The Si-te-cahs

Si-te-cahs In Paiute Legend

The Si-te-cahs were a tribe of  Indigenous Americans that lived in the Nevada / Arizona area in prehistory.  They are extinct and are most likely not of the same race as Amerindians of modern times.  The word "Sitecah"  means “tule-eaters” in the Paiute Indian language. Tule is a fibrous water plant, the Si-Te-Cahs towards the end of their existence lived on rafts made of tule on Lake Lahontan to avoid harassment from the Paiute.  [Although the word Si-te-cah only applies to the tribe that the Paiute legends speak of, I have applied it to other related peoples and traces of peoples throughout the same vicinity.]

The Paiute Indian legends describe a race of red-haired giants called Si-te-cahs. Like their red-haired counterparts, The Ronnongwetowanca and Adena giants of the Ohio River Valley, The Si-te-cahs were the enemies of many Indian tribes of the region. also according to the Paiutes, the Si-Te-Cah were hostile and warlike and practiced cannibalism. The Si-Te-Cah and the Paiutes were at war, and after a long struggle, a coalition of tribes trapped the remaining Si-Te-Cah in Lovelock Cave. When they refused to come out and be slaughtered, the Indians piled brush before the cave mouth and set it on fire, annihilating The Si-Te-Cah.

"My people say that the tribe we exterminated had reddish hair. I have some of their hair, which has been handed down from father to son. I have a dress which has been in our family for a great many years, trimmed with reddish hair. I am going to wear it sometime when I lecture. It is called a mourning dress, and no one has such a dress but my family."  Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins  Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims 

Paiute legends also have the Si-Te-Cah building a pyramidal stone structure in New York Canyon, some miles away in Churchill County, The area is known for earthquakes, and if the pyramid existed it 

probably collapsed over the years.

Lovelock Cave 

The Unexplained: An Illustrated Guide to the World's Natural and Paranormal Mysteries by Karl P. N. Shuker reports that in 1911, Guano [bat excrement] miners discovered a treasure trove of prehistoric artifacts at Lovelock Cave, [the same cave in which per Paiute legend states was where the Si-te-cah were slaughtered] above the southeastern shore of Humboldt Sink. Archeologists from the Nevada Historical Society and the University of California believe the cave was occupied from approximately 1500 B.C. until a few hundred years before the white man appeared in the region.   Red-haired mummies and skeletal remains ranging from 6 and a half feet to 8 feet tall were discovered in the cave. Some skulls recovered from Lovelock Cave can still be seen in museums in Lovelock and Winnemucca, Nevada.

Artifacts from Lovelock Cave include

a Jawbone [cast] shown above in comparison to a Modern Human Jawbone.

Lovelock Cave duck decoys
Photo: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian

In 1931, more large skeletons were found in the Humboldt lake bed [ Humbolt lake bed / Sink is an intermittent dry lake bed, approximately 11 miles by 4 mi across, in northwestern Nevada],  approximately 20 miles from Lovelock, Nevada. The first of these two skeletons found measured 8 1/2 feet tall and appeared to have been wrapped in a gum-covered fabric similar to the Egyptian manner. The second skeleton was almost 10 feet long. (Review - Miner, June 19, 1931).  The Review Miner of Sept. 29, 1939, reported another finding of a 7-foot 7-inch skeleton, also near Lovelock, Nevada.  Humboldt lake bed was once part of an ancient lake known as Lake Lahontan.

***