Giant Female Mummy

This page is a continuation of earlier web projects: Researching a Human Oddity over the Internet.
This trade card was found in a group of paper ephemera I purchased from an estate in Hudson NY.

Business card from the Big Chief Cafe, Fordyce Post and Edward Post, Proprietors, 600 Broadway, Kingston NY. Slightly smaller than postcard size, approx. 3 1/2 by 5 inches. Undated. The fact that beer and liquor were served would place it before 1919 or after 1933. My guess would be pre prohibition due to the telephone number of 390-R. An internet search also found 2 Victorian era trade cards for H. Clausen and Son, which was probably a small local brewery that ended operations at the start of prohibition. More research is in order.

Text transcribed as follows:

The Patagonian Giantess, standing over seven feet tall, with her own infant babe tightly clasped in her arms.

She is in perfect form, showing all the muscles of the body, tongue, fingers and toes, toe nails, etc. Every part of this great Patagonian Giantess is mummified and preserved for all time.

It was found by Prof. De Anthony, a French Geologist, buried in the hot, dry sands along the banks of the Uro River in the Argentine Republic, South America, in the summer of 1893, and is supposed by scientists to have been buried more than 1,000 years ago.

She is wrapped in buckskin coverings, as was the custom at that time, a good portion of which still remains. The Great Patagonian Giantess has been exhibited in South America and in many other parts of the world, and has been considered by noted scientists as the most PERFECTLY PRESERVED, tallest and most wonderful specimen of the human race ever discovered.

While searching the Internet, I found this page, which describes a very similar mummy.

According to Bobbie Short, the author of the Sightings article, this mummy is not Patagonian in origin, but rather Ahwahneechee, from the Yosemite Park area of California. She also notes that the picture on the card was cropped to remove the man who wrote of her discovery. Now we add to the mystery, How did she get to Kingston NY, and why was the mummy mis-represented as to origin. Now she resides in Calaveras County, California.