More folklore from Creatures in the Mist by Gary R. Varner.

Tales of giants are almost as numerous as those about the little people in Native American lore. These tales most likely are metaphorical in nature; that is they are the explanations for the huge landforms that Native people existed with on a day by day basis but for which they could not explain. At least that is the primary theory of contemporary anthropologists and folklorists. To a certain extent, the myths concerning giants would tend to indicate that this theory is correct. However, there are also those tales, combined with physical evidence, that indicate that another race of giant people did, in fact, exist not only in North America but around the world.

In Greek mythology, the giant Titans were the offspring of Gaia, the Earth Goddess, and Uranus the Sky God. The Titans were primordial deities that ruled over earth and heaven until overthrown by Zeus. However, many other gods and goddesses were born of the union between Zeus and Titan women or other Titan gods and goddesses. Among these was Apollo, Selene, goddess of the moon, Eos, the goddess of the dawn, Helios, god of the sun, Artemis, goddess of the wild beasts, Demeter, goddess of agriculture, Hades, god of the underworld, Posedion, god of the sea, and Cronos who castrated and overthrew his father Uranus.

In most cases, these ancient giant beings were regarded as evil. In Mesoamerican lore giants were considered to be the “first race”. They are still believed to exist as forest cannibals in some locations and are said to be so large that they must sleep sitting up, as they have no room to stretch out. (1) The belief in a race of giant cannibals is fairly common in Native American lore although, according to ethnologist James Mooney, the giants are “comparatively few in number while the ‘little people’ are legion.” (2)

In addition, in most cases, these giants are “stony-skinned” and are therefore more physically similar to stone than to flesh and blood. A Cherokee legend from Tennessee speaks of the Spear-Finger, a huge evil woman with a lethal index finger whose skin was like stone. She “had great powers over stone and she could easily lift and carry immense rocks and could bond them together by merely striking one stone against another. To get across the rough country more easily, she built a great rock bridge through the air from the Tree Rock, on the Hiwassee [River], over to Whiteside Mountain, on the Blue Ridge.” (3) Rocky promontories supposed to be pieces of this great bridge can still be seen today.

In both Old World and New World mythology, the giants reportedly were destroyed when they dared to challenge the gods. In Beowulf the giants are drowned after they had attacked the gods and in Tarascan (Mexico) lore the giants are destroyed “when God decided to bless the world”, or in the mythology of Honduras they are simply changed into animals “during God’s conquest.” (4) In Inca lore the first human race created by the creator god Viracocha was the race of giants. These giant men and woman, who were not evil, lived in a world of darkness as the sun had not yet been made. According to legend Viracocha was unhappy with his creation and destroyed the giants in a world-wide flood.(5)

In Scandinavian lore, giants were flesh and blood — but if the rays of the sun caught them, they would instantly turn to stone, much in the same way as the Night Trolls in Iceland. Similarly, the Callanish Standing Stones on the Western Isles of Scotland, according to legend, were originally giants that were turned to stone by St. Kieran when they refused to adopt Christianity.

Folklorist John Rhys notes that a huge giant that supposedly lived on the Isle of Man was responsible for throwing five huge stones over several miles from a mountain called Cronk yn Irree Laa. “I have seen,” he remarks, “the marks of his huge hands impressed on the top of two massive monoliths.” (6)

In China, it was said, there existed a “Country of the Giants”. These giants were fifty feet tall with feet six feet in length, teeth like saws and fingers resembling hooked claws. Their bodies however did not resemble stone so much as huge bears. Their bodies were covered in long black hair. Chinese legend indicates that these giants lived as long as eighteen thousand years and that they were also cannibalistic—not eating their own kind but any human taken in battle. (7)

There are, however, stories about giant people that do not exhibit traits of evil or cannibalism. Mooney wrote of one account he obtained in the later part of the 19th century:

“James Wafford, of the western Cherokee, who was born in Georgia in 1806, says that his grandmother, who must have been born about the middle of the last [17th] century, told him that she had heard from the old people long before her time a party of giants had come once to visit the Cherokee. They were nearly twice as tall as common men, and their eyes set slanting in their heads, so that the Cherokee called them…’The Slant-eyed people,’…They said that these giants lived very far away in the direction in which the sun goes down. The Cherokee received them as friends, and they stayed some time, and then returned to their home in the west.”(8)

Interestingly enough, Irish mythology links giants to the Little People. Barbara Walker noted, “The Irish said giant people still lived in ‘the chambered undergrounds of Tara…”(9) According to Walker, the giants “shrank as popular belief in their powers waned before the encroachment of the new [Christian] religion. Eventually they became fairies or elves, not giants but ‘little people’…This reduction in their size was surely related to a reduction in their awesomeness.” (10)

I dispute this theory because the myths of the two beings are very different, their powers, descriptions, characteristics and habitats are not similar at all but are applied to two independent creatures. The fact that tales of Little People and Giants are universal across the globe only emphasizes the possibility that two separate species of beings existed at one time. Walker’s theory that the giants “shrank” due to the shrinking of their reputation does not explain those other stories across the world that speak of similar “unusual” people.

To the Netsilik Eskimo there were two giants to contend with. One, called Amayersuik, is a dangerous giant female “with a space in her back”. Reportedly, she steals children. The Inugpasugsuk was a giant who was both fearful and fond of humans and was said to “take great pains not to harm them.” (11) This giant no longer lives in the present world but the reason for his demise is unknown.

Some giants had the ability, like the Faery, to change their sizes. According to Davidson, “One such figure, in Saxo’s History, claims to be able to alter her appearance at will, becoming huge to terrify her opponents and shrinking to mortal size when taking a mortal lover.”(12)
Among the Indian tribes of Tierra del Fuego, according to John Cooper, a gigantic, invisible creature called Taquàtu exists. It is said that he is “a giant who travels by day and night in a big canoe, over the sea and the rivers, and who glides as well through the air over the tops of the trees without bending the branches.” (13) Should Taquàtu find a man or woman alone in the forests “he takes them without much ado into his great boat and carries them far away from home.” (14)

In addition, an evil spirit described as an “immense black man”, called Yaccy-ma, was greatly feared for the havoc he occasionally caused among the West Patagonian Channel tribes. The Yaccy-ma was blamed for bad weather, famine, illness and most other calamities. (15)

According to Cooper, the Yaccy-ma was probably “a superior being who watches over moral conduct.” (16) However, it is difficult to reconcile this statement with another that Cooper attributes to Admiral Fitz-Roy,(17) which calls the Yaccy-ma “an evil spirit.”

NOTES
1. Bierhorst, John. The Mythology of Mexico and Central America. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1990, 172
2. Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1995, 501 A reprint of the 1900 publication “Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1897-98
3. Atalie, Princess. The Earth Speaks. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1940, 148.
4. Bierhorst, op cit., 9
5. Hallam, Elizabeth, ed. Gods and Goddesses. New York: Macmillan 1996, 23
6. Rhys, John. Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx, Vol. 1. New York: Gordon Press, 1974, 285
7. Werner, E.T.C. Myths and Legends of China. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1994, 387. A reprint of the 1922 edition published by George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd., London.
8. Mooney, op cit., 391
9. Walker, Barbara G. The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. Edison: Castle Books 1983, 341
10. Ibid., 342
11. Balikci, Asen. The Netsilik Eskimo. Garden City: The Natural History Press 1970, 205
12. Davidson, H.R. Ellis. Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press 1988, 96
13. Cooper, John M. Analytical and Critical Bibliography of the Tribes of Tierra Del Fuego and Adjacent Territory. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 63. Washington: Smithsonian Institution 1917,147
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., 148
17. Robert Fitz-Roy was an explorer to the Patagonian region during the 1830’s and was one of the most important authorities of the region for decades to come.