Took me a long time to find the section in that site about "little people" (although some of the other stuff there was very interesting), but here it is:
Approximately 1,500s AD: The traditions of the Cherokee tribes of southeastern North America describe a group of pygmies or little people living in the southern Appalachian mountains; accounts of pygmies in northwest North America also exist
If such a people did once exist, they may have been descendents of a migration of pygmy Aetas from the Philippines. Prevailing sea currents could easily have deposited them in the North American northwest (with them becoming known as the "Et-nane" by average-sized natives there) after a crossing of the Pacific. The great influx of large newcomers across the Bering land bridge could have forced such people to move deeper into North America, eventually settling in the pleasant surroundings of the southern Appalachians. Sometime after that they seem to have either died out from disease or other reasons, or been absorbed into the average sized tribes surrounding them.
[jump off sources include...SOME NEWLY DISCOVERED ARCHEOLOGICAL ANOMALIES FROM NORTH AMERICA From Science Frontiers Digest of Scientific Anomalies #48, NOV-DEC 1986 by William R. Corliss, citing the Epigraphic Society, Occasional Publications, 15: 33, 77, and 77, 1986]
[jump off sources include....AMERICAN PYGMIES From Science Frontiers Digest of Scientific Anomalies #84, NOV-DEC 1992 by William R. Corliss, citing Virgilio R. Pilapil; "Was There a Prehistoric Migration of the Philippine Aetas to America?" Epigraphic Society, Occasional Papers, 20:150, 1991]
[Caution: Extreme speculation ahead; this section mostly created for "What If?" entertainment value]
Other, more exotic explanations for little people worldwide also can be had. For instance, few people circa 2000 AD will be aware that the primate precursors to humanity circa 45,000,000 BC included truly tiny monkey-like creatures so small they could stand on a 21st century person's thumb. These creatures also enjoyed an evolutionary headstart of roughly 40 million years on humanity, as well.
[jump off sources include...Fossils of Tiny Primates Found By DAVID KINNEY, Associated Press/Yahoo! Science Headlines, March 16 2000 ]
And tiny brains can often do more than we give them credit for. For example, those birds equipped with suitable vocal mechanisms can display impressive speech and speech comprehension skills, circa 2000 AD...
...What might have happened if some tiny primate managed to evolve into something akin to tiny human beings or better, over the 40 million year headstart they enjoyed over us? 40 million years is a staggering number. 21st century human beings themselves are only some 6 million years separated from chimpanzees. 40 million years is also a long time in terms of artifacts preservation. It may be that a pretty advanced civilization of tiny primates could have sprang up 30 million years or so ago, suffered a catastrophe, and disappeared, with little or nothing remaining behind to prove they ever existed. If their main civilization existed on only one continent-- and that continent was Kerguelen-- then 20 million years ago their whole world would have sank below the Indian Ocean.
[jump off sources include..."'Lost continent' discovered" By BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse, BBC News Online: Sci/Tech, 5-27-99, BBC Homepage]
There's many ways such a civilization could have died and been erased from the face of the Earth-- even a relatively advanced one. If the center of the civilization had existed in Chesapeake Bay around 35,000,000 BC, it would have been erased instantly by way of a great comet impact.
[jump off sources include... Tiny Teeth Shed Light on Ancient Comets; 3/20/98; News Release; U.S. Department of the Interior; U.S. Geological Survey, Central Region Outreach Office, P.O. Box 25046, MS 150, Denver, CO 80225-0046. Contact Heidi Koehler Phone 303-236-5900 ext. 302 Fax 303-236-5882 ]
Chesapeake Bay and vicinity would appear to be a very unfortunate place for any civilization to arise-- for the cosmic impact described above was the second-- the first took place about half a million years earlier.
[jump off source: GIANT IMPACT-WAVE DEPOSIT ALONG U.S. EAST COAST From Science Frontiers Digest of Scientific Anomalies #87, MAY-JUN 1993 by William R. Corliss, citing C. Wylie Poag, et al; "Deep Sea Drilling Project Site 612 Bolide Event: New Evidence of a Late Eocene Impact-Wave Deposit and a Possible Impact Site, U.S. East Coast," Geology, 20:771, 1992 ]
But enough with tiny Atlantean monkey people. What if a larger monkey species merely evolved to a state good enough to become trusted early human companions in the pre-wolf/dog days? As seems possible from some discoveries regarding Procynocephalus monkeys and Homo erectus around 2,250,000 BC?
[jump off sources include...EARLY HOMO ERECTUS TOOLS IN CHINA by RUSSELL CIOCHON and ROY LARICK, NEWSBRIEFS, Archaeology, Volume 53 Number 1, January/February 2000, the Archaeological Institute of America,
http://www.archaeology.org/0001/newsbriefs/china.html]
If such a thing happened, then the special monkeys and human ancestors also parted ways again sometime afterwards. Why? And what became of the monkeys? Could they have continued to evolve? Could it be that the reason the two split was that the monkeys began competing rather than cooperating with their human allies, by some point? Note that this scenario would appear much more plausible than the tiny Atlantean monkeys, just by virtue of much larger brain cases and overall physical sizes more comparable to small humans than mice.
What if these monkeys lacked tails, and walked upright? Walking upright over millions of years might eventually cause them to develop feet of a shape and size much like that of a human child-- thereby leaving behind footprints which would rarely attract human attention as being something out of place. What if they were also largely hairless? From a distance they would likely look like human children or short adults. If they were clothing as well, observers would likely have to be pretty close to them to see notice anything unusual about their appearance.
What if they developed their own parallel but hidden society over the millennia? Avoided human beings like the plague? Retained nocturnal habits and eyesight from the early evolution days of primates? Grew to prefer subterranean or semi-underground dwelling?
Such a scenario could go far to explain age-old myths and legends the world over concerning strange and elusive little people: leprechans, elves, dwarves, fairies, etc., etc.
Some believers will claim in 2000 AD that little people live in places like the southwestern United States. Perhaps by mere coincidence, lots of other claims of unusual finds or phenomena regarding the American southwest will make up a significant part of the American rumors circuit for centuries to come...
(edited to remove chunks of not really relevant stuff from the quote)