The Giants From The West

According to James Mooney in his ‘Myths Of The Cherokee’ (Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 1897-98, Part I.) ‘James Wafford*, of the western Cherokee, who was born in Georgia in 1806, says that his grandmother, who must have been born about the middle of the last century, told him that she had beard from the old people that long before her time a party of giants had come once to visit the Cherokee. They were nearly twice as tall as common men, and had their eyes set slanting in their heads, so that the Cherokee called them Tsunil’kälû’**, “The Slant-eyed people,” because they looked like the giant hunter Tsul’kälû’. They said that these giants lived very far away in the direction in which the sun goes down. The Cherokee received them as friends, and they stayed some time, and then returned to their home in the west. The story may be a distorted historical tradition.’

* James D. Wafford (Born 1806 – Died about 1896) was also known as Tsuskwanun’nawa’ta (Worn-out-blanket).
** Tsul’kälû are thought by some to be the Cherokee representation of Sasquatch.