HISTORICAL TRADITIONS AND MYTHS OP OBSEEVATION. 315 



largest riverSj and the tallest pine-trees. Tlie Winnebagos say 

 their monstrous medicine animal still exists^ and they have 

 pieces of the bones which belong to them, which they use as 

 charms. The Dacotas use such bones for '^ medicine/'' and say 

 they belong to the great horned water-beast, the Unk-a-ta-he. 

 Hiawatha helped the Indians to subdue the great monsters that 

 overran the country. The "Tom Thumb" of the Chippewas 

 killed the giants, and hacked them into little pieces, saying, 

 " Henceforth let no man be larger than jou are now," and so 

 men became of their present size.^ There are plenty more 

 such stories. One mentioned by Dr. Wilson has the interest- 

 ing feature that monsters and giants both perished by the 

 thunderbolts of the Great Spirit, and in another all the mon- 

 sters were thus slain except the Big Bull, who went off to the 

 Great Lakes.^ It must be borne in mind, however, that in spe- 

 culating on the origin of tales such as these, possible recollec- 

 tions of contests of men with huge animals now extinct must 

 be taken into consideration, as well as inferences from the 

 finding of large bones, and sometimes even both causes may 

 have worked together. 



In the Old World, myths both old and new connected with 

 huge bones, fossil or recent, are common enough.^ Marcus 

 Scaurus brought to Rome, from Joppa, the bones of the mon- 

 ster who was to have devoured Andromeda, while the vestiges 

 of the chains which bound her were to be seen there on the 

 rock ;* and the sepulchre of Anteeus, containing his skeleton, 

 60 cubits long, was found in Mauritania. ^ 



Don Quixote was beforehand with Dr. Falconer in reasoning 

 on the huge fossil bones so common in Sicily as remains of 

 ancient inhabitants, as appears from his answer to the barbery's 

 question, how big he thought the giant Morgante might have 

 been ? '' . . . Moreover, in the island of.- Sicily there have 

 been found long-bones and shoulder-bones so huge, that their 

 size manifests their owners' to have been giants, and as big as 



1 Schoolcraft, part i. pp. 319, 390 ; part ii. pp. 175, 224 ; part iii. pp. 232, 315, 

 319. ^ Wilson, 'Prehistoric Man,' vol. i. p. 112. 



^ In Polynesia, see Mariner, vol. i. p. 313. 

 < Plin., ix. 4 ; V. 14. * Strabo, xvii. 3, 8. 



