Venetian Antonia Pigafetta was one of the few to survive Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world, and his published account details an encounter with giants in Patagonia – a huge swathe of territory now shared by Argentina and Chile .
Pigafetta wrote: "One day we suddenly saw a naked man of giant stature on the shore of the port, dancing, singing, and throwing dust on his head. The captain-general [i.e., Magellan] sent one of our men to the giant so that he might perform the same actions as a sign of peace. Having done that, the man led the giant to an islet where the captain-general was waiting. When the giant was in the captain-general's and our presence he marveled greatly, and made signs with one finger raised upward, believing that we had come from the sky. He was so tall that we reached only to his waist, and he was well proportioned...”
The giant, however, was not immune to fear. Pigafetta reports that the great figure took fright from his own reflection in the Magellan’s mirror.
In due course, Pigafetta’s companions meet other giants, including one who was more ‘amiable’. This giant even allows himself to become baptised, and learns to say the name of Jesus. He is given gifts and goes back to his people. He returns to the explorers with his own gifts, but our chronicler never sees him again. Pigafetta ruefully concludes that the new Christian has been killed by his own people for fraternising with the Europeans.
Tales of great wonders from all ‘corners’ of the globe were common currency for centuries. It was a time for great exploration, and the naming of regions hitherto unknown to Western powers. The name given to this Southern landmass, Patagonia, alluded to feet (in Spanish, ‘pata’), and after Pigafetta’s narrative became more read, there was an ongoing association with giants, leading to the great British explorer Sir Francis Drake reporting his own sighting of giants in South America.
Even as late as the mid 18th century, stories emanated of Patagonian giants, including a supposed rendezvous with a British ship commanded by the Romantic poet Byron’s grandfather. The Museum of Hoaxes tells us: “The rumors of Patagonian giants were only definitively proven to be fictitious when the official account of Byron’s voyage appeared in 1773. This account revealed that Byron had indeed encountered a tribe of Patagonians, but that the tallest among them measured only 6 feet 6 inches. In other words, they were tall, but not 12-foot giants. The tribe that Byron met was probably the Tehuelches, who were wiped out by the Rocca expedition in 1880.”
A prosaic, bloody end, then, to this strand of fantastic fictions and intrigues generated by world travellers centuries ago. And, once again, testimony to the fascination that giants have had to the human imagination.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patagon
