Gods of the Hunt: Legends of Mysterious Slant-Eyed Giants
February 25, 2013
Micah Hanks
Traveling west out of Asheville, North Carolina and crossing the border into Jackson County, one can trace the Caney Fork River along toward the little Tuckasegee community, following NC Highway 107 heading out of the nearby campus town of Cullowhee. There, off a gravel road running between two pastures, is one of the most underrated–and often overlooked–wonders anywhere in the Eastern United States.
Known today as “Judaculla Rock”, the strange stone mound protrudes from the earth just as it did centuries ago, much earlier even than the Cherokee Indians had begun to inhabit the region. According to most estimates by geologists, the stone’s markings date back as much as 3000 years, though on Raliegh-based group a number of years ago supposed that some of the petroglyphs covering the boulder could be twice as old as previous estimates, if not more.
Of all the curious symbols that appear along the stone’s surface, one particular image stands out among the rest, resembling vaguely a hand-like imprint. According to legend, this portion of the stone marks the place where an ancient Cherokee god of the hunt, known as “Tsul’Kalu’,” had leaped from a nearby mountain, and landing within the valley below, had steadied himself against what is now Judaculla Rock. This is, in fact, merely one of several legends regarding Tsul’Kalu’ that still exist, many of which have some fairly remarkable tie-ins with mysterious discoveries of “giants” alleged to have existed in the ancient Americas.
What got me thinking about this initially was a
recent interview with researcher Mike Mott, where he discussed repeated allegations that the Smithsonian Institute has engaged in cover-ups regarding anomalous discoveries in the Americas. In at least a few instances, these involved the bones of what appeared to be “giant” bodies recovered from a number of burial mounds throughout the Eastern United States. While many such discoveries have been reported, and were even discussed in the reports of the Smithsonian’s Ethnology Bureau throughout the late 1890s, it seems very strange that such information nonetheless seems to have simply “vanished” from record after that period. Conventional modern explanations claim that soil displacement and erosion had caused the bones of normal-sized bodies to move over time; however, it seems odd that trained scientists with the Smithsonian Institute would have been responsible for such faulty judgement in the official reports they had given, even if it had been more than 100 years ago.
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