GIANTS: Cortez would agree

I found Syd Albright’s column on Giants in the Oct. 30 paper quite interesting.

There is a pertinent bit of information which bolsters the historical evidence of this in a book written almost 500 years ago by Bernal Diaz, one of the Conquistadors who accompanied Cortez on his expedition to conquer the Aztecs: “The Conquest of New Spain.”

After making peace with Tlascala, and learning all they could about the Aztecs and the dangers involved in advancing, Diaz digresses: “As we had already heard all that the chiefs were telling us, Cortez stopped the conversation and, embarking on a more profound subject, asked them how they had come to inhabit this country, where they had come from and how it was they differed so much from the Mexicans and were so hostile to them seeing that their countries were so close together.

“They said their ancestors had told them that very tall men and women with huge bones had once dwelt among them, but because they were a very bad people with wicked customs they had fought against them and killed them, and those of them who remained had died off. And to show us how big these giants had been they brought us the leg bone of one, which was very thick and the height of an ordinary-sized man, and that was a leg bone from the hip to the knee. I measured myself against it, and it was as tall as I am, though I am of a reasonable height. They brought other pieces of bone of the same kind, but they were all rotten and eaten away by the soil. We were all astonished by the sight of these bones and felt certain there must have been giants in that land. And Cortes said that we ought to send the leg bone to Castile so that His Majesty might see it, which we did by the first agents who went there.”

This seems to give credence to the skeleton findings and prove that at least, not all the stories are fraudulent.

DENIS SHEA

Post Falls