Golden Person

The Golden People are a race of humanoids native to Sirius XXII.

Physiology
The Golden People were a similar to humans save they were about the five feet tall. They lacked thumbs on both their prehensile hands and feet. Their bodies are lightly covered with a silky hair, some two or three inches long, giving their skins like golden haloes. They stood well under five feet tall, and in every detail, except the body hair and digits, appeared to be miniature adults, complete with navels. The Golden People matured in three months to full grown adults and have a lifespan of around three years. Females were able to bear several babies a year.

History A test colony from Earth had landed on the planet Sirius XXIII where they unexpectedly met with the Golden People. The appearance of the Golden People was a surprise to the colonists as they originally believed the planet to be uninhabited. The humans originally assumed the Golden People to be humanoid animals and the colonists continued their work in setting up a viable colony. However more of the aliens continued to visit the colony out of curiosity.

Coexistence with the natives originally began, until the natives began trading tala, an alcoholic fruit. The tala began to affect the minds of the colonists who began to be lax with work lessening the colony's progress. The leaders of the colonists seeing the Golden People as a distraction wanted to commit genocide on the natives to remove the problem. However it was ultimately decided to sterilize the male population by passively affecting them with radiation to lower their numbers and cause them to slowly die out.

The Golden People noticing the adverse affects from the humans on their males, slowly had their males slowly retreat from their territory.

When the humans noticed that the population did not go down as intended. They enticed the natives to work for them, with the females acting as baby-sisters and starting the tala trade, though only were unable to determine how they failed.

Only one male Joe, escaped the plague and soon found himself at high demand among the fertile females of his race. The genocide failed as Joe was able to repopulate his species greater than they humans could infect them.

Culture
The Golden People were a naturally curious race, innately curious. They lacked clothing preferring to walk about naked. They lacked any tribal infrastructure. Before the human settlers the Golden People had yet to discover the concept of fire or music. There was no such thing as monogamy or even polygamy. They paired off from among several favorites. But there was no formal nor permanent mating arrangement. The only thing that keeps the Golden People population down naturally are the carnivorous koodi.

Source

 * Test Colony by Winston Marks (1954)