Writing Appalachia

An Anthology

Katherine Ledford, Theresa Lloyd, Rebecca Stephens

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780813178790
• eBook ISBN: 9780813178820
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Literature

Despite the stereotypes and misconceptions surrounding Appalachia, the region has nurtured and inspired some of the nation's finest writers. Featuring dozens of authors born into or adopted by the region over the past two centuries, Writing Appalachia showcases for the first time the nuances and contradictions that place Appalachia at the heart of American history.

This comprehensive anthology covers an exceedingly diverse range of subjects, genres, and time periods, beginning with early Native American oral traditions and concluding with twenty-first-century writers such as Wendell Berry, bell hooks, Silas House, Barbara Kingsolver, and Frank X Walker. Slave narratives, local color writing, folklore, work songs, modernist prose—each piece explores unique Appalachian struggles, questions, and values. The collection also celebrates the significant contributions of women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community to the region's history and culture. Alongside Southern and Central Appalachian voices, the anthology features northern authors and selections that reflect the urban characteristics of the region. As one text gives way to the next, a more complete picture of Appalachia emerges—a landscape of contrasting visions and possibilities.

PART I

Early Appalachian Literature

Kevin E. O’Donnell

The texts collected here describe late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Appalachia as a geographical and political frontier. They also reveal how this borderland became a cultural, rhetorical, and mythical frontier.

Appalachia’s first residents were Native Americans, who have occupied the region for at least eleven thousand years. In the eighteenth century, the dominant nations were the Cherokee, Creek, and Chickasaw in Southern Appalachia; the Shawnee in Central Appalachia; and the Iroquois (or Five Nations) in Northern Appalachia. According to King George’s Proclamation of 1763, the lands west of the Blue Ridge were reserved for Native Americans and off-limits for white settlement.

The Proclamation of 1763 became a major grievance of the colonists on the eve of the American Revolution, since the Virginia gentry looked to land speculation in the trans-Allegheny region as a means of resolving their debts to English merchants. The defeat of the British in the Revolution was also the defeat of their Native American allies, resulting in the opening of the western lands. In many instances, the government gave vast tracts to those who had served in the Revolution.

Ethnically, Appalachia’s white settlers were mostly Scots-Irish, German, and English. Migrants ranged from squatters to entrepreneurs and artisans, with many becoming tenants on large landholdings of the wealthy. Most African Americans came to the region as the slaves of white settlers or of assimilated Cherokee, with a few arriving as escaped slaves or free people. In many ways, Appalachia’s settlement was typical of westward expansion throughout the United States.

The mythic history differs from the actual, however. James Fenimore Cooper’s fictional frontier hero, Natty Bumppo, embodies a frontier myth already well established by the 1820s: he is a deliberate echo of Daniel Boone, a white who exhibits Native American traits and eschews Europeanized society. The historical Boone had been dead for only a few years by 1823, when Cooper first published The Pioneers, excerpted here.

Elias Boudinot (Gallegina “Buck” Watie), a Cherokee who had assimilated to white culture but still wanted to preserve the Cherokee Nation, represents another cultural hybrid that emerged in early nineteenth-century Appalachia. Boudinot helped found the Cherokee Phoenix, a bilingual English-Cherokee newspaper. His writings gave his nation a voice in regional and national politics in the dark days prior to the Cherokee’s removal from their homeland. Initially a staunch opponent of the removal, he supported the policy only after he saw the tribe’s options narrow. During the removal of 1838–1839, nearly a fourth of the nation died along the “Trail of Tears.” Though Boudinot has been judged harshly, readers of his 1826 “An Address to the Whites,” a fund-raising speech for a printing press, can see the impossible tensions he was attempting to negotiate as he tried to ensure his nation’s survival.

A more traditionalist Cherokee voice emerges in the Cherokee myths collected by James Mooney at the end of the nineteenth century. That voice is clearly mediated: the myths were collected two generations after removal and transcribed by a young white American of Irish descent who was new to the Cherokee language. Nonetheless, the myths suggest one reason why the removal policy was so strongly opposed by most Cherokees—the culture was deeply and intimately connected to the landscape, including the flora and fauna, of Appalachia.

The selections here also include Enlightenment-era Euro-American views of Appalachia. Thomas Jefferson, in Notes on the State of Virginia, using grand and precise terms, describes Appalachian Virginia with a thinly veiled nationalist pride. William Bartram likewise deploys the language of the European Enlightenment to describe Appalachia—though Bartram’s view is more intimate, botanically oriented, and infused with a poetic Romanticism. Bartram traveled into the mountains of what is now western North Carolina in the spring of 1775, around the onset of the American Revolution. It was a dangerous time to be on the frontier, yet the Indians refrained from killing him. He was the first to scientifically describe many of Southern Appalachia’s most beautiful plant species, including the flame azalea, though other botanists preceded him in publication and thus secured the naming rights for themselves.

Sources: Annette Kolodny, The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters (1975); Terry G. Jordan and Matti Kaups, The American Backwoods Frontier: An Ethnic and Ecological Interpretation (1989); Wilma Dunaway, First American Frontier: Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700–1860 (1996); Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indian, Debtors, Slaves & the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (1999); John Alexander Williams, Appalachia: A History (2002); Andrea Wulf, Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation (2012).

Cherokee Narratives

Native American oral literature, such as that of the Cherokee, is Appalachia’s earliest literary tradition. The Cherokee themselves date their arrival in southern Appalachia to several thousand years ago, and some Cherokee origination stories state that the people have always lived here. The Cherokee language is part of the Algonquian language family, which may explain the parallels between Cherokee creation accounts and those of the Iroquois and Ojibwe in the Northeast.

At the time of first contact with Europeans in the late 1500s, the Cherokee controlled a territory stretching from what is now Kentucky and Virginia south to the Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama, with actual residence centered in the southern part of this area. The traditional economy included agriculture (the work of women) and hunting (the work of men). Socially, the Cherokee were matrilineal and matrifocal, with women holding important tribal leadership positions.

The Cherokee had a complex culture with highly developed sacred rituals and arts, including oral literature. Though the Cherokee developed a writing system in the nineteenth century, many of their traditional narratives, poems, and songs were transmitted orally.

James Mooney (1861–1921), a white ethnographer, collected the narratives included in this anthology from the Eastern Band Cherokee in the late nineteenth century. Eastern Band Cherokee are descended from removal-era traditionalists who eluded capture and expatriation, along with escapees from the Trail of Tears and others who returned to the mountains. With the help of white friends, these Cherokee were able to purchase tracts of their old lands in North Carolina, which form the current Cherokee homeland in the East.

How the World Was Made

The earth is a great island floating in a sea of water, and suspended at each of the four cardinal points by a cord hanging down from the sky vault, which is of solid rock. When the world grows old and worn out, the people will die and the cords will break and let the earth sink down into the ocean, and all will be water again. The Indians are afraid of this.

When all was water, the animals were above in Gălûñ’lătĭ, beyond the arch; but it was very much crowded, and they were wanting more room. They wondered what was below the water, and at last Dăyuni’sĭ, “Beaver’s Grandchild,” the little Water-beetle, offered to go and see if it could learn. It darted in every direction over the surface of the water, but could find no firm place to rest. Then it dived to the bottom and came up with some soft mud, which began to grow and spread on every side until it became the island which we call the earth. It was afterward fastened to the sky with four cords, but no one remembers who did this.

At first the earth was flat and very soft and wet. The animals were anxious to get down, and sent out different birds to see if it was yet dry, but they found no place to alight and came back again to Gălûñ’lătĭ. At last it seemed to be time, and they sent out the Buzzard and told him to go and make ready for them. This was the Great Buzzard, the father of all the buzzards we see now. He flew all over the earth, low down near the ground, and it was still soft. When he reached the Cherokee country, he was very tired, and his wings began to flap and strike the ground, and wherever they struck the earth there was a valley, and where they turned up again there was a mountain. When the animals above saw this, they were afraid that the whole world would be mountains, so they called him back, but the Cherokee country remains full of mountains to this day.

When the earth was dry and the animals came down, it was still dark, so they got the sun and set it in a track to go every day across the island from east to west, just overhead. It was too hot this way, and Tsiska’gĭlĭ’, the Red Crawfish, had his shell scorched a bright red, so that his meat was spoiled; and the Cherokee do not eat it. The conjurers put the sun another hand-breadth higher in the air, but it was still too hot. They raised it another time, and another, until it was seven handbreadths high and just under the sky arch. Then it was right, and they left it so. This is why the conjurers call the highest place Gûlkwâ’gine Di’gălûñ’lătiyûñ’, “the seventh height,” because it is seven hand-breadths above the earth. Every day the sun goes along under this arch, and returns at night on the upper side to the starting place.

There is another world under this, and it is like ours in everything—animals, plants, and people—save that the seasons are different. The streams that come down from the mountains are the trails by which we reach this underworld, and the springs at their heads are the doorways by which we enter it, but to do this one must fast and go to water and have one of the underground people for a guide. We know that the seasons in the underworld are different from ours, because the water in the springs is always warmer in winter and cooler in summer than the outer air.

When the animals and plants were first made—we do not know by whom—they were told to watch and keep awake for seven nights, just as young men now fast and keep awake when they pray to their medicine. They tried to do this, and nearly all were awake through the first night, but the next night several dropped off to sleep, and the third night others were asleep, and then others, until, on the seventh night, of all the animals only the owl, the panther, and one or two more were still awake. To these were given the power to see and to go about in the dark, and to make prey of the birds and animals which must sleep at night. Of the trees only the cedar, the pine, the spruce, the holly, and the laurel were awake to the end, and to them it was given to be always green and to be greatest for medicine, but to the others it was said: “Because you have not endured to the end you shall lose your hair every winter.”

Men came after the animals and plants. At first there were only a brother and sister until he struck her with a fish and told her to multiply, and so it was. In seven days a child was born to her, and thereafter every seven days another, and they increased very fast until there was danger that the world could not keep them. Then it was made that a woman should have only one child in a year, and it has been so ever since.

Origin of Strawberries

When the first man was created and a mate was given to him, they lived together very happily for a time, but then began to quarrel, until at last the woman left her husband and started off toward Nûñdâgûñʹyĭ, the Sun land, in the east. The man followed alone and grieving, but the woman kept on steadily ahead and never looked behind, until Uneʹ‘lănûñʹhĭ, the great Apportioner (the Sun), took pity on him and asked him if he was still angry with his wife. He said he was not, and Uneʹ‘lănûñʹhĭ then asked him if he would like to have her back again, to which he eagerly answered yes.

So Uneʹ‘lănûñʹhĭ caused a patch of the finest ripe huckleberries to spring up along the path in front of the woman, but she passed by without paying any attention to them. Farther on he put a clump of blackberries, but these also she refused to notice. Other fruits, one, two, and three, and then some trees covered with beautiful red service berries, were placed beside the path to tempt her, but she still went on until suddenly she saw in front a patch of large ripe strawberries, the first ever known. She stooped to gather a few to eat, and as she picked them she chanced to turn her face to the west, and at once the memory of her husband came back to her and she found herself unable to go on. She sat down, but the longer she waited the stronger became her desire for her husband, and at last she gathered a bunch of the finest berries and started back along the path to give them to him. He met her kindly and they went home together.

The Ball Game of the Birds and Animals

Once the animals challenged the birds to a great ballplay, and the birds accepted. The leaders made the arrangements and fixed the day, and when the time came both parties met at the place for the ball dance, the animals on a smooth grassy bottom near the river and the birds in the treetops over by the ridge. The captain of the animals was the Bear, ‘who was so strong and heavy’ that he could pull down anyone who got in his way. All along the road to the ball ground he was tossing up great logs to show his strength and boasting of what he would do to the birds when the game began. The Terrapin, too—not the little one we have now, but the great original Terrapin—was with the animals. His shell was so hard that the heaviest blows could not hurt him, and he kept rising up on his hind legs and dropping heavily again to the ground, bragging that this was the way he would crush any bird that tried to take the ball from him. Then there was the Deer, who could outrun every other animal. Altogether it was a fine company.

The birds had the Eagle for their captain, with the Hawk and the great Tlă’nuwă, all swift and strong of flight, but still they were a little afraid of the animals. The dance was over and they were all pruning their feathers up in the trees and waiting for the captain to give the word when here came two little things hardly larger than field mice climbing up the tree in which sat perched the bird captain. At last they reached the top, and creeping along the limb to where the Eagle captain sat they asked to be allowed to join in the game. The captain looked at them, and seeing that they were four-footed, he asked why they did not go to the animals, where they belonged. The little things said that they had, but the animals had made fun of them and driven them off because they were so small. Then the bird captain pitied them and wanted to take them.

But how could they join the birds when they had no wings? The Eagle, the Hawk, and the others consulted, and at last it was decided to make some wings for the little fellows. They tried for a long time to think of something that might do, until someone happened to remember the drum they had used in the dance. The head was of ground-hog skin and maybe they could cut off a corner and make wings of it. So they took two pieces of leather from the drumhead and cut them into shape for wings, and stretched them with cane splints and fastened them on to the forelegs of one of the small animals, and in this way came Tlaʹmehă, the Bat. They threw the ball to him and told him to catch it, and by the way he dodged and circled about, keeping the ball always in the air and never letting it fall to the ground, the birds soon saw that he would be one of their best men.

Now they wanted to fix the other little animal, but they had used up all their leather to make wings for the Bat, and there was no time to send for more. Somebody said that they might do it by stretching his skin, so two large birds took hold from opposite sides with their strong bills, and by pulling at his fur for several minutes they managed to stretch the skin on each side between the fore and hind feet, until they had Tewa, the Flying Squirrel. To try him the bird captain threw up the ball, when the Flying Squirrel sprang off the limb after it, caught it in his teeth and carried it through the air to another tree nearly across the bottom.

When they were all ready the signal was given and the game began, but almost at the first toss the Flying Squirrel caught the ball and carried it up a tree, from which he threw it to the birds, who kept it in the air for some time until it dropped. The Bear rushed to get it, but the Martin darted after it and threw it to the Bat, who was flying near the ground, and by his dodging and doubling kept it out of the way of even the Deer, until he finally threw it in between the posts and won the game for the birds.

The Bear and the Terrapin, who had boasted so of what they would do, never got a chance even to touch the ball. For saving the ball when it dropped, the birds afterwards gave the Martin a gourd in which to build his nest, and he still has it.

The Rattlesnake’s Vengeance

One day in the old times when we could still talk with other creatures, while some children were playing about the house, their mother inside heard them scream. Running out she found that a rattlesnake had crawled from the grass, and taking up a stick she killed it. The father was out hunting in the mountains, and that evening when coming home after dark through the gap he heard a strange wailing sound. Looking about he found that he had come into the midst of a whole company of rattlesnakes, which all had their mouths open and seemed to be crying. He asked them the reason of their trouble, and they told him that his own wife had that day killed their chief, the Yellow Rattlesnake, and they were just now about to send the Black Rattlesnake to take revenge.

The hunter said he was very sorry, but they told him that if he spoke the truth he must be ready to make satisfaction and give his wife as a sacrifice for the life of their chief. Not knowing what might happen otherwise, he consented. They then told him that the Black Rattlesnake would go home with him and coil up just outside the door in the dark. He must go inside, where he would find his wife awaiting him, and ask her to get him a drink of fresh water from the spring. That was all.

He went home and knew that the Black Rattlesnake was following. It was night when he arrived and very dark, but he found his wife waiting with his supper ready. He sat down and asked for a drink of water. She handed him a gourd full from the jar, but he said he wanted it fresh from the spring, so she took a bowl and went out of the door. The next moment he heard a cry, and going out he found that the Black Rattlesnake had bitten her and that she was already dying. He stayed with her until she was dead, when the Black Rattlesnake came out from the grass again and sai...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• A Note on the Selection of Texts
• Introduction
• Part I. Early Appalachian Literature
• Part II. Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction
• Part III. Regionalism, Local Color, and the Settlement Schools
• Part IV. Prose, Poetry, and Songs of Labor
• Part V. Appalachian Folklore
• Part VI. Modernism in Appalachian Literature
• Part VII. The Appalachian Renaissance
• Part VIII. Twenty-First-Century Appalachian Literature
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography and Permissions
• Author and Title Index