The Lakota believed in a race of ugly small men and women that they referred to as tree dwellers.

Similar to tales of other Fairy folk around the world, the tree dwellers, called Can Otidan, reportedly stayed in the woods and forests and would lure hunters away and lose them or they would frighten them so that they would lose their senses. 14 The Can Otidanapparently were more than simple Fairy spirits as they were classed in a group referred to as bad gods. Little people 15 referred to as travel-two were among the forest spirits in the Nehalem Tillamook (Oregon) world. Called travel-two because they always traveled in pairs, these Fairy-like creatures were hunters and would often give a human they encountered on their travels the skills to become a good hunter if the travel-two happened to speak with him. 16 In New Brunswick, Canada, the Little People are called Geow-lud-mo-sis-eg. There are two types of these creatures, one Healers and the other Tricksters. The Healers are said to do some super marvelous things for a person who may be stricken or inflicted with some kind of physical ailment. The Tricksters, as their name implies, play pranks and tricks on people that are more annoying than they are dangerous. Both types of Fairy are closely linked to water sites such as lake shores, rivers, brooks and marshes. 17 Whitley believes that the belief in little people worldwide may be the effect of certain hallucinogens, used by shamans, which temporarily change the optic nerve. When this happens, according to Whitley, an unusual Lilliputian hallucination takes place that makes everything appear much smaller than it is in reality. This is an interesting hypothesis; however, it is not

convincing in itself. The thousands of legends from around the world of Fairy and Water Babies have not been sourced from shamans alone. It would also seem logical that if a hallucinogen were responsible, then stories of other diminutive creatures (deer, birds, etc) and landscapes would also be contained in the mythic literature and they simply arent. Such beliefs may stem from the effects of poor nutrition, as periodic food shortages and seasonal