Moon eye people

In the mountains of the Southern Appalachians, from North Carolina
down through Georgia and Alabama, the remains of ancient stone
structures line the ridges. Some of these are additions to natural rock
formations, others are entirely man-made. Who built these structures?
Are they the remains of an ancient war fought in the Appalachians? Are
they all that's left of the Moon-Eyed People?

The Moon-Eyed People are a race of small men who, according to
Cherokee legend, once lived in the Southern Appalachians. The Moon-Eyed
People were said to being physically very different from the Cherokee,
being bearded and having pale, perfectly white skin. They were called
Moon-Eyed because they were unable to see in daylight, their sensitive
eyes being blinded by the sun. For this reason, they were strictly
nocturnal, and lived in underground caverns.

Perhaps the most famous structure associated with The Moon-Eyed
People is just over the North Carolina border in Georgia at Fort
Mountain. Now a state park, Fort Mountain gets its name form the 850
foot long stone wall that varies in height from two to six feet and
stretches along the top of the ridge. This stone wall is though to have
been constructed around 400 - 500 C.E.

According to one Cherokee legend, this wall is a remnant of a war
that the Moon-Eyed people fought and lost against the neighboring Creek
nation. The Creeks drove the Moon-Eyed People from their homeland during
 a full moon, which even the pale light of is blinding to these
nocturnal people.

Another version of the story has is that it was the Cherokee
themselves who waged war against the Moon-Eyed People, driving them from
 their home at Hiwassee, a village near what is now Murphy, North
Carolina, west into Tennessee. Both versions of the story say the
Moon-Eyed People began living underground after losing the war.

Cherokee cosmology is complex and fascinating, and describes a
universe where humans share the world with other, non-human,
supernatural peoples. In the traditional Cherokee concept of the world,
races such as the Nunnehi or the Yunwi Tsudi are a part of the natural
world who interact with humans at their own discretion, similar to the
traditional idea of fairies in the British Isles. However, what's
interesting is that The Moon-Eyed People are never described as being
supernatural, but are remembered as another group of humans who were
physically very different than the Native Americans.

Because the description of the Moon-Eyed People is that they are
pale-skinned and bearded, this has led to some amount of speculation,
quite a bit of it wild, that the legend of the Moon-Eyed People
represents a Cherokee folk memory of contact with a group of European
settlers who made it to the new world before Columbus. Particularly, the
 Cherokee legend of the Moon-Eyed People has been matched up with the
Welsh legend of Prince Madoc.

Acording to the Welsh story, Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd was a Welsh
prince who, disenchanted with the civil war wracking his homeland, set
sail with his brother Rhirid and a few followers in 1170 across the
Atlantic Ocean and landed somewhere around Mobile Bay, Alabama. After
some exploring up and down the rivers of southern America, Madoc decided
 he liked the place well enough and decided to move in. Leaving Rhirid
and some of his fellow Welshmen behind, Madoc returned to his native
country and recruited enough followers to fill ten ships. He and his
colonists set sail back to America and was never heard from in Wales
again. Some have speculated that the Moon-Eyed People are the
descendants of Madoc's colonists, and that it was these Welshman who
fought a war with the Cherokee, and these Welshmen who built the stone
forts that dot the ridges of the mountains.

Driven out by the Cherokee, Madoc's descendants found their way South
 to Florida and Alabama, where they continued to live in, slowly
absorbing bits of Native American culture, until they became a strange
tribe of pale Indians, living and dressing in Native ways but speaking
Welsh.