Continuing with the Lovelock Cave redheaded giants series, in this post we will explore the comment made by Dorothy P. Dansie in her 1975 article, published in the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, Fall 1975 (John T. Reid's Case for the Redheaded Giants) in which she added a curious piece of information: a cryptid, man-eating, hairy giant in the lore of the Paiute people.
After recording the native stories about the redheaded people that were exterminated in Lovelock Cave, Dansie noted that Gilbert Natchez, the Paiute friend of John T. Reid, who had told him about Lovelock Cave, had also told him about a native myth about a child-eating creature.
This is the full series of posts on Lovelock Cave's "giants":
• Post 1
• Post 2
• Post 3
• Post 4
• Post 5
• January 2014 post mentioning Lovelock Cave.
The monster that ate children
This is what Dansie wrote about Natchez and the native tales:
"Off the subject, but perhaps related, is another tale told that day by Natchez of some large beasts which had once roamed the Humboldt region. They were dangerous carnivorous animals which devoured unprotected children and he claimed that Indian mothers still threatened their children with, "Ooh-queetz will get you, if you are not good." Reid adds that he had heard similar mention of a "cave man" who would get the children if they were unruly. Another term for a terrifying child-eating beast was Pi-Ee-tsah."
I have encountered similar myths in Patagonia, child, and woman-eating creatures, hairy man-like beasts living in caves. They probably reflect the megafaunal creatures that existed until some 10,000 years ago (sloths, large cave bears, sabre tooth felines, etc.) In this case it seems that Dansie added the story because somehow, she believed they were linked to the redheaded "giants" that lived in the region. Perhaps a tribal memory about them.
The tule-eaters
Before looking into the hairy giants myths, I'd like to refer to the the "real" people who lived in this area by the lakes, who were well adapted to its environment. They were, according to the Paiute, tule-eaters. The ones that have been documented histocrically, and have survived until today, lived in California: the Modocs in the Northeastern corner of the state, and the Yokuts in central California, along the San Joaquin River Valley.
As mentioned in a previous post (see: Modocs on Pitt River (and Lake Tule), and Lake Tulare in the south) these people based their subsistence on the tule bulrush (Schoenoplectus acutus). They made houses, mats, boats, baskets, nets, and footwear out of the rushes. They ate the tender shoots, and ground the roots into tule flour. Indeed they were tule-eaters. They also hunted the wildlife that lived in the wetlands around Lake Tulare and Lake Tule.
It may seem an adaptation to a strange, possibly unique environment, but it wasn't. The region was completely different 15,000 years ago. Nevada, western Utah, southeastern California and northern Arizona may be arid nowadays, but back then the region was very humid, and had many vast lakes.
It would have been an ideal environment for the first Paleoindians, providing water, food, and natural resources. The Paiute people were latecomers to the region. Mark Q. Sutton suggested in 1958, that the Northern Paiute reached the region around 1000 AD. "presumably supplanting earlier inhabitants" Yes, they did, they exterminated the tule-eaters.
During the Pleistocene Ice Age periods over the past two million years (a period of time long enough to cover potential migrations of archaic hominins into America), glacial ice melt and grater rainfall formed a network of large lakes across the Great Basin Region.
It gets its name because it is a closed drainage basin (no outflow into the oceans that surround North America).
At the end of the Pleistocene, deglaciation brought with it a gobal warming period and climate change that altered rainfall patterns and led to an increased dryness in that region. As arid conditions set in, evaporation increased and the lakes started to shribnk. Water levels dropped, and the lakes broke up into smaller ones. Most of them dried up quickly while others shrunk to their current size some 8,000 years ago. Their ancient coastlines are etched high up, along the valleys that were once filled with freshwater.
Now, this area has former lake beds that became salt flats or sinks that seasonally carry water. However, some of the modern lakes, are remnants of those vast Ice Age lakes: Great Salt Lake in Utah, Lake Provo, Bear Lake, Lake Mono, Carson Lake, Lake Tahoe, etc.) The following map, prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey (Paleoclimate Variability of the American Southwest) shows, the ancient (dark blue) and modern (pale blue) lakes of the Great Basin Region.
The area around Lovelock contained a vast lake, Lake Lahontan, with a surface area of 22,000 km2 (8,500 sq. mi.) it was almost 270 m deep (900 ft.) An ideal setting for humans to thrive.
Not far from this lake, in the region west of the Sierra Nevada, south of Sacramento, California (and possibly north, along what now is the Sacramento Valley), was another vast lake (Lake Corcoran) that was formed around 760,000 years ago and emptied around 650,000 years ago into the newly formed San Francisco Bay.
In the Southern Part of the Californian Central Valley some parts of Lake Corcoran survived. Nowadays, the San Joaquin River runs along it, with a SE-NW course. It has its sources in the Sierra Nevada, to the East, and its valley is enclosed on the west by the Southern Coastal Ranges, that run parallel to the Pacific coast. Just south of Fresno, was a large lake (Lake Tulare).
Below is the map prepared by Narváez, of Alta California, who visited California in 1822, and published it in 1830. You can see the "Ciénagas de Tulares" (Tulares Marshes - after the Tule bulrushes) running along the San Joaquin River Valley, south of Sacramento all the way to Bakersfield. I highlighted some landmarks on the map.
Narvaez probably exagerated in the extent of the wetlands, basing his knowledge on native informants. But we do know that Lake Tulare was the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River. It covered an area of over 1,750 km2 (~700 sq. mi.) which could grow to almost 1,100 sq. mi. (2,800 km2) during very wet spells.
The surrounding areas were marshes. Starting in the 1870s, the lake was dissecated to make room for farming, the rivers dammed and the overflow used for irrigation.
Something similar took place in NW California where Lake Tule - also named for the bulrushes, (53 km2 or 13,000) was drained in the 1920s. It was much bigger in the past, covering between 50,000 and 100,000 acres (200 to 400 km2) depending on the snowpack and precipitation.
The native people who lived by these lakes were displaced by Western settlers after 1850, and their unique lake-based lifestyles vanished. Below is a short summary about these people.
The Modoc
These were mentioned by John Reid's informants, as the source (in some versions) or the survivors (in other versions) of the giant readheaded tule-eating people who were exterminated by the Paiute in Lovelock.
The Modocs lived on both sides of the Oregon-California border, around Lake Tule and along the Lost River that feeds it. Contact with westerners in the late 1700s introduced disease (smallpox) that wiped out most of them. Then came the pioneers heading for Oregon in the 1850s which led to war, uprooting and relocation with other ethnic groups (Klamaths, and Paiutes). Finally they rebelled and war broke out in 1872. They were defeated and some relocated to the Indian Territories (now Oklahoma), where a band of Modoc still live, in Miami, OK. (Source).
The Lake Tulare People
The first people of Tulare spoke the Yokut language, and were not related to the Modoc, they spoke a different language. But they shared the same lacustrine environment and adaptations. Over 35,000 people spread into more than 40 tribes lived in the region. The Tachi Yokuts of Leemore, CA, and the Tule River Indian Tribe of Porterville, CA are the current remnants of the tribe. (Source).
The Mayak-Datat - "Hairy Man"
Just like the Paiute, who had their myths about the child-eating caveman, the Lake Tulare natives also have oral traditions about a "hairy man". Their ancestors depicted the creature in their rock art.
An article by Kathy Moskowitz Strain, 2012 (The Relict Hominoid Inquiry 1:1-12, Mayak Datat: The Hairy Man Pictographs) decribes the myth and the rock art. The following image is a composite adapted from Strain's article:
The paintings are between 700 and 2000 years old, most likely 500-1000 years old, and represent animals, and the "Hairy Man". Strain says that the "Tule River Indians equate Hairy Man to Bigfoot".
The natives call it Mayak datat or sunsunut. It is depicted as a hairy biped. There is a male, a female and a "child" painting at the site. The creatures have five finters, and "an unusually rounded head, suggestive of a sagittal crest."
The story of the Hairy Man can be found on the Tulare people's website , and I quote it below:
"Big Foot, The Hairy Man
Big Foot was a creature that was like a great big giant with long, shaggy hair. His long shaggy hair made him look like a big animal. He was good in a way, because he ate the animals that might harm people. He kept the Grizzly Bear, Mountain Lion, Wolf, and other larger animals away. During hot summer nights all the animals would come out together down from the hills to drink out of the Tule River. Big Foot liked to catch animals down by the river. He would eat them up bones and all.
It was pleasant and cool down by the river on hot summer nights. That is when grown ups liked to take a swim. Even though people feared that Big Foot, the hairy man, might come to the river, people still liked to take a swim at night.
Parents always warned their children, "Don't go near the river at night. You may run into Big Foot." Now Big Foot usually eats animals, but parents said, "If he can't find any animals and he is very hungry, he will eat you. Big Foot, the hairy man, doesn't leave a speck or trace. He eats you up bones and all. We won't know where you have gone or what has happened to you."
Some people say Big Foot, the hairy man, still roams around the hills near Tule River. He comes along the trail at night and scares a lot of people. When you hear him you know it is something very big because he makes a big sound, not a little sound. Children are cautioned not to make fun of his picture on the painted rock or play around that place because he would hear you and come after you.
Parents warned their children, "You are going to meet him on the road if you stay out too late at night." The children have learned always to come home early.
Told by Ruby Bays Jennie Franco From Big foot and other stories."
Similar stories can be found among other native groups living in the area (see "Rock Giants" in C. Hart Merriam's book The Dawn of the World Myths and Weird Tales Told by the Mewan [Miwok] Indians of California, published in 1910. The Mewan are a different group from the Yokut, but share the myths of man-eating giants.
Comments
I am skeptical about bigfoot or a similar cryptid. Some have suggested it could be a species similar to the Asian gigantopithecus, but it seems unlikely. However, this "hairy man" and the other references to child-eating cavemen, and rock men, may indicate the presence of "wild men". Wild men are a common myth in South America and Patagonia, and in my posts I have suggested that they were exactly that, wild hominins, probably Neanderthals, Denisovans or Homo erectus. In my next post I will go into this hypothesis in detail.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©
