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Alvarez and the Giants (See Mississippi and Texas Giants)
Arizona Giant
In 1891, at Crittenden, Arizona, some workers digging the foundation for a new building struck at a depth of eight feet a huge stone sarcophagus. When they were able to open the lid, they saw inside the remains of a nine-foot giant which time had reduced mostly to a pile of dust.1
(See California Giants; Cocopa Giants; Copafi; Coronado's Giant Discoveries; De Soto's Encounters with Giants; Florida Giants; Graveyards of the Giants; Horned Giants; Indiana Giants; Mississippi and Texas Giants; Montana's Giants; Ocala; Ohio Giants; San Francisco Giants; Seri Giants; Tuscaloosa; Yuman Giants; also see Barranc de Cobre Giants; Mexico's Giants; Quiname; Tlaxcala's Giants)
Barranc de Cobre Giants
While searching a cave near the great canyon of Barranc de Cobre in northern Mexico in the early 1930s, explorer Paxton Hayes came across thirty-four mummified men and women. All had blond hair. All once rose to heights between seven and eight feet.2
(See Mexico's Giants; Quiname; Tlaxcala's Giants; also see Arizona Giant; California Giants; Cocopa Giants; Copafi; Coronado's Giant Discoveries; De Soto's Encounters with Giants; Florida Giants; Graveyards of the Giants; Horned Giants; Indiana Giants; Mississippi and Texas Giants; Montana's Giants; Ocala; Ohio Giants; San Francisco Giants; Sen Giants; Tuscaloosa; Yuman Giants)
Bates, Captain Martin Van Buren
When the War Between the States broke out, Martin Van Buren Bates left Emma Henry College in Virginia to enlist as a private in the Fifth Kentucky Infantry. Although only sixteen at the time, he already stood a little above six-feet tall. Apparently the youngster conducted himself well on the battlefield, for over the next couple years he received several promotions, the last as a captain in the Seventh Confederate Cavalry.
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CAPTAIN MARTIN BATES and ANNA SWAN, the world's tallest couple of record, posed for this picture with friend Lei McFarland.
(Courtesy Medina County Historical Society)4 |
But all through the war, and for several years afterward, Captain Bates kept growing. By his own account, he finally stopped in his twenty-eighth year, after having reached a height of seven feet and eight inches and a weight of four hundred and seventy pounds.3
After the war, the Whitesburg, Kentucky, giant earned his living by exhibiting himself in the United States and Canada. In 1870, Judge H. P. Ingalls, a well-known promoter, asked him to come to Elizabeth, New Jersey, and join a company he was organizing to tour Europe. There his eyes beheld Anna Haining Swan, a seven-foot, eleven-inch Scottish lass from Nova Scotia, and a courtship began.
In April, 1871, Judge Ingalls' company sailed for England. The two enormous sweethearts became an instant hit with the British public, and on June 2, Queen Victoria commanded their appearance at Buckingham Palace. Two weeks later, on June 17, the former Confederate captain and his fiancee, attired in her white satin gown with orange blossoms, spoke their vows before a large crowd in London's historic St.-Martin-in-the-Fields church. Wedding presents from Queen Victoria included a cluster diamond ring for the bride and a watch and chain for the groom. The wedding made world headlines and put the Bates in the record books as history's tallest known married couple.5
After a brief honeymoon, the couple returned to London where they gave a private reception for the Prince of Wales, who invited them to be his guests at Marlborough House. They appeared a second time before the Queen, at Windsor, then set out on a tour of the provincial towns in England and Scotland.
Upon their return to the States, the Bates decided to take a vacation tour of the West and Midwest, then buy a farm and settle down. While in Ohio, they passed through Seville. That country appealed to them, so Captain Bates purchased one hundred and thirty acres of good farm land near the town and drew plans for a house big enough to accommodate giants. "The house he built on that farm... astounded visitors of ordinary size for 70 years," writes Lee Cavin. "It had 14-foot ceilings in the principal wing. The doors were 8 feet high. The furniture was built to order. Captain Bates delighted in seeing normal-size people dwarfed in his house, saying, 'Seeing our guests make use of it recalls most forcibly the good Dean Swift's traveler in the land of Brobdingnag.6
"In 1878,1879, and 1880," continues Cavin, "the giant couple returned to the road as members of the W. W. Cole Circus. This circus, founded in 1871, was noted because it was the first to play many western towns. Its special train was close on the heels of railroad construction throughout the area. The reasons for the return to the road of the couple should be familiar ones to anyone who has built a new home. According to Seville contemporaries, the cost of the giant house exceeded expectations."
Mrs. Bates bore the Captain two children. During the second year of their British tour, an eighteen-pound daughter died at birth. In the winter of 1879, after a difficult delivery, she gave birth to a twenty-three pound boy that measured thirty inches in length. How-ever, the child died the next day. In 1888, after years of declining health, Anna Swan Bates also died. The Seville Times devoted three columns to her obituary.
About a dozen years later, Captain Bates married Lavonne Weatherby, a daughter of the pastor of the Seville Baptist Church, which he and his first wife had long attended. The new Mrs. Bates stood just over five feet tall.
Seville's most famous resident lived seventy-four years, but in January, 1919, he finally yielded to a lingering illness. (Also see Swan, Anna Raining)
California Giants
In 1833, some soldiers digging a pit at Lompock Rancho, California, unearthed a twelve-foot giant with a double row of teeth, both uppers and lowers.7 The Lompock giant's teeth, while unusual, were not unique. For another ancient skeleton later found on Santa Rosa Island off the California coast showed the same dental peculiarity. Also, in 1888, in a burial mound near Clearwater, Minnesota, seven skeletons, with skulls containing double rows of teeth, were dug up, but they were not giants.
(See Arizona Giant; Cocopa Giants; Copafi; Coronado's Giant Discoveries; De Soto's Encounters with Giants; Florida Giants; Graveyards of the Giants; Horned Giants; Indiana Giants; Mississippi and Texas Giants; Montana's Giants; Ocala; Ohio Giants; San Francisco Giants; Seri Giants; Tuscaloosa; Yuman Giants; also see Barranc de Cobre Giants; Mexico's Giants; Quiname; Tlaxcala's Giants)
Colorado River Giants (See Coronado's Giant Discoveries)
Copafi
When Hernando De Soto reached the territory of the Apalachee around Tallahassee, Copafi, that tribe's cacique, insolently refused to meet with him. To avoid playing a subservient role, the chief, described as "a man of monstrous proportions," fled into the woods. De Soto and some of his men pursued and captured the giant and brought him in.
(See Arizona Giants; California Giants; Cocopa Giants; Coronado's Giant Discoveries; De Soto's Encounters with Giants; Florida Giants; Graveyards of the Giants; Horned Giants; Indiana Giants; Mississippi and Texas Giants; Montana's Giants; Ocala; Ohio Giants; San Francisco Giants; Serf Giants; Tuscaloosa; Yuman Giants; also see Barranc de Cobre Giants; Mexico's Giants; Quiname; Tlaxcala's Giants)
Coronado's Giant Discoveries
Across the continent, at the same time that De Soto was blazing his famous trail, an expedition led by Coronado searched for the fabulously rich "Seven Cities of Cibola." Near Mexico's present-day border with California and Arizona they ran into several tribes of Indian giants. Starting out from Mexico City with some three hundred Spaniards and eight hundred native Indians, the Coronado expedition marched west to the Pacific Ocean. Then turning north-ward, they ascended the coast through regions that later became known as Sinaloa and Sonora. While this march was underway, Hemando de Alarcon set sail with two ships up the coast, transporting the baggage and supplies for the soldiers. The original plan called for Alarcon and the army to keep in frequent touch and to rendezvous at suitable harbors along the coast. So when the army reached the province of Senora, a force under Don Rodrigo Maldonado set out to find the harbor and scan the horizon for Alarcon's ships. Maldonado sighted no ships, but he did return with an Indian who stood so tall as to astonish the Spaniards. Pedro de Castaneda, who accompanied Coronado and later wrote the most complete and factual history of the expedition, records this unusual event as follows: "Don Rodrigo Maldonado, who was captain of those who went in search of the ships, did not find them, but he brought back with him an Indian so large and tall that the best man in the army reached only to his chest. It was said that other Indians were even taller on the coast."8 This giant evidently belonged to the Seri. This great Indian tribe occupied the island of Tiburon and the adjacent Sonora coast on the Gulf of California. Historians testify to their tall stature.
Soon after this, while still trying to establish contact with Alarcon, Captain Melchior Diaz came across another tribe of giants. Taking twenty-five of his "most efficient men" and some guides, Diaz struck out toward the north and west in search of the seacoast and the ships. "After going about 150 leagues," reports Castaneda, "they came to a province of exceedingly tall and strong men--like giants " Evidently, these were the Cocopa, a Yuman tribe. According to Castaneda, these huge Indians went about mostly naked. "They . . . live," he adds, "in large straw cabins built underground like smoke houses, with only the straw roof above ground. They enter these at one end and come out at the other. More than a hundred persons, old and young, sleep in one cabin. When they carry anything, they can take a load of more than three or four hundredweight on their heads. Once when our men wished to fetch a log for the fire, and six men were unable to carry it, one of these Indians is reported to have come and raised it in his arms, put it on his head alone, and carried it very easily."
(For a similar feat, see San Francisco Giants)
While among these Cocopas, the captain learned that ships had been seen at a point three days down toward the sea. But when Diaz' finally reached this place, he saw no sign of a sail, even to the distant horizon. On a tree near the shore, however, his party found this written message: "Alarcon reached this place; there are letters at the foot of this tree." Diaz dug up the letters and learned from them how long Alarcon had waited for news of the army and that he had gone back with the ships to New Spain, i.e., Mexico.9
But on his way back Alarcon changed his mind--and thus became the discoverer of the Colorado River giants. Sailing into the port of Culiacan, he came unexpectedly upon the San Gabriel, loaded with provisions for Coronado. This chance meeting with the San Gabriel probably figured in Alarc6n's decision to resume efforts to locate the explorer's party. At any rate, he added this third ship to his fleet and continued up the coast. They sailed the Gulf of California until they entered the shallows near the head of the gulf. After hazarding the murky shoals there and almost losing all three ships, he and his crew reached the mouth of the Colorado River. Dropping anchor here, Alarcon and his exploratory party launched two boats against the river's furious current. "Thus began," writes historian Herbert Eugene Bolton, "the historic first voyage by Europeans up the Colorado River among the tall Yuman peoples who lived along its banks on either side."10
A piece up the river Alarcon and his men came upon their first settlement. About two hundred and fifty giant Cocopa warriors stood on the banks, ready to attack them. But the captain, by making signs of peace and offering gifts, won them over. Further upstream more than a thousand giant Indians appeared with bows and arrows, but Alarcon knew they intended them no harm because their women and children accompanied them. These Cocopas he described as "large and well formed, without being corpulent. Some have their noses pierced, and from them hang pendants, while others wear shells. . . . All of them, big and little, wear a multi-colored sash about the waist; and tied in the middle, a round bundle of feathers hanging down like a tail.... Their bodies are branded by fire; their hair is banged in front, but in the back it hangs to the waist." The women, meanwhile, "go about naked, except that, tied in front and behind, they wear large bunches of feathers."11
(See Arizona Giants; California Giants; Cocopa Giants; Copafi; De Soto's Encounters with Giants; Florida Giants; Graveyards of the Giants; Horned Giants; Indiana Giants; Mississippi and Texas Giants; Montana's Giants; Ocala; Ohio Giants; Seri Giants; Tuscaloosa; Yuman Giants; also see Barranc de Cobre Giants; Mexico's Giants; Quiname; Tlaxcala's Giants)
De Soto's Encounters with Giants
In 1539, probably while the survivors of Narvaez' crew were making their way across the country, another Spanish explorer, Hernando De Soto, sailed nine ships into Tampa Bay. There he put ashore six hundred lancers, targeteers, cross-bowmen, and harque-busiers, along with two hundred and thirteen horses. As they ventured inland, the first Indians they encountered were friendly Timucuans. While some of their leaders were giants, most of these people stood, on average, only a foot taller than the explorers. Their vast territory extended from Tampa Bay north to the present Jacksonville area and west to the Aucilla River, which runs along the eastern border of modern Jefferson County and empties into the gulf.
As De Soto marched through the various Indian provinces, he met with their caciques. It was his custom after these conferences to courteously "detain" the cacique and some of his nobles--as a precaution against attack. He also required them to furnish him with porters. The Indians' reaction to this policy varied. After some reluctance, the cacique of Ocala, "an Indian of enormous size and amazing strength,"12 finally agreed to become De Soto's "guest." Vitacucho, the cacique in the neighboring province of Caliquin (present-day Alachua County), consented only after his daughter chanced to fell into De Soto's hands. But even while being detained, Vitacucho and his tall warriors secretly managed two serious uprisings. Copafi, the cacique of the Apalachee around Tallahassee, described as "a man of monstrous proportions,"13 refused even to meet with De Soto, but a party led by the governor himself finally captured the giant and brought him in.
After wintering at Ambaica Apalachee, the Spanish explorers crossed over into Georgia. But there they received a kindly reception, with the nation of the Creeks greeting them everywhere in a warm, friendly manner. The several other caciques who guided them through the Carolinas and into Tennessee were, for the most part, also friendly, and even those who may have been offended by the governor's invitation to accompany him offered no serious objection. So all went well--until De Soto's company reached the borders of the giant cacique Tuscaloosa. As suzerain over many caciques, he ruled a wide territory that included most of modern Alabama and Mississippi. Though proud and haughty, Tuscaloosa sent an embassy headed by his huge son to greet and welcome De Soto and his men.
Tuscaloosa's heir apparent, who, at eighteen years, already stood as tall as his father, came to De Soto while he stayed at Tallise, a large Indian town located on the bank of a great river. The young giant delivered to the governor the following communication from Tuscaloosa: "The grand cacique of Tuscaloosa, my master, sends me to salute you. He bids me say, that he is told how all, not without reason, are led captive by your perfection and power; that wheresoever lies your path you receive gifts and obedience, which he knows are all your due; and that he longs to see you as much as he could desire for the continuance of life. Thus, he sends me to offer you his person, his lands, his subjects; to say, that wheresoever it shall please you to go through his territories, you will find service and obedience, friendship and peace. In requital of this wish to serve you, he asks that you so far favor him as to say when you will come; for that the sooner you do so, the greater will be the obligation, and to him the earlier pleasure."14
Dismissing the cacique of Coca, who had accompanied him to Tuscaloosa's borders, De Soto set out to meet with Tuscaloosa. Early on the morning of the third day, the governor, his master of the camp, and fifteen cavalrymen entered the village where he was quartered. Having heard daily reports from his scouts on De Soto's progress, the Indian chieftain was prepared to receive them in state. As they rode in, they saw Tuscaloosa stationed on a high place, seated on a mat. Around him stood one hundred of his noblemen, all dressed in richly colored mantles and plumes. Tuscaloosa appeared to be about forty years old. His physical measurements, writes Garcilaso de la Vega, who accompanied De Soto, "were like those of his son, for both were more than a half-yard taller than all the others. He appeared to be a giant, or rather was one, and his limbs and face were in proportion to the height of his body. His countenance was handsome, and he wore a look of severity, yet a look which well revealed his ferocity and grandeur of spirit. His shoulders conformed to his height, and his waistline measured just a little more than two-thirds of a yard. His arms and legs were straight and well formed and were in proper proportion to the rest of his body. In sum he was the tallest and most handsomely shaped Indian that the Castilians saw during all their travels."15
As the cavaliers and officers of the camp who preceded De Soto rode forward and arranged themselves in his presence, Tuscaloosa took not the slightest notice of them, even as they made their horses curvet and caracole as they passed. Determined to excite his at ten-ti on, some spurred their horses up to his very feet, to which "he, with great gravity, and seemingly with indifference, now and then would raise his eyes, and look on as in contempt."16 He made no move to rise even when De Soto approached. So the governor took him by the hand, and they walked together to the piazza. There they sat on a bench and talked for several minutes.
Two days later De Soto decided to resume his journey toward Mobile.17 He also decided to take Tuscaloosa with him. On these marches the cacique in custody always rode alongside the governor. So De Soto ordered a horse for Tuscaloosa. But owing to the cacique's huge size and great weight, not even the largest horse they brought forward was able to bear him. At last, a pack horse accustomed to heavy burdens proved strong enough to carry the chief. But when he mounted Tuscaloosa's feet almost touched the ground. This description accords with Garcilaso de la Vega's statement that the chief stood a half-yard taller than the tallest men around him. Though no one recorded Tuscaloosa's actual size, these two measurements give us some idea of his height. If these descriptions are accurate, then we cannot err too much in estimating his stature at about eight feet.
Even while they were on the trail to Mobile, De Soto's party encountered an ominous sign of what awaited them. Two soldiers turned up missing. The Spaniards suspected that the Indians caught the two men some distance from camp and killed them. When De Soto questioned Tuscaloosa about their whereabouts, the cacique testily replied that the Indians were not the white men's keepers. Vigilance was now increased, and the governor dispatched two of his best men to Mobile under the pretext of making arrangements for provisions. Four days later, as the Spaniards approached the town, the scouts rode out to De Soto and reported that many Indians had gathered inside and that some preparations had been made. They then suggested the army camp in the woods nearby. Unfortunately, the doughty De Soto refused to heed his scouts' advice.
While the army waited, the governor with his small party approached the town and its high walls. Just then a welcoming committee of painted warriors, clad in robes of skins and head-pieces with many feathers of very brilliant colors, came out to greet them. A group of young Indian maidens followed, dancing and singing to music played on rude instruments. The governor entered the town with Tuscaloosa, his son, and the cacique's entourage. Seven or eight men of his own guard plus four cavalrymen also accompanied him. They seated themselves in a piazza. From here, De Soto saw that there were only about eighty houses, but several of them large enough to hold one thousand to fifteen hundred people. Unknown to him, more than two thousand Indian warriors now stood in concealment behind these walls, waiting.
After some of the chief men from the town joined him, Tuscaloosa withdrew a short distance from De Soto. With a severe look, he warned the governor and his party to leave at once. In attempting to regain custody of the chief, a tussle between a Spaniard and an Indian ignited an all-out war. Under a hail of arrows, De Soto and most of his men retreated from the village. The governor then ordered the town besieged. After a time, the Spaniards gained entry, set fire to the buildings, and conducted a massacre. According to Alvaro Fernandez, about two thousand five hundred Indians died that day, while only eighteen Spaniards fell. Among the Indian dead was Tuscaloosa's giant son and heir apparent. Tuscaloosa himself escaped. At the start of the battle, some of his chiefs, wanting to protect his life for the good of their nation, persuaded him to flee Mobile. Tuscaloosa reluctantly agreed, departing with twenty brave bodyguards soon after the battle began.
(See Arizona Giants; California Giants; Cocopa Giants; Copafi; Coronado's Giant Discoveries; Florida Giants; Graveyards of the Giants; Horned Giants; Indiana Giants; Mississippi and Texas Giants; Montana's Giants; Ocala; Ohio Giants; San Francisco Giants; Seri Giants; Tuscaloosa; Yuman Giants; also see Barranc de Cobre Giants; Mexico's Giants; Quiname; Tlaxcala's Giants)
De Vaca and the Giants (See Florida Giants)
Florida Giants
In 1528, or almost ten years after Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda's discovery of giants on the Mississippi River, the ill-fated explorer Panfilo de Narvaez put three hundred men ashore at Tampa Bay. His mission was to search the Florida mainland for its riches, while his five ships sailed just off the coast. Only Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and three companions survived this expedition. Afterward they crossed the North American continent from shore to shore, becoming the first white men to do so. In his history, Cabeza de Vaca mentions some giant Florida Indians who attacked the Narvaez party. "When we came in view of Apalachen," he writes, "the Governor ordered that I should take nine cavalry with fifty infantry and enter the town.18 Accordingly the assessor and I assailed it; and having got in, we found only women and boys there, the men being absent; however these returned to its support, after a little time, while we were walking about, and began discharging arrows at us. They killed the horse of the assessor, and at last taking to flight, they left us.... The town consisted of forty small houses, made low, and set up in sheltered places because of the frequent storms. The material was thatch. They were surrounded by very dense woods, large groves and many bodies of fresh water. . . Two hours after our arrival at Apalachen, the Indians who had fled from there came in peace to us, asking for their women and children, whom we released; but the detention of a cacique [the Indians' chief] by the Governor produced great excitement, in consequence of which they returned for battle early the next day, and attacked us with such promptness and alacrity that they succeeded in setting fire to the houses in which we were."19
After twenty-five days, Narvaez' army departed Apalachen. But a short while later, as they attempted to cross a large lake, they came under heavy attack from many giant Indians concealed behind trees. "Some of our men were wounded in this conflict, for whom the good armor they wore did not avail," continues Cabeza de Vaca. 'There were those this day who swore that they had seen two red oaks, each the thickness of the lower part of the leg, pierced through from side to side by arrows; and this is not so much to be wondered at, considering the power and skill with which the Indians are able to project them. I myself saw an arrow that had entered the butt of an elm to the depth of a span.... The Indians we had so far seen in Florida are all archers. They go naked, are large of body, and appear at a distance like giants. They are of admirable proportions, very spare and of great activity and strength. The bows they use are as thick as the arm, of eleven or twelve palms in length, which will discharge at two hundred paces with so great precision that they miss nothing."20
Harassments by these Indian giants continued. So Narvaez decided to head south for the gulf coast and escape by the sea. Arriving there after much hardship, he and his men constructed five crude boats, in order to search along the coast for a Spanish settlement. Unfortunately, a sudden, fierce storm caught them some distance from land. The high winds drove all the boats, with all their men aboard, far out to sea. All were subsequently lost except Cabeza de Vaca and three companions who managed to reach the shore. They walked across Texas and northern Mexico, finally reaching the Pacific coast where they linked up with Francisco Vazquez de Coronado in 1541.
(See Arizona Giants; California Giants; Cocopa Giants; Copafi; Coronado's Giant Discoveries; De Soto's Encounters with Giants; Graveyards of the Giants; Horned Giants; Indiana Giants; Mississippi and Texas Giants; Montana's Giants; Ocala; Ohio Giants; San Francisco Giants; Serf Giants; Tuscaloosa; Yuman Giants; also see Barranc de Cobre Giants; Mexico's Giants; Quiname; Tlaxcala's Giants)
Freeman, Charles
Michigan-born Charles Freeman could lift fifteen hundred-weight, and "could throw an astounding number of somersaults in succession and run and jump like a deer."21 But he knew almost nothing about professional boxing. After gazing upon his seven-foot, six-inch frame and witnessing his feats of great strength and agility, one-time British prize-fighter champion Ben Caunt decided that did not matter. He envisioned great things for Freeman in the ring and persuaded the young man to return with him to London.
Before leaving, Caunt tipped the New York press. The writers, of course, pounced on the story. They built Freeman up, giving him a fictitious record, while the editors caught their readers' attention with headlines proclaiming that the huge American was crossing the Atlantic to lay claim to the "Championship of the World."
On December 14,1842, near Sawbridgeworth, Freeman fought seventy rounds with William Perry, known as "The Tipton Slasher," but the bout "was adjourned due to darkness falling." Six days later they resumed the match, "but Perry fell before receiving a blow and was disqualified."22
Freeman gave up boxing for the stage. In early 1843, he appeared at the Olympia Theatre in The Son of the Desert and Demon Changeling, a piece written expressly for him. He also did a stint with the circus. "His great circus performance," according to a Hunterian Museum report, "was to ride two horses at a time, galloping around the arena, with his arms above his head balancing a man."23 Perhaps to make ends meet, he later became a barman at the Lion and Ball tavern in Red Lion Street, Holborn.
The giant barman excited the Lion and Ball's regular crowd and attracted many new patrons, who got to see him for only the price of a whiskey. Either Freeman or one of his promoters penned the following poetic invitation to the British public to visit him:
You need not unto Hyde Park go,
For without imposition,
Smith's Bar Man is, and no mistake,
The true Great Exhibition.
The proudest noble in the land,
Despite caprice and whim,
Though looking down on all the world,
Must fain look up to him. His rest can never be disturbed
By chanticleer in song, For though he early goes to bed,
He sleeps so very long. Though you may boast a many friends,
Look in and stand a pot; You'll make a new acquaintanceship,
The longest you have got. Then come and see the Giant Youth,
Give Edward Smith a call, Remember in Red Lion-street,
The Lion and the Ball.
Liquors of a Giant's Strength.24 (See Toller, James)
Horned Giants
Pursuit, in its July, 1973, issue, reported that in the 1880s, while digging in a mound at Sayre in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, a reputable group of antiquarians found skeletons of humans measuring not only above seven feet tall but having skulls with horns.25 The diggers, which included two professors and Pennsylvania's state historian, turned what they found over to the American Investigating Museum in Philadelphia, but the bones were afterward misplaced, stolen, or lost. A story about the horned skulls appeared in a Reader's Digest book, Mysteries of the Unexplained.
(See Ariels; Origin of the Giants--Biblical Account; also see Arizona Giants; Barranc de Cobre Giants; California Giants; Cocopa Giants; Copafi; Coronado's Giant Discoveries; De Soto's Encounters with Giants; Florida Giants; Graveyards of the Giants; Indiana Giants; Mexico's Giants; Mississippi and Texas Giants; Montana's Giants; Ocala; Ohio Giants; Quiname; San Francisco Giants; Seri Giants; Tlaxcala's Giants; Tuscaloosa; Yuman Giants)
Indiana Giants
1879, some Indiana archaeologists dug into an ancient burial mound at Brewersville, Indiana, and unearthed a human skeleton that measured nine feet eight inches in length. A mica necklace still hung around the giant's neck. The bones, which were stored in a grain mill, were swept away in the 1937 flood.26
In 1925, several amateurs digging in an Indian mound at Walkerton, Indiana, uncovered the skeletons of eight very ancient humans measuring in height from eight to almost nine feet. All eight giants had been buried in “substantial copper armor.”
(See Arizona Giants; California Giants; Cocopa Giants; Copafi; Coronado's Giant Discoveries; De Soto's Encounters with Giants; Florida Giants; Graveyards of the Giants; Horned Giants; Mississippi and Texas Giants; Montana's Giants; Ocala; Ohio Giants; San Francisco Giants; Seri Giants; Tuscaloosa; Yuman Giants; also see Barranc de Cobre Giants; Mexico's Giants; Quiname; Tlaxcala's Giants)
Karankawas (See Mississippi and Texas Giants)
Lompock Rancho Giant (See Graveyards of the Giants)
Melius, Angelina
Angelina Melius, a good-looking American giantess almost seven feet tall, arrived in England about 1821. On her exhibition tour there she was accompanied by her two-foot-two-inch page, Senor Don Santiago de los Santos of Manilla.27
(See Chang Woo Gow; Giants and Dwarfs)
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