Stone Giants
Mythological Narrative
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.
Scholarly Commentary & Evolution
## 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.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Stone Giants.
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