(statue found in the earth in NC of 2-1/2 foot tall moon-eyed folks)
They were described as tiny people with flat faces, pale skin, and blue eyes. Described to build tone walls on Fort Mountain in Northern Georgia. Interestingly, tribes along the Appalachians had their own tales of little people.
I am reminded of my favorite research book, "The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee" (more on this book below) from the 1800s, documenting finds in Tennessee including a graveyard of 2-1/2 foot tall people. Interestingly, that is the height of these statues -
Fort Mountain in Northern Georgia is the heart of the legend where strange stone walls stand, a physical nod to the legend.
The moon-eyed people were said to live in caves and couldn't see well in light, so they come out at nighttime.
The Cherokee saw the ancient mounds and realized they predated their own people living on the land. How to explain such structures? The moon-eyed people hid inside the darkness.
The sensitivity to light and pale coloring reminds me of the Guna People of Panama. It is a wide concentration of albinos who have blue eyes rather than red. They were also called the moon people because light affects them.
So, we have proof of a light sensitive, albino-like, blue-eyed population, but we are missing the small stature.
Did the moon-eyed people exist?
Well, this is kind of like the Egyptians. They came upon amazing structures and couldn't explain them, so they attributed it to ancestors. When a people move into an area previously occupied, they must explain the builders. And, in the case of Egypt, the citizens claim the structures as their own and in America anything ancient is claimed by the Native Americans.
There is evidence and oral reporting about prior people in the United States, but there is no actual record. This means we may never know who built the mounds, who mined, and who these moon-eyed people were.
An example of evidence comes from a book written in the early 1800s, "The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee" by John Haywood. He described a graveyard uncovered that had 2 to 2-1/2 foot coffins and tiny bodies inside that were not human.
Tennessee has legends of pygmy people. A book by Mary A. Joyce, "Cherokee Little People Were Real," shared testimonies from men who had dug up small skulls with wisdom teeth and found tunnels under ground.