The Martindale Mummies were discovered 1n 1885 in California's great Yosemite Valley . A group of miners led by G.F. Martindale found the remains of a woman nearly seven feet tall still holding a mummified child in a cave behind a wall of rock . These mummies are currently the property of Ripley's Museum
The people Indigenous to the Yosemite region when whites arrived were the Ahwahneechee tribe. Ahwahneechee folklore relates a story of giants called Oo-el-en or Uwulin who came into the Yosemite Valley many years before the white man.
The Oo-el-en, like the sitecah of nearby Nevada, were claimed to be cannibalistic giants who ate the meat of the Indians. Oo-el-en would catch the adults and cut them into bite-size pieces, hanging their meat in the sun to dry into jerky. The legend says that the Ahwahneechees finally killed the giants and burned their bodies. [The Ahwahneechee are believed to be extinct, or fully assimilated and no longer exist as a tribal entity]
The myths and legends of the Ahwahneechee was similar to the other Amerindians of the region {Miwok}. It was believed by the natives that the earth was re-peopled six successive times. The first world was dominated by a cannibal giant Uwulin who gradually devoured its inhabitants until a Fly discovered a vulnerable spot in his heel - like that of the Greek Achilles - and destroyed the malefactor.
This legend may or may not be relative to the ancient Humans who inhabited the Yosemite prior to the Amerindian, a example of which is the Martindale Mummies.
