The Moon Eyed People
Were the mountains of Appalachia once inhabited by race of ancient, nocturnal cavemen?
The regions surrounding the fabled Appalachian Mountains are home to some fascinating, but often macabre myths and legends.
Many are already familiar with the likes of the Moth Man, the red eyed harbinger of doom who lurks at the locations of impeding disasters; or the Flatwoods Monster, who many believe is an example of extra-terrestrial visitation.
Yet fewer are familiar with another Appalachian legend; which, after some research, might just be rooted in a deeply unsettling truth.
In certain parts of southern and eastern Appalachia, some folks still talk of an eerie, nocturnal race of imp-like humanoids known as - ‘The Moon Eyed People’.
The Moon Eyed People are said to be around four foot high, with pale, ghostly bodies and large, slightly bulbous eyes.
They’re mostly harmless, and only ever come out at night due to their general fear of humanity.
But go walking on the trails, when the moon is big and bright, and you might just spot a Moon Eyed Person, bathed in silvery light.
To most, the Moon Eyed People sound like nothing but a quaint, rural folktale. But like many so-called myths and legends, there can be varying degrees of truth to them.
And in the case of our nocturnal gnomes, that degree of truth might be very large indeed.
Prior to the Removal of 1838, North Georgia and other parts of the Appalachians were still part of the Cherokee Nation; and in 1782, the region’s governor was a man named John Sevier.
That same year, Sevier paid a visit to the Cherokee Chief Oconostota at Fort Mountain, who had recently reached the ripe old age of ninety-years-old.
Given his status as the region’s governor, Sevier and Oconostota dedicated a great deal of their discussion to local politics.
Sevier sought the old chief’s wisdom, yet he also sought his experience, and before long, the conversation turned to history.
Sevier and Oconostota began discussing the origins of the Cherokee, with the old chief describing how his people had migrated to Appalachia from the northern Great Lakes region.
Oconostota claimed his ancestors had arrived to find another people had settled the area, a people so sophisticated that they’d turned the mountain into a veritable fortress, hence why it was given the name.
The Cherokee fought hard to conquer the indigenous tribe, but eventually, they prevailed, and drove their enemy from the region before settling it themselves.
Sevier then asked the old chief if he knew anything of this vanquished tribe. What he was told – shocked him to his core.
Chief Oconostota’s forefathers told him that those who had occupied Fort Mountain before the Cherokee were, and I quote, “white men from across the great sea”.
The Chief went on to describe how these “Moon Eyed People” earned their name.
Not only did they have huge, disc-like eyes; much larger than any human’s.
But they’d evolved to be viciously effective nocturnal hunters, with natural night vision so strong that it struck fear into the hearts of the Cherokee, who didn’t dare venture away from their camps after dark.
Governor Sevier was stunned, and assumed these Caucasoid tribespeople were merely the stuff of legend. Yet Chief Oconostota assured him that his account was no mere myth.
Sevier promised to return the following spring, and in the company of a historian, so that the chief’s account could be officially recorded.
Yet sadly, when Sevier returned in the spring of 1783, he discovered that the elderly chief had passed away.
Despite Chief Oconostota’s death, rumors of the Moon Eyed People did not abate. In fact, almost every band of Appalachian Cherokee were familiar with the legends.
So much so, that it attracted the attention of a man named Benjamin Smith Barton.
Born in 1766, in the British colony of Pennsylvania, Doctor Barton was one of the early United States’ most prominent physicians.
He’d studied at the Philadelphia School of Medicine, but also at Scotland’s University of Edinburgh and Germany’s University of Göttingen.
He was also such a famous and well-respected figure that he received honorary diplomas from both the Lisbon Academy, and Kiel University.
At one time, Doctor Barton specialized in botany, and after corresponding with naturalists throughout the United States and Europe, he published the first American textbook on the subject.
Yet around the end of the 18th century, Barton became fascinated with the subject of Anthropology, or more specifically, the origins of humanity.
After many years of study, Doctor Barton published his 1797 book - ‘New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America’.
The book includes excerpts of an interview with a US Army Colonel named Lenoard Marbury.
Fluent in the Cherokee language, Colonel Marbury acted as an intermediary between the government and the natives for the better part of twenty years; and in that time, had heard many a story regarding the so-called Moon Eyed People.
“The Cherokee tell us that when they first arrived in the country which they inhabit, they found it possessed by certain ‘moon eyed people’”, Colonel Marbury explained, “These wretched people could not see in the daytime - and were expelled following a brief but bloody war”.
At first, Doctor Barton theorized that there had been some kind of miscommunication, and that these pale ‘Moon Eyed People’ were not some previously undiscovered race of stunted humanoids, but rather a collection French settlers.
The Cherokee had sometimes described the Moon Eyed People as possessing what they described as ‘alien’ or ‘unfamiliar’ weaponry.
Yet when Doctor Barton interviewed one frequent visitor to the Cherokee, he claimed these “alien weapons” were little more than “hoes, axes, guns, and other metallic utensils”, that’d been brought to the New World by the French.
Many others have supported this assertion, claiming the Moon Eyed People were no more than rogue European settlers, who specialized in hunting by night, rather than by day.
Yet when South Carolina historian B. R. Carroll interviewed merchant-explorer James Adair, he refuted any and all claims that the Moon Eyed People were European.
Born in the Irish County of Antrim in 1709, Adair sailed to the New World with a British trade mission at the age of twenty-six.
He spent the next forty years living among the natives, chiefly among the Chickasaw and Eastern Chocktaw, while being almost entirely cut off from the outside world.
In 1775, when Adair was in his sixties, he was encouraged to pen an account of his experiences with the native tribes, titling the book ‘A History of the American Indians’.
The book cemented Adair’s status as one of the most knowledgeable Indian experts of his generation, hence why he was sought out by the author B.R. Carroll; and when asked if he was familiar with the so-called Moon Eyed People, he replied in the affirmative.
Adair claimed that almost all of the Appalachian tribes had stories concerning this primordial race of albino humanoids.
But it was not the frequency with which he encountered these stories that convinced Adair of their veracity, it was the consistency with which they were described.
Each and every tribe spoke of the Moon Eyed People as being stunted, nocturnal, and incredibly pale; and what’s more, most tribes agreed that the cause of their malformation was that they chose to live life underground.
Scientifically speaking, the Moon Eyed People’s wide-eyed physiognomy is entirely consistent with an offshoot of humanity having taken to living underground, especially if they've done so for thousands upon thousands of years.
And while this all might sound like the stuff of science fiction; it is firmly rooted in truth.
Back in 2003, a team of comprised of local and Australian archaeologists began excavating an Indonesian cave known as Liang Bua; in the hopes of uncovering pre-modern human remains.
Two years later, the team were undertaking a routine dig when they discovered evidence of a human skull.
When a section of this skull was sent away for analysis, an Indonesian scientist believed that, due to its relatively small dimensions, the skull must’ve belonged to a child.
Yet after more of the person’s skull were uncovered and analyzed, it was discovered that their teeth were that of a grown adult.
The remains they’d discovered were not those of a Homo Sapien. They belonged to a previously undiscovered relative - Homo Floresiensis.
Named after the island of Flores, on which they were found, Homo Floresiensis were determined to be an extinct species of small archaic human that inhabited the island until the arrival of modern humans, about 50,000 years ago.
The remains found in the Liang Bua cave belonged to an adult female, believed to have stood at three-foot-seven-inches tall, which earned her the nickname - ‘the Little Lady of Flores’.
If the Cherokee did indeed migrate to Appalachia around 12,000 years ago, which is when the last of the Flores Hobbit People are believed to have died out, its frighteningly feasible that they encountered a prehistoric race of sub-human cave dwellers, against whom they waged a terrible, and ultimately genocidal war.
But then again, how could the Cherokee be so certain that every last one of the Moon Eyed People were extinct?
Perhaps they simply took shelter in the deepest recesses of their subterranean settlements, and became even more cautious following the arrival of European settlers.
Maybe the stories of stunted, ethereal looking beings roaming the Appalachian Trial aren’t just stories, but rather an aspect of ancient anthropology that we have yet to fully explain.
After all, if the Little Lady of Flores and her kin were only discovered in 2003 – what else has mankind yet to discover regarding our ancient and mysterious origins?