thumb|200px|right|1840s (fanciful) illustration of a Patagon chief from near the [[Strait of Magellan, bedecked in costume of war; from Voyage au pôle Sud et dans l'Océanie... by French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville]]
The Patagons or Patagonian giants were a mythical race of giant humans rumoured to be living in Patagonia described in early European accounts. They were said to have exceeded at least double normal human height, with some accounts giving heights of or more. Tales of these people maintained a hold upon European conceptions of the region for nearly 300 years.
History
The first mention of these people came from the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan and his crew, who claimed to have seen them while exploring the coastline of South America en route to the Maluku Islands in their circumnavigation of the world in the 1520s. The original word would probably be in Ferdinand Magellan's native Portuguese (patagão) or the Spanish of his men (patagón). Since Pigafetta's time the assumption that this derived from pata or foot took hold, and "Patagonia" was interpreted to mean "Land of the Bigfeet". However, this etymology remains questionable, since amongst other things the meaning of the suffix -gon is unclear. It is now understood that the name comes from a character in Primaleón, a very popular 1512 Spanish chivalric romance novel, a type of fiction said to be widely read by Magellan and his conquistador colleagues. Nevertheless, the name "Patagonia" stuck, as did the notion that the local inhabitants were giants; maps of the New World of the time sometimes attached the label regio gigantum ("region of giants") to the area.
thumb|420px|left|1840s illustration of Patagon encampment; from account by French explorer [[Jules Dumont d'Urville]]
In 1579, Francis Drake's ship chaplain, Francis Fletcher, wrote about meeting very tall Patagonians, of "7 foote and a halfe".
In the 1590s, Anthony Knivet claimed he had seen dead bodies long in Patagonia.
Also in the 1590s, William Adams, an Englishman aboard a Netherlander ship rounding Tierra del Fuego, reported a violent encounter between his ship's crew and unnaturally tall natives.
thumb|A sailor giving a Patagonian woman a piece of bread for her baby
The Dutch sailors Sebald de Weert in 1598, Olivier van Noort in 1599, and Joris van Spilbergen in 1615 claimed that giants were living in Patagonia. There is a photograph of a seven-foot tall Selkʼnam ("Ona") man in the US Library of Congress.
See also
- Hyperborea