This researcher is operating from the sketch of the Stonish Giants contained in the article linked below and widely available online:

The Stonish Giant were said to roll in clay or sand to coat their hairy hide and make it impervious to arrows. Their legend was also combined or related to that of the red haired and hairy “giants” who lived along the Appalachian mountains and were fierce with hairy coats of scale.

In this same region numerous iron hearths dating from before A.D. 1400 have been excavated. The process of producing such crude iron required the use of clay and sand for banking and quenching. Together with the fact that Europeans had much more body hair than natives and had red hair where natives did not, this suggests that the legend of the Stonish Giants, also of the Sasquatch and Wendigo, represented an ancient folk memory of hairy, red-haired armored invaders.

In the eldest legend the last Stonish Giant was said to have made a truce with The People and lived on in alliance.

If, beyond these considerations, one looks at the illustrations of the Stonish Giants one sees a mailed swordsman with a coifed helmet, consistent with the gear worn by the Templars that left Spain in six ships in the 13th century and the men at arms attending Prince Madoc of Wales over a century earlier. The mailed warrior with coifed conical helm would also fit 11th century Norse warrior [known to have reached North America] harnesses, again, mail with a coifed conical helmet.

Additional links are provided below:

Note that the native historians of the 1700-1800s had Christian names.

Whatever the truth about the Stonish Giants, the first European settlers met Indians who had bits of iron used in the construction of wooden swords and clubs and who had a keen interest in metals, suggesting previous contact with iron-using folk. One tribe in Maine even used stone swords, a quite impractical weapon.

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