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

The most powerful fairies in New England are undoubtedly those mystical beings known to the region’s Native American tribes. Perhaps this is because the fairies of Dawnland (the Wabanaki name for their home) have always been here and are deeply rooted in the land—unlike those pixies, banshees, hobgoblins, and bogles who populate the stories of European immigrants. For the Algonquian tribes of the North East (the Wabanaki in the North and the Mohegans, Narragansett, and Wampanoag in the South) have cultivated close relationships with the Little People and other fairies through story and ritual since precolonial times.

Here I introduce five of the most powerful fairies who inhabit New England’s “Land of Fae,” as known to the region’s indigenous peoples. Although most Native American fairies are highly social beings, especially the tribes of Little People who inhabit Algonquian territory, here I focus on powerful individuals who possess their own unique stories.

Little Thunder

NB. The name “Little Thunder” in the following story was actually a late addition to the tale.

The first fairy on this list didn’t actually start his life as a fairy. Little Thunder was originally a Wabanaki man who grew up in the Northern New England region. Little Thunder had a burning desire to become a powerful fairy, like the Little People who dwelled in the woods around his home. After hearing that Glooskap, the legendary lord of the Wabanaki, had promised to fulfill the wishes of anyone who found him, Little Thunder set out on a seven-year quest to locate the divine lord’s home. Eventually he came to a distant island in the eastern ocean where Glooskap lived with his younger brother Marten.

Glooskap acknowledged Little Thunder’s pilgrimage as evidence of his bravery and determination, and he agreed to transform him into a fairy (mikumwess or wood fairy in the Algonquian language). To effect this change, he covered Little Thunder with dirt, took him to a river to wash him clean, put a magical hair-string around his neck, and gave him a fairy pipe with the power to charm all living things. This transformed the man into a powerful fairy.

As a fairy, Little Thunder derived most of his power from that magical pipe. In fact, he used it to carry out his greatest feat: charming a giant golden serpent and cutting off its head. He also had the power to dance into the ground up to his knees, forming a trench in the earth—the sign of a true shaman or fairy for the Wabanaki people.

Little Thunder using his elfin pipe to charm the giant golden serpent.

Marten

The wood fairy or mikumess called Marten (whose Algonquian name is Apistanewj) accompanied the divine lord and hero Glooskap on many of his adventures through the lands of the Wabanaki people. His name derives from the marten, an animal related to the weasel, for he could transform himself into one at will.

Marten was an extremely powerful fairy who could also transform himself into a baby or a full-grown man. However, he usually appeared in the form of an adolescent, and in this guise he was Glooskap’s adopted younger brother.

Two magical possessions gave Marten extraordinary powers: a birch-bark dish, which he used to communicate with Glooskap; and a magic belt that gave him Glooskap’s superhuman powers, including the ability to hunt successfully at all times.

Marten earned his name because he could transform himself into a marten. License.

Granny Squannit

The divine medicine woman Granny Squannit lived long ago on Mohegan Hill in Connecticut and in a cave on Sandy Neck Beach near Mashpee, Cape Cod. The Narragansett Tribe in Southern New England originally worshipped her as a goddess of women and children. She later became a patron of the Mohegan and Wampanoag tribes.

Described as a two-foot-tall woman with long black hair, Granny Squannit (or ‘Ole Squant, as she was sometimes known) taught the Algonquian tribes how to grow corn and tobacco and sometimes stole children when they were bad. To placate her and to give her thanks, the tribes left offerings on tree stumps in the woods or outside her cave on Sandy Neck Beach.

Some of Granny Squannit‘s most interesting attributes include her famous knowledge of healing herbs; the tiny size of her footprints, which the Wampanoag compared to those of a rabbit; and her eyes, which were depicted as either square-shaped or comprising a single eye in the middle of her forehead. All these attributes point to her mystical, fairylike nature.

According to one story, Granny Squannit ended her days on Rhode Island’s Sakonnet Point, where the Great Spirit turned her into a rock.

Sandy Neck Beach on Cape Cod where Granny Squannit lived in a cave. License.

Tsienneto

The next fairy on this list is not an indigenous fairy at all, although the Scots Irish who told her story in the twentieth century described her as Abenaki and claimed she lived in Abenaki territory.

A beautiful and powerful fairy queen known to poets and folklorists as Tsienneto, she lived in the waters of Beaver Lake outside Derry in Southern New Hampshire. In the nineteenth century, poets claimed her name was an Algonquian word, but it was actually a fanciful invention. Furthermore, no evidence of Abenaki settlements have been found in the Derry area.

This fairy queen had a particular sympathy for the European immigrants who settled in New England in the seventeenth century, especially when they found themselves in distress. The most famous object of Tsienneto’s care was an early American called Hannah Duston. One day when Tsienneto rose from the waters of her lake, she found Hannah languishing on the shore, a captive of an Abenaki war band.

Tsienneto promised to save Hannah from the Abenaki band’s clutches. She followed the company up the Merrimack River until they reached Sugar Plum Island at the confluence of the Merrimack and the Contoocook. There, she cast a spell on the Abenaki, putting them into a deep sleep. Duston, seizing her opportunity to escape, killed the Abenaki with a hatchet and left with two other captives in a canoe.

The story of Tsienneto the Fairy Queen has its origins in Scots Irish folklore circulating in Southern New Hampshire in the late nineteenth century. Unfortunately, white supremacists used Hannah Duston’s story for many years as propaganda, Hannah becoming a racist symbol for those who wished to depict the Abenaki as “savages.” Today we can take a more critical approach to Hannah’s story, pointing out, for example, that the story misrepresents Abenaki treatment of captives.

Arthur Rackham’s illustration of a sleeping Titania. Public domain.

Great Chief of the Pukwudgies

Many people have heard of those powerful fairies, the pukwudgies, who live in the swamps and forests of Massachusetts. But not everybody knows that these diminutive beings were once ruled over by a Great Chief whose magic spells surpassed those of the average pukwudgie.

Not only was the Great Chief a more powerful wizard than his fellow pukwudgies, he was also slightly taller, reaching almost to the “knee of an ordinary man” (according to storytellers Red Shell and White Horse).

The Chief Pukwudgie lived with his compatriots in the marshes around Popponesset Bay on Cape Cod. There he ruled over seven bands of pukwudgies, each band having its own chief who ultimately answered to him.

One of the Great Chief’s powers was his ability to transform people into animals. He once turned an “ugly” Wampanoag woman into a trout so she could spend the rest of her life with a giant trout who’d professed his love for her.