Nearly 17 years ago I wrote a post about the Lovelock Skull and Spirit Cave Man - Nevada and quoted a short paragraph form a book written by a Paiute woman named Sarah Hopinks Winnemucca in 1883: Life among the Piutes, their wrongs and claims. Putnam’s. N. York. p 73. In it she describes how her people fought against a "small tribe of barbarians" who were cannibals, and who "had reddish hair". I remarked that redheadedness was uncommon among Amerindians but that Neanderthals carried a gene responsible for red tinted hair and suggested that "maybe a band of relict Neanderthals lived in Nevada until quite recently and were wiped out by the Paiute."
The story is longer and far more entertaining than my brief post revealed. Today's post will look into other sources about these redheaded Indians, which, according to some witnesses, were giants.
The Version given by Sarah Winnemucca: Redheaded Cannibals
This is what Sarah Winnemucca (1841-1895) wrote in her book (she had learned to read and write in English at a Mormon school in Genoa, Nevada):
"Among the traditions of our people is one of a small tribe of barbarians who used to live along the Humboldt River. It was many hundred years ago. They used to waylay my people and kill and eat them. They would dig large holes in our trails at night, and if any of our people travelled at night, which they did, for they were afraid of these barbarous people, they would oftentimes fall into these holes. That tribe would even eat their own dead —yes, they would even come and dig up our dead after they were buried, and would carry them off and eat them. Now and then they would come and make war on my people. They would fight, and as fast as they killed one another on either side, the women would carry off those who were killed. My people say they were very brave. When they were fighting they would jump up in the air after the arrows that went over their heads, and shoot the same arrows back again. My people took some of them into their families, but they could not make them like themselves. So at last they made war on them. This war lasted a long time. Their number was about twenty-six hundred (2600). The war lasted some three years. My people killed them in great numbers, and what few were left went into the thick bush. My people set the bush on fire. This was right above Humboldt Lake."
So, here we hava a band of "bararians", "Barbarous people", who were cannibals, warmongering and "very brave". The Paiute tried to integrate them but they couldn't adapt. The story goes on, describing how the barbarians fled in boats made from bulrushes known as Tule, across Lake Humboldt, and were picked off by the Paiute as they landed. They hid in a cave (Lovelock Cave) and were killed every time they left the cave to fetch water. The Paiute asked them if they'd quit their bad ways: "My people would ask them if they would be like us, and not eat people like coyotes or beasts. They talked the same language, but they would not give up." So finally they gathered wood and dry bushes and burned them alive in their cave. Winnemucca added: "This tribe was called people-eaters".
This took place in west-central Nevada, not far from its capital city, Reno. See Humboldt Lake in Google Maps. The map also shows the location of Lovelock Cave. The area is now barren, but during the period following the last Ice Age, it was a well watered region with lakes (the lake is pictured below, Source).
Then she mentions that they were redheaded:
"My people say that the tribe we exterminated had reddish hair. I have some of their hair, which has been handed down from father to son. I have a dress which has been in our family a great many years, trimmed with this reddish hair. I am going to wear it some time when I lecture. It is called the mourning dress, and no one has such a dress but my family."
The discovery of Lovelock Cave
The cave is mentioned by Llewllyn L. Loud and M.R. Harrington in their scholarly account about their excavations at the cave (See their book: Lovelock Cave, 1929. For a full description of their activities there).
Loud visited the site in 1911 once the mining of bat guano from the cave had concluded. During the mining period, bones and artifacts had been found in the cave, and many were destroyed, lost, or sold to private collectors. Starting in 1912, Loud recovered thousands of artifacts. In 1924, a new expedition conducted by Harrington went to the cave, Loude assisted him. The book includes accounts given by Gilbert Natches in 1914, Gilbert was the grandson of Sarah Winnemucca, her account about the cave, and the story of its discovery by White men, given by John. T. Reid.
Interestingly, Gilbert Natches mentioned a Paiute myth about abstaining from killing bears and using their fur: "bear meat was never eaten, because bears are just the same as a person. They understand our language and know when they are being talked about even at a distance." This is similar to what Winnemucca had said about the man-eaters "They talked the same language" as the Paiute. So maybe the redheaded people didn't speak the Paiute language.
Lowe and Harrington report the Paiute's belief in "supernatural creatures", who attributed to them the stone tools made in different shapes, and from different types of stones to the ones they knapped:
"They had spears and no arrows, while the Northern Paiute had arrows but no spears. They were mean, contemptible, foolish, degraded cannibals, had red hair which they were excessively fond of decorating with bone ornaments, and yet w'ere so poor that they dressed in robes made of the skin and feathers of the mud hen. In a collection of specimens from Nevada every object w'hich is unfamiliar to a Northern Paiute is attributed to them.
In the mind of the Northern Paiute they are often associated with the Pit River Indians among whom a remnant 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.
Of the ancient sai ’i there were two bands. The first band, which is conceived, like any band or “family” of Northern Paiute, to consist of only a few hundred individuals, lived at Humboldt lake until exterminated by the Northern Paiute... " [Source]
The book mentions Sarah Winnemucca's account (transcribed further up) including it as Appendix III, and reports that Gilbert had heard this same account from his grandmother who had learned it from her grandfather.
Lowe comments on Sarah's story and notes that " Much of the hair found on the mummies in the cave is reddish. Similar hair is known from mummies from the Pueblo region, Peru, and elsewhere, the color being due to age or chemical action." He also notes 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".
Tule (Schoenoplectus acutus) is a variety of bulrush that grows in North America and which the natives used to weave baskets, mats, clothes, tents, and watercaraft. The tender shoots can be eaten, and the roots (rhizomes) and flowers are boiled like vegetables. The old, tough roots, can be boiled and mashed to remove the fiber to produce flour. So the name "tule eaters" or Sai-duka'a (also written Si-Te-Cah) given to these people is quite reasonable.
Finally, in Appendix IV, it gives "John T. Reid’s Accounts Of Lovelock Cave" which we will discuss below.
John T. Reid
John T. Reid, born in 1871 in Unionville, Nevada, died 1943 in Lovelock, Nevada. His father ran the General Store there between 1883 and 1895, and John was a clerk. He later became a geologist and mining engineer. His intimate knowledge of the natives and his interest in anthropology and archaeology led him to investigate the local sites, and also befriend the natives. Below is his portrait.
This is the account given by Reid to Lowe (Source). Captain Natches is Gilbert Natches. Highlight is mine:
"I recall that along about 1887, when I was about 16 years old, Captain Natches, two other Indians, one known locally as “Coffee Charley,” the other as “Mustache Charley,” and myself had undertaken to catch some wild horses that roamed in the neighborhood of the Carson and Humboldt sinks. In due time we came in contact with the wild horses, and then the chase was on. After running those horses all day long we were obliged to camp over night near the southern end of the Humboldt sink and on its eastern shore. The next morning we resumed the chase, following the horses over into the Carson Sink desert. But here we had to turn around, homeward bound, since we had no fresh saddle horses available to pursue the mustangs further.
On the way back we passed Lovelock cave, and the hour being late wo decided to camp there for the night. Later, Captain Natches related to me the great calamity which had occurred in that cave to another race of people who had been exterminated by the Piutes.
In the tale that Natches related, with the other two Indians aiding him in bringing out all of the material facts that had any connection, I was informed that about four or five generations back the Indians had fought to extermination a people who were redheaded and who spoke their own language. The fact that these two people spoke tho same language suggests that they had lived together for a long period of time.
Natches assigned no reason for the origin of the trouble between the two races, and I doubt if he knew or had a history, although his sister, Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, states that these people were cannibals and ate the Piutes. This is hardly compatible with her further statement that the Piutes had taken some of these people into their own families.
Annie Lowry, a half breed, who married an Indian named Mr. Sanny, assigned as a reason for the trouble between the two races that these people had stolen their women and taken their wild rice seed away from them.
I rather think that the matter of food was the trouble and the Piutes decided after a period of droughts that they would exterminate the other people who were consumers of the small amount, that was all the while getting smaller and smaller, of food that was available in the form of wild seeds and wild fowl that visited the lakes.
Natches stated that these people had come from the southwest. A battle had waged for a long time on the Carson sink at some sand hills on the east and west side of the Carson river, after which the Piutes had driven these people northward into the region of the Humboldt lake, thence across the lake to the cave, some going into the cave while others went northward.
From what I learned through Natches, and from numerous others of the old Indians, I have deduced that this redheaded people had long occupied the territory about the cave before the Piute Indian had come from elsewhere.
Natches further related how the Piute Indians had gathered sagebrush in great quantity around and about the hills adjacent to the cave and assembled it on the bluff above the cave. Then they had lighted and thrown it down immediately in front of the cave. The Piutes staid on either side of the cave, at a safe distance, and watched for the people within to come out for food or water, or to escape the smoke which in part penetrated the cave. As they came out they were dispatched with well-directed arrows."
The story told to Reid by Gilbert Natches and his companions is identical to the one told by Sarah Winnemucca. But it seems that some of the readheaded people managed to escape unharmed fleeing north.
Lowe then transcribes an account that John Reid had heard from James H. Hart (Source). Hart and David Pugh filed a mineral claim on the cave to mine bat guano deposits in 1911. James Hart said:
"In 1911 I heard David Pugh of Lovelock tell of an old Indian cave some twenty miles south of Lovelock. He said that it was full of bat guano in which he had dug down four feet. When a boy he had learnt from the Indians where the cave was. There had then been fires in it for there was much smoke on the walls. Realizing that if the cave was as large as described the guano might be of value, I arranged with Pugh to file a mineral location upon it and ship out the guano. This we did, working from the fall of 1911 to the spring of 1912. We drove a small tunnel into the mouth of the cave, or rather to one side of it, the natural opening being too small to work through. We took out about five car-loads of guano which were shipped to the Hawaiian Fertilizer Company of San Francisco. Wd soon began to discover Indian relics, and notified Dr. J. C. Merriam of the University of California, who took the matter up with the University of Nevada and the Nevada Historical Society. We also wrote to the Smithsonian Institution, but they advised that they had no funds for collecting, receiving only donations. After some of the best specimens had been destroyed, we received word from the State Historical Society that, in conjunction with the University of California, they would send an investigator. This was Mr. Loud. We gave him all possible facilities for collecting. Many objects had been destroyed by the weather and others had been taken away. I recall many boas or ropes of fine feathers. As these lay strewn about in the open end of the cave in the way of the workmen they were irreparably damaged. Some of these boas were found perfectly preserved. All the Indian objects began to appear about four feet below the surface of the guano.
In the south end of the cave, "about twenty feet deep," we unearthed some skeletons. In the north-central part of the cave, about four feet deep, was a striking looking body of a man "six feet six inches tall." His body was mummified and his hair distinctly red. There was a grass rope about his neck with a knot under the left ear. The rope was about eight feet long. The feet were bound together from the ankle to above the knees with stout rope. The mummification was complete except for a part of the abdomen. The other mummies all had red hair — I think there were either four or five. Those that appeared to be women were small, something like a Japanese woman in height." This was not altogether due to the shrinking of the bodies in mummifying, because the man was “a giant.” The women had on moccasins which reached clear to the knees; the buckskin was beaded with shells. Two of them had on a kind of buckskin coat (gown) that came down to the knees. These bodies were from the deep south end of the cave.
There were no bats in the cave when we went there to work."
This is an eyewitness account of giant men six feet, six inches tall (1.98 m) which isn't gigantic, but, is tall. The women were smaller, suggesting sexual dimorphism, which isn't overly marked in humans but noticeable in other primates.
I also highlighted the remark about bats, let's see the relevance of bats in this story.
Bats and the date of the site
The arid and desert-like environment of Lake Humboldt, there are bats, like the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) in NW Nevada. They migrate and hibernate but live in small groups. There are over 20 bat species living in the state of Nevada. Any of them could have lived in the cave.
Bat excrement accumulates on the floor of the cave, beneath the bats hanging from the ceiling. This cave had 3 to 6 feet (90 to 180 cm) of guano (bat droppings, used as fertilizer) on its floor (see p. 8). But, as mentioned by Hart, in 1911 there were no bats in the cave. The accumulation of guano may have been old.
How quickly does guano accumulate in a cave? This depends on many factors. The seasonality of the bat population (do they live in the cave on a permanent basis, or move to other sites?), the population itself, and the cave chemistry. An example reported by Bogdanowicz et al., 2020 dated guano in two caves in Jamaica. In one, a core 81 cm long was dated to 200 years old, in the other, a 1.29 m long core was found to be 4300 years old. This confirms the different deposition speeds (4 mm per year in cave #1 and 0.3 mm per year in cave #2, a thirteen-fold difference.
Six feet of guano would have accumulated over a period of 450 to 6,000 years using the values given by Bogdanowicz. But it could have been even thicker; Lowe reports that "Before the arrival of the writer, 5 carloads of 50 (?) tons each had been taken from the cave for fertilizer. Besides this, a large quantity was left in the cave because it was so much mixed with other things that it no longer paid to ship it. Bat manure was sometimes found in nearly pure beds of perhaps several feet thickness." (p. 34) Lowe adds that "Although there was so large a quantity of bat guano in the cave no bats were seen during the writer’s stay; but a cowboy said that several years previously he had smoked out large numbers." Lowe and Hart saw no bats, is it reasonable to believe that they had been smoked out in the past?
While dealing with the bat excrement, Lowe says that "The human excrement in the cave reveals, on the part of the ancient inhabitants, an incredibly coarse diet of seeds, hulls, and tough plant fibers. Some of the excrement was over 2 inches in diameter." An amazingly fibrous diet, but also, weirdly large sized stool. Were these people human beings, or some plant-eating primate?
The bats, according to Shackley, M. Steven n.d. occupied the caves shortly after a wet period 7.000 years ago: "Heizer and Napton state that Lovelock Cave was occupied by bats at a date coinciding with the estimated end of the Altithermal perhaps as a direct result of the rejuvenation of Humboldt Lake. The initial buildup of the older bat guano layer may have begun ca. 5000 B. C. The earliest, although intermittent evidence of human occupation is in the Older Guano layer at ca. 2700 B. C. Bats and other creatures continued to inhabit the cave until about 2500 B. C. when human occupation began ca. 1500 B. C... Intensive occupation of the cave began ca. 1500 B. C. and continued until about A. D. 500. Due to a massive rockfall (ca. A. D. 440 ± 90) access to the interior of the cave was greatly impeded, but it continued to be utilized as a repository for the dead and for cache purposes. According to Heizer and Napton (1970: 41), human occupation of the interior of the cave was drastically curtailed, and this, together with the reduced illumination and air circulation made it attractive to bats. Thus, between A. D. 700 and A. D. 1911, a thick deposit of bat guano accumulated over the cultural deposits. Human occupation of the outer shelter and use of the inner cave probably continued until 1829."
So there is an "old" and a "new" period of guano buildup, one prior to 2,500 BC, the other after 700 AD. These are relatively recent.
In the second part of this three post series, we will look into more information about Reid and the redheaded giants, following John Reid's Redheaded "Giants" of Central Nevada: Fact or Fiction? by Sheilagh Brooks, Carolyn Stark and Richard H. Brooks, 1984. The authors conclude that the people buried in Lovelock cave were not giants and also explain their origin of their reddish hair.
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