The mystery of the moon-eyed people of Cherokee legends

Try to imagine.
It’s midnight, with a dim moon high in the sky, when hundreds of little people, bearded, flat faced, and pale, with large blue eyes are hard at work atop Fort Mountain, in northern Georgia.
They’re building a wall of rocks from east to west, only a few meters tall, but they hope it will protect them from the Cherokee, so much taller and stronger than themselves.

Actually all across Appalachia, there are tales of bands of these strange people, or “Yunwi Tsunsdi”, in Cherokee, who live in the region’s many caves and coming out only at night, because daylight was too strong for their weak eyes.
It’s also rumored they come near a house at night, the people inside hear them talking and, the morning they find their corn gathered or the field cleared as if a whole force of men had been at work.
But always remember this basic rule: do not watch them!

For centuries, stories of these moon-eyed people have captivated (and also creeped out) locals and visitors alike in Appalachia.
According to the legend, they were present before the Cherokee came to the area, and driven out in a battle at Fort Mountain, waged by the Cherokee themselves when the full moon was too bright for their rivals’ sensitive eyes.
Archaeologists estimate the wall at Fort Mountain was built between 500 and 1500, but no one knows who actually constructed it and, for believers, what’s left is proof that the moon-eyed people did indeed exist.
But if this isn’t enough, sixty miles away, at the Cherokee County Historical Museum in Murphy, North Carolina, is a curious, one-meter-tall talc and soapstone statue that was discovered by a farmer named Felix Ashley in the 1840s which features two entwined figures with oval heads and large, crescent-shaped eyes.
Moreover, it was 1882, when an article in the Native American newspaper Cherokee Phoenix detailed the discovery of three burying grounds of extremely small-statured people near the Tennessee town of Sparta.
Several of the bodies, interred in stone coffins, were buried with items that may have been made from shells, and there is no record of what happened to the remains.

For most, however, It’s just this old-timey Appalachia legend that people hear from their grandparents, and it seems the earliest preserved stories of the moon-eyed come not from Cherokee sources, but from white colonists.
And, even if the legend is not a major part of the Cherokee history and culture, they were fascinated by the legend and speculated about who the moon-eyed people could have been.
Some believed they were possibly descendants of a fabled community of albino people who were said to have lived in what is now Panama, while others believed that they were actually descendants of the mythical 12th-century Welsh prince Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd, who allegedly landed in the Americas near what’s now Mobile, Alabama.
Not by chance, in 1801 John Sevier, the first governor of Tennessee, told a story about a war between the Cherokee and white people who had lived there before them, which he claimed was told to him by the great Cherokee leader himself, Chief Oconostota.
Eventually the whites proposed to the Indians, that if they would exchange prisoners, and cease hostilities, they would leave the country, and never more return.
Stories of “Welsh Indians” had captured the imagination of jingoistic colonialists since Elizabethan times, because their purported existence meant that North America had been claimed for the English long before Columbus arrived in 1492.
There were Welsh people living in Appalachia when the moon-eyed people stories began circulating, however. In the 18th century, Welsh settlers came to the region to mine its mineral-rich mountains, leading to tensions with the Cherokee, whose land they were plundering.
Apparently, they called the Welsh ‘moon-eyed people,’ not because they were small, white skinned, and the men bearded, but because they lived underground and apparently they could see well in the dark.

Although this version of the story may explain the Welsh connection to the legend, it’s at odds with other versions of the same story, in which the moon-eyed people are not pale, as they have the same complexion as the Cherokee.
In any case, the “little people” can also be hospitable or sneaky and treacherous, and they’re particularly vengeful when mocked or betrayed, traits that parallel European trickster elves and gnomes.
Cherokee tradition, in fact, taught the importance of respecting the Yunwi Tsunsdi and their territory.
For example, when a hunter finds anything in the woods, such as a knife or a trinket, he must say, “Little People, I want to take this”, because it may belong to them, and if he does not ask permission, they will throw stones at him as he goes home.

Either way, tales of the moon-eyed or little people of Appalachia persist to this day and, perhaps inevitably, exists people saying they are actually extraterrestrials.
However, although the true identity of the people that inspired the legend remains a mystery, there is clear evidence that there were native peoples here before the Cherokee, but who this tribe was in the case of Fort Mountain, and whether they were the same as the moon-eyed people mentioned by the early settlers is unclear.
But, amid conflicting tales of mythical Welsh princes, lost tribes, and extraterrestrials creatures, there is one truth we know about the so-called “little people” of Appalachia: according to local sources, we don’t have to go that far back to know that we don’t know anything about the place we call home.