Ebook: (White) Indians of North Carolina letter from the secretary of the Interior, transmitting, in response to a Senate resolution of June 30, 1914, a report on the condition and tribal rights of the Indians of Robeson and adjoining

Page 140:
There is a dim but persistent tradition of a strange white race preceding
the Cherokee, some of the stories even going so far as to locate
their former settlements and to identify them as the authors of the
ancient works found in the country. The earliest reference appears,
to be that of Barton in 1797, on the statement of a gentleman whom
he quotes as a valuable authority upon the southern tribes. “The
Cherokee tell us, that when they first arrived in the country which
they inhabit, they found it possessed by certain ‘moon-eyed people,’
who could not see in the daytime. These wretches they expelled.”
He seems to consider them an albino race?

Haywood, twenty-six years later, says that the invading Cherokee found “white people”
hear the head of the Little Tennessee, with forts extending thence
down the Tennessee as far as Chickamauga Creek. He gives the
location of three of these forts. "The Cherokee made war against them
and drove them to the mouth of Big Chickamauga Creek, where they
entered into a treaty and agreed to remove if permitted to depart in
ace. Permission being granted, they abandoned the country.
Hlsewhere he speaks of this extirpated white mace as having extended
into Kentucky and probably also into western Tennessee, according
to the concurrent traditions of different tribes. He describes their
houses, on what authority is not stated, as having been small circular
structures of upright logs, covered with earth which had been dug
out from the inside?

Harry Smith, a half-breed born about 1815, father of the late chief
of the Bast Cherokee, informed the author that when a boy he had
been told by an old woman a tradition of a race of very small people,
perfectly white, who once came and lived for some time on the site of
the ancient mound on the northern side of Hiwassee, at the mouth of
Peachtree Crock, a few miles above the present Murphy, North Caro-
lina. ‘They afterward removed to the West. Colonel ‘Thomas, the
white chief of the Fast Cherokee, born about the boginning of the
century, had also heard a tradition of another race of people, who
lived on Hiwassee, opposite the present Murphy, and warned the
Cherokee that they must not attempt to cross over to the south side
of the river or the great leech in the water would swallow them.*
They finally went west, “long before the whites came.” ‘The two
stories are plainly the same, although told independently and many
miles apart.