This is the final post of the Lovelock Cave redheaded "giants" (Sixth in the Series). In my previous posts I have discussed the information gathered by the first Western person to visit the cave, John T. Reid.
This is the full series of posts on Lovelock Cave's "giants":
• Post 1
• Post 2
• Post 3
• Post 4
• Post 5
• Lovelock Cave redheaded giants - Conclusion (post 6)
• January 2014 post mentioning Lovelock Cave.
Reid obtained this information from the local Paiute natives, who told him about their oral history and myths. These accounts tell us about a group of tall, redheaded people who were tule-eaters (tule is a variety of bulrush). They were the original people in this area, having arrived before the Paiute. They were well adapted to a lacustrine and fluvial environment, that had gradually been vanishing since the end of the Last Ice Age.
Reid called them Si-te-cah (redheaded tule-eaters). They vanished without a trace because the Paiute exterminated them during a war that lasted several years, and ended at Lovelock Cave. Some versions sayt that a few of these readheaded people managed to get away, making it to Lake Tule and Pit River in Northeastern California.
Summary of the Facts
- Reid's main informants were Sarah Winnemucca and her nephew Gilbert Natchez (he was the grandson of the Paiute Chief Winnemucca, who was Sarah's father; and the son of Sarah's brother, Natchez Winnemucca). Other natives, and locals also mentioned the readheaded people:
Sarah: they were "barbarians", people who ate the dead, cannibals, "people eaters". She added that they had "reddish hair" and that she owned a dress made with it.
Mr. Mah-Wee said the dress existed, and had reddish-brown hair, obtained from the Si-te-cah (tule-eaters).
Gilbert: They came from the Southwest, were "redheaded" and "very tall" they had spears but not arrows, and dogs with peaky, upright ears. They were also identfied with the "Umatilla's" or Pitt River or Modoc Indians (whe were lacustrine people).
Taylor says they were the original inhabitants of this area when the Paiute arrived (c. 1000 AD according to Sutton). The Paiute would replace them.
Bow-E-An (aka "Skinny Dave"): He was the grandson of Natchez and great-nephew of Winnemucca , narrated how his father, Pas-sa Dave (aka "Captain Dave") said they had reddish brown hair and some of them "were very tall". He also called them "Si-te-cah which means 'Tule Eaters'." - Lowe and Harrington who excavated Lovelock cave in 1912 and 1924, respectively, added more information: the Paiute called the "ancient people the name sai-duka’a, “tule-eaters,” a name which might be applied to any people with this habit. This may account for the application of the name or its shortened form sai’i to the Pit River Indians and the form Saidyuka [sic] to Indians of eastern Oregon".
- Comment. In the different soucrces there are several references associating these redheaded giants with the Pit River and Lake Tule (Modoc) people. They lived in NE California and across the border, in southeastern Oregon. They were well adapted to their lakes and rivers habitat. Perhaps this similarity with the lifestyle of the Si-te-cah people led to this connection between both ethnic groups, redheads and Modocs. I will mention this in detail further down.
- Reid believed they were Neanderthals. A newspaper article about Reid said he called them "red-heads, known scientifically as the Sid-ucah [sic] or Neanderthal race."
While the local Paiute had "round" skulls, that is, brachycephalic, the redheaded tule-eaters had elongated crania, that is, dolichocephalic. In this, they resemble the Paleoindians (Lagoa Santa, Kennewick Man), and also Neanderthals and Denisovans were long-skulled humans. - Natchez added that there was a child-eating "large beast" that lived in the area in the past, called "Ooh-queetz". Reid mentioned a similar creature, a "cave man" called "Pi-Ee-tsah."
- There were other "Tule eating" natives in California besides the Modocs at Lake Tule, and Pit River; these were the Yokut speakers from Lake Tulare near Fresno and Tulare, CA. The latter believed in a "Hairy Man", a wild-man, similar to bigfoot. They called it "Mayak datat" or "Sunsunut". One of the articles I quoted suggests it was a bigfoot.
Discussion
The now desertic and arid environment at Lovelock, Nevada is very different to the humid conditions that prevailed there when vast lakes covered the Great Basin Region in Nevada and Utah before the end of the last Ice Age. There were people who lived in that lacustrine habitat, thriving on the fish, game and plants that grew in the wetlands surrounding the lakes.
These were the first people in the area, and they were very different from the later arrivals like the Paiute or Shosone.
Baker et al., 2000 using the basket-making techiques of these people was unique, and "has no ethnographic correlates anywhere in North America. The appearance and disappearance of this textile from the Western Great Basin demonstrates a rare technological turnover within a regional basketry sequence characteristic of population replacement" (highlight is mine). The Numic speaking Paiute used "totally different [methods]" to make their baskets.
The replacement of the original population took place ~1000 AD. Baker et al., clearly state that this replacaement ".., means that there was a non-Numic population living in the area before the ancestors of the Northern Paiute arrived."
Who were these people? They were definitely Paleo-Indians, or probably an earlier population, with elongated heads. Their perfect adaptation to the lakes suggests that they had evolved over millennia in contact with this environment. An environment that has a long history in the Great Basin Region and Califnornia.
Lake Tulare in South Central California and its predecessor, Lake Corcoran span a period starting over 750,000 years ago. The Great Basin Lakes formed time and time again over the past 2 million years.
Reid's belief that these people were Neanderthal, due to their skull shape, is probably valid. But, I would suggest that they were Denisovans. These have dolichocephalic skulls like Neanderthals and the readheaded giants, but, unlike the Neanderthals, Denisovans were were big (See my post Denisovans were very tall people!).
I am not convinced about the bigfoot theory, it is likely that the natives had wild-men myths. In fact it is a shared heritage common to most human groups. Wild men, ogres, trolls, hairy giants are found across the world. It could be feasible that the later arrivals, Homo sapiens assigned a primitive child-eating, child-kidnapping behavior to other hominins (wild-men) that arrived earlier to America (Denisovans, Neanderthals, Homo erectus). This would explain the tule eaters description as barbarians and cannibals given by Sarah Winnemucca.
A very wild and farfetched idea is that the redhaired people were of a more primitive kind, for instance gigantopithecus, a giant-sized relative of the orangutans (who have red or orange fur, though we don't know what was the color of gigantopithecus fur). They may have been able to make tools, but it is an implausible possibility.
Red Hair is a unique trait
Readheaded people are not at all common, only 2 to 3% of the total human population have red hair (Source). Red hair or brown hair is extremely rare among Native Americans, who tend to have jet black hair.
The official explanation for the red hair of the Lovelock remains is that chemicals and microbes decolored the hair of the mummified bodies, or that ochre was applied to the hair, coloring it red. Both are valid explanations.
In my 2014 post about Lovelock and the nearby Spirit Cave remains (which also have red hair), I wrote that "Red hair is not at all common among Amerindians or East Asians but Neanderthal had the MC1R gene (melanocortin 1 receptor) associated with red hair in humans... So maybe a band of relict Neanderthals lived in Nevada until quite recently and were wiped out by the Paiute." I made this remark based on a paper by Lalueza-Fox, C., Römpler, H., Hofreiter M., et al., (2007). A melanocortin 1 receptor allele suggests varying pigmentation among Neanderthals. Science, October 25, 2007.
The authors found a mutation in two Neanderthal specimens, a variant that has not yet been detected in humans, the "R307G substitution" in the MC1R (melanocortin 1 receptor) protein that regulates skin and hair color. This substitution causes a partial "loss of function" in the protein, and in human MC1R, a similar loss of function causes pale white skin and red hair. The paper notes that the "Neanderthal individuals that may have had reduced pigmentation levels, possibly even similar to the pale skin color and/or red hair observed in modern humans" and speculates if it could have been the result of selection allowing a better absorption of sunlight in northern Eurasia for vitamin D production in the skin.
As this mutation is different to the one found in humans the paper rules out gene flow and suggest that human and Neanderthals developed red hair through a "convergent evolution of reduced-function MC1R alleles." They note that at least 1% of Nenderthals carried this mutation.
Since 2007, analysis of other Neanderthal specimens has failed to detect this R307G substitution. It must be very rare. These other Neanderthals carry another variant that they passed on to modern humans (see Ding et al., 2014). It is the "Val92Met variant, a loss-of-function variant in MC1R that is associated with multiple dermatological traits including skin color and photoaging. Frequency of this Neanderthal introgression is low in Europeans (∼5%), moderate in continental East Asians (∼30%), and high in Taiwanese aborigines (60–70%)." It causes freckles in Japanese people! Could it cause red hair in Neanderthals?
The modern human mutation causing reduced function on MC1R is ancient. Harding et al., 2000 noted that "for the European red hair–associated Arg151Cys and Arg160Trp variants, we estimate an age of ∼80,000 years." This is far older than modern human remains in Europe. Furthermore, the authors calculated that "the MC1R variants Val60Leu, Val92Met, and Arg163Gln may trace back to ancestors in Eurasian populations existing 250,000–100,000 years ago." Now this date predates the Out of Africa (OOA) event, meaning that these people would have lived in Africa (but there are no redheaded people there). This is inconsistent with the OOA migration. Harding et al., aware of this discrepancy: "... an incompatibility arises between estimated ages in the range of 250,000–100,000 years, for non-African MC1R allelic variation, and ages, from fossil evidence, of ⪱100,000 years for the dispersal of modern humans outside Africa and the Middle East." (They try to explain it away to adapt the dates to the OOA theory).
The point is that red hair is an ancient trait shared by Humans and Neanderthals. Do we know if Denisovans carry this trait? No, we don't. It seems that they don't have the MC1R variants.
But, Tenesa et al., 2018 pointed out that "MC1R only explains 73% of the SNP heritability for red hair in UK Biobank, and in fact most individuals with two MC1R variants have blonde or light brown hair. We identify other genes contributing to red hair, the combined effect of which accounts for ~90% of the SNP heritability" So there are other genes that can cause red hair.
And even in the MC1R there are more variants that can produce redheaded people. A recent paper by Kashyap et al., 2026 searched for mutations in the MC1R gene in 11,000 Indians and found 9 new variants and 12 "ultra-rare" ones, that make skin pigmentation lighter, and an extremely rare, unique variant in a girl from Southern India, that caused red hair.
Then we have an area with a high level of Denisovan introgression, Melanesia where people have a different allele that causes fair hair and also red hair. It is a switch from arginine to cysteine known as the R93C mutation in the TYRP1 (tyrosinase-related protein 1) gene on chromosome 9. Did this mutation reach Polynesia in an ancient wave? I have posted about a pre-Maoir people who are said to have been the original inhabitants of New Zealand, the Urukehu, fair, and redheaded. Then we have the "Ehu" (note the term "ehu" in Urukehu, and Ehu. It means a reddish or brown tint in the hair) of Hawaii was reported by H. D. Alexander, 1893 (p.24): "The existence among them of a strain of lighter colored people with sandy or reddish hair called in Hawaii ehu and in New Zealand kehu may be due to intermingling with another race either in India or the Malay Archipelago."
The Denisovans could have reached America some 400,000 years ago, and adapted to the empty New World. These tule eaters could have been thei last remnants.
Giants
Reid believed they were giants, and the figures he calculated were gigantic. As I have shown, later, formal studies give them a tall yet normal height. This discrepancy requires an explanation.
In my first post, James Hart, who dug the caves, removing guano in 1911 unearthed very large skeletons: a man measuring 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 m), he described as gigantic. Where did this skeleton end up? It does not seem likely that it became part of Reid's collection, the one measured by modern scholars, which yielded "shorter" or more "normal" heights. The source I cited states that "It is assumed Reid must have collected these specimens from the Pyramid Lake area and in the Humboldt Sink. The time period to which these remains date is undetermined, as there were no directly associated artifacts or archaeological context. Consequently the skeletal material from the Reid Collection was grouped together and treated during this analysis as if all the individuals were from one time period." So, perhaps none of the cave people were measured, and Reid collected bones from Paiute burials in the region.
We will never know for certain because, as stated in the Humboldt Museum (Winnemucca, NV) website, "In respect for American Indians and compliance with NAGPRA, the display was removed. All human remains have been repatriated. HUMBOLDT MUSEUM DOES NOT POSSESS ANY HUMAN REMAINS OR FUNERARY ITEMS." The remains are lost to science in the name of a supposed (actually non-existent) link between Paiute people and these other humans who were not even Paiute!
The Modoc & Pit River connection
There were several references to the Modoc natives from Lake Tule and Pit River in the stories of the Paiute people about the redheaded giants. Why?
In my first post of this series I quoted Lowe and Harrington as saying "In the Mind of the Northern Paiute they [the tule-eaters] are often associated with the Pit River Indians among whom a remnant [of the redheaded giants] are even supposed to exist today. The Pit River Indians are called by the Paiute sai’i, which is also the name of the ancient people, but the possible reason for this is that both peoples are held in contempt." In other words, the Paiute gave the Modoc (Pit River Indians) the same name they had given the redhead giants: "sai'i" or "ancient". Which is revealing, because it assigns antiquity to these people, coinciding with the idea accepted by modern anthropologists, that they were the first inhabitants of this area of the Great Basin.
Lowe and Harrington also wrote that "The Northern Paiute applied to the ancient people the name sai-duka’a, “tule-eaters,” a name which might be applied to any people with this habit. This may account for the application of the name or its shortened form sai’i to the Pit River Indians and the form Saidyuka to Indians of eastern Oregon."
These Saidyuka were a small band, comprised of five tribes that lived close to Pyramid Lake in NW Nevada. that were displaced by the Paiute into Oregon (Source). They were of Shoshone origin, and therefore related to the Paiute, unlike the "ancient" lake dwellers.
In my second post I mentioned that bothh authors noted that "In some versions a few escaped and were chased to the northwest of Lovelock Cave; in other versions, they ended up as far away as Tule Lake, California."
In my third post, I quote Reid, who gives Gilbert Natchez's account: "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... but other stories go on to state that the intruders were driven to the northwestward". Note that the Umatilla's did not have a river or lake habitat, instead they lived on the Columbia River plateau in Oregon, they used horses.
Reid also mentions that the "Si-te-cah (redheaded tule-eaters) ... who escaped this confrontation were driven north towards the Pitt River."
It seems that the "Pitt" (actually Pit) River natives, the Modoc people, who also lived by Lake Tule in NE California were considered tule-eaters. The versions stating that the survivors of Lovelock Cave massacre moved northwest, and the reference to the Umatilla people of southern Oregon all point at an association in the minds of the Paiutes, between the Nevada tule-eaters and those other ethnic groups, contemporary tribes, living in NE California and Oregon.
This association may have been promoted by the similar lifestyles of Modocs and Lovelock redheads, adapted to lake and river environments. But it is very likely that the Lovelock people did not belong to the Modoc, or Tulare, ethnic groups. They were the ancient inhabitants who settled there during the wet periods preceding the Last Glacial Maximum in the Great Basin Region.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©
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