indian, Lucy Thompson (1856–1932), a member of the Yurok tribe whose Yurok name was Che-na-wah Weitch-ah-wah, recorded many of the tales of her people. One of the most interesting stories in the book is that of the Wa-gas. According to Thompson, the Wa-gas were an ancient race of white people that lived in North America many thousands of years ago. However, these folks were much different than Europeans who colonized the Americas in recent times. The following excerpt comes from Thompson’s book in a section titled “ Traditions of the Ancient White People” :
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Giant Bones in West Virginia

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When the Bible famously declared that “there were giants on the earth in those days,” in Genesis 6:4, the writer wasn’t kidding—especially when it comes to West Virginia. In the early days of our nation, people routinely unearthed giant bones in the Mountain State. Giant Bones Countless newspapers and county histories in the 1800s told the story of giant bones. Stories such as these were commonplace: “It is said that a jawbone was plowed up near Moorefield which would pass over the outside of a common man's lower jaw; that it contained eight jaw teeth on either side, and that they sat transversely in their sockets. A bone of that size would have belonged to a man eight or nine feet high… Another jawbone of enormous size is recorded as having been discovered near Martinsburg.” Hu Maxwell and H. L. Swisher,  History of Hampshire County West Virginia from Its Earliest Settlement to the Present  (Morgantown, WV: A. Brown Boughner, 1897) “While digging a grave on Trace Fork, Lin...
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Island of the Giants

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Christopher Columbus gets the credit for discovering the New World, but it was another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512) that proved the Americas were a large and separate land mass—not the outer fringes of Asia. The Americas, as they came to be known, were named after Amerigo Vespucci. During Vespucci’s second voyage, he landed on an island that would become known as the Isla de los Gigantes, or Island of the Giants . Vespucci recorded the following in his letters: …We found that this other island was inhabited by very tall people . We landed to see whether there was any fresh water, and not thinking it was inhabited, as we had not seen anyone, we came upon very large footprints in the sand, as we were walking along the beach. We judged that if the other measurements were in proportion to those of their feet, they must be very tall. Going in search, we came into a road which led inland. There were nine of us. Judging that there could not be many inhabitants, as the island was sma...
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Chinese Dragon

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Is the Chinese dragon based on fact, not mythology? J. O’Malley Irwin asked this very question in a 1916 article he penned for Scientific American . I have reprinted the article below: "During the latter part of a holiday trip in the Yangtze Gorges undertaken by my wife and self in November 1915, we met Mr. M. Hewlett, British Consul at Ichang, and his wife, and in their company spent a day in the Ichang Gorge, landing at various points to climb the cliffs and explore some of the numerous caves. "While exploring a large cave on the right bank of the river, about one mile above the Customs Station at Ping Shan Pa, we discovered the fossils about to be described. The cave is reputed by the Chinese to extend some 20 miles to a point near Ichang. It is reported that a party of bluejackets from H.M.S. “Snipe” spent three days in the cave some years ago and that they failed to reach the end. Evidence that this party penetrated beyond the point where the discovery was made exists in...
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A Bolivian Saurian

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From the earliest days of European exploration in South America, reports of strange, dinosaur-like creatures have emerged. One of the most intriguing reports of dinosaurs in South America comes from Bolivia. The following account was published in the  Scientific American  in 1883. The article is titled, “A Bolivian Saurian,” and some think it lends credence to the idea of living dinosaurs . The Brazilian Minister at La Paz, Bolivia, has remitted to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Rio photographs of drawings of an extraordinary saurian killed on the Beni after receiving thirty-six balls. By order of the President of Bolivia the dried body, which had been preserved in Asuncion, was sent to La Paz. It is twelve meters long from snout to point of the tail, which latter is flattened. Besides the anterior head, it has, four meters behind, two small but completely formed heads rising from the back. All three have much resemblance to the head of a dog. The legs are short, and...
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Custer's Payroll

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In 1957, Billings, Montana journalist Kathryn Wright broke the story of Custer’s missing payroll. According to the story, about a month before the ill-fated Battle of Little Bighorn, the army paid out $25,000 to the men of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry. This was the equivalent to four months of back pay. The army paid the troops while they were out in the field, far away from any town, to deter potential deserters and to avoid having to round up men who had went into town and had too much to drink. Paying soldiers in this manner was standard practice in the day. So, essentially, the U.S. soldiers who fought at the Battle of Little Bighorn had a total of about $25,000 on them. Little Big Horn The army suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn. According to Wikipedia: The 7th Cavalry suffered 52 percent casualties: 16 officers and 242 troopers killed or died of wounds, 1 officer and 51 troopers wounded. Every soldier of the five companies with Custer was killed (except for s...
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George Washington's Giant Skeletons

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During the height of the French and Indian War, a fort was built in the frontier town of Winchester, Virginia to protect the local citizenry from attack. Named Fort Loudoun, after the Governor General of Virginia and Commander-in-Chief John Campbell, the fourth Earl of Loudoun, construction began in 1756. The fort was designed by the commander of the Virginia Regiment, Colonel George Washington, who supervised its construction. During the excavation of the fort’s foundation, Washington’s men dug up a couple of large skeletons. According to Washington, they were seven feet long. Today, the property is owned by the French and Indian War Foundation and is listed in the National Registry of Historic Places. If you guessed that the George Washington giant skeletons are not housed in the museum on the property, then you are correct. What happened to them? My guess is that they were lost—possibly never even stored. A war was going on, and Washington and his men were not out to prove to t...
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The Giants of Ancient Peru

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The historian Garcilaso de la Vega (1539–1616) was the son of an Inca princess and a conquistador. He quoted the following story about ancient giants in his work  Royal Commentaries of the Incas : Before leaving this region, we should mention a very remarkable story which the natives have received as a tradition handed down by their ancestors for many centuries. It refers to some giants who they say arrived in their country from over the sea and landed at the point now called Santa Elena, a name given to it because it was first seen by Spaniards on this saint's day. As Pedro de Cieza de León is the Spanish historian who speaks of these giants at greatest length, having received his version in the very province which the giants visited, it seemed best I should follow his account word for word, for although Padre J. Acosta and the accountant general Agustín de Zárate say the same, their version is very brief. Pedro de Cieza's fuller account in his Ch. Iii is as follows: “As th...
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