Mass Grave of "Razor Toothed" Giants Discovered in Virginia Cave
New York Times, September 8, 1871
MORE BIG INDIANS FOUND IN VIRGINIA
Not to be behind Canada, Virginia puts in a claim of the possession of a cave full of dead Indians, the Petersburg Index giving the tale as quoted below, on the authority of gentlemen whom it asserts to be of the highest character and credit, who have seen with their own eyes, and touched and tested with their own hands, the wonderful objects of which they make reports as follows:
"The workman engaged in opening a way of the projected railroad between Weldon and Garrysburg struck Monday, a about a mile from the former place in a bank beside the river, a catacomb of skeletons, supposed to be those of Indians, of remote age and a lost and forgotten race. The bodies exhumed were of strange and remarkable formation. The skulls were nearly an inch in thickness; the teeth were filed sharp as those of cannibals, the enamel perfectly preserved; the bones were of wonderful length and strength- the femur being as long as the leg of an ordinary man, the stature of the body being probably as great as eight or nine feet. Near their heads were sharp stone arrows, stone mortars, in which their corn was laid, and the bowls of pipes, apparently of soft soap-stone. The teeth of the skeletons are said to be as large as those of horses. One of them has been brought to the city, and presented to an officer of the Petersburg Railroad. The bodies were found closely packed together, laid tier on tier as it seemed. There was no discernable ingress into or egress out of the mound.
