Cemeteries and the Life of a Smoky Mountain Community

Cades Cove Under Foot

Gary S. Foster, William E. Lovekamp

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030232948
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030232955
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Nordamerikanische Geschichte

In one of the few studies to draw upon cemetery data to reconstruct the social organization, social change, and community composition of a specific area, this volume contributes to the growing body of sociohistorical examinations of Appalachia. The authors herein reconstruct the Cades Cove community in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, USA, a mountain community from circa 1818 to 1939, whose demise can be traced to the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. By supplementing a statistical analysis of Cades Cove's twenty-seven cemeteries, completed as a National Park Study (#GRSM-01120), with ethnographic examination, the authors reconstruct the community in detail to reveal previously overlooked social patterns and interactions, including insight into the death culture and death-lore of the Upland South. This work establishes cemeteries as window into (proxies of) communities, demonstrating  the relevance of socio-demographic data presented by statistical and other analyses of gravestones for Appalachian Studies, Regional Studies, Cemetery Studies, and Sociology and Anthropology.

© The Author(s) 2019

Gary S. Foster and William E. LovekampCemeteries and the Life of a Smoky Mountain Communityhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23295-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. A Primer on Cades Cove

Gary S. Foster¹ and William E. Lovekamp¹

(1)

Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL, USA

Gary S. Foster (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

William E. Lovekamp

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

The ecology of Cades Cove, a geophysical feature in the Great Smoky Mountains of the Appalachian Mountain range, offered a temperate climate and an abundance of diverse, natural resources, including water, flora, and fauna that accommodated human occupation as early as 10,000 years ago. Human habitation continued throughout the prehistoric period, and the geography was subsequently occupied by Euro-American settlers beginning in the early 1800s. They occupied the land for more than 100 years, establishing the mountain community of Cades Cove until it was taken by the federal government for the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the 1930s. Many of the edifices were razed to present a National Park Service interpretation of a nineteenth-century mountain community that is now visited by 2.4 million people annually.

Keywords

Civil WarFaunaFloraHistoric settlementMigrationPark creationPrehistoric

End Abstract

Cades Cove, as place and place-name, is both natural and cultural. Cades Cove is (the result of) geology and physical geography, with a climate and an ecology that is unique, contributing to a wide diversity of flora and fauna. With the abundance of such resources, the immediate region has had human occupation, probably almost continuous, for at least the last 10,000 years. The sweep of human history in the cove continues today with nearly 2.4 million tourists and visitors annually.

Physical Environment

Cades Cove is a geophysical feature within the Great Smoky Mountains, a range within the Appalachian Mountains. The Appalachians, formed some 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period and contemporaneous with the Great Smoky Mountains, are the oldest remaining mountain system in North America. The Smoky Mountains are part of an International Biosphere Reserve and is a World Heritage Site, both UNESCO designations. The Smoky Mountains are located in northwest North Carolina and southeast Tennessee, as is the national park. Cades Cove is situated in the northwestern section of the park in Blount County, Tennessee. The cove is an upland valley or bowl, a perched limestone window, geologically, that is the result of erosion. Erosion of the Paleozoic limestone (exposed when the older Precambrian sandstone eroded) produced deep, fertile soil in the cove bottom. The cove floor elevation is about 1725 feet, with surrounding mountain peaks at 2840–5530 feet. Thus, local relief has a relative elevation of more than 3800 feet, and more than 4900 feet in the area. Cades Cove is oriented east–west and drains (branches and creeks) northeast–southwest. The cove floor is approximately 5 miles long and 2 miles wide. Two geological features in the cove are a waterfall (Abrams) and a cave (Gregory) (Houk 1993; Moore 1988).

Some areas of the Smoky Mountains, because of their elevation, are hardwood rainforests, receiving 50–80 inches of precipitation, much as heavy snow. The cove receives some 50 inches of precipitation and more than 20 inches of snow. With an average annual temperature of 55.1 ℉, it averages 35.4 ℉ in January and 72.4 ℉ in July. The average high temperature for those months is 46.0/81.7, and the average low for those months, 24.9/63.2 (Weatherbase.​com).

Flora/Fauna

The Great Smoky Mountains is one of the most diverse ecological systems in the world. The region’s 1600 species of flowering plants include over 100 species of native trees and 100 species of native shrubs. Cove hardwood forests occur at lower elevations like Cades Cove, with over 130 species of trees like yellow birch, basswood, yellow buckeye, tulip poplar, sugar maple, oak, and shagbark hickory. Beneath these hardwood canopies are redbud, dogwood, rhododendron, and mountain laurel. The forested slopes offered an acorn and nut mast that would sustain and fatten deer, bear, and later, hogs allowed to roam freely. The floor of Cades Cove is kept clear by grazing and agricultural activities or the cove would close back up with these tree species. On the higher elevations surrounding Cades Cove and beyond are northern hardwood forests because of the cooler climate. Species include American beech, white basswood, mountain maple, and striped maple. At the highest elevations are the spruce–fir forests. They are relics of the Ice Age when temperatures were too cold to support hardwoods. The two major conifer species are red spruce and Fraser fir. A flora phenomenon are balds, patches of land with trees absent. These highland meadows occur at mid-to-upper elevations. One or two are visible above the cove (Houk 1993).

The region hosts 66 species of mammals, over 240 bird species, 43 species of amphibians, 60 fish species, and 40 reptile species. Of most interest to human habitation, prehistorically and historically, are the mammals, including black bears, white-tailed deer, elk (reintroduced), and smaller mammals like rabbit and squirrel. Other mammals include bobcat, cougar, coyote, red fox, gray fox, river otter, and red wolf (some species reintroduced). Two venomous snakes are indigenous to the Smoky Mountains—the timber rattlesnake and the southern copperhead—and have been found in the park’s cemeteries (Dodd 2004; Linzey 1995).

Prehistoric Occupation

With the bounty and abundance of this ecology, human habitation was inevitable. The very first occupations, probably Paleo, have been lost in antiquity, but numerous Archaic sites (8000–1000 BCE) have been found throughout the national park. Prehistoric occupation continued into the Woodland period (1000 BCE–1000 CE), with a growing reliance on agriculture and more sedentary settlements. A prehistoric presence continued into the Mississippian period or the Pisgah phase (900–1600 CE). By the very early historic period, the Cherokee were the dominant presence in the area and were using well-established trails that went through Cades Cove (NPS 2004, 2–5). While Cades Cove proper has not been thoroughly examined archaeologically, some archaeological survey and testing has documented eleven prehistoric sites, ranging from the Early Archaic (8000–6000 BCE) to the Late Woodland (500–1000 CE; National Register of Historic Places Inventory 1977). The Mississippian period, Pisgah phase (900–1650 CE) metamorphosed into the tribes/cultures that were encountered by European explorers during the proto-historic period¹ (Chapman 2009; Guthe et al. 1985). Approximately ten miles from Cades Cove, in the Tuckaleechee Cove of the Little River valley (near what is now Townsend, Tennessee), substantial prehistoric and early historic villages existed (see Hollenbach 2015). A number of sources indicate that probably in the late 1700s, just prior to white settlement, the Cherokee established a large town in the cove along Abrams Creek and had likely maintained a presence in and through the cove for several centuries (NPS 2004, 2–5). The place name, “Cades Cove,” harkens back as early as 1794 and is attributed to a Cherokee leader named Cade (or Kade; Dunn 1988, 6). The Cherokee knew the cove as Tsiyahi, or “otter place.” A “native” presence² is further affirmed by accounts that the first settlers, having arrived too late to “put up a crop” themselves, were spared from starvation by the generosities of food from the Cherokee (Dunn 1988, 6–9).

Historic (European) Settlement and Growth

Blount County, Tennessee, was established in 1792 as a county of North Carolina, prior to Tennessee statehood in 1796. With the admission of Tennessee into statehood in 1796, westward expansion invited the inevitability of Cades Cove’s settlement by Europeans. The first sustained presence of Euro-Americans in the cove was that of John and Lucretia (or Lurena on her gravestone, known by both names in the written record) Oliver, and their young daughter, Polly, in the fall of 1818, twenty-two years after Tennessee statehood (see Image 1.1). The area was not legally available for settlement until the Calhoun Treaty was ratified in 1819, ceding lands from the Cherokee. These first settlers preempted the treaty and the land. The Oliver family, migrating from Carter County, Tennessee, some 140 miles distant, were the only permanent occupants of the cove for the next three years. An 1820 census of Cades Cove would have recorded only four free white residents, the fourth another daughter, Martha, born in the cove in 1819. However, the censuses of 1820, 1830, and 1840 identified cove residents as merely part of Blount County, and the first census to identify Cades Cove as a community of residence was in 1850. The Olivers, in their first years, maintained intermittent communication with friends in Carter County, and in 1821, were joined by several, including Joshua Jobe and his family (Dunn 1988, 7–13). The Oliver’s second cabin, constructed in the early 1820s, stands as the oldest structure in the cove.

Image 1.1

This is not the oldest stone in the cove, but marks the burials of the first settlers (Primitive Baptist Church)

Much of the early history and settlement of Cades Cove is elusive because those who took up the land often failed to file any claim for years. At the time of Cades Cove’s early settlement, the filing cost of claiming land was one dollar per acre, and some simply did not have the money to stake their claims, or to then pay taxes on those purchases. Buying land from individual owners could cost two dollars or more per acre, profit accrued as the spirit of capitalism took root in the infancy of the new nation (Dunn 1988, 7–13, 68–73).

The first legal land-grant claim (patent) recorded in Cades Cove was to William (“Fighting Billy”) Tipton in 18...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. A Primer on Cades Cove
• 2. Cades Cove as Community
• 3. Death Culture of the Upland South: A Context for Cades Cove
• 4. Cemeteries as Windows into Communities
• 5. The Cemeteries of Cades Cove
• 6. A Census of Cades Cove Through Gravestones
• 7. A Quantitative Retelling of Cades Cove’s Cemeteries
• 8. A Conclusion to the Story of Cades Cove’s Cemeteries
• 9. Cemeteries: A Reflection and Epilogue
• Back Matter