Si-Te-Cah

3 Archaeology

According to Paiute oral history, the Si-Te-Cah,

Saiduka or Sai'i are a legendary tribe whose mummied remains were allegedly discovered under four feet of
guano by guano miners in what is now known as Lovelock
Cave in Lovelock, Nevada, United States. Although the
cave had been mined since 1911, miners didn't notify
authorities until 1912. The miners destroyed many of
the artifacts, but archaeologists were still able to retrieve
10,000 Paiute artifacts from the cave. Items included tule
duck decoys, sandals, and baskets, several dating back
over 2000 years.

Adrienne Mayor writes about the Si-Te-Cah in her book,

Legends of the First Americans.[3] She suggests that the
'giant' interpretation of the skeletons from Lovelock
Cave and other dry caves in Nevada was started by entrepreneurs setting up tourist displays and that the skeletons themselves were of normal size. However, about a
hundred miles north of Lovelock there are plentiful fossils of mammoths and cave bears, and their large limb
bones could easily be thought to be those of giants by an
untrained observer. She also discusses the reddish hair,
pointing out that hair pigment is not stable after death and
that various factors such as temperature, soil, etc. can
turn ancient very dark hair rusty red or orange. Another
1 Name
explanation for the 'giant' interpretation of the skeletons
may also come from the fact that some of the rst rethe guano miners in 1911-12 were
Si-Te-Cah literally means tule-eaters in the language mains unearthed by [4]
of the Paiute Indians. Tule is a brous water plant. In described as giant.
order to escape harassment from the Paiutes, the Si-Te- A written report by James H. Hart, the rst of two miners
Cahs were said to have lived on rafts made of tule on the to excavate the cave in the fall of 1911, recalls that in the
lake.
north-central part of the cave, about four feet deep, was
a striking looking body of a man six feet six inches tall.
His body was mummied and his hair distinctly red.[5]
Unfortunately in the rst year of mining, some of the human remains and artifacts were lost and destroyed. The
2 Oral history
best specimen of the adult mummies was boiled and destroyed by a local fraternal lodge, which wanted the skeleton for initiation purposes.[6] Also, several of the ber
According to the Paiutes, the Si-Te-Cah were a redsandals found in the cave were remarkably large, and one
haired band of cannibalistic giants.[1] The Si-Te-Cah and
reported at over 15 inches (38 cm) in length was said to
the Paiutes were at war, and after a long struggle a coalibe on display at the Nevada Historical Societys museum
tion of tribes trapped the remaining Si-Te-Cah in Lovein Reno in 1952.[7][8][9]
lock Cave. When they refused to come out, the Indians
piled brush before the cave mouth and set it aame. The The Paiute tradition asserts that the Si-Te-Cah people
practiced cannibalism, and this may have had some baSi-Te-Cah were annihilated.
sis in fact. During the 1924 excavation of the cave, a
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, daughter of Paiute Chief
series of three human bones were found near the surface
Winnemucca, wrote about what she described as a small
towards the mouth of the cave. These had been split to
tribe of barbarians who ate her people in her book Life
extract the marrow, as animal bones were split, and probAmong the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims - she wrote
ably indicate cannibalism during a famine.[10]
that after my people had killed them all, the people
round us called us Say-do-carah. It means conqueror; it
also means enemy. My people say that the tribe we
exterminated had reddish hair. I have some of their hair, 4 Notes
which has been handed down from father to son. I have
a dress which has been in our family a great many years, [1] Johnston, Charlie. Prehistoric Storage: Nevadas ancient
caves contain a hole lot of Native American history.
trimmed with the reddish hair. I am going to wear it some
Nevada Magazine. July/August 2011. Retrieved 18 Nov
time when I lecture. It is called a mourning dress, and no
2012.
[2]
one has such a dress but my family. Hopkins does not
mention giants.
[2] Hopkins 75
1

[3] Mayor, Adrienne (2005). Fossil legends of the rst Americans. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. ISBN
0-691-11345-9.
[4] Loud and Harrington
[5] Loud and Harrington 87
[6] Loud and Harrington 5
[7] Nevada State Journal, Reno, Nevada. Sunday, August 3,
1952 Page 6.
[8] Nevada State Journal, Reno, Nevada. Sunday, February
22, 1953 p. 9.
[9] Reno Evening Gazette, Reno, Nevada. Thursday, Sep.
25, 1913 p. 1.
[10] Loud and Harrington 13

References
Carroll C. Calkins, ed. (1982). Mysteries of the unexplained. [chief contributing writer, Richard Marshall ; contributing writers, Monte Davis, Valerie
Moolman, Georg Zappler] (Repr. with amendments
ed.). Pleasantville, N.Y.: Readers Digest Association. pp. 4142. ISBN 0895771462. |rst1= missing |last1= in Authors list (help)
Hopkins, Sarah Winnemucca. Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims. Boston Stereotype
Foundry, 1882.
Loud, Llewellyn L.; M. R. Harrington (15 February
1929). Lovelock Cave. University of California
Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology (University of California at Berkeley) 25 (1):
1183.

External links
Adrienne Mayors homepage
Stone Mother, a Paiute Legend
Paiute Indian Legends
Paiute Legends and Stories
Lovelock Culture

EXTERNAL LINKS

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