Haudenosaunee TraditionCreature
Stone Giants
- Flint armour that arrows cannot pierce
- Great strength
- Cannibal hunger in some tellings
Giants of Seneca and wider Haudenosaunee tradition, shaped like people but of enormous size and covered with coats of flint that turned aside the arrows of men.
About Stone Giants
Coats of flint
Parker describes the Stone Giants, or Stone Coats (Gĕnnon'sgwā'), as beings like people but gigantic and covered with coats of flint. They are not gods: celestial powers such as the Thunderer can harm them, but the arrows of men cannot. The early Iroquois, he writes, were said to have fought many wars with them, and the last of them was killed in a cave. Several of the tales in his collection, including 'Beyond-the-Rapids and the Stone Giant' and 'The Stone Giant's Battle', turn on meeting one.
An older record
The Tuscarora writer David Cusick's Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations (1827), one of the earliest Haudenosaunee-authored books, already describes 'stonish giants' who came from the west and troubled the people until the Holder of the Heavens destroyed most of them. The long record, from Cusick to Parker, shows the Stone Giants as one of the most widely told monster traditions of the Haudenosaunee.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Arthur C. Parker, Seneca Myths and Folk Tales
- David Cusick, Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
The danger rating is an editorial shorthand for how the myths portray the creature, not a claim made by the sources.