The Legendary Giants of South America
Later voyages described encounters with Patagonians who stood ten feet tall. As if in a race of one upsmanship, others reported that they had contacted twelve-foot-high Patagonians. Yet others encountered Patagonians who truly towered above normal people, at fifteen feet in height. Reports of the legendary South American giants gripped European imaginations for over 250 years. The first challenge to the tall tales came from the famed British seaman and pirate, Sir Francis Drake, who encountered Patagonians during his own circumnavigation of the globe. As described by his nephew: “Magellan was not altogether deceived in naming these giants, for they generally differ from the common sort of man both in stature, bigness and strength of body, as also in the hideousness of their voices“.
He continued: “but they are nothing so monstrous and giant-like as they were represented, there being some English men as tall as the highest we could see, but peradventure the Spaniards did not think that ever any English man would come hither to reprove them, and therefore might presume the more boldly to lie.” Yet, as late as 1766, rumors circulated that a British ship had encountered a tribe of nine-foot-tall natives. However, when the ship’s account was finally published, the natives were recorded as being six and a half feet tall – tall, but not incredibly so, and certainly not giants. In reality, the tribe in question, the Tehuelche, were statuesque and bigger than average. But they stood in the six foot range.
