THE GIANTS FROM THE WEST

THE GIANTS FROM THE WEST

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 heard 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′ kălû′, “The Slant-eyed people,” because
they looked like the giant hunter Tsulʻkălû′ (see the story). 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.

 

Source:
Myths of the Cherokee, James Mooney