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THE ROLE OF THE PLEISTOCENE IN NATIVE AMERICAN ORAL TRADITIONS
BY
NICHOLAS LANDOL
M.A. Binghamton University, 2022
THESIS
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Master of Arts in Anthropology
in the Graduate School of
Binghamton University
State University of New York
2022
©Copyright by Nicholas Landol, 2022
All Rights Reserved
iii
Accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Master of Arts in Anthropology
in the Graduate School of
Binghamton University
State University of New York
2022
October 27, 2022
Randall McGuire, Faculty Advisor
Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University
Lubna Omar, Reader
Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University
iv
Abstract
The validity of oral traditions has been the subject of much contention in
anthropology. Numerous Native American oral traditions appear to describe events and
animals of the Pleistocene Epoch. Through comparisons between the elements of these
oral traditions and what has been empirically established about Pleistocene events and
animals, it becomes possible to determine which Pleistocene events and animals these
oral traditions might be describing. Demonstrating the accuracy of these oral traditions’
portrayal of the Pleistocene can verify that information can be preserved solely by oral
means for at least 12,000 years and as such, that oral traditions are capable of benefitting
both paleontology and anthropology.
v
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Dr. Randall McGuire for offering me the guidance necessary to
complete this thesis as my primary advisor. I also wish to thank Dr. Lubna Omar for
offering additional guidance as my secondary reader. Additionally, I wish to thank Dr.
Elizabeth DiGangi for familiarizing me with Eugene Hunn’s work dealing with
Kennewick Man and the Bretz floods. I also commend Dr. David Merriwether, the chair
of Binghamton University’s anthropology department, for accepting me into the
department’s graduate program for which this thesis was written and Dr. Rolf Quam for
permitting me to enter the program as a 4+1 student. It is also my intention to thank my
great-great-grandfather Carmelo Lopez. While I never knew him in life, it was his Taino
heritage which instilled in me a desire to study archaeology from an Indigenous
perspective. This thesis owes its existence to the numerous Indigenous storytellers who
transmitted across generations the narratives discussed here and the ethnographers who
made these narratives available to the public. It also of course could not have been
written had the Pleistocene species described herein never graced this world with their
presence.
vi
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1
Research Objectives .......................................................................................................... 5
Terminology ...................................................................................................................... 6
CHAPTER 2. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE .............................................................. 8
The Origins of the Study of Folk Memory ...................................................................... 10
Folk Memories of Distant Events .................................................................................... 11
Folk Memories of Extinct Animals ................................................................................. 13
Summary ......................................................................................................................... 14
CHAPTER 3. METHODS ................................................................................................ 15
Selection of Oral Traditions ............................................................................................. 15
Analysis of Pleistocene Events and Animals in Scientific Literature ..............................17
Rationale for Methods Used ............................................................................................ 18
Summary ......................................................................................................................... 20
CHAPTER 4. ANALYSIS ................................................................................................ 21
Potential References to the Native American Migration into North America ................ 21
Potential References to the Bretz Floods ....................................................................... 23
Potential References to the Younger Dryas .................................................................... 24
Potential References to Extinct Proboscideans .............................................................. 27
Potential References to the Short-faced Bear .................................................................. 33
Potential References to American Lions, Saber-toothed Cats and Scimitar-toothed
Cats .................................................................................................................................... 36
Potential References to the Dire Wolf ............................................................................. 39
Potential References to Teratorns .................................................................................... 42
Potential References to the Giant Ground Sloth .............................................................. 46
Potential References to the Giant Vampire Bat ............................................................... 49
Potential References to the Giant Beaver ........................................................................ 51
Summary ......................................................................................................................... 52
CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSION .......................................................................................... 54
vii
Satisfaction of Research Objectives ................................................................................ 54
Avenues for Further Research ......................................................................................... 58
References Cited ............................................................................................................... 60
1
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
This paper seeks to demonstrate that both major events of the Late Pleistocene and
the now-extinct animals which inhabited the Western Hemisphere during this period are
present in the oral traditions of multiple Native American nations. The paper seeks to
counter the notion that oral traditions are inherently unreliable and unable to compete
with written accounts in terms of their accuracy and the amount of time over which they
can transmit information. The period covered by this paper, the Late Pleistocene, predates
the world’s first writing by more than 5,000 years. Therefore, the presence of aspects of
Late Pleistocene life in the contemporary oral traditions of the Native Americans would
demonstrate that the oral traditions of at least some cultures are capable of providing
information about events that occurred prior to the earliest written records. As such, they
would prove more valuable than written accounts at times.
Before proceeding further, an introduction to the Pleistocene Epoch and the arrival
of humans in the Americas is in order. The Pleistocene Epoch lasted from approximately
2.6 million to 11,700 years ago (Bednarik, 2017). The epoch was marked by a series of
glacial periods and while most geologists agree that the Pleistocene is now over, the same
cannot be said for the Ice Age that accompanied it. The planet currently finds itself in
what is known as the Holocene interglacial, a period between two glacial periods that is
expected to last for another 18,800 years when it will be succeeded by the First Future
Glacial Age (Mörner, 1972). The most recent glaciation was the Last Glacial Period
which lasted from 115,000 to 11,700 years ago (Wassman, 2021).
Most anthropologists agree that during the Last Glacial Period, the first anatomically
modern humans to populate the Americas arrived from Siberia (Feder, 2019). However, a
2
controversial alternative model known as the Solutrean hypothesis also exists, which
suggests that descendants of the Solutreans may have entered the Western Hemisphere
via an ice bridge that linked North America to Europe (Stanford & Bradley, 2012). This
hypothesis largely stems from similarities between the projectile points of the New World
Clovis culture and those of the Solutreans of Western Europe (Stanford & Bradley,
2012). Anatomically modern humans are the only hominid known to have ever inhabited
the Western Hemisphere (Roberts, 1997). However, being that Homo denisova was
known to have inhabited Siberia (Waddell, 2011), it is not out of the realm of possibility
that it also crossed into the Americas.
Two hypotheses currently exist for how anatomically modern humans from Asia
advanced through the Western Hemisphere. The “ice-free corridor” hypothesis states that
they did so by waiting for a narrow corridor to open up between the Laurentide and
Cordilleran ice sheets which allowed them to reach the glacier-free territory of what is
today the southern United States (Raff, 2022). The Kelp Highway hypothesis states that
anatomically modern humans were able to bypass the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice
sheets by paddling canoe-like boats down the coast of western North America, relying on
the organisms that inhabited the kelp forests which were abundant in the region at the
time to sustain themselves on the long journey (Erlandson, 2007). As of now, the 14,500-
year-old site of Swan Point provides us with the oldest firmly established date for a
human presence in the Western Hemisphere (Hirasawa & Holmes, 2011) and the at least
14,000-year-old site of Monte Verde provides us with the oldest firmly established date
for a human presence in South America (Dillehay et al., 2008). The latter site lends
considerable support to the Kelp Highway hypothesis given that it predates the
3
emergence of the “ice-free corridor” by approximately 1,000 years and is located south of
where the corridor would have been (Jackson & Dud-Rodkin, 1996). Despite this,
controversial dates as distant as 50,000 BP, 51,000 BP, 60,000 BP, and 75,000 BP have
been obtained at Imperial Valley in New Mexico (Hayden, 1976), the Topper site in
South Carolina (Goodyear, 2005), Pedra Furada in Brazil (Niède, 2002) and Pendejo
Cave in New Mexico (MacNeish & Libbey, 2004), respectively. Analyses at the Calico
Early Man Site (Bischoff, 1981) and Hueyatlaco (Steen-McIntyre, 2004) have even
arrived at the astonishing dates of 200,000 BP and 250,000 BP, respectively.
While it is disputed when exactly the ancestors of the Native Americans arrived in
the New World, what seems certain is that it was at some point during the Pleistocene. As
such, they undoubtedly encountered many now-extinct species upon their arrival. While
it is beyond the scope of the introduction to provide a laundry list of every extinct animal
species that was in existence during the Pleistocene, among the most iconic of these were
the mammalian megafauna. These included the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus
primigenius), the Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi), the giant short-faced bear
(Arctodus simus), the saber-tooth cat (Smilodon fatalis) and the giant ground sloth
(Megatherium americanum).
Although the cause of the demise of these animals is uncertain, three major
hypotheses have been proposed to account for their extinction. The Overkill hypothesis
states that humans wiped out the mammalian megafauna as thousands of years of
isolation from them would have made the megafauna naïve to the dangers that humans
posed and relatively easy to hunt (Keens-Soper & Lent, 2002). The Climate Change
4
hypothesis credits their extinction with the Younger Dryas, a period of intense cold that
occurred at the end of the Pleistocene (Keens-Soper & Lent, 2002). The Hyperdisease
hypothesis states that massive epidemics wiped out the megafauna. This hypothesis holds
that the numerous animal populations that passed through the Bering land bridge would
have lacked immunity to each other’s deadly pathogens (Keens-Soper & Lent, 2002). A
variation of this hypothesis states that humans and their domesticates, primarily dogs,
might have been the carriers of these pathogens (Fiedel, 2005).
The disappearance of the mammalian megafauna did not necessarily mark the
disappearance of these animals from the memories of those populations who encountered
them nor did the end of the Last Glacial Period necessarily mark the end of remembrance
of its major events. While no Indigenous society north of what is now Mexico is known
to have had a writing system, oral traditions still allowed them to relate events that had
occurred in the distant past. Some fantastical elements have certainly been incorporated
into Native American oral traditions, as have been incorporated into many historical
chronicles produced by literate societies. However, there is no reason to believe that such
traditions are not ultimately derived from events that actually transpired. The notion of
folk memory, the passing down of information regarding important events along with the
bygone aspects of life in the past over generations for hundreds or even thousands of
years, is of interest to anthropologists. This has been the case since Walter Johnson first
published Folk-memory: Or, The Continuity of British Archaeology in 1908. The
megafauna of the Late Pleistocene surely would have left a great impression on those
who encountered them, as would the significant events of the epoch on those who
experienced them. Is it not possible, as this paper shall assert, that both became imbedded
5
in the oral traditions of various Native American cultures still being recounted to the
present day?
Research Objectives
The utilization of oral traditions in archaeology has been the subject of much
contention of late. As such, a comprehensive work that compares what is related in oral
traditions to what is known from empirical studies appears necessary. By demonstrating
that many elements of Native American oral traditions align with data regarding the
animals and events of the Pleistocene, the most distant period in Native American
history, the use of Native American oral traditions to aid studies will become a more
well-respected archaeological strategy. Given that much of the archaeology dealing with
the pre-Columbian Americas pertains to societies that lack writing and the knowledge
that can be obtained from studies of material culture alone is limited, examinations of
oral traditions might be the only means of acquiring certain information about these
societies.
While I understand that this is an avenue some may find to be controversial, another
intention of this paper is to investigate whether or not oral traditions describing extinct
animals could benefit the life sciences by providing information about these species that
the fossil record cannot. Previous studies have been conducted on Paleolithic artwork in
the hopes of enriching our understanding of extinct species. For instance, it has been
concluded from Paleolithic artwork that male cave lions likely did not sport manes
(Yamaguchi, 2004). Perhaps studies of oral traditions can allow for similar conclusions.
In this sense, this paper can be considered a multidisciplinary study.
6
Terminology
Before proceeding forward, it is important to elaborate on the terms that are used
throughout this paper, along with the reasoning behind these word choices. It is my hope
that this section will remind researchers to be selective when considering which terms
they should use when discussing culturally sensitive topics such as oral traditions. At the
very least, it will address any uncertainty those reading this may have regarding why I
utilize the terms I do and why I omit other terms from this work.
The term “Native American” will be used in this paper to refer to the Indigenous
peoples of both North and South America and not merely the Indigenous peoples of what
is now the United States. This is because, in its broadest sense, the term “America” refers
to the entire Western Hemisphere.
This paper rejects the use of the term “folklore” to describe the accounts in question
as I view the term to be degrading to such accounts as it implies that they are merely
stories invented for entertainment purposes. Likewise, I will also refrain from using the
term “oral history” to describe these accounts as some scholars would argue that only
written accounts can be considered history. As a substitute, the phrase “oral traditions”
will be used to describe accounts as I view it as a neutral term.
When referring to specific Native American cultures, the term “nations” will be
used. This is to acknowledge the sovereignty of the cultures as these cultures were often
incorporated into modern nation-states against their will. “Tribe” will not be used as an
umbrella term to describe the various Indigenous cultures of the Western Hemisphere as
the term has a particular connotation in anthropology as a society consisting of multiple
7
autonomous sedentary villages and some of the Indigenous societies of the Western
Hemisphere do not meet this definition.
In layman’s speech, the term “the last ice age” is used to refer to the Last Glacial
Period (115,000-11,700 BP). However, in geological literature, the entire Pleistocene
Epoch is treated as the last ice age with the Last Glacial Period being only one of several
glaciations that occurred over the course of it. As a result, when the term “the last ice
age” is used in this paper, it shall refer to the Pleistocene Epoch as a whole.
8
CHAPTER 2. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
Being that the Pleistocene Epoch ended more than 11,000 years ago, there is
obviously no person alive today who can attest to the events that occurred then and the
animals that went extinct by the epoch’s conclusion. However, anthropologists have long
asserted that memory is as much of a communal phenomenon as it is an individual
phenomenon. Through the phenomenon of collective memory, also known as social
memory, society is still capable of remembering an event long after the last witness to the
event has died. Two major ways in which this can occur are through the process known
as cultural memory and through the process known as folk memory (Olick, 2016).
In its broadest sense, cultural memory is the relationship that contemporary culture
has with the past. The notion holds that both are capable of influencing one another. Two
main approaches to cultural memory exist- the historiographical approach and the
cultural studies approach. The historiographical approach, pioneered by Richard
Terdiman, focuses on the way in which contemporary trends influence our perception of
the past. Terdiman (1993) argued that this phenomenon is a product of the French
Revolution and the radical changes which followed it. These changes caused individuals
to become considerably detached from their past in the sense that they now found
themselves in a world that was so unlike the world their ancestors lived in that it became
difficult for them to understand the past. As a result, attempting to envision what the past
was like became a highly speculative affair. The easiest way to envision the past was to
use the present as an analogy. One of the ways in which this can clearly be seen today is
in the reinterpretation of the presence of race in medieval Europe. Current events have
led to a renewed interest in how racialization and racism have shaped history. This has
9
compelled many historians to discard the previous model of medieval Europe as a pre-
racial society. The new model which has replaced it holds that beliefs about race played a
substantial role in medieval European society (Heng, 2018).
The cultural studies approach to cultural memory holds that the past is capable of
transcending time and influencing the present. This occurs in several different ways.
Embodied memory is the way in which the human body helps contribute to the
continuation of cultural memory (Connerton, 1989). The body is capable of both
inscribing events by recording information about such events via writing and
photography and incorporating events into the present (Connerton, 1989). Incorporation
occurs by repeating phrases or practicing customs that are the legacy of events that
occurred in the distant past (Connerton, 1989). For instance, the phrase “mad as a hatter”
is believed to be derived from the Danbury shakes, a condition that afflicted hatters in the
19th-century due to their exposure to mercury (Hightower, 2011). Individuals continue to
use the phrase long after the Danbury shakes have disappeared from living
consciousness. Objects are also capable of facilitating cultural memory. For instance,
souvenirs obtained during a visit to another part of the world help reinforce in the psyche
of the souvenir’s owner, and through them, the psyche of those in their community, the
notion that the location they visited is an exotic one (Stewart, 1993). At the same time,
many individuals living in the 21st-century rely on photographs to help remember past
events. Some scholars have even argued that the way in which individuals remember
important events in their lives is largely based on how those events are depicted in
photographs (Sturken, 1999). The cultural memories which are generated by objects,
however, are not temporally uniform. For example, the ruined state of Roman buildings
10
invoked a sense of disdain for the Ancient Romans in the minds of the medieval
Christians who encountered these monuments as it was concluded that these buildings
must have fallen into ruin as a result of the depravity of the Romans. In the Renaissance,
however, these ruins invoked a sense of nostalgia for the glory that was Ancient Rome
(Stewart, 2020).
Folk memory operates slightly differently than cultural memory. Folk memory
occurs in the absence of the vessels such as phrases, souvenirs, and photographs that
cultural memory relies on to subconsciously transmit information. In folk memory,
individuals make an active attempt to pass down the memory of an event or bygone
aspect of life. Until a society adopts writing, the only way in which it is possible for
individuals in said society to do this is through oral traditions and in some cases,
ceremonies. While the effort to preserve information through folk memory is a conscious
one, it should not be interpreted that the message transmitted through folk memory
remains entirely unchanged since its inception. It should be expected that certain
elements of the narrative are altered over the millennia, whether intentionally or
unintentionally. It is also not improbable that some aspects of a narrative are made to be
more fantastic than they were in actuality. While oral traditions are meant to record
events, they also serve as a means of entertaining an audience. As stated before, some
might argue that this dual purpose is what contrasts oral traditions from written history.
There is little reason to believe, however, that written historical accounts are not also
often embellished with fantastical elements.
The Origins of the Study of Folk Memory
11
Walter Johnson appears to have coined the term “folk memory” in his 1908 work
Folk-memory: Or, The Continuity of British Archaeology. Johnson defines folk memory
as “the conscious or unconscious remembrance, by a people collectively, of ideas
connected with the retention of rites and superstitions, habits, and occupations” (11). As
those reading this might have noticed, Johnson’s definition of folk memory differs from
how contemporary researchers define the concept in that Johnson believed folk memory
could be unconscious. Today the unconscious aspect of memory would be assigned to the
category of incorporated embodied cultural memory. In his book, Johnson proposes that
the legends of faery-like beings which abound in the British Isles are in fact a fanciful
rendering of the Neolithic inhabitants of Britain. He argued that these peoples were
replaced by later populations consisting of individuals of taller stature. Johnson uses this
hypothesis to explain why the faery folk tend to be associated in British and Irish folklore
with Neolithic burials.
Folk Memories of Distant Events
Distant events are a major theme of the Native American oral traditions which will
be examined in this paper, especially distant events which were catastrophic. As a result,
it is important to survey the oral traditions describing cataclysms that past researchers
have argued represent a folk memory of actual cataclysms. The folk memory hypothesis
is often applied to the narratives recorded in the Holy Bible, a text which describes a host
of disasters. With the aid of sonar, geologists have uncovered evidence that a strip of land
lies submerged at the bottom of what is now the Bosporus strait. The fossils of mollusk
species whose adaptations imply a freshwater lifestyle have also been recovered,
indicating that this strip of land held large lakes. Around 8,600 BP, these freshwater
12
species were completely replaced by their saltwater counterparts. Researchers concluded
this was when the last remnants of the Laurentide ice sheet melted, causing sea levels to
rise around the planet. This sudden rise in sea level saw the Mediterranean spill into the
Black Sea, permanently drowning the strip that once separated them and causing the
latter body of water to expand to the point where it engulfed the surrounding territory.
Conway (2008) cites this event as being a possible inspiration for the Great Flood in the
Book of Genesis and perhaps the Sumerian flood myth as well.
Some might argue that the fiery destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is the most
inexplicable event in the entire Bible. Yet research conducted yet again in 2008 might
provide a source material for the spectacle. Manufactured by an Assyrian scribe around
700 BCE, British Museum collection No K8538, dubbed the Planisphere, records an
astronomical event that occurred in 3123 BCE. The disk-shaped artifact depicts a
meteor-like object and the trajectory of its movement provided by the disk corresponds
to the impact crater located in Kofels, Austria (Bond & Hempsell, 2008). The collision
could have been great enough to send shrapnel to present-day Israel that would prove
responsible for the destruction of the two dreaded cities and such a cataclysm almost
certainly would have been significant enough to be passed down for generations until it
was committed to writing in Genesis.
The Israelites were not the only culture who apparently managed to maintain folk
memories of catastrophic events for thousands of years. Temple XIX at the Mayan site of
Palenque contains an inscription which records that eleven years after the enthronement
of a deity referred to simply as GI, which would place the action in 3298 BCE, the
beheading of a cosmic crocodile brought forth a flood of blood. It has been suggested that
13
the cosmic crocodile’s decapitation was a metaphor for a comet whose tail was lost
during a coronal mass ejection (Daniels, 2012). The impact of the comet would have
likely resulted in a tsunami that would have been tinted red by the debris of the comet,
accounting for the flood of blood. Being that Temple XIX was constructed in the 8th-
century CE, oral traditions would have had to have kept the memory of the event alive for
four millennia.
Folk Memories of Extinct Animals
This is not the first publication to suggest that extinct animals survive in the oral
traditions of Indigenous groups. Several oral narratives belonging to the Australian
Aborigines are purported to reference a large species of monitor lizard known as
Megalania prisca. Megalania went extinct at least 20,000 years ago and perhaps as
distantly as 50,000 years ago (Hancock, 2012). In the Ngiyaampaa account of how the
kookaburra bird acquired its laughter-like vocalizations, two children taunt a massive
monitor lizard until, driven by frustration, the animal flattens them with its tail, much to
the amusement of two kookaburras who bore witness to the event (Legge, 2004). The
Kukatja of Balgo in Western Australia speak of a lizard large enough to duel a crocodile
(Hancock, 2012). The Kuku Yalanji tell of the Mungoon-Gali, another great goanna
lizard. In one account, the Mungoon-Gali was equipped with venom until the asset was
stolen from it by the Australian black snake (Parker, 1898). The seizure of venom from
the monitor lizard in Aboriginal oral traditions could in fact be a metaphor for the
extinction of Australia’s venomous lizards such as the Megalania.
The moa, any one of a number of large flightless birds which inhabited New
Zealand until the 15th-century (Holdaway, 2014), also appear to be recorded in the oral
14
traditions of the islands’ Indigenous Māori people. Richard Taylor wrote that his Māori
informants had told him that there was once a time when they hunted formidable bipedal
birds by driving them into lakes. Being that they were not proficient swimmers, they
became easy targets once in the water (Hector, 1873).
New Zealand was once also home to Hieraaetus moorei, a massive aerial predator
commonly known as the Haast’s eagle. This animal also appears to have made its way
into Māori traditions. A legendary bird known as the Pouakai was said to have once
feasted on their ancestors until a warrior by the name of Hau-o-Tawera devised a plan in
which he had the dreaded creature trapped in a net and speared to death (Hector, 1878).
Summary
This chapter presented an overview of previous literature regarding folk memory
from various regions of the world in order to provide a framework for the analysis of
Native American folk memory that is the subject of this paper. The notion of folk
memory was defined, and an explanation was offered for how it differs from cultural
memory. The conception of folk memory by Walter Johnson in his work on oral
traditions regarding the faery folk of the British Isles was discussed. The application of
the theory of folk memory to Biblical narratives such as that of the Deluge and the fiery
cataclysm that levelled Sodom and Gomorrah was also described. The chapter concludes
with an analysis of previous literature, which has cited folk memory as the source of oral
accounts of semi-mythical beasts which bear a resemblance to extinct animals. These
include multiple Aboriginal traditions of a giant goanna akin to Megalania prisca and
Māori narratives that likely refer to the moa and the Haast’s eagle.
15
CHAPTER 3. METHODS
If this paper is to be regarded highly, meticulous and structured methods must be
developed to validate my argument. Essentially, in the analysis carried out in this paper,
what is known to science shall serve as the framework against which I will compare what
is known to tradition. In other words, data regarding events and animals of the
Pleistocene, that has been acquired via empirical means, will be compared to the
ambiguous events and animals that are described in the numerous oral traditions of the
Native Americans. In this chapter, I will provide a brief overview of the Native American
oral traditions and the pieces of scientific literature this paper will cover and how I came
to acquire them. I will then discuss why I have chosen oral traditions to demonstrate the
existence of folk memories of the Pleistocene and why a comparison with what is
described in scientific literature is needed.
Selection of Oral Traditions
Intermittently over the course of the past three years, I have collected numerous
Native American oral traditions and examined them for potential references to
Pleistocene events and animals. I did not obtain any of the oral traditions presented in this
paper directly from personal correspondences with Native American storytellers. Instead,
I acquired them from the works of previous authors. It must also be noted that many of
these works were not written by Native American storytellers themselves but were
documented by early settlers, ethnographers and journalists who were largely of
European descent. As such, it can be expected that some aspects of these oral traditions
were lost during their transference onto paper or were even intentionally altered by their
transcribers for the sake of their own personal agendas.
16
Those reading this should not be led to believe that every fantastic creature in Native
American oral traditions is likely to have been based on a genuine Pleistocene animal. In
nearly every culture, there are fabricated examples of animal and plant life, which were
either entirely the invention of storytellers and illustrators or the product of the combined
features of various species, which said storytellers and illustrators found interesting. For
instance, the flying heads of the Iroquois (Cusick, 1848) do not appear to have any basis
in actuality, as they lack a reasonable resemblance to any member of the animal kingdom,
either extant or extinct.
It should be noted that I am not the first individual to suggest that Native American
oral traditions allude to the Late Pleistocene. Some of the oral traditions described in this
paper have been previously cited as evidence of Pleistocene folk memories. However, it
is my belief that some of the oral traditions that I have selected have never been
connected in prior literature to the events and animals of the Last Glacial Period.
The earliest accounts presented in this paper to have been committed to writing are
those contained within the 16th-century Maya text known as the Popol Vuh (since many
Maya texts were destroyed during the Spanish Conquest, however, it is not improbable
that earlier written compilations of these traditions once existed). The most recent
accounts presented in this paper to have been committed to writing are those regarding
the Apache medicine wolf and the Seminole Hvcko Capko collected by Nikolas Sucik at
the turn of the 21st-century. The bulk of the oral traditions presented in this paper were
documented during the 19th and early 20th-centuries. At the time, many Native American
cultures were still intact, or at least had members who remembered a time when they
were intact. This was also a time when Native American cultures peaked ethnographers’
17
interests. The sharp decline in the collection of Native American oral traditions after the
mid-20th-century leaves researchers to wonder if many of these traditions have been
forgotten by the Native American nations which composed them.
Analysis of Pleistocene Events and Animals in Scientific Literature
Any comparison between extinct animals and past events with those described in
oral traditions requires the use of much scientific literature. The data regarding
Pleistocene events and animals was obtained from various books, scholarly journal
articles, and other credible venues. Each examination of the similarities between a
Pleistocene event or animal and Native American oral traditions will begin with a
summary of what has been scientifically established about the given event or animal.
For Pleistocene events, the location of the event, the approximate date of when it
occurred, and the evidence for the event will be provided. The “ice-free corridor”
hypothesis, one of the hypotheses that will be addressed when comparing Native
American migration narratives to the arrival of Native Americans in the Western
Hemisphere which is known to have occurred during the Pleistocene, largely operates off
data regarding when the deposition of glacial moraines in particular areas ceased
(Jackson & Duk-Rodkin, 1996; Hughes, 1987). The Kelp Highway hypothesis was
formulated in response to the discovery of archaeological sites in mainland North and
South America which predate the “ice-free corridor” along with sites located on islands
that Native Americans likely would have depended upon in order to reach these mainland
locations. Knowledge of the Bretz floods derives from studies of geological formations
such as the Channeled Scabland. Knowledge of the Younger Dryas derives from studies
of ice cores and ocean-atmosphere climate models.
18
For Pleistocene animals, the scientific name of the animal, its spatial and temporal
data, its probable diet, its length, its weight, its general appearance and its taxonomic
classification will be provided. The researchers who conducted the studies of the
temporal and spatial ranges of these animals that this paper utilizes relied upon various
forms of relative and absolute dating techniques along with the geographic distribution of
these animals’ fossils. The researchers who conducted studies regarding the length and
weight of these animals relied upon skeletal measurements and weight estimates that took
into account both the physical dimensions of these animals and their bone mass. The
studies utilized by this paper that pertain to these animals’ diets took into account isotopic
data, the physical characteristics of these animals and paleoenvironmental data.
This study can be seen as a multidisciplinary approach as much of the information
regarding these events and animals was acquired not by anthropologists but by geologists
and paleontologists. The scientific literature used should be relatively recent. If an oral
tradition is found to contain information that was believed by scientists at the time about
Pleistocene events and animals but has since been discredited, then the tradition was
likely simply inspired by what the storyteller had heard from contemporary scientists.
The Rationale for Methods Used
The earliest Native American nation north of Mexico to adopt writing, the
Kalaallisut, did not do so until the 18th-century (Dorais, 2010). As a result, oral traditions
were the only means many Native American nations had of recording notable events for
thousands of years. Because of this, an analysis of them appears to be the most efficient
way to determine if modern Native American societies have any memory of the
Pleistocene or its signature animal species.
19
Furthermore, archaeologists have previously demonstrated that Native American
oral traditions have been capable of preserving information for at least eight centuries
(Somerset, 1960). An examination of Paiute oral traditions has revealed that much of
what they state about the Anasazi of the 12th-century American Southwest appears to be
valid. The Paiute assert that the Anasazi arrived from the south, lived in pithouses, grew
corn, were of short stature, and eventually returned to the south after a severe famine
where they evolved into the present-day Hopi. Each of these claims has been
substantiated in some way by archaeological investigations (Somerset, 1960).
There is compelling evidence that the Klamath nation remembers an event that
occurred nearly 7,000 years ago- the formation of Crater Lake (Lopes & Carroll, 2008).
Today, most geologists agree that Crater Lake was shaped by a prehistoric eruption of
Mount Mazama. In Klamath oral traditions, the universe was once divided into two
hemispheres- the Below World, which was the domain of Llao, and the Above World,
which was the domain of Skell. War eventually broke out between the two divine rulers
which was waged via the hurling of massive stones and balls of fire, a detail reminiscent
of a volcanic eruption. The war concluded with the death of Llao, which triggered the
collapse of Mount Mazama and the establishment of a crater that went on to become
Crater Lake. Llao’s decapitated head became the island in the center of the novel lake.
I am skeptical that Native American visual arts demonstrate a long-term
remembrance of the Pleistocene. There are at least two alleged post-Pleistocene Native
American depictions of mammoths- the Lenape stone and the Holly Oak gorget, both
being suspicious. The Lenape stone is broken in two and the etchings on the two
fragments do not appear to line up with one another, indicating that the etchings were
20
produced subsequent to the stone’s fracture (Mercer, 1885). The Holly Oak gorget
appears to have been modeled after a depiction of a mammoth at the La Madeleine
archaeological site in France, indicating its crafters were familiar with the latter artifact
(Meltzer, 1983).
I find the analysis of scientific literature regarding Pleistocene events and animals
necessary in order for this study to be regarded highly. While the investigation is centered
around oral traditions, it cannot consist solely of them as their descriptions of animals and
events as they need to be compared with what scientists now know about these animals
and events.
Summary
A discussion of how Native American oral traditions made their way from
storytelling ceremonies to this paper was included in this chapter. I also briefly described
the scientific literature that will be utilized for my analysis. The chapter concluded with
an offering of the rationale behind both my decision to use oral traditions to demonstrate
the survival of the Last Glacial Period in the memory of Native Americans and the
exclusion of artwork analysis along with an explanation of why comparisons of
narratives with what has been scientifically established about the Pleistocene are needed.
21
CHAPTER 4. ANALYSIS
It is within this chapter where a comprehensive examination of Native American
oral traditions shall occur. Oral traditions will be compared with what is known about
three Pleistocene events (Native American immigration to the Americas, the Bretz floods,
and the Younger Dryas) and eight types of Pleistocene animals (pachyderms, extinct
felids, the giant short-faced bear, the dire wolf, the teratorn, the giant ground sloth, the
giant vampire bat and the giant beaver). In doing so, I strive to be as comprehensive as
possible, including as many oral traditions which correspond to Pleistocene events and
animals as I have been able to collect.
Potential References to the Native American Migration into North America
As stated earlier, the two competing hypotheses for how humans first arrived in the
Western Hemisphere are the “ice-free corridor” hypothesis, which states that humans
arrived directly via the Bering land bridge, and the Kelp Highway hypothesis which
states that humans arrived via boat. Artifacts belonging to the Clovis tradition are often
used to support the “ice-free corridor” hypothesis as these artifacts date to after 13,000
BP when the “ice-free corridor” formed while artifacts dating to before 13,000 BP are
often used to support the Kelp Highway hypothesis (Feder, 2019). However, it is also
quite possible that migrants from Siberia originally relied on boats to reach North
America and subsequently made use of the “ice-free corridor” once it had emerged.
There is at least one oral tradition that lends support to the Kelp Highway
hypothesis. The ethnographer Livingston Farrand recorded an account from the British
Columbian Heiltsuk (Bella Bella) nation of a time when “there was nothing [but] water
22
and ice, and a narrow-strip of shoreline” (Muckle, 2017). In 2014, archaeologists
discovered the remains of a 14,000-year-old settlement on Triquet Island. From this,
proponents of the Kelp Highway hypothesis concluded that the ancestors of the Native
Americans adopted an “island-hopping” strategy, and that Triquet Island was one of the
islands they had docked at on their way to the North American mainland (Muckle, 2017).
One of the team members, Alisha Gauvreau, asserted that the mentioning by the Heiltsuk
of an ice-free strip of land during the Last Glacial Period was, in fact, likely a reference
to Triquet Island. The Heiltsuk might have sought refuge at the unglaciated island during
their journey along the Kelp Highway.
Some Native American oral traditions do in fact describe terrestrial migrations into
North America. One such tradition was related to a traveler named Alexander Long by
the American Southeast nation known as the Cherokee (Anigiduwagi) in the 18th-century.
Long’s Cherokee informants told him that their ancestors had been driven to their current
location from their original homeland by overpopulation. In order to reach their new
home, their ancestors were forced to pass over “mountains of snow and ice” (Conley,
2005). These frozen faux mountains could be a reference to the glaciers which the
ancestors of the Native Americans needed to bypass in order to reach the temperate
regions of what is now the southern United States.
One Salish narrative is even more consistent with the image of the Native
Americans’ ancestors arriving via the Bering land bridge. The narrative describes a war
that broke out between the ancestors of the Salish and another nation prior to their arrival
in their current homeland. To escape the wrath of these unnamed adversaries, they turned
to a proto-Salish chief whose guardian spirit was the element of cold and another whose
23
guardian spirit was the element of heat. The former caused a lake that stood in his
nation’s path to freeze over so that they could walk across it and reach their current place
of residency. Upon doing so, the latter caused the lake to thaw out so that their enemies
would be unable to pursue them (Boas, 1917).
The Walum Olum is a creation story that Constantine Samuel Rafinesque supposedly
pieced together from pictographs produced by the Eastern Woodland Delaware (Lenape).
The Walam Olum states that in the original homeland of the Delaware, a giant serpent
created a flood to exterminate them, but they were spared by Nanabush, the “grandfather
of beings” who brought them to a tundra. So, in pursuit of more suitable territory, they
traversed a frozen sea to reach a location known as Snake Island. Rafinesque’s work has
come under scrutiny in recent decades, however, as its pictographs appear to be an
amalgamation of the characters of several non-Native American languages (Feder, 2010).
Despite this, the 19th-century scholar George Copway (who was of Indigenous descent
though not a Delaware) vouched for its authenticity (Garrison, 1885).
Potential References to the Bretz Floods
The Bretz floods swept through what is now the northeastern United States between
15,000 and 13,000 BP. They are believed to have been triggered by the periodic bursting
of the ice dam that enclosed the now-extinct body of water known as Lake Missoula
(Allen, 2009). These floods were first hypothesized by geologist Harlen Bretz in the
1920s to account for the formation of the Channeled Scabland (Allen, 2009).
At the turn of the 21st-century, the archaeologist Eugene Hunn sought to
demonstrate possible Umatilla affiliations with Kennewick Man, a hunter-gatherer who
24
had lived in what is now Washington around 9,000 BP. He attempted to do so by
examining Umatilla (Imatalamláma) oral traditions for references to events that were
either contemporaneous with Kennewick Man or predated him (Lindsay, 2000). He came
across an intriguing oral tradition concerning the summit of Rattlesnake Ridge, known to
the Umatilla as Laliik. In Umatilla cosmology, Laliik is regarded as the location where
individuals ascend to the spirit realm upon death. The Umatilla told Hunn of a flood so
massive that it had engulfed everything except Laliik where the ancestors of the Umatilla
consequently sought refuge. Hunn also suggested that the origins of the Umatilla name
for White Bluffs, nukshay, which means otter, might lie in sightings of otters in the
floodwaters.
While oral traditions belonging to the Arikara of North Dakota (also known as the
Sahnish, the Ree and the Hundi) make no mention of an event reminiscent of the
Pleistocene floods that sprung forth from Lake Missoula, their origin narrative might
contain a potential reference to Lake Missoula itself. The Arikara assert that during their
migration to their current homeland, their ancestors were forced to cross a massive body
of water west of the Blue Mountains which have been suggested to be either the Rocky
Mountains or the North Dakota Blue Butte (Echo-Hawk, 2000).
Potential References to the Younger Dryas
The Younger Dryas, a climatological event that occurred about 12,000 years ago,
marked the end of the previous 8,000 years of relative warmth that followed the end of
the Last Glacial Maximum. During this period, the Americas experienced the return of
the intense cold that characterized most of the last Ice Age (Buizert, 2014). The event is
believed to have been caused by the melting of the glaciers that spanned the Northern
25
Hemisphere and the release of freezing water into the Atlantic which in turn suspended
the oceanic conveyer belt (Murton, 2010). Joint analyses of both Greenland ice cores and
ocean-atmosphere climate models have shown that during this period, temperatures, at
least in some parts of North America, dropped by as much as 10 °C (Buizert, 2014). As
stated above, the Younger Dryas is one of the proposed causes of the extinction of the
Pleistocene megafauna. Such a traumatic incident would likely have become imbedded
in the minds of those who survived it and would be a prime candidate for a Pleistocene
event potentially preserved in Native American oral traditions.
The Moses band of the Pacific Northwest nation known as the Sinkiuse-Columbia
(Middle Columbia Salish) nation tell the narrative of the Warm Wind Brothers & the
Cold Wind Brothers (Edmond, 2009). The oral tradition speaks of two groups known as
the Tribe of the Warm Wind and the Tribe of the Cold Wind. The Tribe of the Cold Wind
brought tumultuous weather with them wherever they went. The five sons of the chief of
the Tribe of the Warm Wind did battle with the five sons of the chief of the Tribe of the
Cold Wind in an attempt to halt the latter tribe’s southward expansion but, tragically, the
Warm Wind Brothers all fell under their adversaries. The Tribe of the Cold Wind
subsequently seized control of their territory, and as a result, “the rivers and lakes froze
solid” and “as far south as Dry Falls, the ice was piled as high as mountains”. However,
before dying, one of the Warm Wind Brothers bore a child with a woman from a
neighboring nation. This child inherited the ability of his paternal kin to bring warm
weather with them wherever they went. He was eventually able to defeat the Cold Wind
Brothers and drive their nation far up north. As the Cold Wind Brothers caused a
relatively temperate environment to become unbearably cold, I believe them to be a
26
metaphor for the Younger Dryas. While the Sinkiuse-Columbia storyteller who
introduced the Western world to this oral tradition noted that it was likely a reference to
the ice ages, they did not specify when during the Last Glacial Period they envisioned
this oral tradition as having taken place. I do not believe it refers to the entirety of the
Last Glacial Period as it describes Native Americans as already being present in the
Americas at the cataclysm’s onset, which is unlikely to have been the case with the onset
of the Last Glacial Period unless the Calico Early Man Site and Hueyatlaco represent a
genuine pre-Last Glacial Period Native American presence. The tradition of a cold snap
that occurred subsequent to the arrival of Native Americans in the Western Hemisphere
is most consistent with the Younger Dryas.
Charles Kawbawgam of the Ojibwa (also known as the Chippewa and Saulteaux) of
southeast Canada records another oral tradition that hints at a memory of the Younger
Dryas (Bourgeois, 1994). In it, the Ojibwa folk hero Nanabozho has a wolf companion
who is drowned by the spirits who lived at the bottom of a frozen lake. In an attempt to
avenge his death, Nanabozho shoots Mishi Bizi, a panther who was the leader of the
water spirits, with an arrow. However, Nanabozho soon learns from Mishi Bizi’s
grandmother that he had survived the attack. The water spirits then proceed to try to kill
Nanabozho through various means, among them, causing it to rain stones, freezing the
planet over and finally, unleashing a massive flood. After killing the grandmother,
Nanabozho uses her song to lure Mishi Bizi close enough for him to kill him as well. He
then summits a mountain to seek shelter from the rising sea levels and is saved when a
muskrat arrives with soil it collected from beneath the flood waters. This soil is then used
to create a new world for Nanabozho and his descendants to inhabit. It is my belief that
27
Mishi Bizi’s attempt to kill Nanabozho by freezing the planet is a reference to the Younger
Dryas and that the subsequent flood is a reference to the flooding that occurred once the
last glaciers melted.
Potential References to Extinct Proboscideans
With trunks, tusks and four sturdy, practically toeless feet, mammoths and
mastodons and gomphotheres largely resembled elephants (the ears excepted). They are
believed to have fed on forbs which were more prevalent than grasses during the
Pleistocene (Willerslev, 2014). The Western Hemisphere was home to five pachyderm
species at the end of the Pleistocene- the American mastodon (Mammut americanum),
the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), the Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus
columbi), Cuvieronius hyodon and Notiomastodon platensis). While proboscideans
largely disappeared from the Americas at the end of the Pleistocene, a population of
woolly mammoths survived on St. Paul Island off Alaska until 5,600 BP (Graham, 2016).
The American mastodon stood up to 10 feet tall (Canadian Museum of Nature,
2021) and achieved a length of about 15 feet (Canadian Museum of Nature, 2021),
weighing in at as much as 15 tons (Larramendi, 2015). It had a vast spatial range,
spanning from present-day Alaska to present-day Mexico (Polaco, 2001).
The Columbian mammoth stood up to 14 feet tall (San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
Library, 2021b), had a length of up to 15 feet (San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance Library,
2021b) and weighed as much as 18 tons (Larramendi, 2015). The Columbian mammoth
could be found as far north as present-day Washington and as far south as present-day
Mexico (Lister & Bahn, 2007).
28
The woolly mammoth stood at about 11 feet tall, had a length of around 11 feet (not
including the tusks) (Uchytel, 2012c) and weighed up to 9 tons (Larramendi, 2015). This
animal lived farther north than its Columbian counterpart in what is now Canada and the
northeastern United States (Lister & Bahn, 2007).
By the end of the Pleistocene, the range of Cuvieronius hyodon was restricted to
what is now Florida, Mexico and Texas (Graham, 2001). The animal achieved a length of
14 feet (not including the tusks), stood at around 9 feet and weighed about 4 tons
(Uchytel, 2012a).
Notiomastodon platensis was approximately 15 feet in length, stood approximately 8
feet tall and weighed about 4.5 tons (Uchytel, 2012b). It could be found as far north as
Colombia and as far south as Chile (Alberdi & Prado, 2022).
As the differences between the woolly mammoth, the Columbian mammoth, the
American mastodon, C. hyodon and Notiomastodon were likely too minute to be
recognized by Native American oral traditions, each of the following traditions will be
treated as potential references to any of these species. A possible exception to this is the
Naskapi account which likely specifically refers to the Columbian mammoth for reasons
that will be discussed in the conclusion.
The earliest written account of a Native American oral tradition describing a
proboscidean-like animal dates back to the 18th-century. The French missionary Pierre
Francois Xavier de Charlevoix recorded a narrative about a peculiar creature from an
Algonquian nation from the Eastern Woodlands, presumably the Abenaki (Strong, 1934).
This narrative speaks of an animal referred to as a great “moose” which commanded all
other cervids. His Algonquian informants told him that the animal was so large that all
29
other moose seemed like ants in comparison to him and that as much as eight feet of
snowfall were not enough to cover its massive legs. The creature’s hide was so thick that
it was impervious to arrows or any other weapon. The most intriguing feature of this
great “moose” was its excess appendages. Fully functioning arms protruded from its
shoulders. It seems reasonable that these additional “arms” could in fact refer to the tusks
and trunk of a mammoth or mastodon.
When Thomas Jefferson inquired about the mammoth fossils located at Big Bone
Lick, a paleontological site in Kentucky, he was told by members of the Delaware nation
that the bones had belonged to a bygone class of “tremendous animals” (Lankford, 1980).
These beasts were alleged by the Delaware to have once rampaged across the area and
were large enough to kill all animals in their wake including bears, elks, and buffaloes.
To halt their rampage, the Creator destroyed all of these creatures by hurling lightning at
them, save a bull. This bull managed to flee north of the Great Lakes where Jefferson
says the Delaware at the time insisted he still lived. While the Delaware had only
recently established themselves near Big Bone Lick at the time when this narrative was
collected by Jefferson, it is quite possible that the Delaware acquired it from other
nations that had resided in the region since the Pleistocene.
In the Choctaw variation of this oral tradition, these beasts served as draft animals
for a tribe of cannibals (Lankford, 1980). The human cannibals and their giant livestock
eventually both fell victim to an epidemic of an unspecified illness. As in the Delaware
account, the Creator attempted to bring down the last surviving member of the beasts’
species with lightning, but it managed to evade him and in this variant, reached the
Rocky Mountains. The Choctaw of the 19th-century supposedly attributed the formation
30
of the prairies in the region to the clearing of the forest by these creatures.
The Osage (Wazhazhe) nation offers a similar explanation for the origin of the name
of Big Bone River (now the Pomme de Terre River) in Missouri (Mayor, 2007). Great
beasts once invaded the territory, and a war broke out between them and its endemic
species. The animals native to the area ultimately triumphed over their adversaries and
the carcasses of the slain beasts were burned by the Osage as ritual offerings.
The Tuscarora writer David Cusick compiled a chronicle of the history of the
Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) people of the Eastern Woodlands in 1848. Cusick (1848)
states that long before the creation of the Iroquois League, the ancestors of those nations
which the alliance would one day comprise were attacked by two beasts. Either of these
could have been based off mammoths or mastodons. The first, Big Quisquiss, flattened
villagers’ homes until, after several failed attempts, it was finally repelled by a band of
warriors a local chief had organized. The second, Big Elk, likewise rampaged through
villages until it was finally put to death. If the Native Americans likened the tusks of a
pachyderm to the antlers of an elk, then it is not improbable that they would describe it as
a giant “elk”.
Likewise, a giant “elk” also appears in the Apache of the Southwest’s pantheon of
legendary beasts. The folk hero Jonayaiyin recruited the help of Gopher in order to take
down the monster. Gopher chewed away at the protective coat of fur covering the “elk’s”
chest, leaving the area over its heart exposed. As a result, Jonayaiyin was easily able to
shoot four arrows into the vital organ. The creature subsequently fled the Apache
territory, but its retreat was obstructed by webs spun by giant spiders that had allied
themselves with Jonayaiyin and the animal ultimately died of its wounds (Wherry, 1969).
31
John Reed Swanton mentioned that the Chitimacha nation of Louisiana possess an
oral tradition describing a monster known as Neka-ci ckami. This name apparently
translates to “long-nosed spirit” (Strong, 1934). This creature was quite aggressive, and
the Chitimacha sought refuge from it by scaling trees, only to be hurled out of them by
the
creature’s long nose. The Chitimacha eventually resorted to building tall scaffolds in
order to remain out of reach of the “spirit’s” clutches. Neka-ci ckami had apparently died
by the time of the arrival of Europeans. Upon obtaining guns from them, the Chitimacha
ventured into the forest in an attempt to hunt it down but failed to locate it. There are few
animals with a nose long enough to reach the treetops that the Chitimacha could have
used for their source material apart from pachyderms.
The Chitimacha were not alone in their account of there having once been a long-
nosed monster that terrorized Native Americans. The Naskapi of eastern Canada tell of a
long-nosed monster that went by the name of Katcheetohuskw (Lankford, 1980). Their
narrative begins with Katcheetohuskw killing two Naskapi loggers and extracting an
unborn child from one of the loggers. The child is resuscitated by the loggers’ daughter
who proceeds to raise him under the name Tcikapis. One day, Tcikapis makes plans to
avenge the death of his parents and departs from his older sister under the guise of
squirrel hunting. After interviewing a black bear, a brown bear and a white bear, he is
able to locate Katcheetohuskw. Tcikapis dispatches the monster with his arrows and
before dying, he instructs the folk hero to dismember his carcass, consume his head and
use his ears as a bed. The fact that Tcikapis is able to use Katcheetohuskw’s ears as a bed
is a testament to how large the two organs must have been.
32
Snowy Owl, a hero of the Eastern Woodland nation known as the Penobscot, also
had a confrontation with such creatures (Strong, 1934). While on a quest to locate his
missing wife, Snowy Owl came across animals so large that he initially mistook them for
hills. The creatures had such an insatiable thirst that they caused the waterways to
evaporate. In order to defeat them, Snowy Owl nicked the trees the monsters leaned
against when they wished to sleep and that night, when the creatures went to rest against
them, they collapsed and were impaled upon shards of wood. Snowy Owl subsequently
dispatched them. It was noted by the Penobscot that these creatures had long teeth,
suggesting the members of the nation were describing the tusks of a pachyderm.
One of the most concise links between Native American oral traditions and
mammoths is that found in the Louisiana town of Carencro. Martin Duralde states that
the local Atakapa (Ishak) nation once spoke of a huge animal that had died there and was
feasted upon by carrion crows (buzzards), giving rise to the town’s name. He goes on to
describe how the remains of a prehistoric “elephant” were later unearthed in the area
(Griffin, 1959).
One oral tradition of the Eastern Canadian Kaska nation speaks of a monster known
as the afix (Teit, 1917). In this account, a woman was returning home with beaver flesh
she had harvested when upon seeing the creature, she dropped her bounty and fled to her
husband. However, the husband refused to believe that she had seen the afix and accused
her of having an affair with someone and delivering the flesh to them. That night, the
wife heard the afix approaching and tried to notify her husband, but he was already deep
in slumber. As a result, the wife found it necessary to abandon her husband and fled to a
nearby village with her infant. The afix consumed the husband and then pursued the wife
33
and her child. Fortunately for the woman, however, she managed to reach the village.
After a failed attempt to drown the creature, she confided in an infirm shaman child who
was finally able to bring it down. This child would go on to become the first Kaska chief.
When questioned about the appearance of the afix, the Kaska remarked that it resembled
an elephant.
The Indigenous archaeologist Roger Echo-Hawk (2021) records a narrative among
the Cayuse (Liksiyu) people of a beast referred to as the “king of the elephants”. It
alleges that there was once a time when the “king of the elephants” and his brethren
rampaged across the Pacific Northwest. The Cayuse deity known as Coyote eventually
threatened the beasts into returning to the “Northland”, the region from whence they
came. However, the bull began to reminisce about the Cayuse territory and decided to
return, only to be turned to stone by Coyote.
Potential References to the Short-faced Bear
The giant short-faced bear (Arctodus simus) was the largest bear species ever known
to have existed. The animal weighed at least 2,100 pounds and stood up to 12 feet tall,
surpassing even the giant cave bears of Pleistocene Europe (Figueirido, 2010). Unlike its
European counterpart, Arctodus survived until the end of the Pleistocene (Sisinyak,
2013) while the latter died off during the Last Glacial Maximum (Terlato, 2018). Fossils
attributed to the animal have been found from Alaska to Mississippi (Churcher, 1993).
Paleontologists have long believed that the short-faced bear was a kleptoparasite, an
animal that survives off kills made by other predators. However, this view has been
contested after it was found that bear’s teeth lack the molar damage that is normally
associated with kleptoparasites due to their gnawing of bones (Donohue, 2013).
34
David Cusick (1848) records that during the time of a chieftain known as Artotarho
II, a massive bear by the name of Oyalkquoher invaded the territory of the Iroquois and
claimed the lives of many of the confederacy’s members. An Oneida village known as
Ohiotek dispatched a group of hunters to eliminate the beast. However, the bear was
destined to meet its demise not at the hands of these elite warriors but by the claws of an
animal referred to as a lion which will be discussed in the subsequent section. Cusick
asserts that the beast was so large that when the hunters descended upon it to harvest its
meat, they found that two men were unable to carry a single limb over their shoulders.
David Cusick was not the only Iroquois storyteller who spoke of a giant bear. An
anonymous Cayuga informant told Harriet Maxwell Converse an origin story used to
explain the genesis of the Big Dipper (Converse, 1908). In this narrative, the bear was of
such great nuisance that game became scarce due to its insatiable appetite. As a result,
three skilled hunters took it upon themselves to kill the bear. One night during their quest,
all three of the hunters dreamt of killing the bear and were convinced upon awaking that
they would see the fruits of their labor that day. The hunters’ journey took them literally
to the ends of the earth. The Iroquois believed the earth to be flat and so, upon
transcending the limits of the earth, they ascended into the heavens. Upon reaching the
bear, the animal utilized a translucent atmospheric net to cast its pursuers out into the
cosmos. In their perpetual hunt for the giant bear, the hunters, along with a dog who
accompanied them, became the handle of the Big Dipper with the bear itself being the
main portion. One of the most curious features of this legendary bear is its ability to
summon snow which it uses to mask its tracks, making it quite difficult to hunt. Perhaps,
due to the short-faced bear’s natural environment, the Native Americans made an
association between the creature and snow. Overtime, they may have come to imbue in it
35
the ability to manifest snow.
In his compilations of the Ojibwa oral traditions, Charles Kawbawgam describes a
beast known as the Great Bear of the West (Bourgeois, 1994). The oral tradition speaks
of a nameless folk hero who resided north of Lake Superior and had the ability to run as
fast as an arrow could fly. Upon hearing of his exploits, a human giant from the north
approached him one day and requested his aid to help retrieve a valuable iridescent
wampum belt that was worn by the great bear. The party of two departed and,
fortunately for them, when they came upon the bear, it was fast asleep. The folk hero
lifted up the bear’s paw so that his giant companion was able to obtain the prized belt.
However, the bear quickly awoke and as the giant human was paddling across a nearby
lake with the belt, began to suck up all the water with its mouth. Nevertheless, the giant
reached for its club and struck down the massive beast. The giant subsequently returned
the man to his village and travelled north with his bounty. While a giant short-faced
bear would obviously be incapable of draining a lake, this could perhaps be a literary
device used to emphasize the immense size of the creature. Kawbawgam concludes that
the Giant Bear of the West must have lived prior to the Deluge since that is when the
Ojibwa believe the great beasts of the earth were extinguished. As stated in the section
dedicated to the Younger Dryas, it is my belief that the flood spoken of in Ojibwa
traditions is in fact the flood that followed the melting of the Laurentide and
Cordilleran ice sheets at the end of the Last Glacial Period. Kawbawgam states in his
account of Nanabozho that the flood followed a period of extreme cold.
An important oral tradition of the Plains nation known as the Lakota (Teton Souix)
is the contest between Iktomi the trickster and a monstrous bear known as Mato
36
(Marshall, 2002). Iktomi, who was not a proficient hunter, is searching for food one day
when he finds himself in a field of plums which is Mato’s favorite source of sustenance.
Being that Iktomi is in a prairie, and therefore, would be quite visible for miles, he
decides against trying to evade Mato who was now quickly approaching. Instead, Iktomi
boasts to Mato about his prowess and warns him about attacking. In response to the
bear’s skepticism, Iktomi strikes a wager with him. If he is able to cough up more
imbedded arrowheads than Mato, attesting to the ordeals he has been able to overcome in
the past, Mato will have to supply him with provisions for an entire month. Mato agrees
and begins coughing up his share of arrowheads. As anticipated by Iktomi, Mato closes
his eyes in order to do this and Iktomi seizes the opportunity to put his plan into motion.
Iktomi begins collecting the regurgitated arrowheads and shoves the majority of them in
his mouth, leaving behind on the ground only a small pile. When Iktomi’s turn to display
his battle trophies arrives, he coughs up the arrowheads which he had stored in his mouth,
resulting in him winning the wager.
Potential References to American Lions, Saber-toothed Cats and Scimitar-toothed
Cats
The saber-toothed cat, often erroneously referred to as the saber-toothed tiger, was
arguably one of the most formidable predators to inhabit the Western Hemisphere during
the Pleistocene. While several species of saber-toothed cat are known, the only species
which coexisted with humans in North America was Smilodon fatalis. This animal grew
to a length of nearly six feet and achieved a weight of about 620 pounds (San Diego Zoo
Wildlife Alliance Library, 2021e). This animal’s spatial range stretched from
southwestern Canada (Reynolds, 2019) to Uruguay (Manzuetti, 2018), and it was present
37
at least as recently as 12,000 BP with a controversial study finding it to have survived as
recently as 9,500 BP (Gelbart, 2016). Smilodon was highly carnivorous with isotopic
analysis demonstrating that it hunted animals as large as bison (Coltrain, 2004). It would
have been easily distinguishable from other big cats by its enlarged canines.
If there was any animal Smilodon was weary of it was the American lion (Panthera
atrox). At 500 pounds and eight feet in length (San Diego Wildlife Alliance Library,
2021b), the American lion rivalled it in size. Being that its territory stretched from
present-day Alaska to present-day Peru (San Diego Wildlife Alliance Library, 2021b),
Smilodon likely would have encountered it. In accordance with the competitive exclusion
principle, Panthera atrox likely would have been restricted to grasslands in order to
avoid overcompetition with the forest dwelling Smilodon before disappearing at the end
of the Pleistocene (National Park Service, 2021). Despite being larger than one, Panthera
atrox would have likely resembled a modern African lion. However, as European cave
lions are believed to have lacked manes the presence of manes in the American lion is
questionable.
It has recently been determined that there were populations of the scimitar-toothed
cat (Homotherium serum) which still inhabited present-day Canada 12,000 years ago,
indicating that humans likely encountered the animal (Ewald, 2018). The scimitar-toothed
cat could achieve a length of 7 feet and a weight of 500 pounds (NewDinosaurs, 2017).
The spatial distribution of the various members of H. serum’s genus spanned five
continents (NewDinosaurs, 2017). Given that the animal hunted in packs, it was capable
of bringing down prey much larger than itself (NewDinosaurs, 2017).
Any Native American oral tradition describing a large feline distinct from a
38
mountain lion could be a potential reference to either the saber-toothed cat, the American
lion, or the scimitar-toothed cat. None of the characteristics ascribed to any such creature
in Native American oral traditions, with the possible exception of the Dené lion, are
distinct enough to privilege the animal’s identification as one of these three species over
the others.
The role Pleistocene felids might have played in Native American oral traditions is
apparent is in the works of David Cusick (1848) on the pre-Columbian history of the
Iroquois people. In the account of the giant bear that was pursued by the Ohiotek hunters,
the animal was ultimately brought down by a lion. While it is possible that Cusick was
referring to a mountain lion (Puma concolor), this is a name which is generally given to
the species in the western portion of the United States. The Iroquois were situated in the
northeast and consequently, this is likely where Cusick would have received the bulk of
his Western audience. The ability of the felid to emerge victorious in a duel with a bear as
massive as Oyalkquoher also puts the animal’s identity as a mountain lion in question.
The Muskogee or Creek people also attest to the existence of a large, ferocious felid
in the distant past. In one narrative, a lion that fed on humans known as the Istepaupau,
or Man Eater, once terrorized what is now the southeastern United States (Grantham,
2009). The ancestors of the Creek were ultimately able to vanquish this creature by
constructing a pit that the animal eventually fell into. Upon doing so, the Istepaupau was
incinerated to death by the torches of its captors, save the bones which were then
collected to be used as medicine. Ethnographers asserted that the Creek still retained
these bones in medicinal pouches for whenever they would be of use. In this, the
Istepaupau, or at least its tendency to hunt humans, is treated as a bygone aspect of
39
Muskogee life. As such, those who encounter the narrative must be hesitant towards
associating it with the modern mountain lion.
The Creek also a tell a more fanciful variant of how Man Eater was defeated
(Swanton, 1913). In this account, Rabbit sought to liberate humans from Man Eater’s
wrath by approaching the monster as a friend and deceives him into believing that he also
hunts humans. After two failed attempts to kill Man Eater by pouring burning ash on him
and bringing down a tree on him, Rabbit then decides to have his “friend” jump across a
river with him for entertainment. Being an agile animal, Rabbit is easily able to reach the
other side, but Man Eater falls into the river and drowns.
The zoologist Ivan Sanderson once corresponded with an anonymous ethnographer
who had studied the Denè. The ethnographer told him of a beast the Denè believed
inhabited the Nahanni valley of Canada (Peters, 2018). The Denè referred to the creature
as a lion and claimed it was large enough to hunt bears, moose and an animal with a long
nose, perhaps yet another reference to the mammoth. The nameless lion-like creature was
described as having a woolly mane which encompassed much of its body. While a lion’s
mane does not cover its entire body, it can run down the animal’s underbelly which is
perhaps what the Denè informants were referencing.
Potential References to the Dire Wolf
The dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus) was the largest true canine species ever known to
have roamed the earth. Two subspecies are known- A. dirus dirus, which lived east of the
Continental Divide and A. dirus guildayi which lived west of it (Dundas, 2008). As with
the woolly mammoth and the scimitar-toothed cat, the dire wolf was not unique to the
Western Hemisphere. Its remains have also been found in East Asia (Lu, 2020). In the
40
Western Hemisphere, the animal’s territory extended from present-day Alaska to as far
south as present-day Bolivia (San Diego Wildlife Alliance Library, 2021c). The dire wolf
weighed around 150 pounds. Including the tail, it measured in at around six feet in length
(San Diego Wildlife Alliance Library, 2021c). Isotopic analysis demonstrates that the
dire wolf was capable of taking down animals as large as bison (Coltrain, 2004).
Examinations of its jaws indicate that it was likely a pack hunter as it would have
delivered relatively shallow bites that would have necessitated it hunt in packs in order to
bring down large prey (Therrien, 2005). The dire wolf had shorter limbs and a larger head
than extant wolf species (Kershner, 2015). The animal disappeared slightly later than
most of the Pleistocene megafauna as there is evidence some populations may have
survived until as recently as 8,000 BP (Hester, 1960).
The Inuit (Eskimo) of the Arctic speak of a giant wolf known as the Amarok. The
Inuit appear to have revered the Amarok and in some oral traditions, the animal receives
an almost deity-like status. One such oral tradition is that of an infirm, diminutive young
boy named Kagsagsuk. The tradition is told on both the islands of Labrador and
Greenland (Rink, 1875). Kagsagsuk was an orphan and both he and his adopted mother
were ostracized by their community and forced to live in a shed. One day, while
meditating, the boy was approached by an Amarok who wrapped its tail around him and
forced out a series of bones which the creature asserted were stunting the boy’s growth.
Kagsagsuk then went on to become a skilled hunter, taking down three bears during an
especially brutal winter. Upon realizing his capabilities, the boy then turned on the
villagers who had mistreated him and slaughtered all of them.
The relationship between humans and the Amarok in Inuit oral traditions is not
41
always a harmonious one. In another Inuit narrative, a man who recently lost a relative
sets out with a fellow hunter to bring down an Amarok in the hopes that the venture will
take his mind off the tragedy (Rink 1875). The two trackers come across a den occupied
by Amarok cubs. The hunter who had been mourning kills the entire litter while his
companion, fearful of the wrath of the mother Amarok, flees to a nearby cave. Upon
seeing the mother approaching, dragging a reindeer kill, the hunter who killed the cubs
joins his friend in hiding but to no avail. In a display of the supernatural attributes the
Inuit gave to the Amarok, the offending hunter drops to the ground dead as the
omnipotent Amarok knew who had killed her young.
An article by Ivan Sanderson published posthumously speaks of a wolf-like creature
known as the Waheela. According to a Denè people, presumably the Slavey, the Waheela
dwelt in the Nahanni valley. Information regarding the Waheela was related to Sanderson
by a secretary he had dispatched to the region named Frank Graves (Peters, 2018). The
Denè described the Waheela as having a larger body, a larger head, and shorter limbs
than ordinary wolves, a description which is eerily reminiscent of the dire wolf. However,
in one respect, the Waheela was slightly different from what paleontologists currently
believe about the dire wolf- the Waheela was solitary. The Waheela was also described as
having a thicker tail and shorter ears than an ordinary wolf, two features which cannot be
compared to the dire wolf due to the absence of surviving dire wolf soft tissue. Some
Waheela remained in the Nahanni valley year-round while others migrated to the
Mackenzie mountains.
The same letter writer who informed Sanderson about the Nahanni lion also spoke to
him about the Waheela (Peters, 2018). A Dené informant named Gugo Nah-neh-neish
42
informed the letter writer that the Waheela was fifteen feet in length from the tip of its
nose to the tip of its tail and had a muscular upper body with a coat ranging from brown
to white. Gugo Nah-neh-neish claimed it was large enough to take down a bear but
mostly fed on injured and otherwise vulnerable animals, its ideal choice of prey being a
moose calf. Apart from the aforementioned lion-like beast which prowled the Nahanni,
the Waheela had no natural enemies. The length ascribed to the Waheela is likely an
exaggeration as the dire wolf is not known to have reached such proportions. The
Waheela could also be an amalgamation of residual memories of both the dire wolf and
the giant short-faced bear.
During his time as a community coordinator for various nations of the American
Southwest, Nikolas Sucik (2002) encountered many Apache oral traditions. One such
tradition described an animal known as the medicine wolf. The medicine wolf was
described as being huge with a defined upper body and white, shaggy fur. The hue of its
fur implies that it lived at a time when the climate of the American Southwest was much
colder than it is today.
The Seminole of the American Southeast speak of a beast known as the Hvcko
Capko which literally translates to “long ears” (Sucik, 2002). Similar to the Dené
Waheela, the Hvcko Capko is described as being wolf-like in most respects but is
equipped with a tail that is distinct from that of a canine. In this case, the tail has been
compared to that of a horse. The Hvcko Capko stood at a shoulder height of three feet, a
height not unlike that of the dire wolf, and to enjoy perching on cliffs overlooking
villages to monitor the humans down below, perhaps with the intent of preying upon
them.
43
Potential References to Teratorns
Not all of the predators of the Pleistocene Epoch were confined to the terrestrial
realm. Among the largest aerial carnivores at the time were the teratorns. The largest
teratorn, Argentavis magnificens, achieved a potential wingspan of twenty-six feet, but it
went extinct by the end of the Miocene Epoch (San Diego Wildlife Alliance Library,
2021f) and so, I find it virtually impossible that any hominid ever laid eyes on it.
However, teratorns as a whole could still be found in the Western Hemisphere right up
until the end of the Pleistocene (San Diego Wildlife Alliance Library, 2021f). The largest
teratorn of the Pleistocene was Aiolornis incredibilis which, weighing in at 50 pounds
and having a wingspan of eighteen feet, was still quite impressive (San Diego Wildlife
Alliance Library, 2021f). Despite their otherwise close resemblance to condors, teratorns
had beaks like that of eagles, implying they were predators rather than scavengers
(Campbell & Tonni, 1983). The range of the teratorn stretched from present-day Oregon
(Campbell & Stenger, 2000) to present-day Argentina with Aiolornis incredibilis
inhabiting what is now the western United States (San Diego Wildlife Alliance Library,
2021e).
The majority of the following Native American oral traditions concern a creature
known as the thunderbird. While the etymology of the animal’s name is debated, the most
widely accepted explanation for it is that a thunderous chorus would resonate whenever it
flapped its wings. The oral traditions which describe the thunderbird are too numerous to
be contained within this paper and so instead, so I have decided to present those which I
am most familiar with.
The nature of the thunderbird varies depending on the oral tradition dealing with it
44
and at times, it can be surprisingly benevolent. In one account belonging to the
Passamaquoddy of the Eastern Woodlands, they are even capable of taking on human
form (Edmond, 2009). Two Passamaquoddy trekkers once set out to discover the source
of thunder. One of the trekkers died along the way but his comrade managed to reach a
village of Native Americans of an unknown nation and witnessed some of the villagers
transform into thunderbirds. The trekker found that the thunderbirds lived in fear of
another massive avian creature that went by the name of Wochowsen. Because it had a
damaged wing, Wochowsen produced a much more dreadful wind than the thunderbirds
when it flew. The trekker convinces the deity Glooscap to mend Wochowsen’s wing and
stabilize the wind current. Following this, the trekker himself goes on to become a
thunderbird. It was perhaps due to the teratorn’s ability to rival humans in size that the
Native Americans made an association between the two species.
In the oral traditions of the Plains nation known as the Winnebago (Hochungra),
thunderbirds are capable of both benevolence and malevolence as demonstrated by an
account of them snatching a young child (Edmond, 2009). Shortly after having taken a
pigeon hawk as a companion animal, this orphan boy was captured by a thunderbird who
planned to feast upon him once his stomach had been emptied of digested matter.
However, upon learning of the boy’s plight, the pigeon hawk began to feed him so that
his stomach would never be empty. Upon realizing this, the thunderbird ran the pigeon
hawk out of his nest. Feigning having been burnt by the thunderbird, the pigeon hawk
confronted Big Black Hawk, the chief thunderbird, and convinced him to punish him by
freeing his intended meal. Given the large size of the teratorn, the idea of them preying
upon human children is not improbable.
45
One narrative of the southwest Canadian Kutenai nation describes the thunderbirds’
transition from malevolence to benevolence (Boas, 1918). In this account, the Kutenai
folk hero Yaukekam was wandering through the forest with Coyote. It is there where the
hypnotic vocalizations of two juvenile thunderbirds lure them into their family’s nest.
The adult thunderbirds soon arrive and Coyote, being a trickster, convinces them to begin
feasting upon the bone marrow of Yaukekam’s legs rather than his own by telling them
that Yaukekam is so exhausted that he no longer wishes to be capable of walking.
However, Yaukekam quickly dispatches both of the birds. Upon witnessing the demise of
their parents, the juveniles carry Yaukekam and Coyote back to the ground and are made
to promise their former captives that they would no longer hunt humans and simply bring
thunder with their wings.
The Inuit during the time of Hinrich Rick spoke of ferocious birds known as
serdlernaks (Rink, 1875). In one of their oral traditions, three juvenile siblings flee their
village to escape a massacre wrought by a monstrous child. In a nearby village where
they seek asylum, they are wrongfully blamed by the residents for the massacre until the
sister of the three brings down a serdlernak that had been terrorizing them. Upon opening
up its stomach, they find the remains of seals which it presumably hunted.
The term “thunderbird” is actually used by Edward William Nelson (1900) in his
ethnography of the Inuit. Nelson’s Inuit informants told him that the last living pair of
thunderbirds lived in a mountain on the bank of the Yukon River. These birds were
capable of carrying away reindeer to feed their young. One day, a brazen hunter decided
to venture into their territory with his wife despite having been warned against it by
fellow Inuits. While filling a water bucket, the wife is snatched by one of the two
46
thunderbirds and her husband sets out to retrieve her. Although he manages to kill both
thunderbirds and their young, he arrives too late to save his wife.
Accounts of the thunderbird are not restricted to North America. The Cayapa
(Chachi) of present-day Ecuador attribute thunder to two winged spirits, one bearing the
characteristics of the male gender and the other bearing the characteristics of the female
gender. These dual spirits are described as being slightly larger than most spirits in
Cayapa cosmology, which are presumably of a size equivalent to that of a human, and the
thunder they produce is generated by way of flapping their massive wings (Metraux,
1944).
Following Jonayaiyin’s triumph over the giant “elk”, he set out to defeat a
monstrous eagle (Wherry, 1969). On his way to the bird’s nest, he is captured by the
animal and brought to the dwelling where he mitigates the ravenous appetite of the
eagle’s young with the blood of the “elk”. In a turn of events that is oddly reminiscent of
the Yaukekam narrative, Jonayaiyin waits for the parent eagles to return before he
dispatches them. Jonayaiyin does this with the “elk’s” antlers which, as in the case of the
Iroquois Big Elk tradition, I believe to be tusks. Jonayaiyin then stunts the growth of the
juvenile eagles so that they will no longer achieve the massive sizes of their parents,
perhaps a metaphor for the replacement of teratorns with modern modest-sized birds of
prey.
Potential References to the Giant Ground Sloth
Both North and South America were home to gigantic mammals known as ground
sloths during the Pleistocene. The largest of these, Megatherium americanum, grew to be
47
an astonishing 20 feet in length and could weigh as much as four tons (Defler, 2018).
Ground sloths fed on both terrestrial grasses and the vegetation that grew on trees (San
Diego Wildlife Alliance Library, 2021d). Recent isotopic analyses have revealed that at
least some ground sloth species were likely omnivorous scavengers (Tejada, 2021). The
spatial range of ground sloths is quite impressive as their fossils have been found in both
Alaska (San Diego Wildlife Alliance Library, 2021d) and Argentina (Defler, 2018). Most
species went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene, but populations could still be found on
the Caribbean islands as recently as 4,500 BP (MacPhee, 2007).
Many of the Indigenous nations that call the Amazon rainforest home believe in a
large, hairy ogre-like animal (Smith, 1996). The name given to this creature varies from
nation to nation. The Urubu refer to it as the curupira. The Timbira know it as the
capelobo. For the Tukuna (Magüta), it goes by the name of the mapinguari. While the
creature is sometimes regarded as being cyclopic, most of its other features are much
more zoologically-grounded such as stubby limbs that appear to lack feet. The creature’s
flesh is impervious to weaponry and in order to kill it, one must shoot it either in its eye
or its navel. While such a characteristic might seem supernatural at first glance, it is
consistent with the ground sloth as the animal is in fact believed to have been equipped
with bony plates (Smith, 1996). One of the most peculiar traits of the Tupi curupira is its
backwards-pointing feet. The ground sloth is believed to have walked on its knuckles and
so, its front limbs would have appeared bent (Smith, 1996).
Given their massive size, some paleontologists have suggested that some of the
larger species of ground sloths might have been hairless (Fariña, 2002) as the presence of
thick coats of fur is detrimental to large animals when living in warm climates such as the
48
Pleistocene of equatorial South America. This might also be the case in post-Pleistocene
North America if the continent in fact continued to support populations of ground sloths
until slightly after the Last Glacial Period. Such a late survival for the animal is not out of
the question as the most recent carbon dated ground sloth-associated material in North
America is from 10,650 ± 220 BP (Fiedel, 2008). For a mammal with such a long
generation time to experience such rapid evolution is not unheard of. Genetic studies
have found that it took only 2,000 years for the allele responsible for lactase persistence
to proliferate across Central Europe (Mathieson, 2015; Itan, 2009). Hairless ground sloths
could account for Native American oral traditions describing a creature known as the
yagesho which roughly translates to “naked bear”.
The yagesho had a long, slender, hairless body with broad shoulders and claws as
long as a human finger. If the claws of modern sloth species are anything to go by, the
claw length of the yagesho would certainly be possible for a ground sloth. The Eastern
Woodlands nation known as the Mohicans (Loups) record that the bulk of the yagesho
had been exterminated by humans but that one individual managed to allude hunters and
posed a serious danger to women and children who went out in the wilderness to harvest
roots and berries. As a result, a group of hunters from a culture ancestral to the Mohicans
set out to vanquish this treacherous holdover. Upon locating the lake where the creature
dwelled, the hunter climbed atop a boulder and began mimicking the vocalizations of
various animal species, perhaps mistaking the yagesho for a predator. A detachment from
the hunting party was eventually able to track down the yagesho which pursued them to
the boulder. The hunters managed to reach the boulder before their attacker did and
proceeded to hurl arrows and other weapons at the animal until they were able to bring it
49
down. The hunters then decapitated their kill and mounted its head atop a pole as a
display of their prowess (Moulton & Yates, 1824).
Potential References to the Giant Vampire Bat
One of the more curious Pleistocene species to have been discovered in recent
decades is the giant vampire bat (Desmodus draculae). Despite its unimpressive weight
of 60 grams, the animal sported a wingspan of nearly two feet (Naish, 2013). The species
attained a spatial range stretching from what is now Mexico (Sanchez-Villagra, 2010) to
what is now Argentina (Pardiñas & Tonni, 2000). I do not find an alleged 17th-century
Desmodus draculae tooth from Argentina (Pardiñas & Tonni, 2000) to be conclusive
enough to place the date of the bat’s extinction any more recently than the end of the
Pleistocene. The date given for the tooth was acquired by performing radiocarbon dating
on rodent remains that occurred in association with the element rather than by performing
such dating on the tooth itself. Being that it was a close relative of modern vampire bats,
Desmodus draculae likely formed a parasitic relationship with various mammal species
and sustained itself off their blood.
Given the lifestyle of the giant vampire bat, any potential references to it in oral
traditions would likely treat it as quite formidable. Therefore, it does not seem
unreasonable to connect it to the death bat of the Mayan religion known as Camazotz.
This creature plays a substantial role in the epic of the Hero Twins belonging to the Kiche
Maya of Guatemala. The Hero Twins epic has appeared in writing at least since the 16th-
century when it was included in the text known as the Popol Vuh. However, it was likely
passed down orally long before this (Tedlock, 1985). In the Popol Vuh, the twins
Hunahpu and Xbalanque set out to avenge the deaths of their father and their uncle
50
at the hands of the rulers of Xibalba, the Mayan underworld. In an attempt to thwart their
advance, the rulers of Xibalba plant a series of daunting obstacles before the brothers.
Among the trials the twins face is the House of Bats where Hunahpu is decapitated by
Camazotz. Despite this, Hunahpu remains alive, and he and his brother are ultimately
able to overthrow the rulers of Xibalba and deliver justice for their slain kin (Tedlock,
1985). Hunahpu’s non-lethal decapitation at the hands of Camazotz could be a metaphor
for the giant vampire bat’s tendency to attack animals, and perhaps humans, without
killing them.
The giant carnivorous bat is a trope that spans nearly the entirety of present-day
Latin America. Interestingly enough, the region that now comprises Latin America
largely corresponds with the Pleistocene range of the giant vampire bat. Carlos Estaban
de Oliveira (1930) relates a tradition among the Apinajé of Brazil of a race of winged
“Indians” known as the cupendipi who descend from the Tocantin plateaus to slice the
necks of both humans and animals, presumably to consume their blood. To put an end to
their raids, a group of warriors set out and blocked the entrance to the creatures’ cave
with burning straw to suffocate its residents. Upon surveying the cave in the aftermath of
the massacre, the Apinajé discovered that a juvenile had survived the assault. The
villagers attempted to raise the unusual being, even going as far as to suspend him upside
down from two poles the way the cupendipi normally positioned themselves but the
juvenile refused to eat and eventually died. The way in which the Apinajé refer to the
cupendipi as fellow Indians could be due to the humanlike size of the creatures.
Another Brazilian nation which speaks of a monstrous bat is the Mura. Adelia
Engracia de Oliveira (1984) wrote that the Mura fear a bat known as the cãoera which
51
has a wingspan comparable to that of the Amazonian vulture and consumes enough blood
from its victims to cause fatality. The cãoera can be summoned in three ways- by
cooking the flesh of animals, by washing fish in the river and by shouting which is
perhaps due to the creature mistaking human screeches for the vocalizations made by
fellow members of its species. The Mura attribute underground holes as the place of
residence of the cãoera.
Potential References to the Giant Beaver
Up until the end of the Pleistocene, modern beavers shared their freshwater habitat
with two giant castorid variants. Castoroides dilophidus (Sinibaldi & Trappman, 2021)
swam the rivers of what is now the American Southeast while Castoroides ohioensis
achieved a range which stretched from present- day Alaska to present-day Texas (Cahn,
1932). Giant beavers were capable of growing to a length of eight feet and could weigh
almost 300 pounds (Swinehart & Richards, 2001). Given their dentition, these animals
likely preferred rather soft aquatic vegetation in contrast to the woody vegetation fed
upon by modern beavers (Swinehart & Richards, 2001).
There are several oral traditions told by various Algonquian nations which suggest a
folk memory of the giant beaver. The Penobscot attest to a time when muskrats had tails
akin to those of modern beavers and beavers had tails akin to those of modern muskrats
but that eventually, the two species exchanged appendages (Beck, 1972). Interestingly,
analyses of the giant beaver’s vertebrae indicate that their tails were slimmer than those
of modern beavers, not unlike the tails of muskrats (Kurten & Anderson, 1980). Gluskap,
a folk hero of the Malecite of southeastern Canada did battle with a massive beaver
52
(Beck, 1972). Gluskap was endowed with the ability to shrink animals and set out to
exercise this ability on the beaver after it built a dam along the St. John River so
gargantuan that it triggered a flood. After Gluskap destroyed the dam with an axe, the
beaver takes flight and although the folk hero is unable to apprehend it, he manages to
drive the beast far to the north where it constructs a new dam that results in the flood
which formed the Great Lakes. Paleontologists believe the last surviving populations of
C. ohioensis in fact inhabited the Great Lakes region (Keens-Soper & Lent, 2002). A
noteworthy aspect of this narrative is that Gluskap pursues the beaver in snowshoes,
implying that it occurred during a time of great cold.
The Dane-zaa (also known as the Tsattine and the Beaver nation) of Alberta and
British Columbia also speak of a duel between man and beaver (Beck, 1972). In it, a
human giant traverses a frozen lake in search of a giant female beaver for reasons which
are not specified. Upon locating the den where the beaver dwells, the giant slays the
animal by driving a weapon of sorts through the ice. The ice the man is standing on then
begins to rumble and it is implied supernatural forces are notifying him that the beaver
was pregnant. The giant then frees the young from their deceased mother’s womb and the
ice settles.
Kawbawgam remarks that prior to the aforementioned Ojibwa flood, the world was
home to giant skunks, giant moles and giant beavers. All three of these beasts were
exterminated in the Deluge (Bourgeois, 1994). As stated before, the Ojibwa deluge is a
possible reference to the floods which followed the Younger Dryas.
Summary
53
The chapter began with oral traditions that appear to describe Pleistocene events and
transitioned to oral traditions that appear to describe Pleistocene animals. Comparisons
were made between Native American oral traditions and three Pleistocene events along
with eight now-extinct types of Pleistocene animals. This was achieved by applying the
data regarding these Pleistocene events and animals which has been laid out across
volumes of scientific literature to anomalous events and animals in Native American oral
traditions.
54
CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSION
Satisfaction of Research Objectives
The two major objectives of my research were to demonstrate the survival of a
Native American folk memory of the Pleistocene in their oral traditions and to determine
if Native American oral traditions can contribute to the current knowledge surrounding
Pleistocene animals.
I did not encounter any oral traditions that I would deem capable of definitively
demonstrating the survival of a folk memory of the Pleistocene among the Native
Americans. I was, however, able to locate numerous potential references to the
Pleistocene in Native American oral traditions spanning from Canada to Brazil. In terms
of Pleistocene events, the most compelling case appears to be that of the Salish narrative
of their ancestors crossing a frozen lake in order to reach their contemporary homeland.
This narrative bears a striking resemblance to the crossing of the Beringia land bridge. In
terms of Pleistocene animals, the most compelling case appears to be that of the Dené
Waheela. This animal bears a striking resemblance to the dire wolf, right down to the size
of its head and limbs in comparison to extant wolves. I am confident that I have met my
objective of demonstrating the role the Pleistocene played in shaping Native American
oral traditions.
Roger Echo-Hawk (2000) outlines three criteria that an oral tradition should meet in
order for it to be considered authentic. First, the narrator(s) should be unable to assign a
specific date to when the events described in the tradition occurred. It would be
unrealistic for information regarding precisely how long ago an event in the distant past
55
happened to be preserved in oral traditions given that they rely on memory. Second, a
time period that the narrator(s) regards as being genuine should serve as the backdrop for
the events which transpire in the tradition. Third, some form of archaeological data
should be able to complement the narrative. Virtually all of the oral traditions described
in this paper meet the first and third criteria, however, they only occasionally meet the
second. The Salish account of the ancient chief who wielded control over the element of
cold and his counterpart who wielded control over the element of heat occurs in the
context of a period in which this nation lived on the other side of an unnamed body of
water which I interpret as being the Bering strait. This is also the case with the Delaware
Walum Olum. The creation account of Big Bone River occurs in the context of a war
between foreign beasts and local animals. Oyalkquoher and the lion that killed it lived
during the reign of Artotarho II. The Inuit and the Na-Dene did not treat the Amarok and
the Waheela, respectively, as individual creatures but rather regarded them as what we
would refer to today as species that once existed. The Passamaquoddy and Winnebago
describe tribes of thunderbirds, indicating that they viewed the thunderbird as also having
a population rather than being an individual. The bull which was petrified by the Cayuse
deity Coyote was only the largest of a band of “elephants”. The account of Yaukekam is
set in the context of a time when thunderbirds preyed upon humans. The Inuit tradition of
the last two thunderbirds implies that there were once more of them. The Dane-zaa
reference an entire family of giant beavers. In contrast to narratives relating to battles
between humans and beasts which occur in the context of a period when the species these
beasts belonged to were prevalent is the account of Snowy Owl. While Snowy Owl took
on a group of long-toothed monsters, for him to be able to wipe them out in a single
episode implies that they were not viewed as an entire population of animals but rather a
56
rogue band of beasts which only appeared in one instance.
As is the case with artwork, I believe that oral traditions can provide information
about species whose only surviving physical legacy is in the form of fossils. Over the
course of this study, I have found several leads for future inquiries in this department.
The Naskapi account of the Katcheetohuskw notes that the animal’s ears are large
enough to serve as a bed. While at first glance, this appears to contradict what is known
about mammoth species given that they would have needed reduced ears to avoid
frostbite, the Columbian mammoth inhabited territory south of the ice sheets (Lister &
Bahn, 2007) and so, large ears would not have been detrimental to its survival. If the
account of the Katcheetohuskw does in fact refer to the Columbian mammoth, it could
lend support to the idea that the species had ears akin to those of modern elephants.
While C. hyodon and Notiomastodon also lived south of the ice sheets, their range did not
include the region where the ancestors of the Naskapi are known to have dwelled.
The Dené tradition of the Nahanni lion indicates that the American lion might have
differed in appearance from the European cave lion, its close relative. While analyses of
Paleolithic artwork have found that male European cave lions were maneless, the Dené
describe the Nahanni lion, which appears to be the American lion of the Pleistocene, as
having had a shaggy mane that encompassed much of its body.
Given that the Waheela is said to have had a larger body, a larger head, and shorter
limbs in comparison to modern wolves, it is reasonable to identify it as the dire wolf.
With this in mind, it is reasonable to ascribe the other features of the Waheela which
57
cannot be demonstrated through fossils, such as a thicker tail and shorter ears than
modern wolves, to the dire wolf. The variations in coat color among the Waheela along
with other anomalous canines of Native American oral traditions, which is said to range
from brown to white, could reflect possible seasonal variations in the dire wolf’s coat.
The Iroquois legend of the “naked bear” could provide information on the giant
ground sloth’s integumentary system. The yagesho’s similarity in both size and shape to
the bear and its massive claws demonstrate a possible link to the giant ground sloth. The
hairless nature of the yagesho could therefore aid paleontologists’ assertion that at least
some ground sloth species lacked fur.
Paleontologists disagree as to whether or not giant Pleistocene beavers were capable
of constructing dams. Both the giant beaver which quarreled with Gluskap and the giant
beaver of the Dane-zaa narrative were the architects of large aquatic dams which lends
credence to the image of Pleistocene beavers as dam builders.
Apart from the characteristics of extinct species of the Pleistocene, Native American
oral traditions can also help explain how these animals met their demise. Many of the oral
traditions discussed in this paper describe their respective beasts being slain by humans.
The Big Elk of the Iroquois, the giant elk of the Apache, the Katcheetohuskw of the
Naskapi, the long-toothed beasts of the Penobscot and the afix of the Kaska, all
elephantine beasts, were all brought down by various folk heroes. The Man Eater was put
to the torch by Creek hunters. The Ojibwa Great Bear of the West was clubbed to death.
The Kutenai thunderbird, the Apache giant eagle and the Inuit sadlernak, all teratorn-like
monsters, were extinguished by humans. The yagesho was shot down by Mohican
58
warriors. The Dane-zaa attest to their giant beaver having been skewered. Could these
references to great beasts in the distant past having been wiped out by humans be a folk
memory of the extermination of the megafauna proposed by the Overkill hypothesis?
Alternatively, the Ojibwa account of the flood which claimed the giant beavers, skunks
and moles which were described as having once inhabited the planet could allude to the
extinction of the megafauna as a result of the Younger Dryas and the natural calamities
which occurred in its wake. Finally, the Choctaw account of the eradication of mammoth-
like beasts via illness may lend credence to the Hyperdisease hypothesis.
Avenues for Further Research
Native American oral traditions that reference biologically plausible but
unidentifiable creatures could, in fact, be describing genuine Pleistocene species whose
fossils have yet to be unearthed. Of the three pre-diluvian creatures spoken of by
Kawbawgam- the giant beaver, the giant skunk, and the giant mole, only the beaver’s
existence is attested by scientific discoveries in the form of the remains of Castoroides
dilophidus and Castoroides ohioensis. Interestingly enough, this is not the only reference
to a giant skunk in Native American oral traditions as Kawbawgam provides another
Ojibwa narrative which is specifically dedicated to it. I would advise paleontologists to
review any empirically acquired data which could perhaps support the existence of a
giant skunk or mole species during the Late Pleistocene.
As stated earlier, the invention of fraudulent Native American oral traditions by
ethnographers and pioneers is a genuine possibility. As such, it would be of use to
interview contemporary storytellers from the Native American nations where these oral
traditions supposedly originated in order to determine if they are familiar with these
59
narratives which would uphold their authenticity. However, the fabrication of oral
traditions by Westerners is not the only explanation for why such narratives would not be
known to 21st-century storytellers as the narratives could also have been unable to survive
the forced assimilation of Native American nations that occurred during the 19th and early
20th centuries.
60
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