Episode 38 - The Little People

Across continents and across centuries, cultures around the world have told stories of small humanlike beings who live in forests, mountains, caves, mounds, and hidden places beneath the earth. From the Cherokee Yunwi Tsunsdi and the Pukwudgie traditions of New England to the Muqui of the Andes, the hidden folk of Europe, the Koropokkuru of Japan, and the mysterious Ebu Gogo of Flores Island, this episode of Arcane Station takes a worldwide documentary look at one of humanity’s oldest recurring mysteries.

Are these beings purely creatures of folklore and sacred geography, cautionary stories tied to dangerous places, or could some traditions preserve distant cultural memory of real peoples and even extinct human relatives like Homo floresiensis?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hey everyone, welcome to Arcane Station. I'm your host, Mike Porter. Tonight we're stepping into a mystery that the more you look at it, and there's no pun intended here, the larger it becomes. I'm going to tell you a personal story real quick. So my son, he was probably about three, and I went to go visit my sister in Massachusetts, and we went to visit a friend of hers. And we stopped at the doorway, and my son was staring at this darkened corner of an enclosed exterior stairway that lead led up to the second floor. And in that area, he was pointing at something at the back of that space. And the lady of the house said, What do you see? And he said, A little man. And she goes, That's my house gnome. She knew about it. Um she I guess had some um extrasensory perception or some sort of gift to of sight to be able to see this thing, but my son actually saw it as well and described it. So I'm gonna uh I want to talk about the entirety of this, uh, but what we're gonna do is just kind of walk through uh this idea of little people. And at first glance, the subject of little people traditions might sound like something that's strictly folklore, like lepertons or Christmas elves, um, like a collection of old stories handed down around campfires. But once you start to trace these accounts across cultures and across continents, it becomes clear that there's not a single legend with a local variant. It's a repeating pattern. So I think it makes sense to start in North America because some of the most enduring and culturally grounded traditions surrounding little people comes from the indigenous oral histories that are still preserved today. What stands out immediately in the in these accounts is that the little people are so are rarely described as you know, like random supernatural creatures, they're almost always tied to the land itself and they're almost always discussed as little humans. And they're found in the mountains and the forests and the river banks and medicine places, places that they can gather herbs and plants that are medicinal, and ancient mounds. So they appear again and again in all these places, and they're not simply these wandering figures in a story, they belong to the geography, to the location. So among the Cherokee, one of the most often discussed traditions is that of the Unwi Tisundi, sometimes translated as the little people. In Cherokee and in broader Appalachian traditions, you also find references to the Nunehe, which is a spirit-like people who are deeply associated with mountains, caves, and hidden settlements within the landscape. And these beings aren't described in a simplistic good versus evil way. Instead, they seem to operate according to rules and respect and relationships. So in some stories they assist humans, especially those who are lost or in danger. In other stories they punish trespassers and those who show disrespect to the land. There's a strong sense that these beings are protectors of certain places, particularly mountain regions and sacred sites. So moving further north into the Great Lakes region, the Ashanabe and Ojibwe people preserve traditions about the Mimi Geswe. And I'm probably really ruining that. Mimi Guisi, sometimes described as small beings connected to rocks, rivers, and again, medicinal places. In some accounts, there are protectors of children and sacred herbs, and they're closely linked to areas where the land itself is considered spiritually active. What I find interesting is that the Mimigeswe are often associated with riverbanks and stone formations. That connection to physical geography repeats throughout the world. So we're already starting to see a pattern emerge. These little people traditions are not random, they cluster around places that communities already understand as powerful, dangerous, or sacred. Among the Mohegan and related Northeastern traditions, the Maka Wisug, the Make Wisug, and again I know I'm butchering these names, I apologize. They're another example of small beings associated with woodland spaces. So in some oral histories, they're not only present in the forest, but they're also connected to a knowledge, particularly knowledge of healing plants and the natural world. So these beings aren't just seen, they often possess knowledge that humans don't. They know the land better than we do, they know where to hunt, where to gather, and where not to go. Then we come to one of the most widely recognized North American little people traditions. These are called the Puckwajis. The puckwaji is strongly associated with the Wampanog and other Northeastern traditions, and in modern paranormal culture it's taken a life of its own. So, particularly in places like the Bridgewater Triangle in Massachusetts. Descriptions vary, but the common thread is that these small human-like beings of the forest are often associated with mischief, deception, and in some stories, direct hostility. This is where the older traditions begin to intersect with modern eyewitness reports. People still claim to see small figures moving low through wooded areas, especially in regions already associated with folklore and high strangeness. Some reports describe glowing eyes, rapid movement between trees, and the unsettling sensation of being watched in the woods. Others uh, you know, they they see these creatures and they they try to make sense of it. So these modern reports are directly connected to older traditional, like older oral traditions. So that that's a question. They may be just oral traditions. And from a storytelling perspective, the tradition is still alive enough to shape the way people interpret unusual experiences. If something strange happens, you don't you know normally you would go, oh, that's a raccoon moving through the brush really quickly, very small things, but somehow there's still people talking about these puck wudges and um providing stories of their interactions with these beings. So when people enter certain spaces like old forests and mountains and riverbanks, they're not entering an empty space. They're entering places already layered with a memory, meaning, and a caution that's inherited from whatever tribe or um indigenous peoples are in that space. Many times they look at that space and say, um, that's not our space, that's that belongs to the little people or the other people, or that's a forbidden space, you're not supposed to go there. So as we move down to South America, the traditions are a little bit different. Instead of the wooded mountain guardians and beings associated with riverbanks and medicine places, many of the traditions are connected to places that are inherently dangerous for human beings, like mineshafts or caves or even the deep jungle. So I don't think these are just abstract folklore tales. I think in some places these beliefs remain active enough in the working cultures that are still there that people talk about them. So one of the strongest examples of this is from the Andes, particularly in Peru and surrounding regions, in the form of Mukwai. So the Mukwai is described as a small dwarf-like being that inhabits the mines. You know, like I said, mines are dangerous. They're places of darkness, so they collapse, they have toxic air, and sometimes you just die suddenly. And there are environments where people are already operating kind of on the edge of survival. So it makes sense that the folklore attached to them would or would reflect this danger. So the miners describe the mukwai as a being who knows the tunnels intimately. They know where the ore veins run, they know which passages are safe, and most importantly, I think they know where death is waiting. So in some stories, the mukwai can help miners locate rich deposits of ore, almost as if they're the keeper of the mountain's hidden wealth. And it's very similar, I think, to uh the Tolkien uh um dwarves, you know, and their um their obsession with mining. And it makes sense that you would have this robust smaller creature in mines because it would be easier for them to move through spaces and make less large holes as they progress through the mountain. But, you know, not only is this mukwai helpful, sometimes uh they're dangerous and they're capable of leading people deeper into unstable shafts and then bringing about a collapse. And they think that they do this if you disrespect the mountain or disrespect the wealth of the mountain. So it's kind of got like a dual nature. Uh it's a helper and a threat, a guide and a deceiver. So this is a recurring theme as we start making our way through all these different creatures. And what makes the Mukwai especially fascinating is it's not simply a dead piece of folklore preserved in books. Accounts of the Mukwai persist in mining communities where they're still being spoken of as part of the actual tunnels. Then we move uh into the forested regions of South America, we find kind of another variation uh of little people. So these people are are associated with the wilderness itself. Basically, these forest-dwelling humanoids act as guardians of the animals and of game. Certain they're owners of certain stretches of the forest or spirits that regulate the relationship between humans and the natural world. So it's kind of like an ecological balancer, you know, it makes sure that you don't take too much, that the animals are protected, make sure you don't disrespect the jungle. So if the hunters take too much, or if the travelers wander off known paths, they become uh endangered by these creatures. So in some cases, these beings are described as almost as the owners of the animals themselves, deciding whether the hunt is going to be successful or whether someone will leave the forest without anything. So then we're going to move into Europe because this becomes striking that it's not uh simply the number of traditions involving little people that are similar, it's how naturally they begin to mirror what we've already seen in other parts of the world. The beings belong to the hill, the home, the mine, the mound, or the forest edge. So in Ireland, one of the most widely recognized figures is, of course, a leprechaun. Uh though I think it's important to move past that pop cultural image of the character. This creature is part of the Fae or a Fairy. It's a supernatural being living in a parallel magical realm, accessible through sacred sites, hills, or deep forests, and perhaps tunnels. What I find interesting there is that these locations are already charged with a sense of antiquity, especially in uh in Europe, there's you know very, very old sites. So they're places where people are visibly confronted with the remains of those who came before them. And it's not difficult to see how human imagination or perhaps inherited cultural memory begins to assign a presence to them. Europe also gives us another important development in the tradition, and that is the movement of these beings from the wild landscape into a domestic space. Here we begin to encounter household spirits such as brownies, Dobavoi in the Scandinavian uh Domate or Niste, which are small human-like beings associated with the protection of the home, the farm, or the family property. So, what's interesting about that is that they operate according to the same logic that we've seen everywhere else. So if you take care of the home and you do the right things, they're helpful, and if you disrespect the home or do the wrong things, they're disruptive. Um, they could be dangerous. So they can assist the chores like guarding the livestock and maintaining order, but when those boundaries are violated, they become openly hostile. And you hear people talking about how um things have been moved in their house or um you know things go missing, and many times people associate that with like a ghostly presence, but perhaps it's one of these house spirits or house beings that are you know enacting a little bit of a revenge or a little bit of prank on you. So they they do also have still have a in Europe, they still have that um underground condition uh tradition, and it's very similar to what they have in in uh South America. So in Wells, the Koblinow are small mine beings said to knock within the walls, sometimes guiding miners towards ore and sometimes warning of dangers. And they have those in um American mining too called Tommy knockers, and so they have this concept that these creatures or these beings are in the mines knocking on the walls to tell you whether or not something is going to happen. Now, obviously, this could be you know stress within the walls before a fracture, uh, but this knocking sound can be heard in certain situations, warning of danger. So it's very similar between America, the South America, and Europe. Now we're gonna switch over into Asia, which is slightly different uh because even though you have very similar spirits in many respects, or very similar beings in many respects, there's also some vast differences in Asia. So they're not described as spirits or supernatural presences tied to the land. Instead, uh they explicitly frame them as a people who lived in the land before those who came later. So that distinction is pretty important because it begins to shift the conversation away from a purely symbolic folklore type thing to a more preserved cultural thing. One of the strongest examples comes from the Ainu traditions of northern Japan where we encounter the uh Koropokoru, which is a beings that are often described as small people who live in pit dwellings and shelter beneath large leaves. And what makes this tradition so compelling is that they're frequently spoken about not as spirits in the abstract sense, but as an earlier people who once physically inhabited the land before the ancestors of the Ainu, and the Ainu are very uh very old people as well. So it's not simply still a story about hidden beings occupying sacred spaces. This is basically people, a prior people, um that are living in the space that we used to or that we live in, they you know belong to an earlier layer of the human presence there. It could be our ancestors. So and sometimes they come late at night, they avoid contact, they come late at night, they leave goods or trade items before disappearing again back into the forest, and then fleeting glimpses of these things. So there's this idea that there's a sense of uh coexistence, but also a separation as though two populations share the same region without fully merging. So uh we'll we'll live over here in isolation and peace, and you live over there, almost very similar to the uncontacted tribes in South America. They live separately, they don't know anything about modern the modern world or civilization, and when they come in contact with those people, um they either have fear or they're aggressive. And you know, this uh idea that there's these two not feral people but ancient people and um more in tune with nature than civilization. I think that's a really interesting uh concept. So we're gonna move to over to the Philippines and we encounter like another important variation in the form of this um little person, and that's the uh Nuno Sa Punso. So they're often described as dwarf-like and being associated with ant hills, earthen mounds, and places that appear un uh ordinary ordinary until they're disturbed. So um you have like an ant hill, but perhaps underneath that there could be some structure uh as you disturb that land. So it's not uncommon for some of these communities uh in some of these communities for the people to verbally ask permission before stepping over or disturbing a mound, and especially in rural areas of the Philippines. And again, what I find interesting here is that this being is in uh is inseparable from the place, so the earth itself is sort of understood as inhabited. And this is exactly the same structural pattern we have in North America with the sacred hills and the riverbanks, and in Europe with burial mounds and earthenworks. So the landscape is layered with their presence. And when we get into Southeast Asia, it becomes really, really interesting, particularly in the Malay world. In Malaysia, we find traditions of the Orang Bunyan Bunayan or Bunyan, often translated as the hidden people. So these beings are described as human-like, but not fully visible, and they're associated with the forest and the mountains and all the remote places where travelers may lose their sense of direction or even disappear for periods of time, which is very similar to the concept of the Fei folk taking you into their fairy realm and you disappear for a period of time. So what's interesting there is that not only do they have the orang uh bunion, they have the Atu Pendek, the Ajo, the Sindai, the Setapa, the Setap, Uhang Pendek, Orangugu, Orang Likjo, Orang Pindek, and Orang Asli. So how are there so many different types of little people in such a relatively small place in Malaysia? So, and then we're gonna arrive at the most, I think the very the most interesting part of this is that um there is a place in Indonesia called the Flores Island, and there is where we encounter the tradition of the Ibu Gogo, which is a small, hairy, human-like being that's said to inhabit the forests and the caves of the island. So the accounts of them are described as broad-faced, flat-nosed, quick-moving, and capable of vocalizations that resemble human speech. So some traditions describe them as stealing food or lurking near settlements, while others others treat them as sort of like beings of the forest that you don't see, but they're there. So, under ordinary circumstances, this would already be one of the most interesting little people traditions in the world. But Flores is also known where is also known where in 2003 researchers discovered the remains of Homo Flor Florensis, Floriensis. So it's a very real extinct human relative whose average height was just over three feet. So the Ibu Gogo traditions are, I believe, directly tied to the Homo Florensis. So the fossils date back tens of thousands of years, which makes direct continuous memory difficult to establish, but not impossible. Um, and as I talked about in the megafauna episode, there could be pockets of relic beings or relic animals in areas that are completely undisturbed by humans. There are pockets in Indonesia, in Malaysia, in Southeast Asia in general, that not a lot of people go to because it's an area of restriction or taboo or something like that. So this was a real small-bodied human relative that once lived on Flores Island, and I'm sure they lived elsewhere. Now later on they described these small human-like beings inhabited the same island, small humans with the exact same facial structures as the Ibu Gogo. Asia, more than any region we've covered so far, pushes this mystery to the edge of the world. Of anthropology. Here, the little people aren't simply spirits or of the land or domestic guardians, they are remembered as earlier inhabitants, hidden neighbors or beings whose existence overlaps with the possibility of real populations from the Homo erectus species basically interacting or even at odds with each other. So before we go any further, because I still have to get into Africa, but I think it's important to stop for a moment and ask a very, very simple question. What do all of these beings from around the world actually look like? I already told you about the Ibugogo. So in North America, many of the indigenous traditions describe the little people as just human but smaller. Somewhere between two and three, two to four feet tall. They're usually described as proportionate and they look like miniature people, sometimes with mature faces, long hair, clothing that reflects the region or the period of the story. And in woodland traditions, they're often described as moving quickly through brush and undergrowth, which makes them difficult to see clearly. Some say that they emphasize this older looking face almost as if it appears to be very small, very old adults as opposed to children. The pugwagi puckwudgy in the northeast tend to be slightly different in appearance. They're described more in an unsettling way. They're still small and humanoid, but they're somewhere between two and three feet high, but they're often given like exaggerated features, like large ears, lar sharp teeth, glowing eyes, and almost like a goblin-like appearance. So they're still human in shape, but more of a creature. South America, like I said, they have the stocky dwarf-like uh mukwai figure with broad shoulders and strong limbs, which makes sense given the idea that it's a minor. Um but they also have like a darkened skin, a heavy build, and clothing or adornments that are associated with the underground are tunnels. So in forest traditions, beings like are tend to be less described in detail because they're often seen at a distance or in fleeting glimpses. So perhaps those are monkeys of some variety, South American monkeys of some variety. But also I believe that people who are in the jungles in South America tend to know what those monkeys look like and may not be as uh misguided by their vision than say an American would be. Um anyway, they're typically uh typically seen on the move, right? In Europe, though, they have household beings like Brownies or Tonte, which are often described as small elderly men, sometimes with beards and work clothes, sometimes helping by doing cobbler work, uh, like working on shoes. The hidden folk of the hills, on the other hand, are described as proportionate many miniature humans, sometimes beautiful, sometimes old and weathered, often dressed in clothing that feels slightly out of time. So older European descriptions tend to emphasize that these things look like people, just smaller and somehow more ancient. When we move into Asia, the descriptions become especially interesting, with the Koro Pok the Koro Pokoro are described as very small human-like beings living underneath those large leaves or pits, and they're usually proportionate, and they're depicted as hu fully human in shape, they're just smaller in stature. The Nuna the Nuno Sapunso traditions describe a dwarf-like figure, sometimes older in appearance, so I'm guessing more stocky, and the facial features in strong association with earth and mouth, so they're very rugged, very uh craggy in their faces, and very old. But they still have this human-like presence. And then, of course, we again arrive at the Flores Island and the Ebogugo uh, it looks exactly like Homo Floriensas. So it's fascinating to me that this um concept of a forest dwelling creature uh with local um indigenous peoples describing it matches exactly with what the uh archaeologists and paleontologists are talking, sorry, paleontologists are talking about with the bone structure and the height and their facial features from an archaeological standpoint. I keep saying archaeologists, from a paleontologist paleontologist of oh Lord, I've lost my words. Um anyway, from a paleontologist's perspective, this is exactly the same being. So in Africa, many of the forest being traditions describe small humanoid figures, and we all know that they're actually smaller humanoids that are indigenous peoples in Africa, and they're called the pygmies. So, like I said, we've traveled all over the world, and historically, anthropologists use the term pygmies to describe several populations, particularly in the Central Africa, parts of Southeast Asia, and a bunch of different island regions. And their average adult height is significantly shorter than neighboring populations. And today that old blanket terminology is used a little bit less frequently frequently, but in order to fast-track people's understandings, the pygmy is what we're talking about in Africa. So when neighboring groups encounter one another, typically in regions with limited contact and strong oral traditions, physical differences can quickly become the basis for folklore or a narrative that's inherited over ancestral time periods. So height, clothing, movement through the landscape, and patterns of habitation all become magnified through the memory and retelling. One of the things with oral traditions is that sometimes those oral traditions grow and change based on the retelling. Am I adding more to the story? Am I picking up uh elements from someone else that I heard and incorporating them into my story? So, oral traditions, while are really good in terms of trying to uh map a pattern, sometimes they're exaggerated over time. So, like I said before, Homo Florienthis was discovered in 2003 and challenged the way we think thought about human evolution. So these individuals stood at roughly three to three and a half feet tall, they used tools, and they survived far later than many researchers initially expected. Um this wasn't a myth, this was a real human relative, and there was real interaction with them. So, can these oral traditions preserve fragments of memory over an immense span of time? Like at first glance, that may sound impossible, but there are examples around the world where oral histories appear to preserve memory of real environmental events, so worldwide floods across all cultures, volcanic eruptions, coastline changes, and migrations across extraordinary lengths of time. So those oral traditions carry all that information from generation to generation. And if these stories can preserve memory of landscapes, then it is at least worth asking whether they can also preserve a memory of people. Even if that survives, even if what survives is no longer historically precise, the shape of the memory may remain, right? The the size of a human that this height. Um it could be possible that over time there's not a single event that makes something go extinct. There's always a final one of those things. And so over time, any one of these relic hominids or um these ancient peoples could have overlapped with humans, with Homo sapiens, and that that meeting could have sparked oral conversations that lasted for generations. So I think that's really interesting um why this happens over time. And I think the the main thing I want to say here is that um these traditions are preserved orally, but they also could be a possibility that some of these traditions um preserved a memory of a smaller people and then an additional psychological layer could have altered that um that memory. So people always want to try to explain the unknown through story, like dangerous places become inhabited with dragons if you look on maps uh of old here be dragons, right, or here be monsters. Um so I think part of this um oral tradition provides this um conversation about these other people. And in a cautionary way they could say the other is dangerous or the other is beneficial. And maybe that's right why this pattern uh happens all over the world is because we have this previous interaction with these people. I mean, there is a possibility that there could be these secretive little people uh who are ancient and they're hidden, hidden and they dwell at the edge of our reality currently. So the idea of the fe realm is something that many people still believe in, and in a certain sense, if you put enough belief into something, it becomes real. A thought form becomes uh a life. A tulpa is when an individual breathes life into an idea or a thought form. An egregore is when a group or community of people do the same thing. And I've talked before about the ghost experiment at the university. But throughout history there's always been this belief and knowledge of the others, the fe, the spirits, these little beings that live just beyond our understanding. And I think that collective belief might be enough to make these things real. And that's maybe the reason why the story continues to survive, because it touches something fundamental in the human experience, the feeling that certain places aren't empty, that some landscapes hold a presence that goes beyond what we can easily explain. And to me, that's where the mystery remains the strongest. So the more we looked into this subject, I think the clearer it became that the little people aren't one legend or one creature or one cultural idea. I think they may be a combination of many different things. So in one location a spiritual creature, in another a memory of a real people. And my belief is that some people are far more in tune with the spiritual world and can see what others can't, or maybe what others people what other people's brains won't allow them to process. I believe that these tiny beings are a result of a strong enough belief that they were brought to life based on experiences and perhaps the experiences with the remnants of our smallest ancestors and their bones. This may be one of those beings. Thank you for sticking around. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if your region, your family, or your culture carries its own stories of little people, I would love to hear them. You can reach me at on my website, arcane hyphenstation.com, go to my uh socials, Arcane Station, Arcane Station Podcast. You can find me just about everywhere. I want you to have a wonderful night. Thank you so much.