“The legend of the moon-eyed people is not a major part of the Cherokee history and culture,” park manager Stewart confirms.
But white colonists 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. Others adhered to the idea that the moon-eyed 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.
For example, in 1801 John Sevier, the first governor of Tennessee, related a tale of 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 Chief Oconostota. “At length the whites proposed to the Indians, that if they would exchange prisoners, and cease hostilities, they would leave the country, and never more return,” the chief reportedly said. Also part of the tale: A Cherokee elder named Pey possessed part of an old book from a descendent “of the Welsh tribe.” Sevier said that he had searched for the book but discovered it had been destroyed—conveniently—in a fire.
Tales of Madoc’s “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. Thomas Jefferson was a firm believer in them and encouraged Lewis and Clark to search for them during their trek westward (they found none).
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.
“They called the Welsh ‘moon-eyed people,’ not because they were small, white skinned, and the men bearded, but because they lived underground and could see well in the dark,” Peter Stevenson wrote in the 2019 book The Moon-Eyed People: Folk Tales from Welsh America.
While this version of the story may explain the Welsh connection to the legend, it’s at odds with the stories in Lossiah’s Secrets and Mysteries of the Cherokee Little People. Here, the moon-eyed people are not pale; they have the same complexion as the Cherokee. In Lossiah’s version, the “little people” can be hospitable or sneaky and treacherous, and they’re particularly vengeful when mocked or betrayed, traits that parallel European trickster elves and gnomes.