Yeti, Sasquatch & Hairy Giants Read online

  Choral and Jack accompanied Gardner on some of his expeditions into Baja California, and she chronicled their adventures in her 1973 book Baja California: Vanished Missions, Lost Treasures, Strange Stories Tall and True.62 In her chapter on central Baja missions, she mentions a curious story from Mission San Ignacio de Kadakaman, known usually as simply San Ignacio, an oasis of the Cochimi Indians. The Jesuit priest Juan Bautista Luyando, a wealthy man in his own right, donated dozens of Arabian date palms to the oasis, where they still thrive today.

  Pepper says that the village became alarmed when sometime after 1752, Padre George Retz “dug up a gigantic skeleton at Rancho san Joaquin, about ten miles to the south. He reported that the bones exactly resembled those of a human being, with the dimensions of the skull, vertebrae and leg bones representative of a man over eleven feet tall. This find caused the missionaries to have second thoughts about the natives’ report that the cave paintings in the region’s canyons were executed by giants.”62

  The Giants of Arizona and Sonora

  A curious story is told by Frank Edwards about the discovery of a sarcophagus of a giant that was unearthed by workmen in Fort Crittenden, in southern Arizona, southwest of Tombstone. Originally known as Casa Blanca, Fort Crittenden, also called just Crittenden, was a town that had its origin in the 1860s. There was a rail depot and much mining activity from the mid- to late 1800s. Currently it is a ghost town listed on maps as Fort Crittenden Ruin, and the only standing building is a hotel built in 1885. In 1887, an earthquake damaged the hotel and the second story was removed and that is how it stands today. By 1900, most residents had moved elsewhere as the mines played out. An abandoned railroad line runs just south of the ghost town and the San Ignacio del Babocomari reservation is just to the east. In 1891 workmen were digging the foundation of a house when they unearthed a stone coffin that once held the body of a man approximately 12 feet tall. A carving on the granite case indicated that he had twelve toes.52, 101

  According to Brad Steiger, The New York Times of December 2, 1930 carried an item that told of the discovery of the remains of an apparent race of giants who once lived at Sayopa, Sonora. Sayopa is a mining town three hundred miles south of the Mexican border, south of Crittenden. Steiger says that J. E. Coker, a mining engineer, stated that laborers clearing ranchland near the Yazui River had dug into a very old cemetery and had found “bodies of men, averaging eight feet in height, buried tier by tier.”102

  The skeletal remains of seven giants was featured in a curious story about a sealed cave with a door cut into the rock that was published in the Phoenix Herald in 1892. The article is quoted in a chapter entitled “Royal Treasure?,” published in a book entitled Arizona Cavalcade103 by Joseph Miller. The book is a compilation of old newspaper reports and it contains several very curious articles.

  The 1892 article is about a man named Andrew Pauly who claimed to have made a discovery around 1889 while searching for some stolen horses. He saw a “most peculiar appearance of the face of the rock in one of the remote recesses or clefts of the cliff up which I had gone looking for water, which gave me the impression of the work of some human hand. It looked like a small door cut in the rock and again skillfully closed by some dusty material. I was too thirsty to have any curiosity then, so I pulled on for the top of the range.”

  Andrew Pauly then returned to the place in 1892, believing that the sealed cave entrance was a door to a treasure chamber. Says the Phoenix Herald:

  As was noted last week that he was about to go out in search of what he considered a very peculiar artificial opening in the rocks among the mountain which now prove to be not very remote from the orchard of the upper valley, Pauly started out with a prospector’s outfit and succeeded in finding the object of his search, and furthermore, that it was a genuine piece of masonry in a cut opening in the solid rock and of such thickness and consistency that with a prospecting pick, hammer, and other tools, he was five days in making an opening though the cement and rock that packed the opening which is not now much larger than a man can crawl through.

  Pauly tells a wonderful story of his discovery in the chamber behind the barricade through which he has worked his way. He found a chamber apparently cut from solid rock not less than twenty by forty feet in dimensions and about ten feet in height. The floor was covered by seven immense skeletons of men who in life must have been not less than seven feet in height, and there was further evidence that they must have been warriors as the remains of what were copper shields, copper spear heads, and battle axes and other artifacts were found with the skeletons.

  A most interesting discovery was a small ornament, a crude amulet apparently, of gold, a metal that has never before been found in all the searches that have been made of the ancient Aztec mounds and ruins so plentifully distributed through this region of country. A yet more important and startling discovery was an opening at the farther end of the chamber also closed with what appears to be a sort of rude bronze door. So neatly and accurately filled into the solid rock that barring a jut of the rock over and at the sides of the door it might have grown there, so solid does it appear. It is about two by three feet in dimensions and of unknown thickness, but when struck sounds as though it either lay against solid rock or was of great thickness.

  The mystery of this second discovery now occupies Pauly’s attention and he provided himself with the necessary means to remove the door or heavy bronze plate set in the side of the cave, or whatever it may be. As we have above indicated, the place may prove the treasure house of the Aztec tribes or it may prove nothing more than has been found, but at any rate the discovery is a startling and interesting one. Pauly, who works entirely alone, so far, traveled to town on foot yesterday, and guards his treasure with the greatest secrecy so far as its location is concerned, though he talked very freely with a Herald representative as to what he had found and what he thinks he may find which he believes to be nothing less than the treasure vault of an ancient royalty.58, 102

  Nothing more was ever heard about this astonishing find. The seven-foot skeletons on the floor are very intriguing, but no further information is known about the amazing discovery. Like many mummies and other artifacts, they probably vanished early into private or other collections, likely never to be seen again.

  The Strange Giants of Nevada

  Geologists agree that in ancient times, most of Nevada was an inland sea, known geologically as the Lahontan Sea or Lake. This water has been drying up for thousands of years, and such lakes as Tahoe, Walker and Pyramid are the last remains of the Lahontan Sea. Nevada was a different place back then, a lush lake district with plenty of animals, including huge ground sloths, mastodons and rhinos. Man lived there, too. In 1930, the still-decomposing remains of a giant ground sloth were found in Gypsum Cave, Nevada, by the archaeologist Mark Harrington working for the Southwest Museum of Los Angeles.64 As was the case with the Patagonian find, there was an indication that the sloths were domesticated, or held captive, in the cave. What but a giant man could domesticate a twelve-foot-tall ground sloth?

  I went to Nevada to investigate the strange stories of red-haired giants found in a cave which had been studied by scientists from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1911, miners began to work the rich guano deposits in Lovelock Cave, 22 miles southwest of the town of Lovelock. They had removed several carloads of guano when they came upon some Indian relics. Soon afterward a mummy was also found; reportedly it was that of a six-and-a-half-foot-tall person with “distinctly red” hair.

  Legend relates that a race of giant “freckle-faced redheads” once roamed the Humboldt Sink area of northern Nevada. According to legends of the local Piute Indians, a tribe of cannibalistic, red-haired giants called the Si-te-cahs were once the mortal enemies of the Indians in the area, who had joined forces to drive them out. It was said that the giants came in boats to the Lovelock-Winnemucca area and were then chased into a cave where they had their camp. The Paiutes stacked huge piles of wood at the e
ntrance to the cave, lit a bonfire and suffocated the giants.

  The strange legends of red-haired giants in Nevada are even told in the first book ever written by a Native American woman. The author was Sarah Winnemucca, the daughter of Chief Winnemucca, and the book was Life Among the Paiutes, published in 1882. This was thirty years before the astonishing discoveries were to be made in Lovelock.

  The discovery of the vast remains at Lovelock are well told in an article from the Humboldt Star which ran on May 13, 1929. The article details the circumstances of the discovery, and then goes on to mention the curious fate of one of the red-haired skeletons under the heading Mummy Used by Lodge: “But money was temporarily lacking, and before an expedition could be sent much valuable material was destroyed. The best specimen of the adult mummies found, reported to be six feet six inches in height, went to a fraternal lodge for initiation purposes.

  “Finally, in 1912, finances having been arranged, the University of California sent Llewellyn L. Loud of the museum of anthropology to the scene. In spite of the work that had been done on the guano, Loud managed to accumulate 10,000 specimens single-handed. An outstanding feature of this collection was the profuse textile material, including over 1,500 fragments of basketry and 1,400 of matting. The climatic conditions are so fine for preservation of even delicate material that Professors A.L. Kroeber and R.W. Lowie, in a preface to the report just published by the University Press, state that the situation recalls those in Egypt and Peru and is rivaled by few other archaeological sites in North America...

  “Some of the human material was found buried in pits, as if left by the former inhabitants for safe keeping. The guano diggers reported that they had uncovered thirteen buried bodies, and Loud found 32 more. Some of these were represented by fragments of bones, some by complete skeletons, and some by remarkably preserved mummies.”65

  University of California archaeologist Llewellyn Loud gave an account of his return to Lovelock Cave at the end of 1924, this time with Mark Harrington, and they published their definitive work on the cave in 1929, entitled simply The Lovelock Cave.65 In systematic excavations, the cave was found to contain the remains of 12 more bodies, making the total of bodies recovered from the cave almost 60. Harrington estimates the age of the cave as 4,000 years old, occupied by at least 1,000 B.C.65

  Rare photo of a giant woman and child found at Yosemite.

  Today some of the bones, including a giant skull and some femurs, can be seen at the museums in Winnemucca and Lovelock. I stopped in at the Lovelock museum to look at the bones and other artifacts. The ladies who ran the museum were friendly and helpful, and very familiar with the stories of the red-haired mummies.

  “I remember this photo,” said Wanda, the director of the Chamber of Commerce, “of a man holding a skeleton by the hair and standing on a big crate. He was holding this skeleton over his head and this skeleton was tall. At least seven feet tall if not more. And it had long red hair. That is the story, and the photo is real. I think that Wilbur Green has that photo.”

  “We don’t have much of that stuff around here anymore,” continued Wanda. “Some of the duck decoys and a few skulls. We don’t know where the red-haired mummies are. Maybe in Carson City with some of the other things. Many of the artifacts are there. We are trying to get some of it back here for our museum.”

  Sadly, I was informed that many odd relics, including skeletons, were destroyed when some years back, a shed containing many of the artifacts caught fire and burned to the ground. The shed had also contained carvings on marine shells and articles laboriously made of colored feathers.

  Other bones and artifacts of “giants” have turned up in the Lovelock-Winnemucca area. In February and June of 1931, skeletons were found in the Humboldt lakebed near the cave. The first of these was eight and one-half feet long and appeared to have been wrapped in a gum-covered fabric somewhat after the Egyptian manner. The second was almost 10 feet long according to the Lovelock Review-Miner’s article of June 19, 1931. On September 29, 1939, the Review-Miner reported the discovery of a seven-foot-seven-inch skeleton on the Friedman Ranch near that town.36, 104

  The rancher, a man named Reid, decided to collect as much information as he could on mummies, giants and whatnot in the Lovelock area. Some Paiute Indians told him that they had encountered, but hadn’t disturbed, petrified bodies of the peculiar giants lying in the open in a wilderness area south of Lovelock Cave. One of the most fascinating objects attributed by the Indians to these people is a stone pyramid in New York Canyon near Job’s Peak on the east side of the East Humboldt Range, 215 miles southeast of Lovelock in Churchill County. Unfortunately, this has been somewhat disarranged by earthquakes in recent decades.36, 104

  Another strange report was made of Nevada giants in July of 1877. Four prospectors were moving along the hills of Spring Valley near Eureka, Nevada, in search of precious metals when one spotted something sticking out of a ledge of rock. What he found wasn’t gold, but evidence of an ancient giant.

  Using their picks, the prospectors soon chipped out human leg and foot bones that had been encased in solid quartzite. The black bones, which had been broken off just above the knee, included the knee joint, kneecap, lower leg bones, and a complete set"> of foot bones. The man who had once walked on this leg was obviously huge—from knee to heel, the bone was 39 inches long.

  The men quickly took their find to Eureka, where local physicians examined it. The doctors ruled that the bones were human, and extremely old. After the Eureka newspaper wrote articles about the giant leg bone, several museums sent archaeologists to look for the rest of the remarkable man’s skeleton—but no further traces were discovered.84, 104

  Tales of giants, giant tools and constructions by giants are commonplace all over the world. Though skeletons and mummies of “giant” people have been found, even fairly recently, little solid evidence remains. Do these skeletons just crumble to dust when exposed to the air? Some discoveries appear to be suppressed, as in the Lovelock case, while other discoveries—and subsequent loss of evidence—appear to be the result of negligence or carelessness. In any event, the quest for giants in the earth continues.

  The Search for Modern Giants

  Giants have been reported throughout history and they continue to live among us even today. A curious drawing, supposedly from Italy, circa 1856, shows four men around the skeleton of a giant man who was allegedly eleven and a half feet tall. Little is known of the origin of this old drawing (some claim it is actually a photograph), including where it was originally published. It seems to have been dug up by some folks whose main interest is in proving that the Bible is the literal word of God and that the stories of giants in the Bible are literally true. One site says: “A miner fell through a hole in a mine in Italy and found this 11’ 6” skeleton.”

  An old illustration of a huge skeleton supposedly discovered in Italy, circa 1856.

  If authenticated, this would make the skeleton that of the tallest man ever to have been known to exist. According to The Guinness Book of Records, the tallest human being ever authenticated was Robert Wadlow, the “Alton giant,” who was only 8’ 11” tall, and who died of a septic blister caused by the way his ankle brace rubbed against his right ankle. Wadlow was so tall, he had to wear braces to support his own body!

  Robert Wadlow with his father.

  Fedor Machnov with midget, circa 1900.

  Wadlow was born on February 22, 1918 in Alton, Illinois, near St. Louis. Wadlow had the pituitary gland syndrome known as hypertrophy, and he continued to grow in size throughout his short life. This is sometimes equated with acromegaly, and it is essentially a prepubertal excess of growth hormone which leads to “pituitary gigantism” (vertical growth). Many modern day giants, however seem to have a normal pituitary gland.

  Wadlow’s size began to take its toll as he continued to grow and, as noted above, he required leg braces to walk. He had little feeling in his legs and feet. Despite the braces and difficulty with his
legs and feet, Wadlow was never confined to a wheelchair. On June 27, 1940 (eighteen days before his death), he was measured at 8 feet 11.1 inches (2.72 m) by doctors C. M. Charles and Cyril MacBryde of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He is still officially the tallest man who ever lived.

  Fedor Machnov

  .It has been said that the Russian giant Fedor Machnov was nine feet tall, making him one inch taller than Wadlow. Machnov was well proportioned, though like Wadlow, he had unusually long legs.

  Born in Vitebsk, Russia, in 1881, Machnov caused a sensation wherever he went, particularly in Paris, where almost all the members of the anthropological society took a keen interest in his extraordinary physique. The Paris anthropological society would have liked to examine him in intimate detail, but Machnov refused throughout his entire life to undress in front of doctors. He did allow them to measure his feet, however, which were eighteen inches long, and his hands, which measured almost thirteen inches.

  “This Russian,” they observed, “is all legs.” In fact, if he had been born legless, he would have been of normal height! His head, which was too small for his body, made him look a bit comical and he unsuccessfully tried to overcome this by wearing a richly embroidered Cossack uniform. His ears were six inches long, and his mouth four inches wide. He was married to a Russian woman who was of normal height.

  John “Bud” Rogan.

  After a few days of rest he was generally a couple of inches taller than at the end of a particularly strenuous day, which could result in significant compression of his spine. Machnov ate four meals a day. His breakfast alone would have fed an entire family for two days. Every morning at nine, he downed two quarts of tea, John “Bud” Rogan. twenty eggs and eight round loaves of bread with butter. Lunch consisted of five and a half pounds of meat, two pounds of potatoes and three loaves of bread and another quart of tea. Before going to bed he would put away fifteen eggs, more bread and another quart of tea! Machnov died in his bed in October 1905.