Writer documents testimonies about the Little People

By Rose Hooper

Mary Joyce had never heard of them before. But after talking with old-timers in the area, she believes there could have been, or might still be, a race of Little People in Cullowhee.

Walter Middleton's story was the one that piqued her curiosity when she read his book "Qualla - Home of the Middle Cherokee Settlement," which mentions the Little People.

Middleton, 83, has researched the Little People and has seen a tunnel he believes could have been the results of their handiwork. It was in the late 1940s when he and others were digging out the basement of McKee Building at Western Carolina University to make a shop.

Middleton tells it this way: "Mr. C.A. Hall was the principal of the school - McKee housed Cullowhee High School at that time.

"Sometime after we started digging in the basement to level it off - we were using shovels and different methods just to get the dirt out - we dug into, I believe some said three little tunnels, but I only remember seeing one of them. Now, I knew the others were there, but I wasn't as interested then as I've come to be later on, but I was down in front of one, peeking into it. The best I remember, it was about two feet wide."

"We'd play on it... I remember that Mr. Brown had a dairy farm there and the cows were around the mound, and he had taken logs and put them down into the top of the mound where it was open. I don't know how deep it was down in there, but the logs were sticking up out of there. We knew why, to keep the cattle out."

From Middleton Joyce learned that when the mound was excavated, two childlike skeletons were apparently found. The late Clint Dodson, a science professor at WCU, used one of the small skulls as a paperweight on his desk, Middleton told her.

Although Dodson thought it was a child's skull, Middleton said Winona Hooper Wood, an English teacher, picked it up one day and said it was the only child she'd ever seen that had a full set of teeth, including wisdom teeth.

"Walter then led me to Johnny Clayton and Johnny led me to others," said Joyce, who manages the Kountry Kupboard health food store in Sylva. "Without Johnny's influence, none of these people would have given me the time of day."

Before Clayton died last July at age 85, he related to Joyce about working on the McKee Building and seeing the little tunnels in 1938.

"There were two of them and they were, I'd say, about 42 inches in diameter," Clayton said as he described the tunnels with square bottoms and "almost round" tops. "I don't know if they came together or not, but they were at different levels in the bank and they ran from the McKee Building, and I'd say they angled toward where the Bird Building is now."

As a child Clayton was always fascinated about stories of the Little People, and he told Joyce when he was about 7 years old some men from his father's mica mine came to their house on a Saturday.

"They told about these tunnels that they'd run into. Everyone was excited about them. I know it excited me, too," Clayton said.

"After hearing about the tunnels on Saturday, Dad went up to the mine on Sunday and looked at the tunnels. He was very excited about them," said Clayton, who also remembered the workers telling stories about their tools getting lost.

Clayton took Joyce to interview Lambert Coggins, who told her about his bulldozer falling into one of the little tunnels.

Grady Parker told Joyce the same thing happened to him in the 1960s when he was excavating the bank along Buzzard's Roost.

"I was running a dozer myself, and another friend of mine, Ed Stevens, was on the site with a backhoe. We were bringing the dirt down on a slope in behind Stedman Mitchell's house... I was halfway down the slope, I guess... It was pretty deep in there - 10,12 or maybe 16 feet deep below the original surface. The machine just went up on its side and I fell into this hole."

He discovered a tunnel in the red clay. "Whoever made the tunnel worked in soil that wasn't rocky, that was stabilized and wouldn't cave in," said Parker, who crawled into the tunnel, which he estimated to be about 4 1/2 feet tall and 4 feet wide. Although some artifacts were found in the tunnel, Parker told Joyce that none of the university officials showed much interest in them. After hearing these stories and others, Joyce, a professional writer, felt compelled to document the evidence concerning Little People.

"Old legends are a bit like grapefruit. They consist of juicy tales and pulp fiction. But there almost always are seeds of truth within them. What I have tried to do is find those seeds of truth regarding the legends of the Little People," said Joyce, who compiled her interviews into book form "Testimonies That an Ancient Race of Little People May Have Lived in Cullowhee."

A former English teacher, Joyce was on familiar ground when it came to writing. She's worked as a printing specialist with Texas Instruments and was a former editor of the Oakland Press, a newspaper that won more press awards than any other paper in Michigan.

She's managed a public relations and promotions firm and designed and wrote literature for nine successful political campaigns. She's already authored two books and countless published articles.

Documenting the evidence made her a believer, she said. "I am convinced that Little People were here. I don't know if they are still here, but I haven't closed the door on that."

It's like what William Davis Buchanan told her in his interview, "When Moses took his people up and wanted to cross the Jordan River, the giants turned them back... So if there could be giants then and not now, so why not Little People then and not now?"

Too many people live within such a narrow scope, she said.

"Instead of walking around like we have blinders on, I think we need to be more open-minded," said Joyce. "I believe angels help us out. So, if I believe in angels, I can't rule out Little People."

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