Mexico's Giants
About 1542, within months of De Soto's and Coronado's expeditions, five-year-old Fray Diego Duran moved with his family to Mexico. He thus grew up among the central Mexican Indians and later served as a missionary to them. While living here, he several times came in contact with giant Indians. Of these encounters, he later wrote: "It cannot be denied that there have been giants in this country. I can affirm this as an eyewitness, for I have met men of monstrous stature here. I believe that there are many in Mexico who will remember, as I do, a giant Indian who appeared in a procession of the feast of Corpus Christi. He appeared dressed in yellow silk and a halberd at his shoulder and a helmet on his head. And he was all of three feet taller than the others."28
Spending his childhood in Texcoco gave Duran a unique opportunity to learn firsthand a great deal about the Aztecs and to become acquainted with early Mexican culture. Fortunately for us, he made the most of it. Because of his long and close association with these Indians, he became a recognized authority on their language, customs, and preColumbian history. For that reason, most scholars regard Duran's work as of "extraordinary importance." In his seventy-eight chapters, he details the history of Mexico from its origins down to the conquest and complete subjection of the country by the Spaniards. In gathering his information, Duran used a great number of pre-Hispanic, picture-writing manuscripts, which had to be explained to him by Indians well-trained in interpreting native hieroglyphics. During his thirty-two years among the Aztecs, he also interviewed many old Indians knowledgeable in the ancient ways and traditions of their people. From all these sources he learned about the giants. Bernardino de Sahagun and Joseph de Acosta, two other notable historians of about the same period, also knew about a tribe of giants who once occupied central Mexico, but Duran's book offers us the best and most complete account.
Duran writes that, according to the Aztecs, the giants and a bestial people of average size once had this land all to themselves. Then, in A.D. 902, six tribes of people from Teocolhuacan (also called Aztlan, i.e., "Land of Herons"), which "is found toward the north and near the region of La Florida," began arriving in Mexico. They soon took possession of the country. These six kindred tribes included the Xochimilca, the Chalca, the Tecpanec, the Colhua, the Tlalhuica, and the Tlaxcalans. A seventh tribe, the Aztecs, were brothers to these people, but they "came to live here three hundred and one years after the arrival of the others."
When these six tribes had settled, Duran continues, "they recorded in their painted books the type of land and kind of people they found here. These books show two types of people, one from the west of the snow-covered mountains toward Mexico, and the other on the east, where Puebla and Cholula are found. Those from the first region were Chichimecs and the people from Puebla and Cholula were 'The Giants,' the Quiname, which means 'men of great stature.'
"The few Chichimecs on the side of Mexico were brutal, savage men, and they were called Chichimecs because they were hunters. They lived among the peaks and in the harshest places of the mountain where they led a bestial existence. They had no human organization but hunted food like the beasts of the same mountain, and went stark naked without any covering on their private parts....
When the new nations came, these savage people showed no resistance or anger, but rather awe. They fled towards the hills, hiding themselves there.... The newly arrived people seeing, then, that the land was left unoccupied, chose at will the best places to live in.
"The other people who were found in Tlaxcala and Cholula and Huexotzinco are said to have been 'Giants.' These were enraged at the coming of the invaders and tried to defend their land. I do not have a very true account of this, and therefore will not attempt to tell the story that the natives told me even though it was long and worth hearing, of the battles that the Cholultecs fought with the Giants until they killed them or drove them from the country.
"These Giants lived no less bestially than the Chichimecs, as they had abominable customs and ate raw meat from the hunt. In certain places of that region enormous bones of the Giants have been found, which I myself have seen dug up at the foot of cliffs many times. These Giants flung themselves from precipices while fleeing from the Cholultecs and were killed. The Cholultecs had been extremely cruel to the Giants, harassing them, pursuing them from hill to hill, from valley to valley, until they were destroyed.
"Even if we detain the reader a little, I should like to tell the manner in which the people of Cholula and Tlaxcala annihilated that evil nation. This was done by treason and deceit. They pretended to want peace with the Giants, and after having assured them of their good will they invited them to a great banquet. An ambush was then prepared. Some men slyly robbed the guests of their shields, clubs, and swords. The Cholultecs then appeared and attacked. The Giants tried to defend themselves, and, as they could not find their weapons, it is said that they tore branches from the trees with the same ease as one cuts a turnip, and in this way defended themselves valiantly. But finally all were killed."29
Bernardino de Sahagun, who arrived in the Americas in 1523 and became the foremost authority in his time on the pre-conquest Aztec culture, mentions in his twelve-volume history on central Mexico that the "giants" of Quinametin were Toltecs and that they built both Teotihuacan and Cholula.30
In his History of the Indies, Joseph de Acosta tells a story of the giants very similar to Duran's, but he also adds this eyewitness account: "When I was in Mexico, in the year of our Lord one thousand five hundred eighty six, they found one of those giants buried in one of our farms, which we call Jesus del Monte, of whom they brought a tooth to be seen, which (without augmenting) was as big as the fist of a man; and, according to this, all the rest was proportionable, which I saw and admired at his deformed greatness."31
(See Barranc de Cobre Giants; Quiname; Tlaxcala's Giants; also 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; Indiana Giants; Mississippi and Texas Giants; Montana's Giants; Ocala; Ohio Giants; San Francisco Giants; Seri Giants; Tuscaloosa; Yuman Giants)
Mississippi and Texas Giants
In 1519, a year before Magellan discovered the Patagonians, Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda encountered some giants on the banks of the Mississippi River, not far from where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Sent to search for a strait across Florida, Pineda came first upon the northern gulf coast, reconnoitered it, then sailed south, coasting the western shore of Florida until he reached its southern tip. Finding the peninsula offered no strait, he then retraced his course. Landing at strategic places along the coasts of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and even down to Tampico in Mexico, Pineda made maps and notes of the rivers and bays, established landmarks, and took possession of all these lands in his king's name. That done, he sailed back to the mouth of the Mississippi River. There he "found a large town, and on both sides of its banks, for a distance of six leagues up its course, some forty native villages." These Indians proved friendly, so he remained here forty days while his crew careened their four ships and made necessary repairs. In his report on the country, Pineda noted that it provided the natives with an abundance of food, that many of its rivers contained so much gold that they commonly wore it as ornaments in their ears and noses, around their necks, and over other parts of the body, and that there lived on the banks of this river "a race of giants from ten to eleven palms in height."32
On his return from Tampico to the Mississippi, Pineda also, unknowingly, sailed right past a tribe of equally huge Texas Indians. For historian Woodbury Lowery, along with several others, places "the giant Karankawas" nation around Matagorda Bay at that time.33
In a report on the Karankawas, John R. Swanton, of the Bureau of American Ethnology, describes the men as being "very tall and well formed.... Their hair was unusually coarse, and worn so long by many of the men that it reached to the waist. Agriculture was not practised by these Indians, their food supply being obtained from the waters, the chase, and wild plants, and, to a limited extent, human flesh; for, like most of the tribes of the Texas coast, they were cannibals. Travel among them was almost wholly by the canoe, or dugout, for they seldom left the coast. Head-flattening and tattooing were practised to a considerable extent. Little is known in regard to their tribal government, further than that they had civil and war chiefs, the former being hereditary in the male line."34
The first positive notice of them, adds Swanton, is found in the accounts of La Salle's disastrous visit to this area.35 They also later engaged in a fierce battle with Lafitte and his band of pirates, who had abducted one of their women. But the Karankawas proved no match for the buccaneers, who, having superior arms and firepower, inflicted heavy casualties upon them and forced them to retreat. When Stephen Austin built his settlement on the Brazos in 1823, the tribe began to decline. "Conflicts between the settlers and the Indians were frequent," says the ethnologist, "and finally a battle was fought in which about half the tribe were slain, the other portion fleeing for refuge to La Bahia." By 1840, the Karankawas had been reduced to about one hundred souls living on Lavaca Bay.36
(See Arizona Giants; California Giants; Cocopa Giants; Copafi; Corona-do's Giant Discoveries; De Soto's Encounters with Giants; Florida Giants; Graveyards of the Giants; Horned Giants; Indiana 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)
Montana's Giants
In 1903, on an archaeological outing at Fish Creek, Montana, Professor S. Farr and his group of Princeton University students came across several burial mounds. Choosing one to dig in, they unearthed the skeleton of a man about nine feet long. Next to him lay the bones of a woman, who had been almost as tall.37
(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; Indiana Giants; Mississippi and Texas 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)
Narvaez and the Giants (See Florida Giants)
Ohio Giants
Nature, in its December 17,1891, issue, reported that at a depth of fourteen feet in a large Ohio burial mound excavators found the skeleton of a massive man in copper armor. He wore a copper cap, while copper moldings encased his jaws. Copper armor also protected his arms, chest, and stomach. A necklace made of bear's teeth and inlaid with pearls decorated his neck. At his side lay the skeleton of a woman, probably his wife.38
In the 1860s, some excavators digging in a hill in Marion, Ohio, uncovered thirty skeletons who also ranged in height from seven to eight feet.39
(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; Indiana Giants; Mississippi and Texas Giants; Montana's Giants; Ocala; San Francisco Giants; Seri Giants; Tuscaloosa; Yuman Giants; also see Barranc de Cobre Giants; Mexico's Giants; Quiname; Tlaxcala's Giants)
San Francisco Giants
When Sir Francis Drake dropped anchor in a small bay just north of modern San Francisco, the Indian natives, who had never seen a white man before, took the Englishmen to be gods. Francis Fletcher, Drake's chronicler of the voyage, says the king, "a man of large body and good aspect," even set his own crown--a headdress of feathers--on Drake's head and pleaded with him to exercise dominion over the land. He also describes these Indians as a tall people with herculean strength. "Yet are the men commonly so strong of body," he writes, "that that which two or three of our men could hardly bear, one of them would take upon his back, and without grudging carry it easily away, up hill and down hill an English mile together."40
(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; Indiana Giants; Mississippi and Texas Giants; Montana's Giants; Ocala; Ohio Giants; Sen Giants; Tuscaloosa; Yuman Giants; also see Barranc de Cobre Giants; Mexico's Giants; Patagonia's "Big-feet" Giants; Quiname; Tlaxcala's Giants)
When Sir Francis Drake dropped anchor in a small bay just north of modern San Francisco, the Indian natives, who had never seen a white man before, took the Englishmen to be gods. Francis Fletcher, Drake's chronicler of the voyage, says the king, "a man of large body and good aspect," even set his own crown--a headdress of feathers--on Drake's head and pleaded with him to exercise dominion over the land. He also describes these Indians as a tall people with herculean strength. "Yet are the men commonly so strong of body," he writes, "that that which two or three of our men could hardly bear, one of them would take upon his back, and without grudging carry it easily away, up hill and down hill an English mile together."41
(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; Indiana Giants; Mississippi and Texas Giants; Montana's Giants; Ocala; Ohio Giants; Sen Giants; Tuscaloosa; Yuman Giants; also see Barranc de Cobre Giants; Mexico's Giants; Patagonia's "Big-feet" Giants; Quiname; Tlaxcala's Giants)
Seri Giants
When his army reached the province of Senora, Coronado dispatched some men to the coast to search for the supply ships. The party sighted no ships, but they did return with a friendly Indian who stood so tall as to astonish the Spaniards. In his history, Pedro de Castaneda, a member of the expedition, mentions this event in these words: "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."42 This giant evidently belonged to the Seri, a great tribe of Indians who occupied the island of Tiburon and the adjacent Sonora coast on the Gulf of California.
(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; Indiana Giants; Mississippi and Texas Giants; Montana's Giants; Ocala; Ohio Giants; San Francisco Giants; Tuscaloosa; Yuman Giants; also see Barranc de Cobre Giants; Mexico's Giants; Quiname; Tlaxcala's Giants)
South Carolina Giantess
The after-classes moonlighting of a young South Carolina giantess attending an English boarding school caught the attention of the British press. In the September 5, 1826, issue of the Public Ledger, a reporter gave this account of her: "We yesterday visited the tall young lady, who is now exhibiting as a giantess, at Bourke's dancing rooms, Change-alley, Cornhill. She stands about seven feet high without her shoes; but with the aid of them, and a most lofty plume of feathers, her visitors would imagine her to be at least eight feet high. She is not only pleasing in her countenance, but extremely well made and proportioned. She is only 18 years of age; and, having all the advantages of a fine person, would be no bad match for the celebrated Monsieur Louis, the French giant.... Her manners are extremely pleasing, and indeed her whole demeanour, instead of embarrassing, commands respect in the spectator. She is a native of South Carolina, and has been for the last four years at a boarding-school in England. From the number of black servants that are continually running about her, persons passing through King's Arms-passage imagine her to be a native of India. She is, indeed, well worth being seen."43 (See Frenz, Louis)
Swan, Anna Haining
Born at Mill Brook, Nova Scotia, in 1846, Anna Haining Swan joined P. T. Barnum's gallery of wonders in the early 1860s and became the best known giantess of her day. Barnum proclaimed that his four male giants stood above eight feet and advertised Miss Swan's height as seven feet eleven inches. However, according to Dr. A. P. Beach, her physician when she lived at Seville, she only measured seven feet nine inches.
One of thirteen children born to Scottish immigrants Alexander and Ann Swan, Anna grew so rapidly that at age six she already stood as tall as her mother. By age sixteen she towered seven feet high and had many curious people following her through the streets.
Barnum, in his autobiography, recounts that he "first heard of her through a Quaker who came into my office one day and told me of a wonderful girl, 17 years of age, who resided near him at Pictou, Nova Scotia, and who was probably the tallest girl in the world.
"I asked him to obtain her exact height. He did and sent it to me, and I at once sent an agent who in due time came back with Anna Swan.
"She was an intelligent and by no means ill-looking girl, and during the long period she was in my employe she was visited by thousands of persons."44
In February, 1864, Barnum took his American Museum to New York where crowds flocked to see the curiosities. But on July 13, 1865, fire broke out in the museum and spread so quickly that the giantess barely escaped. Rescuers found Miss Swan at the top of the stairway "in a swooning condition from the smoke." Because of her great size, it took eighteen men using a block and tackle to remove her from the burning building. The blaze reportedly cost her every-thing she owned except the clothes on her back. Her trunk, which the fire destroyed, contained $1,200 in gold plus a sizable amount of "greenbacks."
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Anna Swan towers
over her sister
Maggie, who visited
the Bates at their
farm near Medina,
Ohio
(Courtesy Medina
County Historical
Society) |
In 1870, Miss Swan met Captain Martin Van Buren Bates from Letcher County, Kentucky, when the two giants joined Judge H. P. Ingalls' company for a tour of Europe. The next year, following their presentation to Queen Victoria, they were married in London's historic St-Martin-in-the-Fields church. After a grand tour of England and Scotland, the couple returned to the States and bought a farm near Seville, Ohio. The giantess gave birth to two "abnormally large" children, but both soon died. In 1888, tuberculosis claimed her own life.
In its obituary, the Seville Times described Anna Swan as a learned woman who "at an early age developed an inquiring mind" and a thirst for knowledge. "Even when independent of the resources of her native home," the newspaper added, "she continued her habits of study; she had thus acquired a breadth of information and a facility of expression which made her very interesting as a companion and conversationalist.... Her knowledge of the world was wide and varied, a fact which in no small degree added to her ability to entertain and instruct."
(See Bates, Captain Martin Van Buren; also see McAskill, Angus, another famous giant from Nova Scotia)
Tennessee Giants (See Graveyards of the Giants)
Texas Giants
The long-haired "giant Karankawas," who occupied a large territory around Matagorda Bay on the Texas gulf coast, engraved their bodies with many tattoos and occasionally ate human flesh. The tribe thrived until Stephen Austin built his settlement on the Brazos in 1823. Conflicts between the settlers and the Indians then became frequent, writes John R. Swanton, "and finally a battle was fought in which about half the tribe were slain, the other portion fleeing for refuge to La Bahia."45
(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; 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)
Tlaxcala's Giants
Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who served in the army of Hernan Cortes during his conquest of Mexico and later wrote an "exceptionally accurate and reliable" narrative of that brilliant campaign, recounts that in 1519, after the Spaniards defeated the Mexican city-state of Tlaxcala, the Tlaxcatecs became Cortes' most faithfulally. While relating to the Latins something about their history, the Tlaxcatecs mentioned that a race of enormous size had once inhabited their land. "They said their ancestors had told them that very tall men and women with huge bones had once dwelt among them," continues Diaz, "but because they were a very bad people with wicked customs they had fought against them and killed them, and those of them who remained had died off. And to show us how big these giants had been they brought us the leg-bone of one, which was very thick and the height of an ordinary-sized man, and that was a leg-bone from the hip to the knee. I measured myself against it, and it was as tall as I am, though I am of a reasonable height. They brought other pieces of bone of the same kind, but they were all rotten and eaten away by the soil. We were all astonished by the sight of these bones and felt certain there must have been giants in that land."46
(See Barranc de Cobre Giants; Mexico's Giants; Quiname; also 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; Indiana Giants; Mississippi and Texas Giants; Montana's Giants; Ocala; Ohio Giants; San Francisco Giants; Serf Giants; Tuscaloosa; Yuman Giants)
Tuscaloosa
On his march through Alabama, De Soto courteously detained the giant cacique Tuscaloosa--as a precaution against attack. As suzerain over many caciques, Tuscaloosa ruled a wide territory that included most of modern Alabama and Mississippi. According to Garcilaso de la Vega, who accompanied De Soto, the chief stood a half-yard taller than his tallest men. Accompanied by the haughty chief and his equally gigantic eighteen-year-old son, as hostages, De Soto's party crossed the state with the loss of only two men. But at Mobile the Castilians were surprised by a well-planned ambush--which ended in disaster for Tuscaloosa's braves.
(See Arizona Giant; 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; San Francisco Giants; Seri Giants; Yuman Giants; also see Barranc de Cobre Giants; Mexico's Giants; Quiname; Tlaxcala's Giants)
West Giantess
In 1833, a seven-foot giantess from North America appeared in Crockett's show at London's Bartholomew Fair under the name of Miss West.47
Yuman Giants
Upon reaching the mouth of the Colorado River, Hernando de Alarcon's three ships dropped anchor, while his exploratory party launched two boats against the river's furious current. On this historic first voyage up the Colorado River the Europeans came across the giant-like Yuman peoples who lived along its banks. Pedro de Castaneda, who accompanied Coronado on this expedition and wrote the most complete and factual history of it, described them 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."48
(See Arizona Giants; California Giants; Cocopa Giants; Copafi; Coronado's Giant Discoveries; De Soto's Encounters with Giants; Florida Giants; Horned Giants; Indiana Giants; Mississippi and Texas Giants; Montana's Giants; Ocala; Ohio Giants; San Francisco Giants; Seri Giants; Tuscaloosa; also see Barranc de Cobre Giants; Mexico's Giants; Quiname; Tlaxcala's Giants)
1 Roy Norvill, Giants: The Vanished Race of Mighty Men (Welling-borough, Northamptonshire: The Aquarian Press, 1979), p. 82.
2 Norvill, Giants: The Vanished Race, p. 84.
3 Captain Bates' actual height is uncertain. Some claim that for show purposes he added a couple of inches.
4 Guinness Book of World Records (New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 1990), p. 344
5 Lanier, A Book of Giants, p. 307.
6 Lee Cavin, There Were Giants on the Earth (Seville, OH: Seville Chronicle, publisher, 1959), p. 11.
7 Frank Edwards, Stranger Than Science (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1959), p. 129.
8 Castaneda, "Expedition of Coronado," p. 301.
9 Ibid.
10 Herbert Eugene Bolton, Coronado, Knight of Pueblos and Plains (New York and Albuquerque: McGraw-Hill Co., and The University of New Mexico Press, 1949), p. 157.
11 No reference given.
12 Miguel Albornoz, Hernando De Soto: Knight of the Americas (New York: Franklin Watts, 1986), p. 289.
13 Ibid., p. 295.
14 Alvaro Fernandez, "Expedition of Hernando De Soto," in Spanish Explorers, ed. Hodge and Lewis (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1959), p. 186. Though Fernandez does not say so, Tuscaloosa's son evidently made this eloquent speech before De Soto in Indian sign language
15 Garcilaso de la Vega, The Florida of the Inca, ed. John and Jeanette Varner (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1951), p. 349.
16 Fernandez, "Expedition of Hernando De Soto," p. 188.
17 Modern Mobile is not located exactly on the same site.
18 Some historians believe the territory referred to here comprised the northern part of Leon and Jefferson counties, a land of many lakes. They think Apalachen was located on Lake Miccosukee.
19 Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, "Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca," Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1959), pp. 28-29.
20 Ibid., pp. 31-32.
21 Information Sheet No. 3, Hunterian Museum, London.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Wood, Giants and Dwarfs, pp. 222-223.
25 These were located about two inches above the eyebrows.
26 Mysteries of the Unexplained (Pleasantville, NY: The Reader's Digest Association, 1983), p. 40.
27 Wood, Giants and Dwarfs, p. 209.
28 Fray Diego Duran, The Aztecs (New York: Orion Press, 1964), pp. 5-6. The manuscript lay for nearly three centuries in the National Library of Madrid. The first of three volumes from it was first published in 1867, under the title History of New Spain.
Mexico's Giants
29 Ibid., pp. 9-12.
30 Ibid., note, p. 332. Also see "Mexico and Central America" in the Nar-rative and Critical History of America, Vol. I, Justin Winsor, editor (New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1889), p. 39, note, p. 141.
31 Joseph de Acosta, History of the Indies, Vol. II, translated by Edward Grimston (New York: Burt Franklin, publisher, 1970), pp. 453-454.
32 Woodbury Lowery, The Spanish Settlements (New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1959), pp. 149-150. Webster's Dictionary defines a palm used as a unit of measurement to range from seven to ten inches.
33 Ibid., p. 64. Matagorda Bay is located about one hundred miles below modern-day Galveston.
34
Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Part 1, edited by Frederick Webb Hodge (New York: Rowan & Littlefield, publishers, 1971), pp. 657-658.
35 The Clamcoets, who massacred all but five of the people LaSalle left at the fort he built on Matagorda Bay, are identified with the Karankawa. The massacre took place in 1687.
36 Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Part 1, p. 657.
37 Norvill, Giants: The Vanished Race, pp. 82-83.
38 Mysteries of the Unexplained (Pleasantville, NY: The Reader's Digest Association, 1983), p. 40.
39 Wood, Giants and Dwarfs, p. 230.
40 Francis Fletcher, The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1966), p. 72.
41
Ibid.
42
Castaneda, "Expedition of Coronado," p. 301.
43
Ibid., pp. 215-216.
44 Cavin, Giants on the Earth, p. 6.
45 Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Part 1, pp. 657-658.
46 Wood, Giants and Dwarfs, p. 220.
47 Bernal Diaz, The Conquest of New Spain, translated by J. M. Cohen (New York: Penguin Books, 1963), p. 181.
48 Bolton, Coronado, Knight of Pueblos and Plains, pp. 158-159.
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