Patagonian Giants
During its circumnavigation of the globe, the Spanish expedition headed by explorer Ferdinand Magellan dropped anchor off Patagonia – a sparsely populated region at the southern end of South America. There, they came across a naked giant singing and dancing on the shore, and Magellan ordered one of his men to make contact, singing and dancing in turn to demonstrate friendliness. It worked, and the giant was induced to meet Magellan. As described by a scribe who kept a diary that was later turned into a book account of the voyage: “When he was before us, he began to marvel and to be afraid, and he raised one finger upward, believing that we came from heaven. And he was so tall that the tallest of us only came up to his waist“.
The explorers proceeded to make contact with the rest of his tribe, and in subsequent weeks, hunted with them, and built a house ashore to store their provisions. When Magellan prepared to finally depart, he wanted to take some Patagonians to display back in Spain. So he invited some aboard his ship with the lure of trinkets, got them drunk until they passed out, and placed them in chains. When the Patagonians came to, the ships were already underway, sailing away from their homeland. Sadly, the kidnapped Patagonians did not survive the voyage. Nor, for that matter, did Magellan. However, the sailors who did complete the trip and returned to Spain, brought back with them the fantastic tale of a land inhabited by giants.
It was a tall tale that kept growing taller. Later voyages described encounters with Patagonians who stood 10 feet tall. Others came in contact with ones whose height was measured at 12 feet. Yet others encountered Patagonians who truly towered above normal people, measuring 15 feet in height. Reports of the South American giants would grip 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: 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 the stories of South American giants persisted, and as late as 1766, rumors circulated that a British Royal Navy ship had encountered a tribe of 9-foot-tall natives. However, when the ship’s account of the voyage was finally published, the natives were recorded as being 6 feet 6 inches tall – quite tall, but not incredibly so, and certainly not giants. In reality, the tribe in question, the Tehuelche, was statuesque and bigger than average. But they stood in the 6-foot range.