From giant mummies in Nevada and Florida to nine foot tall kings off the coast of California to ancient mound-building ancestors of American Indian tribes, there is a huge amount of folklore regarding the existence of giants in America.
While anthropological experts and researchers have sought to debunk the tales, there are some who are convinced that the evidence has been deliberately suppressed.
This article will summarise some of the most interesting stories and theories about giant humanoids in America’s dim and distant past.
Giant builders or a colonial conspiracy?
In 1797, Benjamin Smith Barton, a naturalist, botanist and doctor, published a text called New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America. He brought the existence of huge native American burial mounds, like Grove Creek Mound and Great Serpent Mound, to the attention of a fascinated public. Although Barton himself cautioned against rushing to conclusions, the discovery of unusually large bones was seized upon by the popular press to give rise to the idea of a race of giants that pre-dated the tribes and built the mounds.
In fact, many of those stories came from the native Americans themselves, and the tales of giant-sized ancestors were also established in South America. There is even a photo of the conquistador Hernan Cortes being presented with an ancestral bone by an Aztec chief.
Christian preachers latched on to these stories and claimed that this race were none other than the Nephilim from the Book of Genesis. These giants were often depicted as white-skinned and sometimes blonde-haired, connecting with myths of an ancient master race. Whether or not there really were a race of white-skinned giants, this story played into the hands of the colonial powers who could now say that they were only reclaiming land which had been violently siezed from the giants by the primitive Indians.
Although an in-depth study by ethnologist Cyrus Thomas in 1894 concluded that native Americans did indeed build the mounds, many refuse to dismiss the idea of prehistoric giants, with some going as far as to accuse the Smithsonian Institute of deliberately destroying the remains of giants.
Hoaxes, tall tales and bad science
What is not in question is that people have been discovering giant-sized bones across America. But according to anthropologists, biologists and other ‘ists’ who study these things, jumping to the conclusion of giant human skeletons is, more often than not, a case of misidentification.
Predictably, some skeletal giants were found to be the bones of mastodons or other large fauna. In many cases, those who discovered giant leg bones simply didn’t realise that femurs were so long. After expert inspection, the height of some of these ‘giants’ shrunk from seven feet plus to a rather less impressive five feet.
Inevitably, some attention-seekers and charlatans got in on the act, with the ten foot tall Cardiff Giant of 1869 being one of the most well-known hoaxes.
Compelling tales of underground cities and dead giants slumped over water fountains are usually dismissed as pure fiction.
Mummified giants of Nevada and Florida
One of those who has accused the Smithsonian Institute of a cover-up is the writer and filmmaker Richard J. Dewhurst. In his book The Ancient Giants who Ruled America he presents evidence for giant red-haired ‘bog mummies’ allegedly found in sinkholes – or cenotes – in Florida, and also of mummified giants in Spirit Cave, Nevada. He claims that thousands of giants were unearthed in the Mississippi Valley alone, and that ruined cities were also discovered.
However, Dewhurst lacks a scientific background, and his evidence consists of sensational articles, photographs and field illustrations. His conviction that the bones of many of these giants were deliberately destroyed by the Smithsonian Institute is unsurprisingly dismissed by skeptics, especially since these claims were ‘debunked’ by Reuters and the Associated Press.
Of course, there are plenty of people who remain open to the possibility of a cover up, and so the search for incntovertible evidence of giants in America will undoubtedly continue.
You can check out Richard Dewhurst’s book at https://amzn.to/4fm6X9c Please note that as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Images all in the public domain