week of 7/31/02
 
 
 

The essential books of Appalachia — part II
By George Ellison
As noted in last week’s Back Then column, I often receive requests for information regarding this region’s essential books. Accordingly, that column was devoted to an overview of the literature about the natural history of the Southern Blue Ridge Province. This week we’ll focus on the human side of the story; however, due to the voluminous amount of printed materials available for the entire Southern Blue Ridge Province (in Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia), we’ll have to limit this survey, for the most part, to those materials concerning Western North Carolina. And since it’s probable that more has been written about the Cherokees than any other Indian tribe in North America, we’ll wait until next week before considering that complicated topic.

The books about WNC’s history are so numerous that what follows is an account of some of the titles I have accumulated— sometimes with purpose, sometimes by chance — in the past 30 years; without doubt, many worthwhile books will have escaped my attention. Nevertheless, here we go.

William S. Powell’s quite readable North Carolina Through the Centuries (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1989) is perhaps the best overview of WNC’s place in state and regional history. Two companion volumes have been published by the Appalachian Consortium Press in Boone: Ora Blackmun’s Western North Carolina: Its Mountains and People to 1880 (1973) is superb; while Ina W. and John J. Van Noppen’s Western North Carolina Since the Civil War (1973) is adequate. Together they provide the essential outline of the region’s history.

One of my favorite books is John Preston Arthur’s Western North Carolina: A History from 1730-1913 (Asheville: Daughters of the American Revolution, 1914; reissued Johnson City, Tenn.: Overmountain Press, 1996). Arthur, an alcoholic lawyer who spent his last days in Boone working for 50-cents an hour digging potatoes, produced a delightfully quirky text that reliably mixes fact with the curious and absurd.

The settling of the American frontier has been well chronicled. Two books by John Anthony Caruso published by Bobbs-Merrill Company — The Appalachian Frontier: America’s First Surge Westward (1959) and The Southern Frontier (1963) — provide contexts for WNC. Numerous early narratives describing travels and adventures in the mountains of present-day North and South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia can be found in Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 1540-1800 (Johnson City, Tenn.: The Watauga Press, 1928) edited by Samuel Cole Williams.

While not specifically about WNC, the fabled Scotch-Irish settlement of the southern highlands has been colorfully depicted by Parke Rouse Jr., in his The Great Wagon Road: From Philadelphia to the South (Richmond, Va.: Dietz Press, reissued 2001). Go to From Ulster to Carolina: The Migration of the Scotch-Irish to Southwestern North Carolina (Raleigh: N.C. Dept. of Cultural Resources, 1998) by Western Carolina University professors H. Tyler Blethen and Curtis W. Wood Jr., for an account of this region’s settlement. (There is available at the Mountain Heritage Center on WCU’s campus a 20-minute slide-video production on this topic that is first rate. Call ahead at 828.227.7129 to make viewing arrangements.)

Although regrettably out-of-print, the romantically-descriptive travel volume titled The Heart of the Alleghanies or Western North Carolina, Comprising Its Topography, History, Resources, People, Narratives, Incidents, and Pictures of Travel Adventures in Hunting and Fishing, and Legends of Its Wilderness (Raleigh, N.C.: Alfred Williams, 1883) is every bit as seductive as the title would indicate.

One of the region’s undeniably significant and immensely popular volumes appeared on the scene in 1913. This was, of course, Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders, initially published by the Outing Publishing Company, a small firm located in New York. In 1922 it was republished by the MacMillan Company, also of New York, with four new chapters and a new title: Our Southern Highlanders: A Narrative of Adventure in the Southern Appalachians and a Study of Life Among the Mountaineers. This text was reissued in 1976 by the University of Tennessee Press with a longish biographical-critical introduction by this writer. The book — a mix of autobiography, first-hand observations, lore, and socio-economic musings — has perhaps been more readily identified with the mountains of WNC in the national consciousness than any other book except Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel. Through the years it has naturally attracted detractors, but continues to shed them like rain off a duck’s back; or, in the immortal words of Truman Capote about his critics: “The dogs may bark but the caravan keeps on moving.”

The other regional volume of true significance from the first half of the 20th century would be John C. Campbell’s The Southern Highlander & His Homeland (Russell Sage Foundation, 1921; reissued by the Univ. of Kentucky press, 1969). Actually compiled by Olive Dame Campbell after her husband’s death, this book is perhaps not as lively as Kephart’s, but it has more reliable nitty-gritty information of the socio-economic variety. Taken together, the Kephart and Campbell volumes provide a good feel for the way life was in the first half of the last century.

I would also mention two volumes that deal with the Little Tennessee River region of WNC: Alberta and Carson Brewer’s Valley So Wild: A Folk History (Knoxville: East Tennessee Historical Association, 1975) and Lance Holland’s Fontana: A Pocket History of Appalachia (Robbinsville: Appalachian History Series, 2001).

Both are delightful in regard to general history and lore. If you’re interested in mining operations, the building of Fontana Dam and Lake, and the arrivial of big-time tourism in far WNC, the last half of the Holland book is ground-breaking and will be your cup of tea.

Oh my goodness, I’m running out of room and and my deadline has arrived and there are 40 other books that should be mentioned; what about Dykeman, Dargan, Frome, and all the others? Oh well, I’m going to conclude with a paean to my dear friend, Duane Oliver, the regional historian par excellence who resides in Hazelwood. After Duane retired from teaching at Western Carolina University some years ago, he didn’t know what to do with himself and was getting on his mother’s nerves. She advised that he write something. When Duane asked what he might write, she said (more or less), “Well, you could write about us.” And that’s what he has done.

The Oliver family goes back numerous generations into the 19th century in the well-known Hazel Creek watershed of the present-day Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Duane has his own memories of Hazel Creek and his mother had a razor sharp memory and keen wit. Then there were all the other relatives and former neighbors to talk to and draw upon ... which is what Duane did and is continuing to do.

If you want a depiction of what mountain life was really like in all of its everyday glory — homesteading, farming, logging, cooking, talking, and so on — treat yourself to Hazel Creek From Then Till Now (self-published, 1989). Then you can proceed to Duane’s other titles, which include traditional cookbooks and even a picture book.

Next week: Cherokee Lit. 101.

George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C. 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com