Giants of the Kanawha: The Smithsonian’s Forgotten Discoveries

Giants of the Kanawha Valley: Two Burials, One Mystery

The Kanawha Valley of West Virginia has long been whispered about as a land of ancient giants, where the Adena mound builders left behind towering earthworks and enigmatic burials. It’s a legend that caught fire again after my earlier video on the giant skeleton found near Charleston—but what I’ve uncovered since takes the story even deeper.

It begins in the archives of the Smithsonian’s Fifth Annual Report (1883–1884), where Dr. Cyrus Thomas documented the excavation of a remarkable burial mound on Col. B. H. Smith’s farm, just outside Charleston. The dig, led by Col. P. W. Norris of the Bureau of Ethnology, revealed a monument that dwarfed most others in the region—175 feet across and 35 feet high, composed of earth and rock hauled from distant ridges. Evidence showed it was constructed in layers over generations, each phase marking a new wave of ritual burial and mound rebuilding.

When Norris drove a shaft straight through the center, the discoveries told a story of ancient ceremony and power:

• Deepest level—a stone vault, 7 feet long, containing a headless skeleton and a single spearhead.
• Mid-level layers—burned ashes, bark coffins, and skulls flattened by cranial shaping, a known Adena practice.
• At 19 feet deep—a 12x12-foot timber vault, roofed with walnut logs, housing five skeletons: four upright in the corners and one colossal figure laid flat in the middle.

That central burial stunned the Smithsonian crew. The skeleton measured 7 feet 6 inches long, the shoulder width nearly 19 inches. It was sheathed in bark and adorned with elaborate grave treasures: copper bracelets, a copper gorget, mica plates, hematite celts, shell beads, and flint spearheads—a full regalia of Adena elite craftsmanship.

For over a century, that 7½-foot figure of the Kanawha Valley stood as one of the best-documented giant burials in Smithsonian records—a riddle wrapped in official paper.

But the story didn’t end there.

Nearly 80 years later, archaeologists returned to the same valley, this time to study the South Charleston (Criel) Mound, another ancient Adena structure that still dominates the modern city landscape. In 1961, a controlled excavation on the mound’s slopes uncovered more evidence that echoed the earlier find.

Field assistant A. R. Sines recorded a skeleton measuring 6 feet 8¾ inches, once again unusually tall for Adena remains. The skeleton was buried with copper fragments, Olivella shell beads, and heavy conch-shell disks—grave goods strikingly similar to those listed in the 1880s excavation. Though later curatorial mixing blurred the exact artifact source, the material signature matched the same mound-building culture that buried the 7½-foot "chief" decades earlier.

Even the site’s modern history reflects layers of stewardship: once owned by Union Carbide Corporation, the mound was later deeded to the City of South Charleston with the condition that it remain a public park. Today, it still rises over the valley, silent but enduring—a reminder of a civilization whose dead were treated with immense ceremony, and whose tallest members became legends in both archaeology and folklore.

Together, the Smithsonian’s 1880s giant and the 1961 Criel Mound skeleton create a timeline of awe stretching more than two millennia—and bridge the gap between myth and documented excavation. As new evidence comes to light, one question lingers over the Kanawha Valley: were these “giants” the spiritual elite of an ancient culture, or remnants of something even older whose story we’ve only just begun to unearth?

So about the Smithsonian cover up of giant skeletons..? Is it all make belive conspiracy theories?

Video link about the P.W. Norris excavation below.