The Yehasuri

The Catawba, a Siouan-speaking tribe indigenous to the Carolinas, have a tradition of little people called the Yehasuri. Yehasuri translates to “little wild people.” According to legend, these wild people looked and dressed like the Catawba, but were “leprechaun-like” and stood at about two feet tall. The little wild people lived in hollowed-out tree stumps and ate tree fungus, insects, tadpoles, frogs, and turtles.

The Yehasuri were strikingly similar to other legends of little people. They were tricksters who did not like to be seen; at times, they became violent toward the Catawba. The Yehasuri possessed magical arrows that were deadly to humans. When humans got too close to the little people, they loosed their powerful arrows at them. Catawba tradition held that once a little person had turned violent, the only way for someone to stop them was to perform a ritual involving tobacco.

Catawba Texts

Anthropologist Frank G. Speck (1881–1950) recorded much of the Catawba language and stories from their folklore in his 1934 book Catawba Texts. In a section titled “The Mischievous Dwarfs and How to Avert Them,” Speck shared the story of a woman named Margaret Brown whom he had interviewed. Brown had found a solution to her longstanding problem with the Yehasuri.

Brown said that after she rubbed tobacco on her head, the little people could no longer cause her any pain. She spoke to the little people and said: “Do not bother me again, wild people. I am alone here, I cry, and I am an old woman.” Brown said that after performing the ritual, the Yehasuri “are good, they don’t bother me.” Brown told Speck of someone was much less fortunate in their dealings with the Yehasuri. She said: “An old woman was tied to a pine tree by her hair by the wild people.”

Tricksters

Typical of tricksters legends across the globe, the Yehasuri sometimes stole Catawba children. In 1940, Robert Lee Harris recounted a number of Catawba tales for a newspaper reporter and said that the little wild people would sometimes kidnap children and tie their hair to bushes. The Yehasuri even targeted babies. Doris Blue recounted a prevalent belief regarding infant laundry:

The Indians believed that if you left the baby washing out all night—wash for the baby—and left the washing out, the little Indians would come and touch the clothes, and the baby would cry all night. They wouldn’t leave a baby’s garments out all night at all, no matter what. If they washed late they would bring them in wet because the little Indians would come and touch these little garments.

Boogeymen

With the tales of little people kidnapping Catawba children and causing harm to infants, it is not surprising that parents took advantage of the reputation of the Yehasuri. Parents used the little wild people as “boogeymen” of sorts to help scare their children into obedience. Georgia Harris recalled her parents issuing stern warnings about straying off too far. Her parents told her: “If you fool around, the little wild Indians are going to get you.” Doris Blue recalled some of the boogeyman stories:

They used to try to scare children when they were bad and misbehaved, and they’d tell them that if they didn’t behave themselves the wild Indians would come and get them in the night, and they’d tell stories about these little people, and they were kind of like—isn’t it little leprechauns—and they said that they lived in the woods…and that they are just Indians but little tiny Indians, and they live in the woods, and if the children are bad they will come out at night and get them…They would come up through a crack in the floor…Andrew [Blue] said when he was little their grandmother used to tell them wild Indians stories and, he said he was so afraid these little people were going to come up through these cracks after him that he would sit on one little plank when he sat by the fire at night. He’d always try to be sure to be on one little plank. He was afraid to get on the crack for fear that the little Indians would come up under the house and get him.

A Strange Habit

One of the strangest tricks the Yehasuri played on the Catawba was braiding the hair of their horses. Catawba lore is full of tales in which the little wild people would make the Catawba aware of their presence by braiding the mane or tail of a horse. Stories such as this by Willie Saunders were common: “One time my daddy had a horse down there in the stable, and I went down there the next day—morning—and something had plaited that horse’s tail. Sure enough, it was plaited, and he said it was the wild Indians.”

No one seems to know why the Yehasuri braided the hair of horses. Some think they may have done it to protest the presence of horses in their domain. The act may have also served as complaint against the Catawba encroaching too far into Yehasuri territory. Some believe the little people braided the hair of horses as a reminder to the Catawba they were there—hiding in plain sight.

Perished in a Flood?

As the twentieth century brought advances in technology and factory jobs to the Catawba, stories of the Yehasuri waned. Interactions between the little people and Catawba seemed to have belonged to older generations, now long gone. Some, such as Robert Ayers, believe a flood swept away the Yehasuri. He said, “They said  the great flood carried them away from here.” The flood he referred to occurred in 1916 when the Catawba River overflowed its banks. This was one of the greatest disasters to ever hit the Carolinas and an estimated eighty people died. Perhaps, too, the Yehasuri perished.

Sources

Blumer, Thomas J. “Wild Indians and the Devil: The Contemporary Catawba Indian Spirit World.” American Indian Quarterly 19, no. 2 (1985): 149–168.

Speck, Frank G. Catawba Texts. New York: Columbia University Press, 1934.


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