In this, the third post on my series about the redheaded giant natives of Lovelock, Nevada, we will dissect the article by Dorothy P. Dansie, published in the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, Fall 1975, titled John T. Reid's Case for the Redheaded Giants. It includes not only the quotes published by Lowe with Reid's account, and several native accounts on the redheaded Indians.
This is the full series of posts on Lovelock Cave's "giants"
Post 1 - Lovelock "giants" revisited"
Post 2 - Lovelock "giants" revisited
Post 3 - Lovelock "giants" revisited
January 2014 post mentioning Lovelock Cave.
Dansie's Article - Main points
The article tells how John Reid, a local geologist, and mine engineer, who was born nearby in Nevada, and lived out his life there, provided the two expeditions (Lowe's in 1912 and Harrington's in 1924) that explored Lovelock cave with information about the local myths. Reid, who had worked at his father's General Store in Lovelock, spoke Paiute language and was a friend of the local Native Americans. This gave him intimate knowledge about their myths, lores, and also about the cave near the town of Lovelock.
Dansie, who read his files, says that Reid mentioned that the first time he visited the site was around 1866, as a boy, in the company of Gilbert Natches (or Natchez), a relative of Sarah Winnemucca and a Paiute. Gilbert was accompanied by other natives, and the party was searching for wild horses. They camped by the cave, and Natchez told Reid the following story (highlighting is mine):
"A long time ago an indian [sic] tribe came into this country from the southward, this indian tribe was redheaded and they were very tall men, the Piutes fought them on the south and west side of the lake that the intruders crossed over the lake and into the cave, by the use of tule boats they were able to cross the lake easily. The Piutes followed, and when they found that the intruders who Natchez called "Umatilla's" [sic] but other Piutes refer to as the Pitt River or Modoc Indians, had taken refuge in the cave , then the Piutes gathered in council and decided that they would gather all of the sagebrush that they could get hold of that lay to the east of and above the cave and after placing this on the bluff above and setting it afire that they would continue to throw over lighted brush into the face of the cave until all within had perished from suffocation all the while having men so posted that any of the people within the cave trying to escape could be killed with well directed arrows. After a siege lasting several days, Natches [sic] relates that all of the intruders were killed, but other stories go on to state that the intruders were driven to the northwestward. I can only reconcile this lack of harmony in the different stories with the probable fact that where the battles took place to the southward of Humboldt Lake, it is more than probable that the intruders had their force divided into two groups', one of which went on the east side of the lake while the other went on the west side of the lake .... (MS August 8,1924, "Notes for Mr. Harrington")."
The origin of these "readheaded-giant" is relevant. Reid says that according to his Paiute friends, they came from the Southwest (as seen from Lovelock, Nevada). I prepared the following map to show the places mentioned in this text. Lovelock is the red star, in Nevada (Yellow), the southwestern direction is the Triangle to the lower left of the map, into California. Pitt River (also known as Pit River) is located in northeastern California, and flows into the Sacramento River. It runs through Modoc County. Both are mentioned by Reid as names given to these Indians by the Paiute. Interestingly (as mentioned in my previous posts), Sarah Winnemucca said these people were Tule eaters and lived on Humboldt Lake weaving tule bulrushes, living on tule islands, with tule boats. There are two lakes associated to the word tule, one is Lake Tulare, near modern Tulare and Fresno in California, now dissecated, a former lake and vast wetland fed by the snowmelt of the Sierra Nevada in California, and the San Joaquin River basin. The other in northern California has also been partly dissecated, and is located just beyond the western tip of Modoc County.
Since Modoc and Pit River are northwest of Lovelock, something does not fit. I believe that the Paiute found the Modoc tule-eaters similar to others "that came from the southwest", possibly from the region of Lake Tulare, in California (see map).
However, another story has them coming from the Modoc region as we will see below.
In this story, Reid tells us about a man named Dick Sampson, who was around 75 years old in 1924, who recalled a tale told to him by his great-grandmother about the battles between Paiute and these other (readheaded) natives. This time, we learn they came from the west, from Pit River: "She had told Sampson that those now called "Pitt River Indians" came in from the west" and that after several battles"They finally departed westward, back to Pitt River where they had come from".
They weren't redheaded either: "Sampson told Reid that he had never heard that those people whom the Paiutes killed at the cave above Humboldt Lake were redheaded, as had been stated by Chief Natchez." This ties in with the Modoc region, but depicts them as regular natives.
Reid also had other accounts by people who lived in the region. They said that the "Si-te-cah (redheaded tule-eaters) ... who escaped this confrontation were driven north towards the Pitt River."
But, unlike other versions, these tule-eaters spoke a different language; "Virginia" Jim recalled that they had called out to the Paiute "in mournful tones, " Yah-hah-nah-ho-week-ho-no," as well as he could remember it, but that he did not understand its meaning nor did the ancestors who told him of the incident. He thought it was a plea for peace."
In another story, a civil engineer named L. H. Taylor, recalled that in 1904, an old Indian told him about the fighting between the Paiute and "the people who had been in the area when the Indians came."
This suggests that these tule-eaters were the first, the original people living there before the arrival of the Paiute.
This fighting took place along Carson River (that runs from the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada south of Lake Tahoe, with a NE course into Nevada, draining into a closed basin (Carson Sink) south of Lovelock. This aligns with the SW direction mentioned further up.
The habitat of the tule-eaters was the lakes, rivers, and wetlands in west-central Nevada beyond Lake Humboldt. This idea is reinforced by another statement recorded by Reid, given by James Hunter from Lovelock, who had been told by a Paiute named Bung-Eye-Jim that: the Paiute asked other tribes of the intermuntain region for help, and they provided it, sending reinforcements to cover the Paiute losses, "to assist in an all-out effort to exterminate the enemy. Cooperation seemed assured because other tribes had exterminated the redheaded people in the surrounding territories and the antipathy toward them would lend impetus to the plan for final genocide."
The "Intermountain Region" spans California east of the Sierra Nevada, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado west of the Rocky mountains. It extends north and south between the Cascades and the Rockies (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, west Montana and Wyoming, Northern Arizona and Western New Mexico). The natives living here detested these tule-eating people. Why?
Sarah Winemmucca's red-hair dress
I have already mentioned that Sarah Winemmucca said she owned a dress made with the red hair of these defeated people. Reid had more information about this weird garment.
A native named Mr. Mah-Wee made a statement in 1927, who was around 76 years (or more) at that time. He was questioned by Reid, and the statement was witnessed by a government surveyor named John Runner. This was the statement; Reid asked the questions, Mah-Wee answered them:
"Question: Do you remember anything pertaining to a dress that Sarah Winnemucca had that was made of human hair?
Answer: I do.
Question: What was the color of the dress?
Answer: It was red.
Question: Was it a light or a dark red?
Answer: It was a brownish red.
Question: Describe this dress.
Answer: It was like a shirt dress.
Question: What became of this dress?
Answer: I do not know.
Question: How did Sarah W. Hopkins get this dress?
Answer: From the Sai-te-cah (Tule Eaters)
Question: What was the color of these people's hair?
Answer: It was reddish-brown, or a brownish-red.
Question: Did you ever talk directly to Sarah Winnemucca as to how it was that this came to be handed down to her?
Answer: We were not inquisitive and did not ask many questions as you people do as to what happened in the past, but, I remember the dress very well.
Question: How long was the hair in the dress?
Answer: It was made up of hair of various lengths, from a few inches in length to two or more feet in length.
Question: Where is Sarah Winnemucca buried?
Answer: I heard she was buried in Oregon or Idaho, or some place afar off.
(MS December 31, 1927)"
So this witness says these people had red hair, and that Winnemucca's dress existed. It would invalidate the version that the hair of the remains found in Lovelock cave was red due to aging (chemicals, exposure, etc) or ochre.
Reid also recorded that Jasper Wright had told him that about 1920 Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins was with Yellow Tail at one of the Wyoming reservations above Riverton, near Casper, and she was wearing one of the coats with red hair." Sam Dick noted in 1930 "that the Si-te-cah dressed in those coats but the Indians did not."
Another account by a Paiute called Bow-E-An (aka "Skinny Dave"), grandson of Natchez and great-nephew of Winnemucca, narrated how his father, Pas-sa Dave (aka "Captain Dave") abot "people who had lived by the Humboldt and Carson Lakes in his great-great-grandfather's time. They had reddish brown hair. He said that some of them were about the height of Paiutes, but others were very tall. These people were called Si-te-cah which means "Tule Eaters." These people lived principally upon the lakes where they had boats made of tules and upon these boats there were built thatched houses made of tules. The boats could be bound together so that the people could step from one boat to the other as on rafts. However, the boats could be detached readily. The Si-te-cah seldom left the rafts except to procure necessities such as seeds and the stones for grinding them. The Paiutes, whom they feared , kept them hemmed in for a great many years."
Captain Dave met these people and they gave him some gifts: "... beads, a moccasin made of badger skin, arrow points made of sea shell, foodstuff, and a small dog which had ears that stood up straight. The Paiutes did not have any dogs. Since the dog warned the Paiutes of anything coming from far off, they thought he was pretty smart. [he] also brought lots of different things made of mud hen skins, such as neck bands of flowing feathers, and beaver blankets... There were a great number of the redheaded people who in the early mornings and evenings made cooking fires, whereas the Indians ate most of their food raw having no regular time for building fires as did the people destined to become their mortal enemies"
This story mentions the use of dogs by the tule-eaters but not by the Paiute, and that they also employed fire, which the Paiute didn't. Strange indeed!
Tall skeleton
In 1931, Reid learned about a skeleton in the lake bed close to the cave. He dug it up, it was "a large skeleton... 7 feet 7 or 6 inches in height. The difference of one inch ... is due to the matter of being unable to determine if the toes, lying upward, had been bent or were erect" A few months later "Lloyd De La Montoya of California had discovered the skeleton of a "giant" on the lake bed near Toy." Reid measured its femora and "deduced that this man had been "nine and one half or possibly ten feet" tall." Really tall! (2.9 to 3.05 m tall)
The article includes curious information about native monster myths and Reid's theory linking these giants to Neanderthals, which I will discuss in my next post.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©
