Author Denver Michaels

I have devoted much of my attention to the discoveries of diminutive skeletons in and around White County, Tennessee during the 1800s. Collectively known as the "Tennessee Pygmies," the tiny finds have their share of detractors, as well as a few folks such as myself that believe the mystery warrants a closer look. What most folks familiar with the subject may not realize is that small, or "pygmy skeletons," have been recovered elsewhere such as Kentucky and Ohio . Case in point, The Gentlemen’s Magazine ran this piece about a pygmy graveyard in the Antiquarian news section of their August 1837 issue: A short distance from Cochocton [sic], Ohio, U.S., a singular ancient burying ground has lately been discovered. “It is situated,” says a writer in Silliman’s Journal, “On one of those elevated, gravelly alluvions, so common on the rivers of the West. From some remains of wood, still apparent in the earth around the bones, the bodies seem all to have been deposited i...

Anthropologist James Mooney (1861–1921) recorded a wealth of stories about Cherokee little people in his book Myths of the Cherokee . One story tells of the Yunwi Tsunsdi, a handsome people with long hair falling to the ground that barely stood tall enough to reach a person’s knee. “They are great wonder workers and are very fond of music, spending half their time drumming and dancing,” wrote Mooney. He continued by saying they “live in rock caves on the mountain side.” According to Mooney, the Yunwi Tsunsdi were kind-hearted and friendly. When people, especially small children, got lost in the mountains, these little people would look after them, care for them, and help them find their way home. Little Helpers Mooney told the following story of the Yunwi Tsunsdi looking after a man who had fallen ill and wandered from his home: During the smallpox among the East Cherokee just after the war one sick man wandered off, and his friends searched, but could not find him. After several wee...

Giants and dwarves. An ancient odd couple. From fantasy novels to 1800s newspaper stories, the two go hand in hand. My fascination with stories of ancient giants introduced me to supposed tribes of little people in ancient America. Specifically, John Haywood’s Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee opened my eyes to the enigma. His book covers in depth both enormous and diminutive skeletal finds in Middle Tennessee. But what really stuck out to me in my years of research into the ancient giants that walked the earth are reports from North America of burial mounds that contained the remains of both giants and dwarves. Over the years I have read a number of accounts of mound excavations that yielded these strange discoveries. "Graves of Dwarves Found" A Massachusetts newspaper, the North Adams Transcript , ran a piece titled “Graves of Dwarves Found” on October 24, 1899: " Workmen terracing King hill, an old landmark of northwestern Missouri, which is to be convert...

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 st...

Many who are familiar with early American history and westward expansion have at least a cursory knowledge of the stunning amount of alleged “giant bones” recovered from ancient burial mounds and from the earth as land was cleared and fields were cultivated. There is a lesser-known aspect to the discoveries—some believe that a race of pygmies may have inhabited ancient America in the past.  The following article appeared in the  Reading Times in their December 28, 1875 issue: Thursday morning, accompanied by Dr. J. W. Sawyer, Mr. Lillard went to Doyle's farm and beside the grave cut of which Haywood obtained a skeleton during his researches, he obtained the bones of a pigmy. One of the graves had as a headstone a limestone rock, a thing unusual. By this particular mark it is presumed the bones must have been that of a noted person of the race. In the one in which he obtained the fragmentary portions of what was left of a pigmy, Mr. Lillard found remnants of pottery which sh...

The “Tennessee Pygmies” have held a prominent position in what skeptics like to call “archaeological folklore” since the 1820s. Due to the discovery of an enormous amount of the skeletal remains of small-statured people throughout the Cumberland Plateau region of Tennessee and Kentucky, it was once widely believed that a tribe of pygmies inhabited the area in the prehistoric past.  Where it Began To start, we need to go all the way back to 1820, when it all began. The first mention of the Tennessee Pygmies can be traced back to an article in the  Nashville Whig in their July 5, 1820 edition: On the farm of Turner Lane, Esq., five miles south east of Sparta, on the waters of the Caney Fork of Cumberland, and on other farms adjacent, have lately been found, small graves, sunk into the earth from one foot to eighteen inches below the surface. They are about ten inches broad and eighteen inches long, having a flag limestone rock at each of the ends and sides, and covered wi...