Tennessee Pygmies

Back in 1820, in Tennessee, U.S.A., the newspapers reported that some farmers had discovered tombs containing the remains of pygmies! Of course we know there were no pygmies in Tennessee, but the reports about the tiny people refused to go away, and they persisted for decades, well into the late 1800s. Even nowadays they reappear again and again, like when the Flores Island "Hobbit" was discovered in 2004, the Tennesee pygmy resurfaced as an American relative. Let's look into the fake news of these pygmies.

The whole story is very well summarized by Kevin Smith in his article "Tennessee’s Ancient Pygmy Graveyards: The “Wonder of the Western Country" (Tennesee Archaeology, Vol. 7, No. 1, Fall 2013, p.42)↺.

The first report was published in the Nashville Whig on July 5th, 1820, reporting that Mr. Turner Lane, found between 200 and 300 small graves on his farm five miles east of Sparta, Tennessee (TN) - see spot on Google maps, the graves contained small skeletons: "skull bones, about three inches in diameter, nearly sound; the other bones being proportionally small."

John Haywoodin in his "Natural History of Tennesee..." published in 1823 (see p. 200, "Of their Pygmies") gives the account of Lane's findings adding some comments and details: "it seems to be intimated, that there hath been a race of people here in ancient times, whose height was from two feet, ten inches to three feet".

Towards the end of the book, on p. 360, Haywood reports another find:

"In 1818, Mr. Long, the proprietor of a farm on the south side of the Merimac river, fifteen miles from St. Louis, in the state of Missouri, discovered... a number of graves, the size of which appeared uncommonly small. He made a minute examination, which convinced him they were the remains of human beings much smaller than those of the present day."

However, by the 1830s, people were more critical. Robert Montgomery Bird in 1838 (Peter Pilgrim, p. 24) wrote with a more rational tone:

"The belief in the former existence of races of pygmies and giants in the Mississippi Valley is extremely prevalent in many Western communities though the visits of scientific men to the cemeteries of the former have been productive of results that have shaken the faith of many in regard to the pygmies. The celebrated graveyard on the Merameg (sic) river in Missouri was examined by some of the scientific gentlemen attached to Long's Expedition who found bones of men and infants of the ordinary Indian races in great abundance but no others. Bones from the Lilliputian graves in White County Tennessee have also been proved to belong to mortals of ordinary stature."

In a similar vein, in 1852, Dr. Samuel Morton in his Physical Type of the American Indians,in "Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the... Indian Tribes of the United States", p. 318), reports that he analyzed remains from the "pygmy Cemetery" in White County, Tennessee, and is categorical in declaring they are not pygmys at all:

"...these facts are to me an additional and convincing proof of what I have never doubted viz that the asserted Pygmies of the western country were mere children who for reasons not precisely known but which appear also to influence some communities of even our own race were buried apart from the adult people of their tribe."

In 1869, H.C. Williams wrote about them: "I think in the year 1825 in the Review a printed at Sparta the seat of justice of White County... Fiske and some other gentleman made an examination of an ancient cemetery near that town and finding no of adults came to the conclusion that the country had been by a race of pigmies. The graves were numerous covering more than an acre were generally three feet long and eighteen inches deep with a fin of slaty rocks. The bones were so much decomposed that they fell to pieces after a few moments exposure to the atmosphere."

The Smithsonian intervenes

Nevertheless, the belief in these pygmies continued (see Edward J. Wood, 1868, Giants and Dwarfs, p. 247, or Harper's Magazine, 1869, p. 208) so the Smithsonian Institution sent someone to investigate the findings, the sites and clarify the situation.

An article published by the Smithsonian Institution on January 20, 1876, (The Academy. The Tennessee Pygmies) mentions that the institution sent a person to investigate the "recent revival of the tradition... recent diggings unearthed the remains which have given origin a new to the recent reports." The search in Sparta TN where it had been said that 300 skeletons of "Tiny Folk" had been found during the past ten years only yielded "very few skeletal remains, all collected not filling more than a small box. The fragments thus sent proved on examination to be in no way abnormal... and and were evidently the remains of children between three and four years old... With the human remains forwarded were teeth of the beaver, the costal segments of a turtle, some rough pottery and broken valves of unios. These suggest the ordinary Indian sepulture"

The article says that the idea about pygmies comes from the size of the graves rather than their contents. The graves were small, 2 feet long (61 cm) and 14 inches wide (36 cm) and 12 in. deep (31 cm). They were covered with slabs of sandstone. They lie below the surface of the ground and are discovered when a farmer plows the land. Then they are removed, to clear the fields.

Another piece published in the American Naturalist, June 1876 conveys similar information:

"The following evidence that no pygmy race left their remains in this part of our country must be conclusive... Mr WM Clark employed during the last year by the Smithsonian Institution to investigate the same subject ... distinctly proves that the little slab graves are either those of children or are ossuaries... the most convincing proof brought forward from the examination of hundreds of graves that the small cists are either children's graves or ossuaries..."

Tennesee Pygmies in a Smithsonian article from 1875. Source

A publication from 1883 (Tennesee Pygmies, The Comic Liar, 1883) mocked the idea of pygmies and compared them to the finding of giant skeletons in Kentucky:

"... their discovery of a grave yard contain ing the skeletons of seventy five thousand pygmies of the average height of three feet each. What are the three nine foot giants of Kentucky in comparison with so great a cloud of pygmies. If we may judge from the price usually paid by circus managers for living giants and dwarfs a three foot dwarf is decidedly more valuable than a nine foot giant and if the same standard governs the price of fossils the seventy five thousand Tennessee pigmies are worth fully twenty five thousand times as much as the three Kentucky giants."

In 1910, Bennett H. Young published in his work The Prehistoric Men of Kentucky: A History of what is Known of Their Lives and Habits, and on p. 24, he mentions pygmies as follows "Small stone cists measuring not more than two feet in length by fifteen inches and even less in breadth, are frequently unearthed. In these the bones of the dead, after having been disarticulated, were placed in a mass. The small size of these graves in former days gave rise to the belief that the valleys of the Cumberland and Green rivers were once the home of a race of pygmies." This shows that the myth about small folks spread northwards from Tennessee into Kentucky!

The myth lives on

But old myths, like conspiracy theories seem to fascinate us, and even if proven false, they take a long time to die. Some, like this one, manage to revive based on pseudoscientific factoids.

In 1992, an online magazine (Science Frontiers Online) published a note about American Pygmies which dismisses the children bones theory and promotes genuind pygmies that somehow reached America from Asia, small folk related to the Aeta negrito people of the Philippines. It mentions a paper by Pilapil, Virgilio R. MD., (The Aetas In America, B.C.. Journal of Filipino American Historical Society, University of Hawai'i Press, Vol. 2, 1992 pp. 30-35. 🔒) about this theory, its abstract states that:

"... Among the archeological finds were also hundreds of fragmented human bones from 600 burials which were dug from sites in east Tennessee... These pygmies with small, round heads (brachycephalic) and prominent, projecting (prognathous) jaws are similar to the pygmies of the Philippines and Malaysia, who probably originated in southern Mongolia. The pygmy bones and those of the other races present in the burial were in a similar state of preservation indicating that the pygmies were contemporary with the other races. Carbon-14 dating with carbon-13 correction done on the bone collagen yielded an age of 2,160 +- 135 years, putting these pygmies at about the third century B.C..."

Another website - Archaeology General Index hosted at the University of California, Riverside, in one of its many webpage articles European Bronze Age Visitors in America ⁄ Summary of Discoveries of Dr. Barry & René Fell, says the following:

"... it is clear that the pygmies of Tennessee were of Oriental--that is to say, East Asian--origin; and since pygmies are not maritime people, they can have reached the Americas only by the land route.
They must once have been more widely dispersed than our present finds imply. However, since they reached as far east as east Tennessee, and their bones have been found in association with Europoids and inscribed artifacts of Europoid type, such as loom weights and pottery stamps, lettered in ancient Irish (noted as Celtic) and Basque [see Figs. 183, 185, 186, 187 & 189], Fell concluded that there were in fact meetings of the two races, and that therefore the European visitors could well have taken back to Europe some account of these mysterious undersized people. An inscription that Professors Heizer and Martin Baumhoff had recorded from California (Fig. 63), when deciphered as Ancient Irish ogam, seemed also to suggest that early explorers had encountered some pygmy race that they considered dangerous."

This Californian inscription "fig. 63" can be seen in this image which is captioned as follows "A traveler’s warning written in Old Irish ogam, from Inyo County, CA, Site INY-430 of Heltzer & Bassenhoff (1942). The warning states: 'The men [here] are savages, small and ill nourished, but hostile.' (Fell 1982)."

They cite: Fell, Barry. 1982. Bronze Age America. Little, Brown and Co., Boston, Toronto. 304 p.

This blends Celts, Asians, "Europids" and the Tennessee pygmies into a surreal tale, which seems to be based on flimsy facts.

Similar nonsense is posted on a 2024 webpage titled Did Miniature “Moon-Eyed” People Really Inhabit The Appalachian Mountains - Somehow, the Welsh are mixed up in this baffling myth, which suggests that the short white pygmies called "Moon-Eyed" people by the Cherokee people of the Appalachians, were Welsh miners, offspring of the men who accompanied Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd, a Welsh prince c.1170 AD.

In The Lost History of the Little People (2013), (see Chap. 7 - The Wee People among other entries on these pygmies), Susan Martinez mentions the Tennessee pygmies with a distinct culture (they used copper and pearls) that set them apart from the Amerincians, they were the mound builders, an ancient race with large eyes, sensitive to light, that built mounds and pyramids across the planet, and who, in the Appalachians were known to the native Cherokee as "little people". Farfetched? Improbable? Very likely.

Closing Comments

I must point out that the Cherokee people believed in mythical tiny people which they called yunwi tsunsdi. They were short, and reached the height of a man's knee, they had long hair, were kind and helpful, and lived in caves on the slopes of the hills, some, known as yunwi amaiyinehi, were aquatic. They resemble the beliefs of the ngen spirits of the Mapuche, stewards of the waters, and their Trauco dwarves. Perhaps humans imagine the same mythical beings time and time again, around the world, repeating the same motif as a recurring theme.

Another option is that ancient human beings encountered dwarwfish hominins like those whose remains have been found in Flores Island, or in Palau, and retained this memory in their myths and legends about dwarves, elfs, trolls, etc.

There have been proper scientific papers written about the native burials in Tennessee, like the one mentioned at the beginning of this post, and for instance: Dowd, John T. (2008). The Cumberland Stone-Box Burials of Middle Tennessee. Tennessee Archaeology 3(2):163-180. From which the following images of box-like tombs were taken, notice the sandstone sides (top is similar, but were been removed to show the interior of the graves. They were dated to around 1350 AD.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Olmecs, not African, but Oriental? or were-jaguars?

Continuing with the Olmecs, I noticed, while researching for my post about the supposed African admixture into the Olmeca people in Pre-Hispanic America, that not all sculptures and statues depicted people with African features.

I was quite surprised to see that many Olmec artifacts depicted people with a very clear East Asian appearance. In this post we will explore their artwork with non-African features, and what some scholars have written about these oriental-looking depictions.

See my two previous posts on the Olmecs: Blacks in Pre-Columbian America and Africans reached America ca. 1310 C.E.?

Jaguar Men: the were-jaguar

Those who have studied the Olmec culture find that their artwork depicts people with feline features, and this has led to the concept of a jaguar-based symbolism used by the ruling class and the religious leaders and shamans. Of course, we cannot decipher their writing, and there are no Olmecs to tell us about their beliefs. These theories are just that, conjectures.

As an example of this notion, I will quote from the following essay: Slater, F., (2010). Were-jaguars and jaguar babies in Olmec religion, Essex Student Journal 3(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.5526/esj114.

"Digs at sites such as La Venta have yielded an abundance of finds, testament to the sophistication and artistic sensitivity of this ancient culture. Of these finds, one particular type has spurred the most debate and speculation. The delicately carved and gracefully composed anthropomorphic hybrid figures, known as Were-Jaguars and Jaguar-Babies respectively, have puzzled scholars for decades....
The Jaguar Motif appears in a variety of different guises. The essential elements of the Were-Jaguar or Jaguar-Baby are, the ‘V’ shaped cleft, clawed or paw like feet or hands and a feline head with, in some cases, a tail. With Jaguar-Babies the iconography is of a greater symbolic content and is based on facial features. These include; The ‘V’ shaped cleft, large almond shaped eyes, a snarling mouth with bifurcated fangs and full down-turned lips and a broad flat nose. Different levels of ‘jaguarness’ are visible in these images, with some being unmistakeably jaguar like. Others have a much more subtle pars pro toto style, which is typical of Olmec iconography...
Whilst we can never know for certain the significance of the jaguar to Olmec religious view we can be certain of their importance. Whilst it is always difficult to assert with any confidence about the mystical practices of cultures long dead, the frequency of this motif is an excellent starting point for investigation, leading no doubt to the wealth of literature dealing with the subject. In my opinion, the Jaguar was an important symbol of the power of the natural world, as the apex predator of the surrounding area it would be natural for the jaguar to be subsumed into the iconography of any burgeoning chiefdom, which might later become the “royal house” (if such a term can be used accurately). However, the jaguar would always first and foremost be the creature that most played on the popular imagination and, before any conflation with the trappings of state, would indubitably have become a major part of the religious complex. As for the possibility of human/jaguar copulation, it is extremely difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions as to the significance of the jaguar motif, especially when it comes to the possibility of sexual intercourse. Those Monuments where copulation can be inferred - transmit just that - an inference."

Were-Jaguar Olmec figurine, 900-300 BC. Source

Down Syndrome

An article by John M. Starbuck, (2011) (On the Antiquity of Trisomy 21: Moving Towards a Quantitative Diagnosis of Down Syndrome in Historic Material Culture. the Journal of Contemporary Anthropology Research, Vol. II-1) put forward the idea that these statues depict people with Down Syndrome who were worshiped because they resembled their idea of a person which blende human and jaguar features:

"Milton and Gonzalo (1974) argue that several Olmec figurines from Meso-America dated from 1500 B.C. – 300 A.D. may depict Down syndrome. Milton and Gonzalo report that these figurines have upslanted palpebral fissures, well-marked epicanthic folds, short noses, broad nasal bridges, brachycephalic head shapes, open mouth postures, and a lower lip that is drawn downward. Kunze and Nippert (1986) have also diagnosed an Olmec figurine with Down syndrome because of the presence of slanted palpebral fissures, ocular hypotelorism, short extremities, and obesity. In addition to asserting that these figurines depict Down syndrome, Milton and Gonzalo (1974) argue that the religious beliefs of the Olmec culture may have ascribed a high status to individuals with trisomy 21 because they were thought to be the offspring of a mating between humans and the jaguar, which was the most powerful Olmec totem."

Below is an image depicting a were-jaguar, it has clear feline features, with jaguar ears, and sharp teeth in a snarling mouth. It does not look oriental, it is a man-jaguar:

Down Syndrome? Olmec figurines. Starbuck J.

Olmec figurines depicting adults

The following artworks have a very strong oriental look to them. They are not babies, but men:

Olmec Jadeite face, 900-400 BC. The Met

Olmec contortionist, Middle pre-Classical period, 900-400 BCE. Acrobat made of steatite. Source

Some believe the "Wrestler" shown below, with his mustache and goatee is a fake, a forgery that was created to resemble Olmec art. Others say it is authentic. It is remarkable as it hints at motion, and has unique features that don't look like an Amerindian at all!

The Wrestler, basalt, Olmec statue. 1,400-400 BC. Source

Lord of Las Limas, Olmec, Veracruz, 1,200-400 BC. Serpentine with pyrite eyes.

Comments

The Olmecs are better known for their gigantic Afro-looking heads, like the one shown below. The delicate and finely crafted figures with oriental features when compared with these massive and coarsely hewen heads look as if they were the creation of different societies and civilizations. This is quite intriguing. One one hand, small detailed objects, on the other 40 ton, 3 meter tall (10 ft.) colossal heads. Were they produced at different times, during different cultural periods?

Notice how the gigantic head, despite its lips, and flat nose bridge has oriental eyes!

This goes to show that a culture can display many different styles of art, even if they use the same media (stone) and that the creative inspiration in humans is vast. We'd never infer that the Olmecs were were-jaguars just because they made these statues, so why do we wonder if they were Africans that sailed to America, if we see statues with African features?

I do believe that people depict their beliefs and also portray themselves. The oriental-looking figures are not gods, or were-jaguars, they are people, people with pronounced Asian-like epicanthic folds, the skin that covers the inner corner of the eye (canthus). Interestingly, they have high nose bridges, which is not so common among East Asians. So it isn't likely that they depicted visitors from China, Japan, or Korea that sailed across the Pacific Ocean 3500 years ago. They could easily represent a Native American, who share both features. And so do the Polynesians!).

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

The mysterious lack of Olmec DNA papers

The Olmec culture flourished on the Gulf of Mexico coast (Campeche Bay) in the Tehuantepec, Veracruz, Chiapas, Tabasco region of Mexico between 1,500 BC and 100 BC. They are the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilisation, predating the Mayas and the Aztecs. (Short article on the Olmec people or this book with a section dedicated to their culture, both of them in English).

My previous posts (Blacks in Pre-Columbian America and Africans reached America ca. 1310 C.E.?) explored the weird and pseudoscientific theory that assumes as true that Black African people sailed across the Atlantic from Western Africa, reached Mesoamerica, and settled there, creating the Olmec civilization. For some examples of this theory, see: "Olmec and Mayas have distinct genetic origins", "The surprising connection between Olmecs and Africans", "African Origins of Olmec Civilization", etc.

I don't believe in conspiracy theories. Instead, I opt for believing in human ignorance, incompetence, and deliberate manipulation of information to forward certain causes and obscure legitimate ones. Nevertheless, as I sought information on the genetics (mtDNA, Y-chromosome and autosomal DNA) I quickly realized that there is little to be found. This seems to be a blank in the research of Amerindian genetics. Which, is quite surprising! (just google the terms "genetics Olmecs" and you will undertand what I mean).

The paltry papers on Olmec genetics

It is true, papers on Olmec genetics are really scarce! There are very few; I have only found the following, none of which analyzed nuclear DNA or Y-chromosome DNA, they only seem to have looked at the mtDNA, and it is unclear if the specimens analyzed were Olmec or not. Of course, none of these papers hint at an African origin, they state that the Olmecs are Amerindians, like all the other Native Americans. Below are these papers, with a brief comment on their main conclusions):

• Arnaiz-Villena A, et al., (2000). HLA genes in Mexican Mazatecans, the peopling of the Americas and the uniqueness of Amerindians. . Tissue Antigens. 2000 Nov;56(5):405-16. doi: 10.1034/j.1399-0039.2000.560503.x. PMID: 11144288.
  Old paper! "The HLA allele frequency distribution of the Mexican Mazatecan Indians (Olmec culture) has been studied and compared with those of other First American Natives and worldwide populations (a total of 12,100 chromosomes; 6,050 individuals from 59 different populations). The main conclusions are: 1) An indirect evidence of Olmec and Mayan relatedness is suggested, further supporting the notion that Olmecs may have been the precursors of Mayans..."
• Navarro-Romero MT, et al, (2021). Mitochondrial DNA Haplotypes in Pre-Hispanic Human Remains from Puyil Cave, Tabasco, Mexico, in María de Lourdes Muñoz-Moreno, and Michael H. Crawford (eds), Human Migration: Biocultural Perspectives (New York, 2021; online edn, Oxford Academic, 21 Oct. 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190945961.003.0007.
  It tells that the archaic and pre-classic individuals had The mtDNA of haplogroups A, A2, C1, C1c, and D4, haplogroup B was absent. It does not specifically mention "Olmecs" only Maya and Zoque people. But the team's next paper mentions Olmecs, see it below.
• Navarro-Romero MT, et al, (2024). Bioanthropological analysis of human remains from the archaic and classic period discovered in Puyil cave, Mexico. Am J Biol Anthropol. 2024 Jun;184(2):e24903. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.24903. Epub 2024 Feb 2. PMID: 38308451.
  It investigated "ACD" and conducted mtDNA tests, finding: "artificial cranial deformation (ACD)... These pre-Hispanic remains exhibited five mtDNA lineages: A, A2, C1, C1c and D4. Network analysis revealed a close genetic affinity between pre-Hispanic Puyil Cave inhabitants and contemporary Maya subpopulations from Mexico and Guatemala, as well as individuals from Bolivia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and China. Conclusions: Our results elucidate the dispersal of pre-Hispanic Olmec and Maya ancestors and suggest that ACD practices are closely related to Olmec and Maya practices. Additionally, we conclude that ACD has likely been practiced in the region since the Middle-Archaic Period." More or less a re-hash of the 2021 paper, but, it does mention the Olmec culture.
• Enrique Villamar Becerril, (2018) Estudios de ADN y el origen de los olmecas, Arqueología Mexicana, núm. 150, pp. 40-41.
  "The pioneering mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) study conducted on Olmec individuals, one from San Lorenzo and the other from Loma del Zapote, resulted, in both cases, in the unequivocal presence of the distinctive mutations of the maternal lineage “A”. That is to say, the origin of the Olmecs is not in Africa but in the Americas, since they share the most abundant of the five mitochondrial haplogroups characteristic of the indigenous populations of our continent: A, B, C, D, and X." These individuals had haplogroup A.
• Cyphers, Ann, (2020) El ADNMT y la descendencia olmeca, Arqueología Mexicana, Edición especial, núm. 94, p. 23. Same conclusions. It is not based on new studies, only repetition of Villamar's paper (above), mtDNA is Amerindian and not African.

The Olmecs didn't vanish into thin air, their genes must be present in the current population of this region. According to Pye and Clarke (2005), the area where the Olmec and Mokaya lived, was peopled by the Proto-Mixe-Zoque people, who differed from their neighbors, the Maya and Zapotec. The Maya would have a large impact on them when their civilization bloomed and the Olmecs vanished.

The "Ghost" population

However, a study published in Science (Viridiana Villa-Islas et al., Demographic history and genetic structure in pre-Hispanic Central Mexico. Science 380, eadd6142 (2023). DOI:10.1126/science.add6142), though it does not mention the Olmecs and only goes back to the year 100 BC., does mention the Mixe people! and adds an intriguing fact, a "ghost population" admixed into the Mixe.

"Earlier studies report the contribution of “ghost” genetic ancestry from an unsampled group, designated as UpopA, among the present-day Mixe from Mexico. We tested the presence of this UpopA in the pre-Hispanic individuals using combinations of admixture graph models... we found that Sierra Tarahumara and Mixe share the same ghost genetic ancestry, UPopA ... Finally, we ... confirmed that ... Mixe share the contribution from UpopA1... A contribution from an unsampled population named UpopA was previously identified in present-day Mixe as well as in present-day northern and central Indigenous populations from Mexico. UpopA was estimated to have diverged ~24,700 years ago from Native Americans"

The "earlier studies" mentioned above by Villa-Islas et al. refer to a paper by J. I. Moreno-Mayar et al. (2018), Early human dispersals within the Americas (Science 362, eaav2621 (2018). DOI:10.1126/science.aav2621), which says "Modeling indicates that the Mixe most likely carry gene flow from an unsampled outgroup and form a clade with Lagoa Santa... Hereafter, we refer to that outgroup as unsampled population A (UPopA), which is neither AB, NNA, or SNA and which we infer split off from NAs ~24.7 ka ago, with an age range between 30 and 22 ka ago... Under a model with a pulselike gene flow, we inferred a probability of ~11% gene flow from UPopA into the Mixe ~8.7 ka ago (95% CI, 0.4 to 13.9 ka ago)... We infer that the Lagoa Santa population diverged from the Mixe shortly thereafter, ~13.9 ka ago (95% CI, 12.8 to 14.8 ka ago)"

A "Ghost" population is one that left genetic material (DNA, mtDNA, aDNA) in a current or ancient population, but has not been sampled or, it vanished, becoming extinct leaving no remains; a ghost.

Who were these people?

The fact that they appear among the Mixe (Olmec) and the peculiar Lagoa Santa people of Brazil, who carry rare haplogroups and also seem to be associated with Australasians, is surprising.

This is something that furhter genetic research could help clarify with deeper sampling, including ancient remains, if the ghost signal belongs to allelles found at very low frequencies, a larger sample will provide more data about them and help pinpoint the ghost population's origin.

Closing Comments

It is likely that the lack of publications on the Olmec DNA is due to a shortage of funds (Mexico may not provide funding for this kind of research), not enough academic interest in this culture, or, that the jungle habitat or the poorly preserved remains don't allow collection of adequate genetic material for DNA studies. I guess it is a combination of all factors. The Aztecs and the Mayas seem to be more popular as you can see in the following image which compares web searches for Olmecs (blue), Aztecs (yellow) and Mayas (red) between 2004 and now (Google Trends). Notice the Maya peak in 2012 (when many believed that the world was going to end according to a prophecy in the Maya calendar).

Link to this Google Trends result

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

INDEX for our Trans-Pacific Contact posts: Oceania to America

For those who are interested, this is an index linked to all of our posts about the possible trans-Pacific contact or voyages between Polynesia, Oceania, Melanesia, and America, in both directions, as it also includes American voyates to Polynesia. It will help you navigate the different posts.

Updated: 26 - Dec - 2025

Index

• Tupac Inca Yupanqui's voyage to the Polynesian Islands
• Did the Polynesians or the Amerindians reach Juan Fernández Archipelago?
• The sewn canoe: a link between Amerindians and Polynesians
• Polynesian skulls found in Mocha Island, Patagonia, Chile
• The Marquesans and their Melanesian heritage
• Aboriginal New Zealand Natives (before the Maori)
• The peopling of Polynesia, an article from 1910
• The Manahune of Society Islands & Tahiti - Original Inhabitants
• Society Islands (Tahiti, Moorea) and the fair-dwarfish pre-Polynesians
• The Marianas Islands dwarf: Taotaomo’na
• Menehune, the pre-Polynesian dwarf people
• Who were the first people to reach Polynesia?
• Australia to America... via the Antarctic (Paul Rivet's Theory)
• Oceanians: Okewa in the Americas
• Molina on the "engraved stones": Oceanian (Polynesians) in Patagonia
• Palau Islands "pygmies"
• Austronesians and America: the Transpacific Route
• Polynesian - Amerindian admixture
• Polynesian - Mapuche contact: The chickens
• Neves and Pucciarelli's paper on affinities between Australians and Paleoindians
• Easter Islanders met Amerindians before 1492
• Amerindians navigated to Polynesia before the Polynesians arrived there
• Circling Antarctica and getting into America
• Homo Erectus in America - More (Melanesians)
• Pygmies of Ponape: The Chokalai

The Pacific, Polynesia and Oceania.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Tupac Inca Yupanqui's voyage to the Polynesian Islands

This series of posts has been exploring the possible trans-Pacific contacts between Polynesia, Melanesia, Australia, and South America. Until now we have looked at a West to East navigation of Polynesian or Melanesian people, in this post we will learn about the East to West route, and in particular, an expedition sent into the Pacific Ocean by the Inca ruler Tupac Yupanqui around 1470 AD.

There are several sources about this Inca voyage, and we will mention them below, but first, let's learn more about this "Inca" or "Inga" ("Ynga") as the Spaniards of the 16th century called him.

Tupac Inca Yupanqui

The Inca (King, or Emperor of the Inca Empire) Tupac Inca Yupanqui (c.1441-1493) - also Topa Inga Yupanqui and Tupa Ynga Yupanqui, was the tenth Inca to rule the empire, son of Pachacúc (also known as Pachacuti Ynga Yupanqui, or Yngayupanqui - see Murúa Chap. XVII). Although he wasn't the firstborn, his military abilities led his father to name him his successor. He ascended to the throne in 1471 and was succeeded by his son Huayna Capac.

During his reign he expanded the empire south into what is now Bolivia, northwestern Argentina and northern & Central Chile, subduing the Mapuche and setting the southern border of his empire along the Maule River in Chile (see my custom Google map). He also set out to explore the Pacific Ocean.

Tupac Inca Yupanqui. Guaman Poma (1615)

Father Acosta - 1590

José de Acosta in his Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590) was the first to suggest a trans-Pacific contact and its influence in America and its peopling:

"There is a great account in Peru of giants who came to those parts, whose bones of immense size are found today near Manta and Puerto Viejo... They say that those giants came by sea, waged war against the inhabitants of the land, and built magnificent structures... Those men... were consumed by fire that came from the sky. The Indians of Ica and Arica also tell that they used to sail to islands far to the west, and they sailed in inflated sea lion hides. So there is no lack of evidence that the South Sea was navigated before the Spanish came. Thus, we might think that the new world was inhabited by men whom the harshness of time and the force of the North Winds drove there."

See the location of Ica and Arica in my custom map, these inflated boats are far too primitive to have crossed the ocean to Polynesia, they were used by the Chango-Chinchorro people. Manta and Puerto Viejo, in Ecuador (see my map) are sites mentioned in other chronicles as places visited by traders who came from the west, navigating the Pacific Ocean. Here, Acosta depicts them as bellicose giants.

Sarmiento de Gamboa and the Voyage across the Pacific

The first source is a History of the Incas written by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (c. 1530-1592). Sarmiento de Gamboa was a Spanish explorer, navigator, historian, and cosmographer, who arrived in Mexico (Nueva España) in 1555. Two years later (1557) he moved to Peru where he had a close encounter with the Inquisition. Later he joined the expedition of Alvaro de Mendaña that in 1567 set out to explore the South Pacific Ocean in an attempt to find the Terra Australis Incognita. They discovered the Solomon Islands in 1568. The viceroy of Peru commissioned him to write a history of the Incas in 1572 (which we quote further down). In 1578, he tried to capture English privateer, Francis Drake, and ended up exploring the coast of Chile and Southwestern Patagonia all the way to the Strait of Magellan (1579). He continued onwards, to Spain, persuaded the King, Philip II to settle and fortify the Strait and returned to Patagonia in 1581, with men, women, tools, and limited supplies. He established two towns on the Strait, but after he left them, the supply ships never arrived, and the settlers died of hunger and exposure. When Thomas Cavendish sailed by them in 1587, he rescued a sole survivor and renamed the place "Port Famine" (close to what is now Punta Arenas in Chile). During his return to Europe (1584) he was captured by the British, and then by the French. Released in 1588, he returned to Spain where he was named Admiral of the Indies Fleet. He died at sea and was buried in Lisbon, Portugal.

I have quoted his journal on the navigation of Patagonia in my book and in this blog as it is very detailed and includes references about the natives and the fauna. Below I quote Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, Historia de los Incas (p.68).

"And while Tupac Inca Yupanqui was conquering the coast of Manta and the islands of Puna and Tumbes, some merchants arrived there who had come by sea from the west on rafts [balsas
sailing by sail. They told him about the land from which they came, which were islands called Avachumpi and Niñachumpi, where there were many people and much gold. And since Tupac Inca was of high spirits and high ideals, and was not content with what he had conquered on land, he resolved to try his luck at sea. But he did not readily trust the seafaring merchants, for he said that the Capac¹ should not trust so easily at first sight, because those were people who talk a lot. And to gather more information, and since it was not usual to be able to inquire about this just anywhere, he summoned a man he had brought with him on his conquests, named Antarqui, whom all these people affirmed was a great necromancer, so much so that he could fly through the air. Tupac Inca asked him if what the seafaring merchants said about the islands was true. Antarqui replied, after careful consideration, that what they said was true, and that he would go there first. And so it is said that he went by his own means, and explored the path and saw the islands, their people, and their riches, and upon returning, he gave Tupac Inca confirmation.
With this certainty, he resolved to go there. And for this purpose, he built a great many rafts, on which he embarked more than twenty thousand chosen soldiers. And he took with him as captains Huaman Achachi, Cunti Yupanqui, Quihual Tupac (these were Hanan-cuzcos) and Yancan Mayta, Quisu Mayta, Cachimapaca Macus Yupanqui, Llimpita Usca Mayta (Hurin-cuzcos); and he took his brother Tuca Yupanqui as general of the entire fleet, and left Apu Yupanqui with those who remained on land.
Tupac Inca sailed and discovered the islands of Avachumpi and Niñachumpi, and returned from there, bringing back black people, much gold, and a brass chair, and a horse hide and jawbone. These trophies were kept in the fortress of Cuzco until the time of the Spaniards. This horse hide and jawbone were kept by a principal Inca, who is still alive and gave this account. When the others corroborated it, he was present and is called Urco Huaranca. I emphasize this because those who know something about the Indies will find it a strange and difficult-to-believe case. Tupac Inca Yupanqui took more than nine months on this journey, others say a year, and because he took so long, everyone thought he was dead, but to disguise and pretend that they had news of Tupac Inca, Apu Yupanqui, his captain of the people of the land, made celebrations; although later they were interpreted in reverse, saying that those celebrations were of pleasure, because Tupac Inca Yupanqui did not appear; and it cost him his life.
These are the islands that I, in the year sixty-seven, on the thirtieth of November, discovered in the South Sea, two hundred and some leagues west of Lima, on my way to the great discovery of which I reported to the governor and licentiate Castro. And Alvaro de Mendaña, general of the navy, refused to take them.
After Tupac Inca disembarked from the discovery of the islands, he went to Tumipampa to visit his wife and son and prepared to go to Cuzco to see his father, who he was told was ill... "

1. Capac originally meant "rich", but later it was used to denote the lord, prince, high, the rich monarch of the Inca people.

Analysis and comments

Manta, and the Islands of Puna and Tumbes, and Cusco can be seen in our custom Google Map, in northern Peru and western Ecuador.

Sarmiento de Gamboa heard the account firsthand, from a person named Urco Huaranca who appears to havet taken part of the expedition. The trophies had been stored in the Inca Temple in their capital city, Cusco, and had also been seen by the witnesses. However, the Spaniards, with Christian zeal, razed the temple, looted the precious metals and burnt the relics.

This voyage took place before the death of Pachacutec (1471), possibly in 1468-70 so Urco Huaranca must have been extremely old to have sailed with Tupac Inca Yupanqui. It is likely that Sarmiento de Gamboa interviewed Urco Huaranca in 1557, and that Huaranca was young, probably a shield bearer when he sailed, meaning that he was born around 1458 so he'd have been 99 years old in 1557.

I also wonder if this story, and the chance to find gold and silver inspired the South Seas voyage conducted by de Mendaña in which Sarmiento de Gamboa took part, as a captain. They must have imagined that the islands were closer to Peru than they really were.

The Version of Miguel Cabello de Valboa

There is a second version of the oceanic voyage by Miguel Cabello de Valboa (or Balboa) see p. 322, Chapter XVII in Miscelánea Antártica, written between 1576 and 1586, and published in the 20th century. de Valboa (1535-1608) was a Spanish clergyman and writer, great nephew of Vasc Nuñez de Balboa, the man who discovered the Pacific Ocean. His sources differed frmo those used by Sarmiento de Gamboa, yet both stories are very similar. Below is an image with the pertinent text, and further down, its translation into English.

The text shown above, can be seen below, translated into English:

"...and he settled in Manta, and in Charapoto, and in Piquaza… it was where King Topa Inca first saw the Sea, which, upon discovering it from a high place, he worshipped in a very profound way, and called it Mammacocha, which means mother of the lagoons, and he had prepared a great number of the boats that the natives used (which are certain remarkably light poles) and by tying them tightly together, and making on top a certain platform of reeds, woven, it is a very safe and comfortable boat: These we have called rafts [balsas], for having gathered a sufficient number for the people he intended to take with him, and having taken from the natives of those coasts the most experienced pilots he could find, he set sail with the same vigor and spirit as if he had experienced its fortunes and trades since birth. On this voyage he traveled farther than one might easily believe; those who recount the deeds of this valiant Inca affirm with certainty that he remained at sea for a period of a year, and they say that he discovered certain islands which they called Hagua Chumbi and Nina Chubi; whether these islands are in the South Sea (on whose coast the Inca embarked) I will not dare to state definitively, nor what land might be presumed to have been found on this voyage. The accounts that the ancients give us of this voyage are that he brought back from there black Indian captives, and much gold and silver, and also a brass chair, and hides of animals such as horses, and from where such things can be brought, it is completely unknown in this Peru and in the sea that extends from it..."

The Inca grandchildren's account

A third reference is the testimony of Tupac's grandchildren in written in 1569 and published by Rowe in 1985 (La Probanza de los Incas nietos de conquistadores), who as proof of their relationship with the Inca mention his conquests and confirm he discovered "aba chumbi, nina chumbi, province that is towards the sea." Since this predates the other chronicles, it is surely based on historic facts, and different sources too!

Murúa's Account

The fourth source was written by friar Martín de Murúa (1525-c.1617) in his Historia General del Peru that he concluded in 1612, (see Chap. XXI) where he mentions a successful military campaign undertaken by Tupa Inga. He was sent by his father (Murúa names him as Inca Yupanqui) while he was still a prince. This is his account:

" Inca Yupanqui ordered his son and heir, who was to succeed him as ruler, named Tupa Inca Yupanqui, to go to war with a very large army, and so he dispatched him...
Tupa Inca Yupanqui and his brothers left Cuzco with a large army from different nations, and began their conquest in the province of the Quechua... and in the province of the Angares... in the province of Jauja... the province of Huailas... and in the Chachapoyas... and then the province of the Cañares... Continuing his conquest, Tupa Inca Yupanqui arrived at the very powerful province of Quito, where there were great skirmishes and battles with its people, but in the end he defeated and subdued them... From there he went down to the Huancas Vilcas, where he built the fortress of Huachalla, and from there he began the conquest of the Huancas Vilcas, and although difficult, through the multitude of his people and the courage and industry of his captains he subdued them, and their principal leaders, Huacapi Huamo and Manta Yucara and Quisiri to Huachumpi and Nina Chumpi"

The last words of this quote mention the "Polynesian" islands recorded by Sarmiento de Gamboa, Cabello de Valboa, and the Inca grandchildren, with a different spelling, but same sounds: "Huachumpi and NinaChumpi" as the last territories to be subdued after the defeat of the local chiefs in Huancavila. But it says nothing about an oceanic voyage.

Joan de Santa Cruz

The final reference is a historic chronicle by Joan de Santa Cruz, whose Inca name was Pachacutec Yamqui Salcamaygua, written in 1613. He was a christianized native, from a noble Inca family; his paternal family name was originally Condorcanqui. He wrote a history of Peru, and regarding our Inca voyager, there is an interesting text published in Tres Relaciones Peruanas (1879) p. 274.

Joan de Santa Cruz, in a similar way to Sarmiento de Gamboa and de Valboa, he writes about the 8th Inca, "Pachacutiyngayupangui" and mentions his military expedition, naming places jist like Murúa did but in this case the Inca is not Tupac, but his father, who "finally, at the Ancoallos enters the mountains deep inside, taking their idol, and from there the said Pachacutiyngayupangui returns with a great sum and abundant gold and silver and umiña [emeralds]. And coming thus, he arrives at an island of the Yungas where there were mothers of pearls, called churoy-mamam; and he finds much more umiña. And from there he went to the town of the province of Chimo, where he found Chimocapac and Quirutome, curaca of that province of the Yungas."

The "Yungas" was a word used by the Incas to name lowlanders, people who lived on the coast, or in the hollows of valleys (Source), the highlanders were "Serranos". The yungas in this case is the land between Trujillo (Chimu) and Tumbes, along the coast of the Pacific Ocean.

The same Inca conducted another campaign towards the South (Arequipa), "and he entered Cuzco and celebrated, and then they say that he brought into Cuzco a great sum of silver and gold and a whale."

So, in this narrative, we have the Inca, his expedition, but the inca isn't Tupac Yupanqui, instead, it is his father Pachacutui. Who reaches the Yungas with gold, silver and mother pearl, and on a second campaign has a triumph when he returns to Cusco with gold, silver, and the bones or remains of a whale (the horse in the chronicles of Gamboa and Valboa!).

The Polynesian Merchants and Giants

The merchants mentioned in Sarmiento's history are also described in an ancient myth of the Yungas people. Pedro Gutiérrez de Santa Clara (c.1522-1603), was born in Mexico, a creole with a Native American mother; he reached Peru in 1543 and wrote about the Civil War raging there between Pizarro and his associate Almagro over the spoils of the Inca empire. Finally settled in 1554 when the Spanish Crown created the viceroyalty of Peru. In his work Historia de las Guerras Civiles del Perú (Vol. III, Chap. LXI, p. 527) he describes balsa rafts, and the myth of their origin:

"The Indians of the towns of Paita and Puerto Viejo de Tumbes, and of the island of Apuna Puná, and those of the entire coast, have used, since time immemorial and still use today, rafts made of light, dry wood and reeds with triangulated lateen sails and a rudder at the stern. When they want to fish, they board them and go out to sea more than four leagues with the sails set. When the land breeze comes, they catch a fish, pluck out its eyes, and eat it without any disgust...
And after midday, when the tide came in, they returned to land with their sails set and their rafts laden with many kinds of fish. They say further that this way of sailing was learned from their ancestors, and that they, in turn, learned it from a man who had come by sea and arrived there on a raft with sails like the ones they use now. And that this man was called Viracocha, which means sea foam or sea butter, and that the sea begot him and that he had neither father nor mother, and since later the Spaniards arrived in these lands in ships, they are called Viracocha to this day. And that this same man spent a long time among their ancestors, teaching them good doctrine and law, and that afterwards they did not know where he had gone, and that he was a good man, and that he spoke like them; it is understood by the Spaniards that he must have been some disciple of the disciples of the Lord, who passed through here preaching to them."

Viracocha, is similar to the man-god Quetzalcoatl of the natives living in Central America and Amalivaca, of the Orinoco indians. He came from the sea, civilized the natives, and then vanished returning to the sea.

Amerindian Balsa rafts were formidable vessels, the story above says they navigated over 4 leagues into the into the Pacific (22 km or 14 mi.). Below is an engraving (See it online), from 1742, showing a balsa in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

de Santa Clara (see p. 566) also mentions the story of the "giants" who arrived in boats from the West, but gives more details than father Acosta gave:

"The very ancient and old Indians who lived in Puerto Viejo, which are those of the province of Manta, said that in ancient times, when Topa Inca Yupanqui reigned, that while that land was at peace, it was all thrown into turmoil by the arrival of a great number of giant Indians, who were of unusual height and size. And that these came in very large boats or rafts, made of reeds and dry wood, which bore triangulated lateen sails, coming from the direction where the sun sets and from the Moluccas Islands, or the Strait of Magellan, and that these, entering the land, began to tyrannize it, conquering some lands and killing many Indians, and driving others out of their villages. The natives of Puerto Viejo, when they saw these aliens arrive with such great fury and pride, and how they treated them so badly, and how they could not defend themselves against them, were filled with great fear, for which reason they immediately sent word by post to Topa Inca Yupanqui, who at that time was in the city of Cuzco..."

The Inca sent his warlords to tell the giants to submit or they would all be killed, they spoke by signs, and the giants surrendered and told their story:

"These giants told the natives of this land how they had come from some very large islands and lands in the southern sea towards the west, and that they had been cast out of them by a great Indian lord who lived there, who was as large and of stature as they were. And furthermore, that they had sailed the sea for many days by oar and sail, and that a certain squall or storm had cast them into those parts, without knowing where they were going but that fortune would take them wherever it wished, and that they were better off being subjected in foreign lands than free in their own, with continuous wars as they had had there, and so they said other things. The weapons with which these people fought were very large stones, which they threw with their hands, and each stone killed an Indian if it hit him, and with knotted sticks and clubs that they made after they arrived on land, because they did not bring any weapons, because their enemies took them from them by defeat... These gave great news of the many islands they had seen in this South Sea..."

Then they were given land to settle at punta de Tangarata, later named Santa Elena by the Spaniards, it lacked water so the idea was that they die of thirst or leave, but they found water and stayed there. Lacking women, they released their natural instincts by becoming sodomites and God punished them with a ball of fire. Some managed to survive.

Polynesian Rafts

Did the Polynesians have rafts similar to those used by the South American natives? Yes, they did. We have mentioned their sewn-plank canoes and outriggers, but they also used rafts. Frederick William Christian mentions them (Source, see p.200): "The Pahi or raft-boat, which somewhat resembled the Balsa of ancient Peru, and the catamarans of the Chatham Islands, also called Pahi by the natives, the construction of which allows the water to wash through the body of the vessel..." Below is an image of a raft seen in the Mangareva Islands (See Captain F.W. Beechey's voyages in the mid 1820s, and his book, which includes this image); see Mangareva in my custom map. Compared to the South American raft it looks rather primitive, but it shows that large rafts were built in Eastern Polynesia.

F. W. Christian (1932) also noted that these rafts may have had a Peruvian influence: "the well-attested fact of the use by the Mangarevans of a large raft-canoe of non-Polynesian model, is just as decisive evidence in its way, of an alien culture - contact as that of the presence of the outrigger - canoe in Chiloe Island." Evidently Christian favored a two-way trans-Pacific interaction between Polynesia and South America.

Trade between South America and Eastern Polynesia would account for cultural exchange such as the Mapuche chickens, the use of ceremonial adzes, and the dispersal of sweet potato from South America to Polynesia and Melanesia (see this paper about the sweet potato).

The Inca people usd knots tied on strings as a mnemonic technique, they were called Quipu, an identical method was used in Polynesia, and it was found in Hawaii (source) and also in the Marquesas as a memory aid where it was known as too mata (source p.117).

Mythical Tupa in Mangareva and Rafts

Several sources mention a paper by F. W. Christian, published in 1924 (Early Maori Migrations as Evidenced by Physical Geography and Language. Report of the 16th Meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science. Wellington, NZ. p.525) which says that a Mangarevan natives' myth mentions "a chief called Tupa, a red man,... came from the east with a fleet of canoes of non-Polynesian model, more like rafts." Another local account recorded by Peter H. Buck, Peter, 1938 (Ethnology of Mangareva. Bulletin of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum Vol. 157. Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu. p.22), is the following: "An important visitor to Mangareva was Tupa... [he] had a brother, Noe, by a different mother. The two brothers landed at an island named Te Rohau. Tupa killed Noe during a quarrel over who should have Mangareva... the body of Noe was placed on a raft (take take)... Tupa... came to Temoe and built a marae [marae = "temple", "altar"], but finding no food, he sailed on... Tupa sailed to Mangareva through the southeast passage subsequently named Te Ava-nui-o-Tupa (Great Channel of Tupa)... Tupa had many gods and it was he who tahught the people about them. Before he returned to Hiva [Hiva = "distant lands"], he told the Mangarevans about a vast land named Havaiki and Takere-no-te-henua which contained a large population ruled by powerful kings."

This visit took place during the 14th Century (this wold place him in Mangareva 100 years earlier than Tupac Inca's voyage). Interestingly, on page 288, Buck mentions that only the Mangarevans did the rafts take the place of canoes, and gives a detailed desceription of their features (p. 281).

The Opinion of Experts

I read Kon Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl (1914-2002) when I was a child, and its black and white pictures of the balsa wood raft crossing the Pacific were fascinating! Heyerdahl was the first to test the feasibility of his theory, in 1947, by crossing the Pacific ocean from Peru to the Raroia (Tuamotu) using the wind and oceanic currents. He wrote several books and in one of them, Seafaring in Early Peru (1996), written book in both English and Spanish, he looked into rafts, and also mentioned the Tupa myth in Polynesia, and suggested that Mangareva in the Marquesas was the spot viisited by Tupac Inca.

José Antonio Salas García in his thorough and excellent work Travesías Ultramarinas de Tupac Yupanqui (Tupac Yupanqui's Overseas Voyage), Ernst & Young, 2024, suggests that the Inca Tupac used the Polynesian merchants as pilots, and was driven by the oceanic current across the Pacific, and used the counter-current to return. That the balsa wood had been impregnated (palm oil, wax) using a technique known to the Ecuadorian natives, to keep them from becoming waterlogged. That he reached the Marquesas Islands (Mangareva), on their return trip the went by Rapa Nui. The gold and silver were taken by his Generals during military campaigns against the Chimu, the mother pearl could be Polynesian or Ecuadorian, and the hide and bones were either of a whale or a seal. Finally, the "black" people were captives, who were called "yana" in Quechua language, which means "servant" or "slave", and later after the Spanish conquest, it was applied to African slaves, hence its other meaning, "black".

Clements R. Markham (Historia del Peru, 1895, p.34) mentions the navigation and suggests that the islands Tupac visited were the Galapagos: "Yupanqui advanced from Quito to Manta, following the coast north of Guayaquil, and according to Bilbao [sic], he gathered a large number of rafts with which he undertook new conquests. He reached the islands of Nina Chumpi and Hahua Chumpi, which mean Island of Fire and Outer Island. If this curious tradition can be believed, it is likely that these are the Galapagos Islands." Markham had already suggested this in his Discovery of the Galapagos, published in The Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, Vol 14, No. 5, May 1892 p, 314 identifying them and using the meaning of their Quichua names: "... and discovered two islands which he named Nina chumpi and Hahua chumpi Chumpi means a girdle or encircled space in Quichua hence an island Nina means fire and Hahua outside The Fire Island and the Outer Island Albemarle and Narborough Islands it is supposed With regard to Nina chumpi there is later evidence of the activity of Galapagos volcanoes In 1546 smoke was seen issuing from a crater Darwin saw a small jet of smoke issuing from the summit of one of the craters in 1836."

The Galapagos have a volcano, several islands, but no gold, silver, or inhabitants (see this paper that states they were uninhabited until their discovery by the Spaniards in 1535).

José Antonio del Busto in his work "Tupac Yupanqui" offers two different alternative explanations. The first is that the balsa fleet sailed to the Galapagos Islands. The "bronze" chair could have come from Colombia, where the locals used an alloy that the Spaniards called "tumbaga" that blended gold and copper (and sometimes silver), it was unknown in Peru. The horse head could have been a seal head, a rare thing for a highlander Inca ruler to have seen before, and the black people could have been the dark people seen by Balboa in the Gulf of San Miguel, the Carecuá people (see my post on the "black Indians" that Balboa encountered there). The second is that they reached Polynesia where they captured some Melanesians, the bones and hide belonged to pigs, and the gold, and the bronze chair, absent in Polynesia (no metals there), was obtained on the Colombian coast, when the returned.

Final Comment

This post closes the series on Trans-Pacific contact in Prehistoric America and Polynesia. The index to all of these posts will be posted tomorrow.

Merry Christmas!

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Did the Polynesians or the Amerindians reach Juan Fernández Archipelago?

The Juan Fernandez Archipelago lies roughly 80°W and 33.5° S, around 700 km west of Santiago de Chile (435 mi.), there are two islands, named for a famous castaway and the character he inspired: Alexander Selkirk Island to the west, and Robinson Crusoe Island to the east.

They were discovered by chance in 1574 when Juan Fernández set sail from Callao, Peru to Chile and decided to avoid the doldrums along the coastal route which extended the voyage duration to up to six months. He sailed west, and then south, shortening the trip to only 30 days, and discovered the Juan Fernandez Archipelago and the islas Desventuradas (Unfortunate Islands) 26°19'S and 80°W.

They were uninhabited, and soon became a stopover on the voyage from the Strait of Magellan to Polynesia. They offered water, food, and vegetation that helped restore the ailing mariners.

Over the following centuries, they were settled and abandoned by Spaniards, Chileans, Peruvians, they faced occupation attempts by the French and British, until finally, they became a Chilean National Park and an UNESCO Biosphere reserve. Work is in progress to protect its endangered fauna and flora, endemic and unique, that has been under siege due to the introduction of goats, cats, rabbits, cows, dogs, and foreign plants. See this book by Vicuña Mackenna (1883) on the island's history.

The question of pre-European discovery and settlement has been addressed, and a paper details the work by Atholl Anderson et al., (2002): Archaeological exploration of Robinson Crusoe Island, Juan Fernandez Archipelago, Chile, January 2002, New Zealand Archaeological Association.

They did not find any artifacts showing the presence of pre-European people on the island, but they found charcoal that is older than 1574, the discovery date of these islands. Fire is always a suggestion of human activity, even though it can occur due to natural reasons (lightning strikes in a dry environment with combustible plant material).

At Cumberland bay, the most sheltered area of the island, and one close to the largest expanse of flat ground in the abrupt island, the authors found charcoal "below the level of modern and historical artefactual remains these suggest that there have been forest firing in the pre-European , around the late first millennium and early second millenium AD. While interesting and potentially significant, they do not provide a strong indication of prehistoric occupation in the absence of cultural remains or of any horizon of charcoal, burnt rocks, etc."

The dates in the table 2 of this paper give these charcoal remains the following dates: 1340 ± 40 AD, 1010 ± 170, and 640 ± 210. The authors say that until the rockshelters are excavated nothing more can be said about prehistoric presence in the islands Nevertheless they consider it unlikely due to several reasons: the great distance from the main Eastern Polynesian bases, a vast ocean with no islands (Only Rapa Nui to the west), and for South American sailors, strong easterly head winds and choppy sea. The conclude "As in the case of remote western islands of Polynesia, occupation was likely to have been either very brief (Norfolk Island) or absent (Lorde Howe Island)."

Robinson Crusoe Island. Source

I am curious why the paper shows a midden at La Vaquería, when it mentions the island sites that they analyzed, but does not mention it in the text. Midden is a dump of refuse, of ancient domestic garbage, coastal midden piles are mainly sea shells piled up by those who consumed them, and accumulated over hundreds, even thousands of years. The term may also apply to more recent dumps or heaps, containing potsherds, bricks, etc.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

The sewn canoe: a link between Amerindians and Polynesians

The Chumash natives that lived in the Santa Barbara Channel area, near what is now Los Angeles, California, U.S., (see map) built sea-worthy canoes called "Tomol", made with sewn planks of wood.

The word Tomol means "House of the Sea". (Source). The Chumash fashioned the planks from the logs of redwood driftwood which they curved using hot water (a clay pit, filled with water into which hot stones were placed, causing it to boil). They drilled holes along the planks' edges and used cord to lash them together. They caulked it with a blend of pine pitch and tar called "yop" (La Brea tar pits are very close to the sea in Los Angeles). (Source). The Chumash died out around 1850.

The Chumash used the tomol to reach the Channel Islands that are 34 km - 21 mi. from the mainland, and for deep-sea fishing. As the islands in that area were populated around 10,000 years ago, and that would have required sea-going watercraft, it is likely that these canoes are an ancient technology.

A paper by Brian Fagan (2004), The house of the sea: an essay on the antiquity of planked canoes in Southern California. American Antiquity, No. 69+1, p.7) argues they were first built around 8,500 years ago. There is no surviving specimen, though a replica was built (pictured below) based on notes taken by anthropologist John Peabody Harrington from information provided by a Chumash informant, Fernando Librado (1804-1915) who had seen them during his youth.

Chumash tomol (plank canoe) built under the direction of Fernando Librado Kitsepawit for J. P. Harrington : 1912. Source

They were big canoes with several planks used on the side of the hull. Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who navigated up the coast of California in 1542 wrote a journal and said the canoes he encountered in what is now Ventura, CA, were "Very good canoes, each of which held twelve or thirteen Indians". Impressed by them and their number, Cabrillo called the village there, "Pueblo de las Canoas" (Canoes Village).

Polynesian influences?

The idea was first proposed by Alfred Kroeber in 1939 in his work Cultural and natural areas of native North America (p. 44-45). I cite him below, the underlined text is my highlighting.

"There is a definite climax in this area among coast and island Gabrielino and Chumash, whose culture was semimaritime, with seagoing plank canoes. Although this climax culture was likely to have been further developed locally once it had taken root on the Santa Barbara Islands, its spontaneous origin on the mainland coast and growth to the point where it could reach the islands are hard to understand on the basis of either a Californian or a Sonora-Yuman culture basis. There is therefore a possibility that its impetus came in part either from the Northwest Coast or from across the Pacific, to both of which regions there are sporadic but fairly specific parallels: harpoon, canoe, round shell fishhooks, psychological cosmogony."

Some, however, consider that the know-how was a local development and not imported from Polynesia (see Meroz), furthermore, the date suggested by Fagan is roughly 8,000 years older than the first Polynesian migrations into the Pacific Islands. They predate the appearance of the Polynesians. Arnold also says they are not Polynesian, and preceed them, but places their creation date around 600 AD.

In my opinion there is another alternative: The tomol planks were sewn together using pairs of holes lashed individually. The Polynesians used a continuous sewing, so they differ. However, the Western Polynesians (Samoa) and Melanesians used discontinuous sewing. This suggests the technology used by the Chumash was Melanesian! (Source). This leaves the door open for an early Melanesian trans-Pacific voyage, even 8,500 years ago.

Let's take a look at the Polynesian and Melanesian sewn-plank canoes.

The Polynesian sewn-plank canoes

In 1846, the British government sent a warship, the HMS Grampus, commanded by Captain Henry Byam Martin to investigate the French annexation of the Society Islands. Martin, during his stay in Papeete, Tahiti, in February 1847, Martin wrote about a double canoe made of sewn planks he had seen in Taonoa, two miles from Papeete, which had sailed from what now are the Tuamotu Islands (Pomotoo):

"I walked to Taonoa to see a remarkable double canoe from the Pomatoo islands. It is in fact 2 canoes joined together. Each is about 50 feet long by 5 broad. There is not a nail in them. The logs of which they are constructed are sewn together with bark —and the jOinings are close & neat. The upper works or gunwales are of matting. She is schooner rigged with her masts stepped on the thwarts or connecting boards and I am told these craft stand a great deal of bad weather. Thirty eight persons crossed in her from Pomotoo—about 250 miles."

Below is an image showing it (Source):

Plank Canoe in Tahiti, 1847. Capt. Martin

Abraham Fornander reported in 1880 (see p. 8) that Rev. J. Williams, saw in Tahiti, in 1819, a "large canoe planked up and sewed together whose hold was twelve feet deep" (3.6 m) it had sailed 700 mi. (1,125 km).

Clearly, the Polynesians had mastered the art of building sewn-plank boats. But, what about the Melanesians?

Melanesian Sewn-Plank Canoes

S. Percy Smith, in his work Hawaiki the Whence of the Maori... (see p. 157), published in 1897, described the Alia canoe of the Melanesians:

"The alia is a double canoe and was thus described to me by Mr Kennison a boat builder in Savāi'i. "The biggest canoe of the two is sometimes as much as one hundred and fifty feet in length each end tapers out to nothing; the second canoe is not nearly so long as the first. They sail fast and like the Malay proas, do not go about in beating, but the sheet of the sail is shifted from bow to stern instead. There is a platform built between the two canoes, and both ends are decked over for some distance - the platform a house is usually erected. These double canoes will turn to wind ward very well. The canoes are built up of many slabs joined together with great neatness, and each plank is sewn to the next one with sinnet, which passes through holes bored in a raised edge on the inside of each plank." It was in this kind of canoe that the voyages of the Samoans and Tongans were made... Other accounts I obtained say that the alia was a Tongan design originally, and that the Samoans copied it from them. Again, it is said that the Tongans derived their model of the canoe from Fiji, which brings us back to this: That it probably originated with the ancestors of Maori and Rarotongan... who formed as I believe a distinct migration into the Pacific."

In their excellent book Canoes of Oceania (1938), A.C. Haddon and James Hornell mention (p. 39) that the Melanesians of Solomon Island built four varieties of sewn plank canoes: the mon, lisi, ora, and binabina, none of which had outriggers. The plank-built canoe of these islands did not use sails, they were propelled with oars or paddles, showing that they were primitive.

Haddon, in Vol II - The canoes of Melanesia, Queensland, and New Guinea, goes into many details about the watercraft of this region. It is worth noting that he mentions the Melanesians at Nukumanu atoll (p.69) using driftwood planks (like the Chumash!) sewn together, that could carry up to 20 men. At San Cristoval, they were 30 to 40 ft. long (9 - 12 m), with three strakes (a continuous, longitudinal course of planks along the side of a vessel), and inlaid with shells (coincidentially, the Chumash canoes also had shell inlays - Source). Some could carry 90 men. The text includes the following image with two varieties of sewn-plank canoes from San Cristoval

Plank Canoes of San Cristoval, Melanesia. Haddon

Based on the theories of the late 1930s, Haddon and Hornell suggest that the "kava-people" (here they follow Paul Rivet's theory that mentions them as late arrivals in Melanesia) introduced canoes into Melanesia, they originally used dugouts (canoes made by hollowing out a tree trunk), then improved them and made them more seaworthy by adding strakes and that "this improvement may have led to the evolution of a plank-built boat, in which the original dugout underbody has been reduced to a mere keel." Adding that the "true plank-built boat with inserted rib-frames fastened to cleats on the strakes was employed only sporadically in western Oceania; it had its origin in Indonesia and so can not be regarded as a local development. We consider that it belonged to one of the later spreads from the west into Polynesia."

It is evident that the authors don't consider the Melanesians as capable of developing the sewn-plank knowhow on their own and required a more "civilized" input from Indonesia. I disagree.

The Patagonian Chonos

Not much is known about these people because they became extinct by the mid 1700s. European disease killed them all. The Chono lived south of Chiloe island, in Chile, along the Patagonian coast of the Guaitecas Islands, Taitao Peninsula and the Guayanecos Islands, up to the Gulf of Penas.

They lived in their canoes, the Dalcas. They fished, hunted sea lions and collected shellfish. Their boats were their livelihood.

Dalca: the sewn-plak canoe

The first to mention them was Francisco de Ulloa, who in 1553, sailed south along the Chilean Patagonian coast. In the Chonos Archipelago (45°S) they saw a canoe, on land, "made made of three planks, very well sewn together, 24 to 25 feet (7 meters) long, and the seams had been treated with a bitumen that they make... they were like shuttles with very high tips. (Source).

The Dalca canoe of the Chonos was built with three to five wooden planks which were sewn together with vegetable fibers. They used the wood of the larch (alerce) tree (Fitzroya cupressoides) which was light and did not rot. The split the trunks lengthwise with wedges into planks. They soaked and fired the planks to bend them into shape, and then perforated the holes used to sew them.

Dalca planks. Source

One, conserved at the Stockholm Folkens Museum Etnografiska in Sweden measures 4.26 x 1.00 x 0.51 m (13.9 x 3.3 x 1.6 ft.). There are Spanish accounts of canoes carrying 15 oarsmen and measuring 10 meters (33 ft.) long. They had a rudder, ribs, benches and sometimes masts. They were large like the Chumash Tomols or the Samoan canoes.

A "Dalca", made from sewn planks by the Chonos of Chile

The spaces between the planks were caulked with the leaves of a local plant. There was no tar in the area and no pine pitch to fill the gaps.

José Toribio Medina in his "Aboríjenes de Chile" (1882) quotes Father Diego de Rosales (p. 193) who in the mid 1600s described them as follows:

"They made them from just three boards sewn together, and cut the planks to the length they wanted for the canoe, and with fire between some lockers they bent them as needed to make a boat with a stern and bow, and the one that serves as the floor raises the point at the front and back more than the others so that it serves as the bow and stern, and the rest as the keel. The other two boards, arched with fire, serve as sides, with which they form a long and narrow boat, joining some planks with others and sewing them with the bark of some wild reeds called culeu, crushed from which they make some twisted ropes that do not rot in the water. And to sew the planks they open holes in correspondence with fire and after they are sewn they caulk them with the leaves of a tree called fiaca or teroa which are very viscous and they put maqui bark on top and in this way they make canoes capable of carrying two hundred quintals of cargo [1 quintal = 100 pounds ~46 kg]. They have one in the stern who steers it with a paddle or oar and eight or ten oarsmen and one who is always pumping or bailing with a tray because they are always taking on water."

I have not found any information on the sewing technique, was it continuous or one-on-one? The original dalcas were made to last, and since making a long cord is complicated, it is probable that they used short cords to tie the plank-holes together in a discontinuous way. Later, during historic Spanish conquest times (1700s), inspired by the Europeans, and using iron axes, they made larger ones, and also dalcas that could be taken apart to portage them. They probably acquired European ropes for longer continuous sewing because fewer knots would quicken the process of taking the canoes apart and sewing them together again after the portage. If so, Melanesian, Chumash and Chono canoes were sewn in a manner different to the Polynesian plank canoes.

Discussion

The Chonos lived close to Mocha Island, mentioned in a previous post as a possible beachhead for trans-Pacific voyagers. Another interesting point is that the Chumash and the Chonos despite being 9,900 km apart - 6,150 mi. (in a straight line) or 9,901.62 km (6,152.58 mi) or 12,200 km (7,600 mi) if you take a coast-hugging route, shared the same mtDNA, the D4H3a variety (See my 2014 post mtDNA D4H3a haplogroup): " the D4h3a tends to have a coastal distribution along the Pacific Ocean from Canada to Tierra del Fuego: Canada, California, Ecuador, Southern Chile and Argentina. The Yaghan, Alakaluf, Chono, Cayapa, Chumash, and the man from On Your Knees Cave, all had this haplogroup. They all built sea-going craft: rafts, dugout canoes, bark canoes and "sewn plank" canoes."

However, the D4h3a mtDNA haplogroup is not present in Melanesia. It is found in East Asia. We could suppose that the navigators were a group of men, who traveled without women. Or, if they did, the imprint they left in the local genetic pool was small, and got diluted over the following millennia. The same can be said about their Y-chromosome influence on the local Amerindians.

Regarding plank-canoes, Robert Heizer (1942) is categorical and denies any Polynesian influences in the American sewn-plank canoes: "We may conclude with the summary statement that the Chilotan dalca and the Santa Barbara tomolo, in the light of present information, are each ascribable to local and independent origin."

Could people in different parts of the world develop the same technology independently? Yes, it is very likely. Human minds think in a similar way and find similar solutions to problems (hunting, fishing, farming, etc.)

Could Melanesians cross the Pacific before the Polynesians, some 8,000 years ago, pushed by favorable winds during an El Niño event and reach America? Yes, it is possible.

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