Duhare’s Giant tribes

Duhare’s Giant tribes

The inhabitants of Duhare were described as being Europeans, who seemed to possess few metal tools. They had red to brown hair, tan skin and gray eyes. The men wore full beards and were much taller than the Spanish.

The ancestors of the Creek Indians were at least a foot taller than the Spanish.

The ancestral Creek men wore mustaches and high leaders wore beards, but the beards were thin like those of the Chinese and Koreans. Nevertheless, Spanish accounts clearly labeled the Duhare, Caucasians, even though their houses and pottery were apparently similar to those of American Indians.

In 1526, Spanish explorer Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon landed in modern-day South Carolina. While visiting a province named Duhare he witnessed many unusual things.

First, he noted that the people of this province were white not Native American. Second, he noted that the king of Duhare, named Datha, and his wife were much taller than the commoners and lived in a palace built of stone. He noted their hair was brown and hung to the ground. If tall, long-haired caucasian people living in a stone palace in South Carolina in 1526 isn’t unusual enough, the next observation certainly is. Ayllon noted that these people were in possession of some form of pyrotechnic devices including sparklers and rockets.

Ayllon’s accounts were recorded by Peter Martyr d’Anghiera in his book De Orbe Novo. The reference to sparklers and rockets appears as follows:

“Another fraud of the priests is as follows: When the chief is at death’s door and about to give up his soul they send away all witnesses, and then surrounding his bed they perform some secret jugglery which makes him appear to vomit sparks and ashes. It looks like sparks jumping from a bright fire, or those sulphured papers, which people throw into the air to amuse themselves. These sparks, rushing through the air and quickly disappearing, look like those shooting stars which people call leaping wild goats. The moment the dying man expires a cloud of those sparks shoots up 3 cubits high with a noise and quickly vanishes. They hail this flame as the dead man’s soul, bidding it a last farewell and accompanying its flight with their wailing, tears, and funereal cries, absolutely convinced that it has taken its flight to heaven. Lamenting and weeping they escort the body to the tomb.” Testimony of Francisco de Chicora, paragraph 12

Two hundred years later in the early 1700s among the Tuscororas in nearby North Carolina another witness to such an event was Baron von Graffenreid. His description, recorded in The Colonial Records of North Carolina, is as follows:

“After the tomb was covered, I noticed something which passes imagination, and which I should not believe, had I not seen it with my own eyes. From the tomb arose a little flaming fire, like a big candle-light, which went up straight in the air, and noiselessly, went straight over the cabin of the deceased widow, and thence further across a big swamp above 1 mile broad, until it finally vanished from sight in the woods. At that sight, I have way to my surprise, and asked what it meant, but the Indians laughed at me, as if I ought to have known that this was no rarity among them. They refused, however, to tell me what it was. All that I could ascertain was that they thought a great deal of it, that this light is a favorable omen, which makes them think the deceased a happy soul, but they deem it a most unpropitious sign when a black smoke ascends from the tomb. This flying flame, yet, could not be artificial, on account of the great distance; it could be some physical phenomenon, like sulpurous vapors, but this great uniformity in its appearance surpasses nature (Saunders 1886-1890, I:982).”

Colonial Records of North Carolina.

“After the tomb was covered, I noticed something which passes imagination, and which I should not believe, had I not seen it with my own eyes. From the tomb arose a little flaming fire, like a big candle-light, which went up straight in the air, and noiselessly, went straight over the cabin of the deceased widow, and thence further across a big swamp above 1 mile broad, until it finally vanished from sight in the woods. At that sight, I have way to my surprise, and asked what it meant, but the Indians laughed at me, as if I ought to have known that this was no rarity among them. They refused, however, to tell me what it was. All that I could ascertain was that they thought a great deal of it, that this light is a favorable omen, which makes them think the deceased a happy soul, but they deem it a most unpropitious sign when a black smoke ascends from the tomb. This flying flame, yet, could not be artificial, on account of the great distance; it could be some physical phenomenon, like sulpurous vapors, but this great uniformity in its appearance surpasses nature (Saunders 1886-1890, I:982).” Colonial Records of North Carolina.

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Research done by Kathy Knight-mcconnell

First seen on Old Newspaper Stories website:

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