HIGH MOUNTAINS RISING
HIGH MOUNTAINS RISING
Appalachia in Time and Place
Edited by Richard A. Straw and H. Tyler Blethen
University of Illinois Press
Urbana and Chicago
© 2004 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 C P 6 5 4 3 2
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
High mountains rising : Appalachia in time and place / edited by
Richard A. Straw and H. Tyler Blethen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-252-02916-x (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-252-07176-x (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Appalachian Region—History. 2. Appalachian Region—
Civilization. 3. Appalachian Region—Social conditions.
I. Straw, Richard Alan. II. Blethen, H. Tyler.
F106.H46 2004
975’.68—dc22 2003019701
ISBN 978-0-252-07176-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Richard A. Straw
1. Native Americans
C. Clifford Boyd Jr.
2. Pioneer Settlement
H. Tyler Blethen
3. Slavery and African Americans in the Nineteenth Century
John C. Inscoe
4. The Civil War and Reconstruction
Gordon B. McKinney
5. Industrialization
Ronald L. Lewis
6. The Great Depression
Paul Salstrom
7. Migration
Phillip J. Obermiller
8. Stereotypes
David C. Hsiung
9. Music
Bill C. Malone
10. Folklife
Michael Ann Williams
11. English Language
Michael Montgomery
12. Literature
Ted Olson
13. Religion
Deborah Vansau McCauley
14. Modernization, 1940–2000
Ronald D Eller
Suggested Readings
Contributors
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In a collection of original essays such as this, many individuals’ efforts have combined to produce the finished project. Those people deserve recognition and thanks.
It is difficult for us to imagine an editor who could be any more cordial and professional than Judith McCulloh of the University of Illinois Press. We express our immense gratitude to her for her unflagging enthusiasm, support, and skill at helping us turn each seeming setback into an advance.
We owe our greatest debt of gratitude to the authors of these chapters. Each responded with excitement when we invited them to contribute an original essay to this collection. We thank them especially for their (mostly) cheerful acquiescence to tampering with their prose throughout the editing stages. They were responsive, punctual, professional, and a delight to work with.
We would also like to take this opportunity to thank the manuscript reviewers for their perceptive and insightful critiques of each chapter. Their enthusiasm and support of this collection are much appreciated, and we feel that their suggestions have improved the quality of the book. Richard Straw would like to thank Radford University History Department secretary Fay Dishon for her generous help photocopying and managing chapter files. The editors also thank their wives, Jeanie Straw and Deborah Blethen, for their encouragement, understanding, and advice.
Finally, the editors would like to acknowledge the entire community of Appalachian scholars and teachers whose collective work over the last thirty-five years made this book possible.
HIGH MOUNTAINS RISING
INTRODUCTION
Richard A. Straw
In 1970, late in my undergraduate career at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, I became involved with a group of students who were interested in learning more about the Appalachian region. Little did I know at that time that I was about to become part of an academic and cultural renaissance that would eventually result in my involvement in producing this introductory collection of essays on the history and culture of Appalachia. There is more than a little irony in how this came about.
One of our projects was an attempt to add courses on Appalachia to the curriculum because Ohio University was located in the part of southeastern Ohio that had recently been included in the federal government’s new definition of Appalachia. I was a history major, so I volunteered to find a faculty member in the history department who might be interested in teaching such a class. I asked around, and it appeared that a good candidate might be the professor who taught courses on the American South. Like most undergraduates, I had not spoken often or at length with more than one or two of my teachers, and I did not know this man. I was somewhat intimidated, but I had volunteered and I believed in the idea we were pursuing, so I pressed on.
One afternoon I found him in his office and asked whether he had a few minutes to talk. I introduced myself and told him that I was interested in Appalachia and that I had been attending meetings of a student group that was trying to raise awareness on campus of Appalachian issues. Eventually I asked him whether he thought that a course on the history of Appalachia was a good idea and whether he thought it might be possible.
He listened politely but then said that what I proposed would be a problem because Appalachia has no history. I was stunned by his remarks; I left his office and did not recover for a long time from the embarrassment I felt from having asked his advice. At that time the only books about Appalachia I had read were Harry Caudill’s Night Comes to the Cumberlands and Jack Weller’s Yesterday’s People, but I was convinced that Appalachia, like every other region, people, or culture in the world, had a history. In one very real sense the book you now have in your hands is the culmination of that conversation more than thirty years ago. This is a book for anyone who is interested in learning more about the rich history and diverse cultures of Appalachia.
In the years since I had that unsettling conversation, an extensive body of regional literature has challenged Appalachian stereotypes, reexamined assumptions about Appalachian isolation, and demonstrated the region’s ties to national and international economic markets from earliest European American settlement onward. This book is intended for those who are just beginning their journey into Appalachia’s past, and although its chapters are more a synthesis of current research than new research, the authors represented here have been in the front lines of developing scholarship in their respective fields of expertise. This volume is an attempt to make Appalachia an understandable and accessible place historically and culturally for those who are largely unfamiliar with it.
Because this volume is interdisciplinary in its approach, it is organized both chronologically and topically. The book is divided roughly into two sections. Chapters 1 through 7 and chapter 14 are historical, and chapters 8 through 13 are cultural. Because of the nature of historical studies, there is significant attention to both history and culture throughout each chapter. This gives the reader access to a very wide range of subjects and themes on Appalachia. Although High Mountains Rising is certainly representative of the most recent and most important research on Appalachia, an introductory volume of this type cannot be exhaustive or comprehensive. The chapters included here are starting points. They are not exhaustive analyses of new interpretations; most of these authors have published this groundbreaking scholarship elsewhere. To assist you in
further exploring the history and culture of Appalachia, a list of suggested readings is included. The value of this book is in its practical use as an introduction to the history and culture of the Appalachian region.
In an edited work such as this, many authors are represented. Writing styles vary, but the editors have attempted to keep the writing straightforward, simple, and free, as much as possible, from the jargon that sometimes clogs academic writing. The chapter authors have all attempted to develop clear and highly readable accounts of complex topics that range from an examination of Native American culture in the region to an analysis of the most recent political and historical trends at the end of the twentieth century. Many of these topics could have been addressed by the authors from a variety of viewpoints and from various perspectives that are not represented in this book, but that limitation makes the need for the readers to pursue these topics on their own all the more vital.
High Mountains Rising begins with a discussion of Native American life that focuses on the Cherokees in the Southern mountains. It then moves into an analysis of early Europeans in the region, with an emphasis on the migration patterns and settlements of Ulster-Scots farmers into the colonial backcountry. Appalachian development through the nineteenth century is featured in chapters that delve into slavery and African American life in the region, the Civil War and Reconstruction in Appalachia, and the antebellum industrialization of the region.
The industrialization of Appalachia was gradual but nonetheless resulted in significant social, cultural, economic, and political change in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Great Depression is treated in a chapter that focuses largely on understanding the economic strategies and adaptation that occurred across the course of industrial development and decline in Appalachia. A related issue and a powerful theme of twentieth-century Appalachian life is the migration of people out of the region, mostly in search of improved economic opportunities. Beginning during the Great Depression and then accelerating during and after World War II, the role of the federal government in Appalachia has been crucial. In the concluding chapter of the book, Ron Eller shows us that when modernization swept over Appalachia in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries it left problems and promises, as it did everywhere. In the Southern mountains people have struggled to adapt to the shock of the modern in ways that have drawn strength from their rural past.
Appalachian history cannot be understood without reference to and an appreciation of the diverse cultures that have evolved in the region over the past several hundred years. Several chapters in this book explore the rich and varied cultural life of mountain people. Appalachian music, literature, folklore, language, and religion are explored in depth, as are the origins and history of the stereotypes that have so unfairly labeled Appalachians in the past and into the present.
As the title of this volume suggests, it is about both place and time. It is about culture and history. What Appalachia is and where Appalachia is are essential questions that we need to address before we can begin to understand its history. Appalachia as a place has been so difficult to define that some have suggested that it is more akin to an idea than a geographic locale. These chapters generally reject that notion and instead focus on specific historical occurrences and a shared culture that has evolved over time. The editors of this volume imposed no boundaries or definitions of Appalachia on the authors of these chapters. For most who work in the region, it is the area of the United States that is situated mostly in the Southern mountains of the eastern half of the nation. For some it is better known as southern Appalachia, but regardless, it is made up generally of a core area: West Virginia, southwestern Virginia, eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, and the northern mountains of Georgia.
As you read this book you will notice that a number of themes emerge that will help you better understand what Appalachia is and has been. These are common ideas about Appalachia that help us to see it as a place with a shared history and culture. One major theme is the cultural diversity of Appalachia and the interaction of various ethnic and religious groups throughout the history of the region. For example, on the colonial frontier and in the backcountry settlements of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Ulster-Scots, Germans, English, and Native Americans interacted freely. There is ample evidence that on its farms and in its small manufacturing settlements and in the coal mines and cities of the twentieth century, Appalachia has been and continues to be both ethnically and culturally diverse. This can be seen particularly well in its music, which is defined by influences from a variety of traditions both black and white; its religions; its folklore, which adopted many Native American themes; its language; its history of immigration from many areas of the world, not only the British Isles; and its economic development.
As with any study of history, in Appalachia it is important to recognize the significance of change over time and the adaptability of its residents to change. In their history of out-migration to seek economic opportunity, Appalachian people have had to adapt to new and changing circumstances: From their earliest contacts with one another, Native Americans and European settlers were forced to change and adapt; in the religions that evolved in the region, resilience and flexibility were paramount values; and particularly in the economic development of the region, adaptability to new markets and new ways of making a living were essential qualities for survival. During the industrialization of the mountains beginning in the late nineteenth century, the region’s life and culture were made richer by an influx of new immigrants from eastern and southern Europe and African Americans from other areas of the South.
Several other important ideas present in many of these chapters could be helpful in guiding our understanding of Appalachia. The region has been characterized by and labeled with inaccurate and negative stereotypes about its history, culture, and people. It is our hope that the ideas and arguments presented in these chapters, particularly those on race and slavery, pioneer settlement, economic and industrial development, religion, language, music, and out-migration, will help the reader form a more accurate image and interpretation of this region and its people.
Many of the chapters in this book support the well-established notion that Appalachia was never the truly isolated or historically backward place that has existed in the popular image of the mountain South in literature and the media. Many historians have shown that Appalachian rural communities were not completely shut off from the world outside the mountains. But they have also shown us that isolation is itself a historically relative term. A careful reading of these chapters reveals that although Appalachia certainly did not always interact with all aspects of American life, it was not completely set apart, either. To what extent Appalachia, as it developed, was connected to the rest of the United States remains an important question.
Another important issue raised in many of these chapters is the extent to which Appalachia has been a unique part of America. It is impossible to assert that Appalachia is a completely unique culture because Appalachians are Americans and share most of the language, values, religions, and economies with most of the rest of the country. But it is also undeniable that there are speech patterns, values, music, religion, folklore, and historical developments that are readily identified with Appalachia. Appalachian history and culture have evolved in different ways from other parts of America, although not in every way, and it certainly is not unique in this pattern. It is our hope that Appalachia emerges from these pages as a vital part of American history but also as a place where at least some parts maintain significant differences from what most people think of as mainstream America.
Appalachia has been and to a significant degree remains a rural world where people derive much of their identity from ties to land and family. The rural economy that Appalachian people have developed to sustain themselves makes up another major theme of this collection. Appalachia has been historically depicted as a land of small, backward outpost fa
rms within a very limited or even nonexistent regional economy. Through the work of many historians, some of whom are represented here, we know the historical reality to be much more complex than this. We know that Appalachian farms have been smaller and more diversified than many in other parts of the nation, but this has not forced most farm families in Appalachia into a humble, isolated self-sufficiency. Although it is clear from these readings and the work of other historians that Appalachia was a household-based economy—particularly until the late nineteenth century—there is ample evidence that Appalachian farmers and artisans from varied economic circumstances were involved in local, regional, and even national trade networks that sent food out of the region in exchange for necessary material supplies. Several chapters in this collection tell the story of how the particular economic resources found in Appalachia were developed and exploited in the decades between the Civil War and World War I. Of particular importance in this context is Ronald Lewis’s analysis of the economic connections between agricultural and industrial areas of Appalachia and the larger markets of the United States and the world. Taken as a whole, these chapters tell us that mountain people in Appalachia have not been strangers to change but that Appalachian people have sometimes struggled over the past three centuries to adapt to the best of the new while working very hard to keep their feet planted firmly on the ground of tradition.
Most teachers hope that their students will be changed in some positive way by what they hear, read, and think about in the classroom. In that vein, we hope that you will be enlightened and perhaps even changed a little by what you read in this book. Some of its themes will be familiar to students of the region who are aware of the work of many scholars who have done the research into Appalachia’s past that informs this collection. But for those of you who are reading about Appalachia for the first time or who are familiar with only the popular images and interpretations of this region, the ideas presented here may be new and challenging. Despite the work of many dedicated scholars in a number of different disciplines, many negative impressions and ideas about Appalachia persist. It would be naive of us to think that the conclusions arrived at in this volume will permanently alter the major stereotypes and popular notions about Appalachia. However, we believe that if those who read this collection of essays consider its ideas carefully, there is a chance that it will make a difference in people’s thinking about the region. Popular myths and stereotypes are not easily altered by the work of scholars, no matter how fine or meticulous their research, but the excellent work of many scholars represented here and others who are not can make a difference.
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