He Sought People To Eat; He Preferred Women: Rock Giants of California, Tales of the Miwok Indians

today we have some more actual history about traditional stories of giants who lived in North America we will be reading some tales of the miw Indians of Northern California these tell of rock Giants who lived in caves and came out and ate people particularly women the Miwok tribe did not live too far from where the northern piutes lived this episode follows up our previous episode where we read Sarah winam maka's accounts of the pyute legends of the redhaired Giant cannibals who also lived in caves and also ate people we will be reading from this book

The Dawn of the world myths and tales of the Miwok Indians of California collected and edited by SE Hart Mariam and published in 1910 this book has many stories about the creation of the world and how all the animals came to exist it is divided into one section called ancient myths and one called present day myths each of these sections includes a story about The Rock Giants although the Giants is given a different name in each story these are just stories but for some reason the Miwok Indians passed them down for generations and as you

will see these stories of the Miwok people bear some similarity to that told by saranam Maka which occurred just east of the Miwok lands in California Ellen The Rock giant there was a great giant who lived in the North his name was Ellen and he was as big as a pine tree when he saw the country full of people he said they looked good to eat and he came and carried them off and ate them he could catch 10 men at a time and hold them between his fingers and put more in a net on

his back and carry them off he would visit a village and after eating all the people would move on to another going Southward from his home in the north when he had gone to the south end of the world and had visited all the village and eaten nearly all the people not quite all for a few had escaped he turned back toward the north he crossed the wakal mutta mkad river at a narrow place in the canyon about 6 miles above opla mkad Falls where his huge Footprints may still be seen in the Rocks showing

the exact place where he stepped from an saapa on the south side to hiana on the North side when night came he went into a cave in the sight of a round topped Hill over the ridge from SE a little south of the present town of Coulterville the people who escaped found his sleeping place in the cave and shot their arrows at him but were not able to hurt him for he was a rock Giant when he awoke he was hungry and took the trail to go hunting then the people said to uum the fly

go follow ellan and when he is hot bite him all over on his head on his eyes and ears and all over his body everywhere all the way down to the bottom BS of his feet and find out where he can be hurt all right answered uum the fly and he did as he was told he followed ellan and bit him everywhere from the top of his head all the way down to his feet without hurting him till finally he bit him under the heel this made ellan kick uum waited and when the giant had

fallen asleep bit him under the heel on the other foot and he kicked again then uum told the people when the people heard they took sharp sticks and long sharp splinters of stone and set them up firmly in the trail and hid nearby and watched after a while ellan came back and stepped on the sharp points till the bottoms of his feet were stuck full of them this hurt him dreadfully and he fell down and died when he was dead the people asked now he is dead what are we to do with him and they

all answered that they did not know but a wise man said we will pack wood and make a big fire and burn him then everyone said all right let's burn him and they brought a great quantity of dry wood and made a big fire and burned ell in the Giants when he began to burn the wise man told everybody to watch closely all the time to see if any part should fly off to live again and particularly watch the whites of his eyes so all the people watched closely all the time he was burning his

flesh did not fly off his feet did not fly off his hands did not fly off but by and by the the whites of his eyes flew off quickly so quickly indeed that no one but chick chick saw them go chick chick was a small bird whose eyes looked sore but his sight was keen and quick he was watching from a branch about 20 ft above the Giant's head and saw the whites of the eyes fly out he saw them fly out and saw where they went and quickly darted after them and brought them back

and put them in the fire again and put on more wood and burnt them until they were completely consumed the people now made a hole and put Ellen's ashes in it an piled rocks on the place and watched for 2 or 3 days but ellan was dead and never came out then the wise man asked each person what he would like to be and called their names each answered what animal he would be and forth withth turned into that animal and has remained the same to this day this was the beginning of the animals as

they are now the deer the ground squirrel the bear and other furry animals the blue jay the quail and other birds of all kinds and snakes and frogs and the yellow jacket wasp and so on before that they were hako the first people so that is the end of the ancient myth of the Miwok Indians about the stone giants called Ellen in this story this story is told as a part of several creation myths that describe how the world came to be the people in this story were called the first people and they became the

different animals of the forest after killing the Giant now I'm going to read the more modern myth these stories don't seem to have any connection to the creation of the world and they seem even more similar to The pyute Legend of the cannibalistic people who lived in caves we will read a few different short accounts of rock Giants each from a different subtribe of the Miwok people CH halam The Rock giant of calveras County the northern Miwok say CH halam The Rock giant carries on his back a big bird in basket CH kala which like

himself is of rock he lives in caves of which there are two near Mountain Ranch or El Dorado in caleris County one at Murphy's and one on Stannis River CH halum comes out only at night and wonders about seeking Miwok or people to eat he prefers women of these he catches and Carries off all he can find sometimes he makes a crying noise who whoooo like a baby to lure them if they come he seizes them and tosses them into his big pack baskets and carries them to his cave where he eats them in the

basket is a long Spike which pierces their bodies when they are thrown in so they cannot Escape in his caves are the remains of his victims horns of deer and Bones of people and of different kinds of animals Indians never throw their dead into caves if they did CH halam would get them any man who would put a dead person in a cave would be killed by the other Indians and this is the story of oule The Rock giant of the Chowchilla Foothills the southern Miwok say far away in the West in the place where

the sun goes down lived Ule The Rock Giants at night he used to come up into the Foothills to catch people and eat them another story is of Lupu OAS The Rock giant of Tamil pus the huku EO of Niko and San Raphael say a woman had a husband and two boy babies twins the woman's brother killed her husband and the little boys did not know that they ever had a father when they were big enough they went off every day to play by a big rock in the woods they went always to the same

place they liked this place and always went there this was the very place where their father when he was alive used to go every day to sing but the little boys did not know this for they did not even know that they ever had a father one day the boys heard somebody say you come here every day just as your father used to the voice came from the rock it was the voice of Lupu OAS The Rock Giants then the boys knew they had a father they went to the Rock and saw long hairs sticking

up these hairs grew out of the nostrils of Lupu OAS the boys took hold of them and pulled them out this made l PUO yes angry and he took a long hook stick and tried to catch the boys to kill them he was all rock except a place on his throat where he wore in abalone shell the boys saw this and shot their arrows through it and killed them when he died he fell to Pieces the pieces were rocks and Scattered over the ground inside he was flesh like other people but outside he was Rock

except the place on his throat where the abalone shell was the name Lupu OES means literally the old man of rock from Lupu Rock and O yes old man there is also another footnote here that I will now read many human skulls and skeletons have been found in caves along the west slope of the middle Sierra the presence of human remains in these caves has been interpreted to mean that the Indians now living in the region practice cave burial or did practice it until recent times this is an error the Indians of this region the

Miwok burned their dead and look with horror on the suggestion that they or their ancestors might ever have put their dead in caves they ask would you put your mother or your wife or your child or anyone you love in a cave to be eaten by a horrible Giants the idea is so abhorent to them that the theory of cave burial must be abandoned as Preposterous the mythology of the Miwok does not admit of any migration but describes the creation of the people in the area they still inhabit this in connection with the fact that

these Indians speak a language wholly different from any known in any other part of the world proves that they have occupied the lands they now occupy for a very long period a period which in my judgment should be measured by thousands of years this argues a great Antiquity for the cave remains for they must be those of a people who inhabited the region before the Miwok came and this takes us back a very long way into the past so those are the modern myths of the Miwok Indians about the rock Giants who lived in the

mountains of California as you can see from this map caleris county is about 230 mi from Humbolt Lake where many skeletons were found that support Sarah waka's story of the red-haired cannies so it certainly seems possible that there was a group of giants who were somehow related to the people that the piutes reportedly killed at Humbolt Lake however there are also some discrepancies between the two stories in the Miwok story there is no report of the Giants having red hair and they are also repeatedly referred to as rock Giants which was not a part of

the piute story the Miwok stories are also probably much older than the pyute story which took place just about 5 to Seven Generations before Sarah wiuka reported it in 1883 for those interested in the broader setting of Miwok mythology I will now read the preface and introduction of this book written by the original author SE Hart Mariam in 1910 miam spent over 30 years working with and studying the various Indian tribes of California Theodor Roosevelt once asked him to report on the conditions he saw when he visited Indian communities and to comment on the government's

relationship to them the preface and introduction give a sense of how the stories of the rock Giants fit into the broader mythology of the Miwok people preface it is our custom to go abroad for the early beliefs of mankind and to teach our children the mythologies of foreign lands unmindful of the wealth and beauty of our American folk tales the present collection invites attention to the unique and entertaining character of the myths of some of our California Indians these Tales were told me by the Indians of a single stock the Mian the tribes of which

are confined to Central California and have no known relatives in any part of the world they have been little visited by ethnologists and during the few years that passed since the tales were collected several of the tribes have become extinct the myths are related by the old people after the first Reigns of the winter season usually in the ceremonial roundhouse and always at Night by the dim light of a small flickering fire they constitute the religious history of the tribe and from time immemorial have been handed down by Word of Mouth from generation a generation

they have been repeated without loss and without addition the conceptions of the Indians concerning the forces of nature and the character and attributes of the early inhabitants of the earth differ so radically from our own that an explanation seems necessary this is supplied by the introduction which is intended to give the reader the Viewpoint necessary for the full appreciation and enjoyment of the tales seart Mariam Washington D.C January 1910 introduction the mythology of the Indians of California goes much farther back than our mythology it goes back to the time of the first people curious beings

who inhabited the country for a long period before Man was created the myths of the Mian tribes abound in Magic and many of them suggest a moral they tell of the doings of the first people of their search for fire of their hunting exploits of their Adventures including battles with Giants and miraculous escapes from Death of their personal attributes including selfish and jealousy and their conse quences of the creation of Indian people by a Divinity called coyote man and finally of the transformation of the first people into animals and other objects of nature some Explain

the origin of thunder lightning the rainbow and other natural phenoma some tell of a flood when only the tops of the highest mountains broke the waves others of a cheerless period of cold and darkness before the acquisition of the coveted heat and light-giving substance which finally was stolen and brought home to the people the more important features of Mian mythology may be summarized as follows the existence of a first people beings who differed materially from the present Indians and who immediately before the present Indians were created were transformed into animals trees rocks and in some

cases into stars and other celestial bodies or forces for even sawin the hail and Nuka the rain were first people the existence in some cases pre-existence of other divinities notably wwck the fountain grandson and companion of coyote man mik the Condor father of wwck and patal the lizard who according to several tribes assisted coyote man in the creation of Indian people the possession of Supernatural powers or Magic by coyote man wwck and others of the early divinities enabling them to perform Miracles the prevalence of universal dark dark nness which in the beginning overspread the world

and continued for a very long period the existence at a great distance of a primordial heat and light-giving substance indifferently called fire sun or mourning for in the early myths these were considered identical or at least incontrovertible the presence of a keeper or guardian of the fire it being foreseen by its first possessors that because of its Priceless value efforts would be made to steal it the theft of fire which in all cases was stolen from people or divinities living at a great distance the preservation of the stolen Fire by implanting it in the unu

OR buckeye tree where it was and still is accessible to all the power of certain personages or divinities as kaok the north Giants satate the weasel man and oato the bigheaded lizard to use fire as a weapon by sending it to pursue and overwhelm their enemies the conception of the sky has a dome-shaped canopy resting on the earth and perforated on the sides corresponding to the cardinal points with four holes which are continually opening and closing a fifth hole in the center of the sky directly overhead is spoken of by some tribes the existence at

or near the north Hole in the Sky of Thunder Mountain a place of excessive cold the presence of people on top or behind the sky the presence of people on the underside of the Earth this belief may not be held by all the tribes the existence of rock Giants who dwelt in caves and carried off and devoured people the tendency of the Dead to rise and return to life on the third or fourth day after death the prevention of the rising of the dead and their return to Life by Meadowlark man who would not permit

immortality the creation of real people the ancestors of the present Indians by the transformation of feather sticks or clay of these beliefs origin from feathers is the most distinctive and widespread reaching from Fresno Creek North to Clear Lake the completion and Perfection of newly created man by the gift of five fingers from patal the lizard man who having five himself understood their value so that's it for this episode as you can see it's unclear how literally we should take the stories of rock Giants when they also had stories about coyote Man lizard man and and

others but most of their stories were based on real animals that lived in their environment so it seems possible that Giants were another real aspect of their environments and they were similarly incorporated into the Miwok tales that they would pass down through generations so what do you think about these stories were they just made up or is there an element of truth that is consistent with the stories told by other Indian tribes let us know what you think in the comments and we will continue to bring you more stories like this on this channel this

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