Fairies of New England: The Little People of the Hills and Forests

The Native American tribes who inhabit New England—the Wabanaki in the north, and the Mohegans, the Wampanoag, and the Narragansett in the south—have always known the land they call Dawnland is a fairy-haunted land.

After the seventeenth century, when people from Europe settled on the tribes’ lands, some of them also discovered a Land of Fae coexisting with the territories they called home. These were a minority, for the Puritans generally didn’t believe in fairies, but this didn’t stop them from establishing pockets of fairy belief that survived into the late nineteenth century. As a result, New England possesses a rich melange of fairy beliefs with roots in Native American and European folklore.

Time-honored New England folklore places the fairies in very specific locations throughout the region’s six states. Of these locations, a limited number can rightly be termed the Home of the Fairies in the given state, such as Katahdin in Maine and the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

For this list, I won’t be drawing on urban legends or the recent experiences of paranormal investigators: those deserve a separate list. Here, I include only places mentioned in traditional folklore, as recorded by Native American elders and nineteenth-century folklorists.

1. Mount Katahdin, Maine

Katahdin, like the Intervale near North Conway [in New Hampshire], is haunted and enchanted ground, abounding in fairies and other marvelous beings.

Charles Leland, 1884

One of two major homes of the fairies in Maine, Mount Katahdin takes its name from an Algonquian word meaning great mountain in the Penobscot language. The tallest mountain in Maine and among the tallest in New England, it rises, sharp as a knife, above the forest, a blue-tinted object of fascination for miles around.

According to Charles Leland, collector of Algonquian legends, the fairies who inhabit the mountain and its environs live primarily in rivers and pools. For this reason, they’re called water fairies. He also calls them elves or water goblins.

In the nineteenth century, when a Passamaquoddy elder, Marie Saksis, shared her tribe’s ancient stories, she explained that Glooskap, a divine lord or deity in Wabanaki folklore, had created the water fairies long before he made animals and humans. Primordial beings, they prefer secrecy, but they have been known to help the Wabanaki from time to time.

2. White Mountains, New Hampshire

After Katahdin, Charles Leland mentions that the other major home of the water fairies in New England is the intervale (or low-lying tract of land) around the Saco River in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. This includes the beautiful waterfalls known today as Diana’s Baths but formerly called the spring of the water fairies (oonahgemessuk k’tubbee in the Algonquian language).

Other locations among the White Mountains where fairies are known to sport include the moss-covered ledges of Waternomee Falls. The fairies fled to the falls from the vicinity of Warren, where the “civilizing” and “Christianizing” influence of the town’s rangers and clergyman had pushed them away.

Finally, a mountain spirit who appears in the form of an Abenaki man with long black hair is said to occupy the region around the source of the Ellis River. He once took an Abenaki woman for his bride.

3. Marblehead, Massachusetts

My native town, like other fishing towns, as I believe, was full of superstitions; ghosts, hobgoblins, will-o’-wisps, apparitions, and premonitions were the common, I might almost say the universal subject of belief.

Joseph Story, 1831

The town of Marblehead sits on a hilly peninsula south of Salem in Massachusetts. Here you’ll find many enchanted fairy hills, and one haunted one in particular, called Old Burial Hill, where Marbleheaders have buried their dead above the town since 1638.

Those who settled Marblehead in the seventeenth century were irreligious sailors and superstitious fishermen. For many decades, no church existed in the town. This meant the fairies and pixies were free to congregate here without fearing the sound of church bells, which everyone knows they hate.

The good fairies of Marblehead live in grand palaces under the town’s many hills. They come out at night and sport in the open, causing rings of wild mushrooms to spring up where they dance. Bad pixies with brown skin cause locals to wander in circles not recognizing familiar sights. These coexist with bogles (goblins who snatch people at twilight), hobgoblins (a type of goblin who lives in people’s homes), and Jack-O’-Lanterns (or light-bearing fairies). All this is based on reports from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

4. The Penobscot River, Maine

Besides Katahdin, the Penobscot River is probably the most fairy-populated location in the state of Maine. Its rapids teem with magical beings, the Little People being among the most readily encountered.

Two types of fairies inhabit the river: dwarves who live in pools deep beneath the surface, and water fairies (or Little People) who live in rock pools along the riverbank.

Of these two, the water fairies are the most friendly, for they sometimes provide information relevant to the Penobscot Tribe, including, in days gone by, intelligence about Mohawk raids. Otherwise, they hate to be seen, though you may just spot a pair rowing a stone canoe up and down the river (yes, many of the Little People traveled by stone canoe).

The fairies sometimes leave artifacts (called clay concretions) on the riverbanks for the Penobscot to find. There’s a whole science behind the formation of these concretions, but the magical explanation—that the Little People make them at night as lucky charms for the Penobscot—is more pleasing.

As for the dwarves, pray you never see one: those unfortunate enough to do so are said to die within a year. About two and a half feet tall, they go around naked with their long hair hanging around their waist. If you catch one, you may be rewarded with three wishes. But use them wisely, for the outcomes are often unexpected.

5. Mohegan Hill, Connecticut

Yes, the little men were here then. They used to tell about them; my grandmother and the rest. It was long before my time, but my grandmother knew of them from her grandmother. Folk saw more things in the woods then, than they do nowadays.

Fidelia Fielding, 1903

For hundreds of years, the Mohegan Tribe has coexisted with magical Little People called the makiawisug on a wooded, boulder-strewn eminence near the town of Montville, called Mohegan Hill. Piles of rocks found on the hill have been identified as the ancient fort of the Mohegan sachem, Uncas, who separated the tribe from the Pequot Tribe in the 1600s. The tribe’s church and cultural museum can also be found on the hill.

The Little People who live beneath the hill are said to emerge at twilight when the whip-poor-will’s call fills the air. They wear moccasin flowers on their feet and are the size of small children. For centuries, the Mohegans have left offering baskets filled with corn and tobacco for the Little People. In turn, the Little People nurture and protect the tribe.

In 2012, the tribe successfully blocked a private company from building a housing development on the hill, citing disruption to the Little People’s way of life and their “sacred stone piles.” To this day, the Little People are said to create positive energy that emanates from the hill, protecting elder tribe members who live in a retirement community there.

If you visit, remember to respect the Hill and its long-time inhabitants, fairy and human.

Read about more New England fairies in my book New England Fairies: A History of the Little People of the Hills and Forests.