Case file · Folklore / legend
The Moon-eyed people
A legend, first printed by Benjamin Smith Barton in 1797, of short, pale, bearded people who could not see by day and lived in the mountains before the Cherokee drove them out.
1797 CE · 35.09, -84.03 · status: legend
The account
Settlers credited them with old stone walls and mounds. A carved stone figure of a pair of 'moon-eyed' people is displayed at the Cherokee County Historical Museum in Murphy.
The sceptical view
The story reached print through settlers, not Cherokee storytellers, and was used to claim that a 'lost white race' built the region's monuments, a theory archaeology rejects.