(San Pedro Mountains Mummy discovered in Wyoming in 1932)
We spend a lot of focus on the tall people of the Americas - ancient giants and Sasquatch, but what of the "little people" of as I call them, "Littlefoots."
What? You haven't heard of the Littlefoots?
Well, let's delve into this, both in legends and archaeological digs around America (and the world).
From the book The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee by John Haywood (starting page 200 on reprint edition from Amazon):
Referred to as "pygmies," these skeletons were found buried in crypts just outside of Sparta, Tennessee in the County of White and reported in the Nashville Whig in June 1820.
These graves had many bodies, all of them quite small. Some of the crypts were as small as 18 inches by 12 inches. The first grave was 2 feet long and inside the small skeleton and its teeth had the researcher wondering if it was canine or monkey. He had them sent off to be examined.
They were buried with care in a stone crypt and had shells and urns with them. The bones were so old they crumbled quite easily. One skull the examiner held up was 5" across from side to side. Most individuals were from 18 inches to 2 feet 10 inches long. One find was a 5 foot 5 inch individual found with the smaller ones. The taller skeleton had a head that was longer, eyes much wider asunder, the forehead much higher above the eyebrows, and the under jaw measured one inch longer on each side than the smaller fellows. Atop the head of one skull had bright silver grey fine hairs.
There was great dissimilarity in skull shapes, the size and shape of the bones, and looked to belong to different tribes of people. Just 8 miles away, a 7-foot giant was found.
These finds were packaged and sent for examination in Nashville. The prevailing opinion was that they were not children. No 1 skull belonged to some carnivorous animal of the canine genus; but that the skull belonged on an adult person of small size, not much exceeding 3 feet in length. Cylindrical bones and teeth appeared canine. Others gave the same odd opinion.
Source: V.R. Pilapil, for example, asserts that the disputed Tennessee graves really did contain pygmy remains. Not only that, but he hypothesizes that the pygmies arrived in ancient times from southeast Asia, probably the Philippines, where today's diminutive Aetas live. To support his case, Pilapil recalls B. Fell's examination of the Tennessee skeletal material. Fell noted that: (1) The skull brain capacity was equivalent to only about 950 cubic centimeters, about the volume of a non-pygmy 7-yearold; (2) The teeth were completely developed and showed severe wear characteristic of mature individuals; and (3) The skulls were brachycephalic (flat-headed like dogs) with projecting jaws (like dog). Fell had, in fact, described skulls very much like those of today's adult Philippine Aetas. Another line of evidence adduced by Pilapil involved the traditions of British Columbia tribes, which recognized a tribe of very small people called the Et-nane. More significant is the oral history of the Cherokees, which mentions the existence of "little people" in eastern North America.
Note from blog author: Remember my saying "kernels of truth" found in ancient Native legends - they add magic to explain odd occurrences or things they cannot compute that actually happened or exist- kind of like what our archaeologists and anthropologists do when they find stuff they can't fit into their educational model.
Source: Anthropological Institute, Journal, 6:100, 1876:
An ancient graveyard of vast proportions has been found in Coffee county. It is similiar to those found in White County and other places in middle Tennessee, but is vastly more extensive, and shows that the race of pygmies who once inhabited this country were very numerous. The same peculiarities of position Observed in the White County graves are found in these. The writer of the letter says: "Some considerable excitement and curiousity took place a few days since, near Hillsboro, Coffee county, on James Brown's farm. A man was ploughing in a field which had been cultivated many years, and ploughed up a man's skull and other bones. After making further examination they found that there were about six acres in the graveyard. They were buried in a sitting or standing position. The bones show that they were a dwarf tribe of people, about three feet high. It is estimated that there were about 75,000 to 100,000 buried there. This shows that this country was inhabited hundreds of years ago."
Note from blog author: It would appear that in the 1800s, they had no concept of the age of these graves - as the first find the bones crumbled, showing they were thousands of years old, not hundreds
Source: The Native peoples of North America told legends of a race of "little people" who lived in the woods near sandy hills and sometimes near rocks located along large bodies of water, such as the Great Lakes. Often described as "hairy-faced dwarfs" in stories, petroglyphs illustrations show them with horns on their head and traveling in a group of 5 to 7 per canoe.
A graveyard unearthed in the 1830s in Coshocton County, Ohio was believed to contain skeletons belonging to a pygmy race. In fact that the graves, only about three feet long, were "bone burials" containing disarticulated or bent bones packed together.
The physical remains of tiny people have been reported found in various locations in the western United States, particularly Montana and Wyoming. Typically these are described as being found in caves with various details such as descriptions that they were "perfectly formed", dwarf-size.
Source: Yunwi Tsunsdi. The Little People of the Cherokee are a race of Spirits who live in rock caves on the mountain side. They are little fellows and ladies reaching almost to your knees. They are well shaped and handsome, and their hair so long it almost touches the ground. They are very helpful, kind-hearted, and great wonder workers. They love music and spend most of their time drumming, singing, and dancing. They have a very gentle nature, but do not like to be disturbed.
CROW: The little people of the Pryor Mountains. Crow folklore says the "Little People" live in the Pryor Mountains, a small mountain range in Carbon County, Montana. Petroglyphs on rocks in the mountains, the Crow said, were made by these demon-like creatures. Because the Little People live there, the mountains are sacred to the Crow. The Little People are said to be no more than 18 inches (46 cm) (or knee) high. Crow folklore differs slightly from that of other tribes in describing the Little People of the Pryor Mountains as having large, nearly round bellies; incredibly strong but short arms and legs; and little or no neck.
(San Pedro Mountains Mummy was discovered in Wyoming in 1932)
(Palau skull finds)
Source: The South Pacific Nation of Palau (just east of the Phillipines) has unearthed thousands of human bones that are rather unusual. The bones reportedly are 900 to 2500 years old and appear to be homo sapiens, but also reveal signs of archaic or primitive breeding. The bones were found in a cave. These people were 3-4 feet tall, perhaps 70 to 90 pounds (similar in size to the Homo floresiensis found in Indonesia). Some of these people lacked chins and had deep jaws, large teeth, and small eye sockets. Anthropologist, William Jungers, anthropologist, points out that the hobbit is distinguished from modern humans by jaw structures called transverse tori, which are seen in human ancestors, such as australopithecines and some Homo erectus fossils, he noted.
In the case of the homo floresiensis (Hobbit) from Indonesia; unlike the Palauan bones, the hobbit fossils include a skull with an exceptionally small braincase. Its volume is much smaller than that of small-bodied peoples living today on other Pacific islands and in the forests of Africa. It is also smaller than that of the early Palauans.
Dean Falk is an anthropologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee who received National Geographic funding to compare the Flores skull with both microcephalics and modern humans without disease. She and colleagues from the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology concluded in a study published last year that the hobbit was not microcephalic. Falk said the finding closed the microcephaly argument. The Palauan remains, she added, are just a set of small bones, representing small-bodied people."But being small does not make one comparable to Homo floresiensis," she noted. "It makes one small—period.
Tiny tribes have been reported throughout the islands of the South Pacific. Some scientists suggest that limited resources made them smaller, but that would take hundreds of thousands of years and that lack of resources would have killed them long before then. So, I will hazard a guess that they originated from Madagascar as an evolutionary offshoot of the lemur/lorises branch of the tree, whereas homo sapiens came from the primate branch.
It may seem like a wild idea, but so is man from primate! We came from the same tree as lemurs/lorises and in the isolation of Madagascar for millions of years, a race could have not only evolved long before we did, but were intelligent enough to take to other islands and look for more resources, hence populating the South Pacific, ending up in Peru finds and up into America re we ever considered leaving Africa 100,000 piddly years ago.
As you can see, there was a common ancestor and a division with one branch going to tarsiers, monkeys, apes and humans and another branch that goes to lemurs and lorises. *Please take note of the lemur/lorices branch's skeleton dude with no name - down below I explain him*
Source: The discovery, in China, of some fossilized foot-bones believed to be from Eosimias, an early species already known of from fossilized jawbones, led to the announcement, in 2000 A.D., of Eosimias as a candidate for consideration as an early ancestor present in the family tree of humans / primates. (guess whose side of the tree? Mr. Lemur/lorices )
(above: New graphic that includes the Eosimias)
Source: Most of the mammals that evolved after the age of dinosaurs are known for their enormous sizes, but not so Eosimias, a tiny, Eocene primate that could easily fit in the palm of a child's hand. Judging by its scattered (and incomplete) remains, paleontologists have identified three species of Eosimias, all of which probably led a nocturnal, solitary existence (sound like anyone we know??? - more on a future post) high up in the branches of trees (where they would be beyond the reach of bigger, land-dwelling carnivorous mammals, though still presumably subject to harassment by prehistoric birds). The discovery of these "dawn monkeys" in Asia has led some experts to speculate that the human evolutionary tree had its roots in the prehistoric primates of the far east rather than Africa, though few people are convinced.
(Eosimias were the oldest primate found - but found in China, not Africa)
In summary, I'd like to say shame on archaeologists and anthropologists. They have really fed us a line of bull about the evolutionary process of man and that there was only homo sapiens in the human genus after the 29,000 year mark when they say Neanderthal ended.
There appears to be strong evidence of hairy giants in our woodlands, elongated skull people in Peru found to not be of homo sapiens or Neanderthal lines (DNA testing of elongated skulls), and there are so many variations in skull shapes, teeth, height and more that it's obvious that there were many lines of man and perhaps not all from the primate branch, maybe even the lemur/lorises branch. And, imagine the hybrid variables if the lemur branch of man and the primate branch of man were to mate?
I wish researchers would quit discarding anything that is "out of place/out of time" because these insane standards they have are arbitrary. There is much more in the ground and in caves yet to be found than has already been found and a vast majority we had no idea about like the recently discovered Denisovans. In fact, this newest find in China was just 14 years ago and it proved to be the oldest primate that they never knew about and from OUTSIDE of Africa - a notion they wouldn't entertain. So, be humble, keep your minds open, and don't think you know how everything relates, let the evidence tell you how it relates, don't tell the evidence how it relates!
Next time someone scoffs at the existence of Sasquatch, they might want to take a look at recent finds of ancient giants and elongated skull people (ones that were not flatboarded), and the Littlefoots before they dispute the notion. We honestly have missed a huge amount of variations of humans that have lived on the earth and it's time to get to the ground and make more finds, as well as poking in every cave - the places earlier men sought refuge. There is a whole world yet to be uncovered, so long as the finds come to light and aren't buried away in some warehouse or morphed into something they aren't depending on covert agendas.
Native Tribes from around the country consistently have stories of the little people. That nearly all of them have explanations of little people tells us that there was likely a universal influence around America that made the legends need to be born to explain something they encountered.
California sprites were called Akeki. Pains are tiny magical spirits in the traditions of many California Indian and Northwest Coast tribes. Pains usually take the form of miniature, fairy-like people, although in some tribes they appear as tiny animals or magically powerful inanimate objects. Pains may be summoned by medicine people or witches, or they may remain within a Native American family through generations. In some tribes, Pains are primarily positive spirits, seen as guardians and granters of magical powers (though they can also cause harm to people.) In other tribes Pains are viewed more negatively, associated with disease, curses, and witchcraft (though they can still be a source of healing power to properly trained medicine people.)
Albawitches (Pennsylvania, Chickies Rock, Lancaster County): These little people are reported even today and explained as a population that nearly went extinct in the 19th Century, but are still seen today upon occasion.
Kawi Anukasha (Choctaw): The Little People in Choctaw folklore. They have strong magic and can be very dangerous, but they sometimes also bestow powers upon people who treat them respectfully. Their name literally means "forest dwellers."
Nemirigar (Shoshone/Paiute): Although benign races of small magical creatures exist in many Native American tribes, the Little People of the Shoshone and Paiute tribes are dangerous man-eaters and enemies of humankind. "Nimerigar" is a corruption of the Shoshone and Paiute words meaning "people-eaters", and "Nunumbi" (and its many variants) means "little person."
Makiawisug (Mohegan Tribe): This Connecticut tribe described the little people as good spirits that one leaves gifts and food for. One should never look directly at them (a repeated theme in many Native legends of the little ones). If they catch you staring, they can use powers to hold you still while they take your belongings. And, you are not to speak of them.
Memegwesi (Canadian Tribes): Memegwesi are small riverbank-dwelling water spirits. They are generally benign creatures, but sometimes blow canoes astray or steal things when they are not shown proper respect. In some Ojibwe traditions, Memegwesi can only be seen by children and medicine people; in others, they can appear to anyone, and may help humans who give them tobacco and other gifts. Most often Memegwesi are described as being child-sized and hairy with a large head and a strange voice that sounds like the whine of a dragonfly. The Cree and Innu describe them as having narrow faces, and some Menominee storytellers have said that they have no noses. It is sometimes said that Memegwesi were originally created from the bark of trees. Memegwesi are said to carve symbols on rocks and sometimes carve small canoes for themselves out of stone. Some people believe that their name comes from the Ojibwe word for "hairy," memii, since Memegwesi are usually described as having hairy faces and bodies. Other people believe that their name is related to the word for butterfly, memengwaa.
Little people are reported in legends of nearly all the world's people from Australian aborigines to the Norse, the Celts to the Greeks. Just some are Tommyknockers, fairies, elves, trolls, gnomes, brownies, pixies, leprechauns.
The interesting thing is the running theme throughout - they are earth beings, mischievous, can be friendly and help you or play nasty pranks and hurt you. They accept gifts and that keeps them from causing more harm.
When people around the world report giants that want to eat them and little people within their woods, you have to wonder about those "kernels of truth." Are they reporting actual beings they shared the earth with, whom they could not seem to console their existence and so made up extraordinary and spiritual backgrounds for them?
Today, people often report seeing "little ones" and most often in the company of "big ones," or as we know them, Sasquatch. Some believe you don't speak of the little ones or even look at them, that it could cause some kind of bad or evil. Others revere them as old knowledge within the woodlands, keepers of nature of a sort. Most people today see them as mythological or mystical or even make believe, but there are those who say that the little people that once openly lived around the world, are still there, like the tall ones, only know to stay hidden....
So far as the subject of the Littlefoots, I can't stop thinking of this scene from "Trilogy of Terror." A little guy can do a lot of damage!