North American Indigenous Traditions

The recorded account

James Mooney recorded the tradition from James Wafford. Wafford said his grandmother, whom Mooney estimated had been born around the middle of the eighteenth century, told him that she had heard from older people that a party of giants had visited the Cherokee long before her own time.

The visitors were called Tsunil'kălû', “The Slant-eyed people,” because their appearance reminded the Cherokee of the giant hunter Tsul'kălû'. Mooney himself suggested that the story “may be a distorted historical tradition.” In his notes he also considered whether an encounter with unusually tall Plains warriors might underlie the account.

What the source does and does not establish

This is unusually valuable because Mooney identifies a Cherokee transmitter and gives a family transmission chain. The source explicitly describes extraordinary height, direction of origin, peaceful contact, and departure. It does not identify the visitors with a biblical people, does not give a measured height in feet, and does not report an excavation or skeletal discovery.

Primary documentation

• James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee, Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1897–98, Part I, story 106, “The Giants from the West,” published 1900 / Government Printing Office extract 1902. Smithsonian repository and Project Gutenberg digital editions.

Research note: Mooney collected much of his Cherokee material during field seasons from 1887 through 1890.

The story

Mooney's story 81 begins at the old town of Kănuga on Pigeon River. A young woman is courted at night by a mysterious stranger who accounts to be a great hunter. The stranger proves to be Tsul'kălû', a giant figure associated with hunting and the animals. The narrative follows his marriage, the family's attempts to see him, and the separation between the woman's human relatives and the giant's world.

This record is deliberately separated from “The Giants from the West.” Tsul'kălû' is a supernatural or mythic giant figure, while story 106 is framed by its transmitter as a remembered visit by a party of unusually tall people. Mooney himself makes that distinction in his notes.

Primary documentation

• James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee, story 81, “Tsul'kălû', The Slant-eyed Giant,” Bureau of American Ethnology.

The recorded history

David Cusick's Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations is one of the earliest English-language histories of Haudenosaunee tradition written and published by a Native author. Cusick describes the Eagwehoewe people as being invaded by giants called Ronnongwetowanca. In the narrative, the giants raid settlements, take advantage of warriors being absent, plunder houses, make captives, and retreat toward their northern residence.

The importance of this record is not that every chronological element can be independently verified. Its importance is provenance: this is an early nineteenth-century Native-authored attempt to place inherited Six Nations history and tradition into print.

Primary documentation

• David Cusick, Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations, Tuscarora Village, Lewiston, New York, 1828 edition. Library of Congress digitized copy.
• University of Nebraska-Lincoln electronic edition transcribed from the Library of Congress 1828 edition.

The recorded account

In Myths of the Iroquois, Smith introduces Stone Giants as enemies of humankind and then gives a narrative explicitly identified as having been related by Mr. O'Beille Beille, grandson of Cornplanter. The giants are said to have principally inhabited the far West and to have resolved to come east to exterminate the Indians.

A Seneca war party receives warning of the danger and prepares for the confrontation. The account belongs to a larger Stone Giant complex in Iroquoian tradition, including stories of a Stone Giantess and a Stone Giant's challenge. Smith classifies these beings among supernatural figures, which is essential context for interpretation.

Primary documentation

• Erminnie A. Smith, Myths of the Iroquois, Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1880–1881, Washington, 1883, “Extermination of the Stone Giants,” p. 59. Smithsonian Institution repository.

The documentation

Horatio Bardwell Cushman's History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw and Natchez Indians preserves material concerning the term Nahullo and Choctaw traditions of earlier peoples. Later summaries frequently describe the Nahullo as a race of giants, sometimes adding accounts about complexion, cannibalism, or exact stature.

For museum purposes, those later details must not be merged automatically. This entry therefore treats Cushman's 1899 volume as the current documentary starting point while the wording, informant chain, and earlier attestations are audited directly against the original edition.

Primary documentation

• Horatio Bardwell Cushman, History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw and Natchez Indians, Headlight Printing House, Greenville, Texas, 1899.

What Winnemucca actually wrote

In Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and accounts, Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins recounts a tradition about a small hostile tribe living along the Humboldt River. She describes them as people-eaters and says her people remembered that the defeated group had reddish hair. Her account includes warfare and the destruction of the group.

This matters because modern retellings frequently combine Winnemucca's red-haired cannibal tradition with later accounts about giant skeletons and Lovelock Cave. Those accounts must be documented separately rather than inserted retroactively into Winnemucca's testimony.

Primary documentation

• Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and accounts, Boston, 1883, Chapter IV.
• Later Lovelock archaeological and ethnographic reports should be evaluated separately for the development of the Si-Te-Cah / giant interpretation.

• Smithsonian Institution: James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee, Bureau of American Ethnology.
• Project Gutenberg transcription: Myths of the Cherokee, including stories 81 and 106.
• Library of Congress: David Cusick, Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations, 1828.
• University of Nebraska-Lincoln: electronic edition of Cusick's 1828 Sketches.
• Smithsonian Institution: Erminnie A. Smith, Myths of the Iroquois, 1883.
• Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, Life Among the Piutes, 1883, transcription.
• Horatio Bardwell Cushman, History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw and Natchez Indians, Greenville, Texas, 1899. Original digitized edition used as the starting point for the Nahullo source audit.