Inside Locklock Cave
© Dave Feliz

Part One: The Oral Tradition and Written Account

The Oral Tradition


The northern Paiutes of Nevada have an ancient oral tradition that they have passed down from generation to generation that usually causes the hearer to pause in bewilderment. The Paiutes state that long ago in ages past they went to war against a ferocious enemy known as the "Si-Te-Cah" or "Saiduka."

Now, here is where this prehistoric tale becomes fascinating. According to the Paiutes, the Si-Te-Cah were a race of red-haired cannibalistic giants that would literally devour the flesh of their foes! The chronicle states that after three years of blood-weary-battles, a coalition of regional tribes finally unified together to conquer this savage enemy. The allied tribes bravely pushed the Si-Te-Cah back into the depths of a very large cave and quickly covered the entrance with brush piles. A fire was then set ablaze that began to suffocate the giants and any would-be escapees were quickly shot with a fury of fire-piercing arrows. The giant cannibalistic carnivores finally met their grim fate in a blazing cavernous inferno.

"Si-Te-Cah" is said to be translated as "Tule-Eaters" in the northern Paiute language. Tule is a species of water plant that grows in marshes across North America and would have grown in "Lake Lahontan," a Pleistocene lake that once covered much of northwestern Nevada around 12,700 years ago. According to the oral tradition, the giants used the tule to weave rafts in which to navigate the lake, flee surprise attacks from the Paiutes and worst of all - capture the Paiute women who would gather tule near the shore of Humboldt lake. [1]

The Written Account

The legend of the Red haired giants began to rapidly spread in 1883 when Sarah Winnemucca, daughter of Chief Winnemucca, wrote the first known autobiography by a Native American woman called "Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims." In her book, Winnemucca discusses a tribe of barbarians that she says were known as the "People-Eaters" who lived along the Humboldt river and who would waylay her people and eat them. She states the following in her memoirs...
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 a mourning dress, and no one has such a dress but my family. (2)
Sarah Winnemucca
© WikiMedia CommonsSarah Winnemucca
Giant stature and red hair would obviously be considered genetic anomalies in the context of this account. So to the skeptics who say the Si-Te-Cah were not actually giants but just a tall enemy tribe, I ask the following questions...

Q. Why did the Si-Te-Cah have red hair & not black hair like the other indigenous tribes of the area?

Q. Why would one of the most influential Paiute families of the region save the red hair of their enemy and carefully pass it down from generation to generation and then trim their most treasured garments with it if it was just the hair from a normal human being?


Comment: The full text of Sarah Winnemucca's story of the Si-Te-Cah reads as follows:
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. Then they went to work and made tuly or bulrush boats, and went into Humboldt Lake. They could not live there very long without fire. They were nearly starving.

My people were watching them all round the lake, and would kill them as fast as they would come on land. At last one night they all landed on the east side of the lake, and went into a cave near the mountains. It was a most horrible place, for my people watched at the mouth of the cave, and would kill them as they came out to get water.

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. At last my people were tired, and they went to work and gathered wood, and began to fill up the mouth of the cave. Then the poor fools began to pull the wood inside till the cave was full.

At last my people set it on fire; at the same time they cried out to them, "Will you give up and be like men, and not eat people like beasts? Say quick - we will put out the fire." No answer came from them. My people said they thought the cave must be very deep or far into the mountain. They had never seen the cave nor known it was there until then. They called out to them as loud as they could, "Will you give up? Say so, or you will all die." But no answer came. Then they all left the place.

In ten days some went back to see if the fire had gone out. They went back to my third or fifth great-grandfather and told him they must all be dead, there was such a horrible smell. This tribe was called people-eaters, and after my people had killed them all, the people round us called us Say-do-carah. It means conqueror; it also means "enemy."

I do not know how we came by the name of Piutes. It is not an Indian word. I think it is misinterpreted. Sometimes we are called Pine-nut eaters, for we are the only tribe that lives in the country where Pine-nuts grow.

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.
"Life Among The Paiutes: Their Wrongs And Claims" is available online courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania.


References
  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Lahontan
  2. Winnemucca, Sarah, "Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims", 1883
Part 2: The Cave & The Advanced Artifacts & Specimans

The Cave

About 93 miles northeast of Reno and situated inside an outcrop of limestone that forms part of the Humboldt Mountains, Lovelock Cave sits like an ancient fortress. As I entered this massive cave that is approximately 150โ€ฒ x 35โ€ฒ at its widest point, I felt as if I was going back in time. The first thing I noticed was that the entire cave roof was charred black from fire and smoke. But, before I document the incredible discoveries found inside the cave, check out this quick video of my visit to this amazing site a few years ago:


The Artifacts And Specimens

In the autumn of 1911, a group of miners led by David Pugh and James Hart began digging out 250 tons of bat guano to be used as fertilizer when they began to discover countless well-preserved prehistoric artifacts. The University of California was notified and eventually sent out L. L. Loud in the spring of 1912 to conduct archaeological excavations at what is now known today as Lovelock Cave.

Inside Lovelock Cave
© Amanda CathcartInside Lovelock Cave
Loud obtained over 10,000 artifacts and specimens from the cave. The collection was divided up between the Nevada Historical Society and the University of California. A further excavation was conducted in 1924 by the Heye Foundation who employed M.R. Harrington, who also collaborated with Loud. In their 1929 field guide titled "Lovelock Cave,"

Loud and Harrington mention a few different dates regarding when ancient inhabitants might have first visited Lovelock Cave with the oldest date being around 4000 B.C. However, a mummy found nearby in Spirit Cave, has since been carbon dated at around 10,000 B.C. 1 Unfortunately, Loud did not maintain a comprehensive report of the excavations so all of the detailed information is not available. These archaeologists found artifacts, specimens and remnants of advanced basketry, weaving, pipes, ice picks, nets, balls, knots, darts, horns, weapons, skin, human body parts, zoomorphic stone effigies and more. In their book "Lovelock Cave," Loud & Harrington make the following statement:
The preservation conditions in Lovelock Cave are unusually favorable, recalling those of Egypt and Peru and being equaled at only a very few sites discovered in North America.
The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California wrote:
Lovelock Cave, despite years of destruction, is one of the most important sites in the history of North American archaeology.
But, it gets better. The following are some of the most fascinating artifacts and specimens that were uncovered.

The Calendar

A donut-shaped stone with 365 notches carved along the outside and 52 corresponding notches along the inside, which some believe is a calendar.

Duck decoys Locklove Cave
© Smithsonian National Museum of the American IndianDuck decoys
The Decoys

Eleven duck decoys made of rush and tule were found painted and feathered and are considered to be some of the world's oldest and most elaborate ever discovered. The original decoys are now preserved at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.

The Sandals

The sandals found inside Lovelock Cave are not like others from the region. These tule sandals are known as V-Twined-Bag-type sandals, as they are made in the same way as woven bags. There are many reports that a pair of these sandals measured 15 inches long. [2]

The Burnt Arrow Shafts

Loud and Harrington state: "Tending to confirm the Northern Paiute legend of the assault on the cave are the fire-arrow foreshafts... A very large number of arrow fragments were found in the crevices of the rockfall blocking the mouth of the cave, as if they had been shot into it... as if fired by the flaming arrows mentioned in the legend."

Large arrow shafts
© L.L. Loud and M.R. HarringtonBurnt arrow shafts
The Giant Weapon Shafts

I found several statements by Loud and Harrington that seem to indicate their surprise at finding extremely large arrow shafts. It's almost as if it's so hard for them to believe, that they surmise if the arrow shafts were made for different purposes:
Of weapons we found only a large, heavy, pointed foreshaft of greasewood, larger than those commonly used for arrows ...

The arrow fragments and foreshafts typical of the upper levels were not found in this one, but instead a single pointed foreshaft so large that it probably belonged to an atlatl dart rather than to an arrow.
Q. Were these abnormally large shafts made and used by the Si-Te-Cah to battle the Paiutes?

The Giant Pestle

Giant peste
© YouTube/Sierra Sasquatch
The giant pestle was not discovered during the Loud & Harrington excavations, but was found some time after. Dr. Gene Hattori who is the curator of Anthropology at the Nevada State Museum makes the following shocking statement about the giant pestle... "We recently received a donation of a pestle that was found below the mouth of Lovelock Cave and it is extraordinary large and very heavy... it is much larger than we usually find... it was found below Lovelock Cave and well within the Si-Te-Cah territory. So, this could have been one of the pestles used by the red headed giants and might account for its large size because of the large people that were using it."

Q. Why is this giant pestle only able to be seen in a private back room at the Nevada State Museum and not on display for public viewing?

It is pretty amazing to me that we now have both of the original archaeologists who first excavated Lovelock Cave, as well as the curator of Anthropology at the Nevada State Museum on record validating the oral tradition of the Paiutes and the written record by Sarah Winnemucca regarding a race of red-haired cannibalistic giants called the "Si-Te-Cah."

Again in their 1929 book "Lovelock Cave," archaeologists Loud and Harrington state the following:
The Northern Paiute have accounts of an extinct people living in various localities in Nevada which recall the beliefs in northwestern California regarding an ancient now extinct race of supernatural beings.
Richard J. Dewhurst, Researcher and Emmy award-winning writer & author of the book "The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America," says the following:
The artifacts themselves prove that an advanced culture did indeed predate the Paiute Indians.
Humanoid

The Humanoid

As I scoured the appendices in the back of Loud and Harrington's field report, I was shocked to see this photograph of what appears to be a child-like humanoid that had been mummified and wrapped in a woven fur robe. Consider the size of the skull in comparison to the size of the body. Look at the placement of the large eye-sockets along with the smallish face and jaw. [3]

Q. Is this yet another strange genetic anomaly such as the red-hair and gigantic size of the "Si-Te-Cah?"

References
  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovelock_Cave
  2. http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/great-basin-prehistoric-footwear
  3. Loud, L L & Harrington, M R, "Lovelock Cave", (Kindle) 4426-4437, 1929
Part 3: The Giant Skulls & Skeletons

Based on their oral traditions, the northern Paiutes would be the only people to have actually seen the red-haired giants known as the "Si-Te-Cah" alive in the flesh. However, there are many witnesses who claim to have seen the bones and skulls of these prehistoric cannibalistic carnivores that measured anywhere from 7 feet to 10 feet in length.

The Miners

After centuries of bat guano build-up upon the cave floor, the first people we have on record of being on scene at Lovelock Cave were the guano miners in 1911. Miner James H. Hart testifies to the following:
After some of the best specimens had been destroyed... 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... the man was "a giant. [1]
6-6 ft may not be considered a giant, but it is creeping close to the 7ft benchmark. And we do have Hart on record confirming it had red-hair and declaring it "A Giant." So, along with the length of this skeleton, we should also consider the girth and mass of these bones as well in light of Hart's comments.

John T. Reid was a mining engineer and an amateur anthropologist from Lovelock, Nevada who could speak the Paiute language. Reid claims to have examined and measured several giant skeletons that were either from Lovelock Cave or the surrounding area. Below is a newspaper article from the "Nevada State Journal" from April 17, 1932 that mentions Reid and a 7-7 foot giant skeleton as well as two of Reid's encounters with giant bones.

Nevada State Journal article
© Nevada State Journal
In February, 1931, a Lovelock resident informed Reid of the "weathering out" of a large skeleton on the lake bed near Lovelock Cave. This was excavated with great care and all the bones were recovered. Before removing it, Reid measured it in situ and it proved to be " 7 feet 7 or 6 inches in height... It had been buried in a shroud and covered with a dark substance, perhaps charcoal."

The "Lovelock Review-Miner" reported on June 19, 1931 that Lloyd De La Montoya of California had discovered the skeleton of a "giant" on the lake bed near Toy... Reid, John Foster and Thomas J. Chapel set out across the dry flat to the site... the skeleton was recovered... it was deduced that this man had been "nine and one half or possibly ten feet" tall. [2]

The Archaeologists

In their 1929 field report entitled "Lovelock Cave," archaeologists Loud & Harrington make the following statements about the skeletons and skulls:
It is quite likely that members of the crew excavating the guano took away bones, especially skulls... The best specimen of the adult mummies was boiled and destroyed by a local fraternal lodge, which wanted the skeleton for initiation purposes. Several human mummies and parts of mummies were obtained by the guano crew and the writer.... Much of the hair found on the mummies in the cave is reddish. [3]
Giant skull
© University of California
Q. Was this "best specimen" of the adult mummies a giant skull? We now have Loud & Harrington confirming that they uncovered mummies with red hair. In the appendices of their book, they also reveal two intriguing photos - one of a humanoid looking child (See here in part 2) and one of this large skull shown here.

The Mummies and Giant Skeletons Discovered Near Lovelock

The "Nevada Review Miner" published an article in it's 1931 June issue reporting two very large skeletons that were found in the Humboldt dry lake bed near Lovelock Cave. One measured 8.5 feet in length and was described as having been wrapped in a gum-covered fabric similar to Egyptian mummies. The other skeleton was nearly 10-feet long.

Saint Paul Globe article
© Saint Paul Globe
This newspaper article dated January 24, 1904 from "The Saint Paul Globe," documents the discovery of a "Skeleton of a gigantic human being" in Winnemucca, Nevada by workers who were digging in the gravel. A "Dr. Samuels" examined it and pronounced it to be nearly eleven feet in height.

13 miles east of Fallon Nevada is Spirit Cave. In 1940, two very well preserved mummies were found expertly wrapped in highly sophisticated weaving by Sydney & Georgia Wheeler working for the Nevada Sate parks division. The mummies were radio carbon dated to 9,400 years before the present. DNA testing of the mummies by Douglas W. Owsley, division head of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History revealed that the mummies were of Caucasian origin, with a long face and cranium that most closely resembled either Nordic or Ainu ancestry and bore no ancestry relationship to either the Paiute or Shoshone tribes. This groundbreaking news has received barely a glimmer of attention in the outside world. [4]

The Humboldt Museum Witnesses

There are a handful of people who have testified to seeing giant skulls from Lovelock Cave in a storage room at the Humboldt Museum in Winnemuca, Nevada. Two of theses witnesses are Don Monroe and M.K. Davis. Below are a series of statements made by M.K. Davis regarding their experiences:
The Humboldt Museum in Winnemucca Nevada used to keep a series of human skulls in a cabinet in the basement for private viewing. They have now repatriated the skulls and no longer have them. I saw them in 2006 and photographed them in the cabinet. Don Monroe photographed them some 30 odd years ago and they were different. Compare the photos and you can see that not only are some missing but there is an extraordinary mandible that was there in the prior photo but missing from the later one. This mandible has had the teeth filed. Here is the photo that Don Monroe took some 30 plus years ago. Pay attention to the fact that there are more artifacts then and more particularly to the mandible that is arrowed.
Skulls at Humbolt Museum
© Don Monroe
"Below are the skulls as I photographed them in 2006. This is a stitched photo."

Skulls at Humboldt museum
© M.K. Davis
"These photos are original prints taken some forty years ago in the basement of the Humboldt museum in Winnemucca, Nevada by Don Monroe. The Museum now denies the existence of this and other skulls. Why??? Notice what appears to be "double rows" of teeth."

Large skull at Humboldt museum
© Don Monroe
Large skull at Humboldt museum
© Don Monroe
"These photos were taken by Don Monroe back in the 1970's and recently discovered among his things that were boxed up. Don Monroe has been adamant that there were large skulls there then, that are now missing. This seems to support his claim. I hope that this serves to clear up whether these larger skulls did exist at the Humboldt Museum. Right now they emphatically deny that such skulls were ever there. They obviously were." [5]

Large reddish skull at Humboldt museum
© Don Monroe
Notice how large the reddish looking skull in the middle is in comparison to the other skulls.

The photograph at the top of this blog post as well as the next one below appear to be taken by another witness at the Humboldt museum by the name of "Donn Quijote." I first saw his pictures and read his testimony in an archaeological blog forum. His story and photographs seem to closely corroborate what M.K. Davis and others have said:
I was lucky enough to be shown these skulls before they were told to keep them from the public. This was in Nov 2008. Having read about the skulls on the internet, and I was making a trip to California, I stopped by the museum in Winnemucca to see if there really were giant skulls. I looked through the museum and saw artifacts from the Lovelock Cave were they were supposed to have been found, but didn't see any human remains.

My wife & I then asked the curator there, a lady in her 80's or so, where the giant skulls were. She got a big smile on her face and asked me to follow her. She led us back into a storage room and opened up a cabinet with the remains of 4 large skulls. She said that people from all over the world come there to ask her about those skulls.

I asked why they weren't on display and she said it was because they did not want them to be taken away by any claim from the Indians, and also that Nevada state does not deem them authentic. But according to accounts of Indians themselves, they are not even the same race. I asked her if it was true if there were large red headed mummies taken from the cave, and she said that they were and that she had seen them, but they were taken to UC Berkeley... [6]
Notice the same large reddish skull that was photographed by Don Monroe decades earlier appears to be pictured here in 2008.
Large red skull
© Donn Quijote
The Cover Up

In their 1929 field report "Lovelock Cave," archaeologists Loud & Harrington seem to make a cryptic statement regarding their findings:
The lot from which each specimen came is recorded in the catalogue of specimens in the University of California Museum of Anthropology, but except where the fact seems pertinent to some problem it is not presented in the following account. [7]
Q. Does this statement indicate that any giant skeletons and skulls they might have uncovered were considered a "problem (Pre-Indian Caucasian culture)" to main-stream scientific thought and were therefore not recorded in their catalogs and furthermore not put on display for public viewing?

Richard J. Dewhurst, Researcher and Emmy award-winning writer and author of the book "The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America," says the following:
Recently it has been confirmed that four of the ancient skulls unearthed at Lovelock Cave are, in fact, in the possession of the Humboldt Museum in Winnemucca, Nevada. According to Barbara Powell, who is the director of the collection, the museum is prohibited by the state of Nevada from putting the skulls on public display because "The state does not recognize their legitimacy." They are instead kept in the storage room and shown to visitors from all over the world only by request. In addition, Powell said that additional bones and artifacts were transferred to the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of anthropology in Berkeley, California, where they are kept but also never put on display. What is significant to note is that the scientific community has assiduously scrubbed all references to the six-to-eight-foot-tall, red-haired skeletons found at the site. As will be seen, this repeated effort to clear the historical record of all references to a pre-Indian Caucasian culture in the United States can be seen as working in harmony with the NAGPRA policies of the federal government, which works on agendas based on political correctness and not objective science. [8]
Explorer, author and co-creator of "The Watchers" film series, L.A. Marzulli makes the following statement:
The question is why would men of science deliberately engage in this? And, I believe I have an answer. If skeletons exist, and by all of the overwhelming evidence both from the written record found in newspapers and accounts from scientists, as well as the oral traditions from Native Americans, they pose a direct threat to the pervading world view, Darwinism. [9]
The Pieces of the Puzzle

To bring this 3 part investigative series to a conclusion, let me lay out all the pieces of the puzzle for you one last time:
  1. We have the Paiute oral tradition of red-haired giants who they burned alive inside a cave.
  2. We have the written account from Sarah Winnemucca about the red-haired "People Eaters" and her most treasured dress passed down from generation to generation trimmed with this red hair.
  3. We have Lovelock Cave that is charred black from fire and burnt arrow shafts found inside of it.
  4. We have testimony from the archaeologists and the curator of anthropology at the Nevada State Museum of the advanced artifacts, extra large weapon shafts and giant pestles found in and around the cave.
  5. We have photographs of the humanoid looking mummy and the large skull found inside the cave.
  6. We have the archaeologists on record saying that the mummies found inside the cave had red hair.
  7. We have the testimony of the miners and the newspapers reports of several 7 to 10 foot skeletons that were unearthed.
  8. We have the mummies found nearby in Spirit cave carbon dated at 9,500 B.C. and DNA tests that prove they were not Paiutes but of Caucasian origin.
  9. We have the photographs and testimonies from the Humboldt museum witnesses all telling the same story.
  10. We have the Vice President of the Humboldt museum stating that the museum is prohibited by the state of Nevada from putting the skulls on public display.
Q. So did the Red-Haired Giants of Lovelock cave actually exist? I'll let you decide...

References
  1. Loud, L L & Harrington, M R, Lovelock Cave, (Kindle) 4426-4437, 1929
  2. Dansie, Dorothy P, Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, 166, 1975
  3. Loud, L L & Harrington, M R, Lovelock Cave, (Kindle) 294, 4356, 1929
  4. Dewhurst, Richard J, The Ancient Giants who Ruled America, 276-278, 2013
  5. Davis, MK, The Davis Report, 2014, 2016
  6. Quijote, Donn (Forum), 2012
  7. Loud, L L & Harrington M R, Lovelock Cave, (Kindle) 882, 1929
  8. Dewhurst, Richard J, The Ancient Giants who Ruled America, 288, 2013
  9. Marzulli, L.A, On the Trail of the Nephilim,57, 2013