Quite a few Native American nations believe in fairies, or “little people” as they call them. The fairies live in their folk tales and legends across the North American continent. Some have reported encounters with them, while others say it’s best not to disturb them. What are we to make of this in the science-driven 21^st Century? CryptoVille investigates!

What surprised me about these stories of fairies told by Native Americans, and in some cases, First Nations peoples of Canada, is how many of these tribal nations believe in them.  Let’s go through the list I’ve collected, starting from the Western-most location moving Eastward.

Native Hawaiians

These native peoples believe in the Menehune who are likened more to dwarves than fairies, depending on who is talking about them. They are said to live in remote forests and hidden valleys, getting as far away from human encroachment as possible.

They supposedly are master builders and craftsmen. It’s said they build temples, houses, roads, canoes, and even fishponds. They like to eat bananas and fish, and the natives believe the Menehune lived in Hawaii long before the Polynesians settled there.

On the flip side, at least one scholar, Katharine Luomala, thinks that the legend of the Menehune appeared after the early settlement of Europeans in the islands. She says they are not unlike the European legends of the brownies. She is quoted as saying, “It is claimed that “Menehune” are not mentioned in pre-contact mythology.”  But this is hard to prove because up to that time, all the native’s mythology was told in the oral tradition.

Hawaii was populated by several incursions of peoples. It seems settlers arrived from the Marquesas Islands only to be followed later on by the Tahitians. The Tahitians thought they were better than the Marquesas settlers and they looked down upon them, calling them Manahune (in Tahitian), meaning “lowly people of low social status.” The Marquesas people evacuated to the mountainous regions of Hawaii to escape the Tahitians, and were known as the Menehune thereafter. This would prove that the Menehune aren’t fairies or dwarves at all, but a group of humans escaping persecution.

The Shoshone Tribe

Legends from this tribe speak about the Nimerigar, a small but violent race of people who were cannibals and who would also eat other humans that they could kill, usually with poisoned arrows shot from very small bows.

Their name roughly translates from the Shoshone language to mean “people eaters.”

The Shoshone believed they lived along the Wind River in the Pedro mountain range of Wyoming.

What’s interesting about these supposed creatures is that they may have lived elsewhere on the North American continent. According to Wiki, in 1778, a missionary named Zeisberger claims to have found a burial site for a group of pygmy sized people near Cochocton, Ohio. Frustratingly, the burial grounds were overtaken by extensive farming and human habitation, so they’re not available for further study at this time.

Could they be related to the legend of the Shoshone’s Nimerigar? Perhaps time will tell.

The Choctaw Tribe

The Choctaw also believed in a race of little people that they called Kwanokasha. People generally feared them. One legend describes the Kwanokasha as regularly stealing little boys of the tribe to “test their spirit.”

The test involved choosing between a knife, a bag of poisonous herbs, and a bag of healing herbs. If the boy chose the knife, they’d consider him a killer. If he chose the poisonous herbs, he would only make his people sick. But if he chose the healing herbs, he’d be proclaimed a “powerful medicine man.”

These creatures are described as being between one and two feet tall, and living in caves.

The Cherokee Tribe

The Cherokee people have three varieties of little people that they believe in.

1. The Laurels: These are friendly creatures who like to play mischievous tricks on humans. Young at heart, they strive to influence human beings to be young at heart as well.
2. The Rocks: Nasty, malicious creatures who sound rather territorial. They steal children and wreak havoc at every opportunity.
3. Dogwood People: These creatures are supposed to be kind and helpful. It’s believed they like to take care of humans. Some have said they are like the Scottish brownies.

The Crow Tribe

The Nirumbee are the little people that the Crow tribe believe in. The people believe they give visions to tribesmen at times. In fact, they claim that Crow Chief Plenty Coups received a vision from the Nirumbee that caused him to keep his people together and safe through a very difficult time in the early 20^th Century.

Some tribesmen leave the Nirumbee small offerings today if they are passing through the Pryor Mountains, where the Nirumbee are thought to live.

Eskasoni Tribe

This tribe, native to Nova Scotia in Canada, believes in the little people and have many legends to back-up their belief. There is a hill on the island where the Eskasoni believe the little people live. Children are warned to avoid the area so the little people don’t capture them.

Someone made a documentary film about the Eskasoni and their belief in these little people. The film is called The Fairy Faith and it supposedly contains many more stories of the interactions between the “fairies” and the humans.

While none of this offers sure and certain proof of the existence of these little people creatures, it’s interesting to see how far reaching the belief goes around the whole North American continent, among both Native Americans and First Nations people of Canada.

Then There’s This

There always has to be a hitch, doesn’t there?

According to Wiki, gold prospectors Cecil Mayne and Frank Carr broke through a large rock formation on the trail of gold and discovered a small room. They measured it at 4’ wide, 4’ deep, and 15’ long. Inside was a very small mummy. This occurred in the San Pedro, New Mexico, mountains in October of 1932.

At first, they believed the mummy to be an adult miniature human. It was found sitting upright. Its skin was dark tan, and it measured about 7 inches tall seated. They estimated if it stood upright, it would measure about a foot tall. Strange thing was, though, its head was flattened on top.

Scientists who saw it said it was clearly the remains of an infant suffering from anencephaly. This condition results in a major portion of the brain, skull, and scalp to be missing because they never developed in utero.

Still others insisted it was proof that the little people believed in by so many Native American and First Nations tribes really existed.

This little mummy then wound up on display in a drug store in Wyoming for a few years. Then it was bought by Ivan T. Goodmen, a local businessman. He later lost it to Leonard Wadler, a New York businessman, and after that, the trail runs cold. No one knows where it is today. Supposedly, the Casper Star-Tribune is offering a $10,000 reward to the person who finds the mummy.

Scientists, who at some point, examined this mummy using x-rays, were satisfied it was the body of an anencephalic infant. Somewhere along the line, someone else found a second little mummy that was examined by George Gill, an anthropologist at the University of Wyoming, and also by Denver Children’s Hospital and their tests proved the second mummy to also be that of an anencephalic infant. These tests were performed in the 1990s.  Carbon dating showed that this second mummy dated to approximately the year 1500 while DNA tests proved it was of Native American descent.

By the 1990s, science had a good understanding of anencephaly, DNA testing, and radiocarbon dating. So, I’m satisfied these little mummies were two babies who had died from the gut-wrenching condition of anencephaly.

What to Believe

It seems we’re left with a lot of people believing in the existence of these little people, but little to no proof that they actually exist. The story reminds me of the little people found in Indonesia on the island of Flores who became classified as Homo floresiensis. The individual’s remains that were found would have stood a little over a meter tall, so they were the right height. However, they lived until about 50,000 years ago, kind of too late to seriously co-mingle with humans.

Fairly recently there have been reports of pygmy sized peoples’ remains being found in mounds in Ohio. I’ll have to do more research into them to see if they could possibly be the creatures of Indian lore and legend.  But it’s an interesting prospect.

So, what do you think about these Native American fairies? Do they really sound like fairies, or more like dwarves, or perhaps, more like, yet another species of early hominid?

References

https://wholesecrets.com/native-american-indians-beliefs-in-the-little-people-or-fairies/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Pedro_Mountains_Mummy

https://historycollection.co/truth-behind-disturbing-mystery-san-pedro-mountains-mummy/

http://www.native-languages.org/shoshone-legends.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimerigar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menehune

https://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/TheLittlePeople-Choctaw.html

https://www.theonefeather.com/2014/07/author-cherokee-little-people-are-real/

https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6848&context=etd  Pg. 30

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_People_of_the_Pryor_Mountains

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anencephaly