Patagon

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1840s (fanciful) illustration of a Patagon chief from near the Straits of Magellan, bedecked in costume of war; from "Voyage au pole sud et dans l'Oceanie…" by French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville

The Patagones or Patagonian giants are a mythical race of people, who first began to appear in early European accounts of the then little-known region and coastline of Patagonia. They were supposed to have exceeded at least double normal human height, some accounts giving heights of 12 to 15 feet or more. Tales of these improbable people would take a hold over European concepts of the region for some 250 years, until they were substantially debunked at the end of the 18th century. However, South American legends speak of several giant tribal races, such as the Chancas or Chanak of Peru, which are said to be 7 feet tall on average, and have red hair.

First mention of these people came from the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan and his crew, who claimed to have seen them while exploring the coastline of South America en route to their circumnavigation of the world in the 1520s. Antonio Pigafetta, one of the expedition's few survivors and the chronicler of Magellan's expedition, wrote in his account about their encounter with natives twice a normal person's height:

"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..."

Pigafetta also recorded that Magellan had bestowed the name "Patagão" (or Patagoni) on these people, but did not further elaborate on his reasons for doing so. Since Pigafetta's time the assumption that this derived from pata or foot took hold, and "Patagonia" was interpreted to mean "Land of the Bigfeet". However, this etymology remains questionable, since amongst other things the meaning of the suffix -gon is unclear. Nevertheless, the name "Patagonia" stuck, as did the notion that the local inhabitants were giants. Early maps of the New World afterwards would sometimes attach the label regio gigantum ("region of giants") to the area.

1840s illustration of Patagon encampment; from account by French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville

In 1579, Sir Francis Drake's ship chaplain, Francis Fletcher, wrote about meeting very tall Patagonians.

In the 1590s, Anthonie Knivet claimed he had seen dead bodies 12 feet long in Patagonia.

In 1766, a rumour leaked out upon their return to England that the crew of HMS Dolphin, captained by Commodore John Byron, had seen a tribe of nine-foot tall natives in Patagonia when they passed by there on their circumnavigation of the globe. However, when a newly-edited revised account of the voyage came out in 1773, the Patagonians were recorded as being merely 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m); tall perhaps, but by no means giants.

The people encountered by Byron were in all likelihood the Tehuelches, indigenous to the region. Later writers consider the Patagonian giants to have been be a hoax, or at least an exaggeration and mis-telling of earlier European accounts of the region.