Giants in Catahoula Parish?

The following article was published in the June 22, 1933 edition of the Reno Evening Gazette in Reno, Nevada:

Transcription:

Reno Evening Gazette - 6/22/1933

"There were giants in the earth in those days," four thousand years or so ago in Palestine, according to the biblical account, and now comes the United States with skeletons of Indians to prove that Palestine had no monopoly in the giant business.  The sons of Anak may have been tall, but in Catahoula parish, Louisiana, two members of a Smithsonian Institute exploring party have uncovered from fifteen to twenty skeletons at Larto lake, all of which are said to be more than seven feet tall, which would be hard for Anakites to beat.

That this region was one of importance in the history of tribal migrations in America has long been maintained by investigators. At Natchez on the Mississippi side of the great river is the locale that is asserted by some students of anthropology to be the original home of the Aztecs, who, they believe, went from the lower Mississippi valley either by water or by land to Mexico and conquered, according to this theory, the original inhabitants of Mexican, gradually seizing the towns and fertile lands.

The most interesting feature of the discovery at Larto lake, however, is that very tall men actually did live in the southern part of the Mississippi region.  No legends of giants have survived among the Indians who remain in the territory, although among the Negroes there great stories are narrated about witches and demons and "ha'nts," by which they mean ghosts and devils.  It is such discoveries as this by the Smithsonian party that reveal how little is really known about the early history of North America before the white man came.

Larto Lake in southern Catahoula Parish - DOTD map

Larto Lake

Earlier posts on the Indians of Catahoula Parish can be found at the links below:


Jonesville - Community Life in the Early Years

Land of Beautiful Water

National Register of Historic Places - Ferry Plantation

Lovelace Plantation - Where the French Overcame the Natchez Indians in Louisiana

Tracing a Bygone Race in Catahoula Parish