Moon-Eyed People
A mysterious lost race from the Appalachian Mountains tells of a strange race of nocturnal, dwarf albinos who roamed this land long before the Natives arrived.
In the wildernesses along the Southern Appalachian Mountains, the Native Cherokee people have long told of a strange race of beings they call “The Moon-Eyed People.” This mysterious tribe was smaller than average humans, almost dwarfish in nature, very pale skinned(perfectly white), with white hair, generous beards, and very large blue eyes that were sensitive to light. It is said they were unable to see in the daytime, thus these Moon-Eyed people were nocturnal, hiding in caves and underground caverns during the day, and would only come out at night. Sunlight was said to be enough to kill them and the light of a full moon is said to weaken them.
These strange, nocturnal beings were said to have been here long before the first Native peoples had settled, and according to most legends they were eventually expelled by local Natives, although this expulsion tale varies.
In some tales it was the Creek people from the south who cast them out, in others it is the Cherokees who waged a relentless war campaign that drove them to other lands. Benjamin Smith Barton, wrote of these Moone-Eyes people and their downfall back in 1797, in his book New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America, he wrote:
“The Cherokee tell us, that when they first arrived in the country which they inhabit, they found it possessed by certain ‘moon-eyed-people,’ who could not see in the day-time. These wretches they expelled.”
Whatever has happened to this strange race of people, their legacy has remained in the ancient rock structures and mysterious mounds and ruins in the landscape along the Appalachians from North Carolina all the way through Georgia and Alabama, that legend tells were erected by the Moon-Eyed People.
Perhaps the most famous of these is a stone wall, which runs through Fort Mountain State Park, just over the North Carolina border into Georgia. The “fort” that gives its name to the mountain appears to be more of a ceremonial formation than a defensive wall. The 885 foot long, zigzagging wall has been dated between 400-500 AD. 12 feet thick and from two to seven feet high, the wall features numerous pits, Cairns, cylinders, stone rings, and the ruins of a gateway. Its origins are not clear, but are widely attributed to the moon-eyed-people. It is also said to be a vestige of the bloody war between the mysterious Moon-Eyed People and the native Cherokee. There are countless other rock structures, walls, mounds and forts scattered all throughout the Appalachians, as well as anomalous carvings, figurines. A soapstone carving of conjoined figures is now on display at the Cherokee County Historical Museum(Murphy, NC), said to be of these strange people, and no one really knows who made any of them, although the Cherokee themselves, say it was the work of the Moon-Eyed People. These structures has long remained a mystery, and when Europeans first came to the region the Natives, who were not known for making such fort-like structures, claimed they had always been, and that they were constructions of the Moon-Eyed People.
While Cherokee folklore has many tales of supernatural beings and various spirits, the Moon-Eyed People are never spoken of as such, rather they describe them as being matter-of-factly as another physical race inhabiting the lands.
With a dwarf albino tribe, who predate the natives and construct mysterious mounds and forts, comes a lot of theorizing as to who or what they may have been. One of the most popular is that they are evidence of Native contact with European explorers who had made it to America long before history says they did, possibly connected to the legend of the “Welsh Speaking Indians.”
The story of white-skinned, Welsh speaking Indians in America originates from a 16th-century manuscript by Welsh antiquarian Humphrey Llwyd. He writes of Prince Madoc, along with hundreds of his followers from Wales around 1170, coming to shore somewhere in the vicinity of Mobile Bay, Alabama, where they supposedly disappeared into the wilderness. Through the centuries there have been many stories of fair-skinned, blue-eyed natives who spoke a form of Welsh, and these stories have been speculated to have been the descendants of these settlers. With the many tales of “blue-eyed Indians” from the New World, perhaps this all has to do with the mystery of the Moon-Eyed People.
Another theory is that they were descendants of members of the Guna people of Panama, who have an uncommonly high rate of albinism, so much so that they were referred to as the “White Indians,” and who were also reportedly able to see better at night. Other theories is that, rather than go to war, the Natives of the land integrated with the Moon-Eyed People and absorbed them. There are even more far-out theories that they were another species of human, a new race, or even ancient aliens from another world.
As it is still unclear who or what the Moon-Eyed people may have been, or if they existed at all, they remain a lost civilization. As they may be lost to us, but the tales of the Moon-Eyed People have persisted for many years, and the idea that such a strange race may be hiding among us, is quite intriguing indeed.
