The Moon-Eyed People of Appalachia

When European explorers first arrived in the Americas, they found the land populated by a native people who had already established a presence there tens of thousands of years previous. However, Native Americans, as we think of them today, reportedly weren't the only people living in North America at that time. Legend passed down from generation to generation refers to another—an elusive and rarely seen human-like species who lived throughout the Appalachians and, to a lesser extent, east of the mountains and deep into the Piedmont. The Cherokee called them the Moon-Eyed People. Had they lived in the Americas as long as their human neighbors? Or were they spawned by the forces of nature, wholly and separate? No one knows.

The Cherokee described them as nocturnal, short, often bearded, with blueish eyes and pale, almost white, skin. And so, when white explorers first arrived, the indigenous population met them with some confusion. Were these newcomers long lost otherworldly cousins to the Moon-Eyed?

Elusive but ubiquitous throughout Appalachia, the Moon-Eyed People lived in caves for the most part, their name reflecting their nocturnal nature and poor daytime vision.

A shy and quiet people, they avoided direct confrontation. As such, native peoples and Europeans only ever caught fleeting and rare glimpses of the creature, often amounting to no more than an occasional flicker of movement in the moonlight.

They often spied on their human neighbors from behind a fallen log or a pile of rocks, from caves, or sometimes from high in a tree. And hence, they earned the nicknames The Watchers or The Watchers in the Wood.

They avoided confrontation, but they were known to sneak up on an encampment while people slumbered, or were distracted, or lulled by a cheerful fire on a cool autumn eve, and then would steal an item or two or cause some small mischief like rearranging belongings or unhitching a horse or collapsing a tent. The campers would wake up the next day with holes carved into the bottom of their boats and canoes, fences cut, and gates lifted off their hinges.

On a darker note, the Moon-Eyed often shouldered the blame when a child or a woman or an animal went missing, never to be seen again, especially during long, cold winters or at any time when food became scarce. Even more vengeful and brazen, sometimes a whole party of hunters or berry pickers would go missing only to be later found in a clearing in the forest, their throats slit and bodies neatly arranged in a bloodless circle—either end-to-end forming a grisly perimeter or with all of their heads positioned toward the center and their feet outward like the petals of a flower. In these incidences, a stone would be placed on each eye. Was it a warning? Was it for some dark ritual? Was it the Moon-Eyed?

The Cherokee warned travelers to be on guard and to stay on established paths, especially in parts rarely traveled. To stray, they warned, could be construed as an affront or slight of some kind. The Cherokee conceded that despite living in close proximity to the small folk since time remembered, they could never quite pin down what constituted a transgression and what did not. Periodically, especially during times of need, the Cherokee and other native peoples would set out baskets of corn, persimmons, grapes, pawpaw, and dried meats, hoping to appease their hungry neighbors.

Now today, everyone speaks of them in the past tense. Even before Europeans arrived in the Americas, the Cherokee worked hard to gradually drive them from the mountains. The mountains are vast, though, and the Moon-Eyed were exceptionally crafty. The Catawba, Saponi, Tuscarora, and other peoples east of the Appalachians didn't welcome the resulting migration, leading to conflict with the Cherokee. One notable skirmish, led by the Tuscarora and involving four other tribal nations, lasted more than a year. In their anger over the Cherokee-driven influx of the Moon-Eyed into their lands, they painted their skin white and blackened their eyes and chins, and attacked neighboring Cherokee settlements in the dead of night. Historians would later refer to this conflict as The Small Folk War of the 1300s.

The constant pressure applied by human antagonists dramatically reduced the population of Moon-Eyed People. At least, that is the presumption. Some researchers speculate that though their numbers undoubtedly decreased, the Moon-Eyed may have merely adapted to a more hostile world, learned to better avoid human contact, and now occupy darker corners of the mountains and surrounding areas. Even today, native peoples still teach their children from a very early age to avoid traveling the woods alone and to avoid steep valleys and dark woods. The reasoning they give is to avoid more modern dangers. The origins, though, forgotten by all but the oldest members of those communities, tie directly back to that older danger connected to the presence of humans who aren't so human and live in dark and secret places.

Here on our farm nestled in the North Carolina Piedmont, we have heard whisperings of these stories. Stories that we have, at least initially, dismissed as tall tales—just a handful of the many legends that have somehow survived these many years of colonization and modernization.

But animals have indeed disappeared. Fences have been cut. Odd shapes have been found carved into trees deep in the woods.

We often blame these incidents on coyotes, raccoons, and kids playing in the woods. We are not superstitious people. But we have walked the valley behind the dam to our pond and then well beyond where the forest is older, where light struggles to penetrate, and where small caves are tucked away here and there. And—hand to heart—we have certainly felt eyes on us, and on more than one occasion, seen a queer flickering motion just outside our field of vision. It's silly to think that such mythical creatures still exist today, but …

Sometimes, and only when the sun is high in the sky, we will hike back into that valley, where even the noon-day sun is dimmed to dusk and where the woods are swallowed in shadow, and we will leave an offering of fruits and nuts and cured meats.

You know. Just in case.