The Northern Paiute of Nevada have a story they have told since long before any white man wrote it down. It is about a tribe of red haired giants called the Si-Te-Cah, which means tule eaters, after the reeds they wove into rafts on the marsh that is now Humboldt Sink.
The Si-Te-Cah were savage. They raided Paiute camps and, the story says, ate the people they took. At last the tribes of the region banded together and drove the giants back until the survivors took shelter in a cave. The Paiute piled brush at the mouth and set it on fire. The ones who ran out were shot with arrows. The ones who stayed in the cave died in the smoke. Then the Paiute sealed the entrance, and left it.
The story was written down in 1883 by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, the daughter of a Paiute chief and the first Native American woman to publish a book in English. She told it as history, not folklore.
In 1911 guano miners opened a cave above the dry bed of Humboldt Lake near Lovelock, Nevada. Under the bat droppings they found mummified human remains, sandals, baskets, duck decoys, and a layer of ash and burned reeds. Some of the hair on the mummies was red. Some of the sandals, by the miners’ account, were enormous.
Archaeologists say the hair turned red from centuries in the cave and the bodies were normal in size. The largest finds vanished long ago into private hands. Which leaves the obvious question. Were the Paiute simply telling the truth.
The truth may be far stranger than we have been told.
A myth that happened to match a cave, or a people the Paiute remembered because they fought them?
What do you think about this? The Dropa Stones, 716 grooved stone discs said to be found in Chinese caves in 1938 beside small bodied skeletons, telling of a crash 12,000 years ago. The 1978 book that spread the story was admitted to be a hoax. Pure fiction, or a truth wrapped in lies?
What do you think about this? The Paiute of Nevada told of red haired giants they trapped in a cave and burned, written down in 1883. In 1911 miners near Lovelock opened a cave and found red haired mummies and a layer of ash. Legend that matched a cave, or memory of real enemies?
What do you think about this? In 1987 a Wisconsin family bought a used bunk bed. Within weeks their kids were sick, a radio changed stations by itself, and a chair rocked with no one in it. They fled in the night in 1988 and burned the bed. Old house, or something that came with it?
What do you think about this? In 1904 an American dredged the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá and pulled up gold disks, jade, wooden idols and the bones of more than 200 people, many of them children. The Maya called such wells doorways to the underworld. Prayers for rain, or an open door?
What do you think about this? Norse settlers lived in Greenland for nearly 500 years, with farms, a cathedral and a bishop. The last record is a wedding at Hvalsey church on Sept 16, 1408. Then nothing. The church still stands, roofless and empty. Starved out, or walked away?
What do you think about this? In 1615 a Spanish pearl ship is said to have sailed into an inland sea that then dried up. In 1870 a Los Angeles paper reported its hull found in the desert near the Salton Sea. Every searcher since has lost it to the sand. Mirage, or a galleon in the dunes?
Field reports, theories, and intel from the X-Files straight to your inbox. No filler, no algorithms, just the work.
Phone is optional. If you add it, we may text you tour drops, book launches, and breaking news from the X-Files up to 4 messages a month. Reply STOP anytime. Msg & data rates may apply.