The Patagones or Patagonian giants were a race of
giant
In folklore, giants (from Ancient Greek: '' gigas'', cognate giga-) are beings of human-like appearance, but are at times prodigious in size and strength or bear an otherwise notable appearance. The word ''giant'' is first attested in 1297 fr ...
humans rumoured to be living in
Patagonia
Patagonia () refers to a geographical region that encompasses the southern end of South America, governed by Argentina and Chile. The region comprises the southern section of the Andes Mountains with lakes, fjords, temperate rainforests, and gl ...
and described in early European accounts. They were said to have exceeded at least double normal human height, with some accounts giving heights of
or more. Tales of these people would maintain a hold upon European conceptions of the region for nearly 300 years.
History
The first mention of these people came from the voyage of
Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan ( or ; pt, Fernão de Magalhães, ; es, link=no, Fernando de Magallanes, ; 4 February 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer. He is best known for having planned and led the 1519 Spanish expedition to the East ...
and his crew, who claimed to have seen them while exploring the coastline of South America en route to the
Maluku Islands
The Maluku Islands (; Indonesian: ''Kepulauan Maluku'') or the Moluccas () are an archipelago in the east of Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located eas ...
in their
circumnavigation
Circumnavigation is the complete navigation around an entire island, continent, or astronomical object, astronomical body (e.g. a planet or natural satellite, moon). This article focuses on the circumnavigation of Earth.
The first recorded circ ...
of the world in the 1520s.
[ ]Antonio Pigafetta
Antonio Pigafetta (; – c. 1531) was an Venetian scholar and explorer. He joined the expedition to the Spice Islands led by explorer Ferdinand Magellan under the flag of the emperor Charles V and after Magellan's death in the Philippine Islands, ...
, one of the expedition's few survivors and the chronicler of Magellan's expedition, wrote in his account about their encounter with natives twice a normal person's height:
Pigafetta also recorded that Magellan had bestowed on these people the name "Patagão" (i.e. "Patagon", or ''Patagoni'' in Pigafetta's Italian plural), but he did not further elaborate on his reasons for doing so.Antonio Pigafetta
Antonio Pigafetta (; – c. 1531) was an Venetian scholar and explorer. He joined the expedition to the Spice Islands led by explorer Ferdinand Magellan under the flag of the emperor Charles V and after Magellan's death in the Philippine Islands, ...
, '' Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo'', 1524: "Il capitano generale nominò questi popoli Patagoni." The original word would probably be in Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan ( or ; pt, Fernão de Magalhães, ; es, link=no, Fernando de Magallanes, ; 4 February 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer. He is best known for having planned and led the 1519 Spanish expedition to the East ...
's native Portuguese (''patagão'') or the Spanish of his men (''patagón''). Since Pigafetta's time the assumption that this derived from ''pata'' or foot took hold, and "Patagonia" was interpreted to mean "Land of the Bigfeet". However, this etymology
Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the Phonological chan ...
remains questionable, since amongst other things the meaning of the suffix ''-gon'' is unclear. It is now understood that the etymology refers to a literary character in a Spanish novel of the early 16th century. Nevertheless, the name "Patagonia" stuck, as did the notion that the local inhabitants were giants. Early maps of the New World
The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 3 ...
afterwards would sometimes attach the label ''regio gigantum'' ("region of giants") to the area.
In 1579, Francis Drake
Sir Francis Drake ( – 28 January 1596) was an English explorer, sea captain, privateer, slave trader, naval officer, and politician. Drake is best known for his circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition, from 1577 to 1580 (t ...
's ship chaplain, Francis Fletcher, wrote about meeting very tall Patagonians, of "7 foote and a halfe".
In the 1590s, Anthony Knivet claimed he had seen dead bodies long in Patagonia.
Also in the 1590s, William Adams, an Englishman aboard a Netherlander ship rounding Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego (, ; Spanish for "Land of the Fire", rarely also Fireland in English) is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of the main island, Isla G ...
, reported a violent encounter between his ship's crew and unnaturally tall natives.
The Dutch sailors Sebald de Weert
Sebald or Sebalt de Weert (May 2, 1567 – May 30 or June 1603) was a Flemish captain and vice-admiral of the Dutch East India Company (known in Dutch as ''Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie'', VOC). He is most widely remembered for accurately p ...
in 1598, Olivier van Noort
Olivier van Noort (1558 – 22 February 1627) was a Dutch merchant captain and pirate and the first Dutchman to circumnavigate the world.Quanchi, ''Historical Dictionary of the Discovery and Exploration of the Pacific Islands'', page 246
Olivier ...
in 1599, and Joris van Spilbergen
Joris van Spilbergen (1568 in Antwerp – January 31, 1620 in Bergen op Zoom) was a Dutch naval officer.
Joris van Spilbergen was born in Antwerp in 1568.
His first major expedition was in 1596, when he sailed to Africa.
He then left for As ...
in 1615 claimed that giants were living in Patagonia.[
In 1766, a rumour leaked out upon their return to ]Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
that the crew of HMS ''Dolphin'', captained by Commodore
Commodore may refer to:
Ranks
* Commodore (rank), a naval rank
** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom
** Commodore (United States)
** Commodore (Canada)
** Commodore (Finland)
** Commodore (Germany) or ''Kommodore''
* Air commodore ...
John Byron, had seen a tribe of natives in Patagonia when they passed by there on their circumnavigation of the globe. However, when a newly edited revised account of the voyage came out in 1773, the Patagonians were recorded as being —very tall, especially by 18th century standards, but by no means giants.
Explanations
In 1615, a grave with bones of the giants in Puerto Deseado
Puerto Deseado, originally called Port Desire, is a city of about 15,000 inhabitants and a fishing port in Patagonia in Santa Cruz Province of Argentina, on the estuary of the Deseado River.
It was named ''Port Desire'' by the privateer Thomas ...
was reported by Willem Schouten
Willem Cornelisz Schouten ( – 1625) was a Dutch navigator for the Dutch East India Company. He was the first to sail the Cape Horn route to the Pacific Ocean.
Biography
Willem Cornelisz Schouten was born in c. 1567 in Hoorn, Holland, Seve ...
and Jacob Le Maire
Jacob Le Maire (c. 1585 – 22 December 1616) was a Dutch mariner who circumnavigated the earth in 1615 and 1616. The strait between Tierra del Fuego and Isla de los Estados was named the Le Maire Strait in his honour, though not without controver ...
. This claim was possibly initiated by fossil finds.[
The people encountered by Byron were in all likelihood the ]Tehuelches
The Tehuelche people, also called the Aónikenk, are an indigenous people from eastern Patagonia in South America. In the 18th and 19th centuries the Tehuelche were influenced by Mapuche people, and many adopted a horseriding lifestyle. Once a ...
, indigenous to the region. Later writers consider the Patagonian giants to have been a hoax
A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into pu ...
, or at least an exaggeration and misreporting of earlier European accounts of the region.
These accounts may also refer to the Selk'nam people
The Selk'nam, also known as the Onawo or Ona people, are an indigenous people in the Patagonian region of southern Argentina and Chile, including the Tierra del Fuego islands. They were one of the last native groups in South America to be enco ...
. A photo of a seven-foot tall Selk'nam ("Ona") man can be found in the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
.Ona man, 7 ft. 4 in., standing
Library of Congress. Retrieved 4 June 2019.
See also
*Hyperborea
In Greek mythology, the Hyperboreans ( grc, Ὑπερβόρε(ι)οι, ; la, Hyperborei) were a mythical people who lived in the far northern part of the known world. Their name appears to derive from the Greek , "beyond Boreas" (the God of ...
References
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Giants
Indigenous peoples in Argentina
Indigenous peoples in Chile
Patagonia
Chilean mythology
Mythological peoples
Spanish-language South American legendary creatures