I!
129788
THE LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
FOREWORD
I SHALL always remember with a nameless thrill my
first night by a camp-fire atop the Smokies. On
the pinnacle of the Big Silence, above the dwarfed
trees hundreds of years old, but no higher than a
man's head, shaggy with moss and lichen, all roofed
by the studded canopy of the heavens, two of us sat
one memorable night in the ruddy glow of the coals,
cool winds brushing our cheeks, in the Big Stillness
of the night.
My artist companion, between pipe puffs,
shrugged his broad shoulders in characteristic fash-
ion and, jerking his thumb in the general direction of
unfortunate civilization, dryly remarked : ' I'd rather
be up here than down in the scum and muck!'
He spoke my own silent thought, as well as the
thought of many other campers who have a similar
experience. We two had arrived by way of Ekanetcl-
lec Gap (Eti'na'tu'li old spicewoocl?) just at the
closing hour of day when the sun's last rays, flashing
from a copper wheel of fire, swirled through the
purple mists of the valleys below. The tired sun-god
seemed in a hurry to get home so that he could wrap
his blankets of mists about him and retire for the
night in Usunhi'yi 'The Darkening Land' in the
west*
We hurriedly flung down our packs and raced out
to Tsistu'yi Gregory Bald (Rabbit Place) to
be in at the vanishing of day.
No artist could paint it- To do so he would need
to compete with the Master Painter using the heav-
xvi FOREWORD
ens for a canvas, the sunset and rainbow for a
palette, purple mists and winds out of the west for
brushes, and sweep space with the technique of the
Creator to limn the titanic picture across the uni-
verse.
We two watched for a few breathless moments
before the sun's fire was smothered in the ashes of
twilight. Night drops so suddenly in these altitudes
that almost before we knew it we were standing
in cool semi-darkness with sunset's embers dying
faintly in the west. Speechless, we made our way
back a mile and a half to our knapsacks in the saddle
between the two Balds, where we threw up poles for
our camping-bunk of ponchos and blankets upon a
bed of sweet fern for the night. And such a night !
Let the initiated imagine a perfect camp-fire with
wood for the gathering, roast potatoes, bacon, hot
coffee, corn-cakes, and jimmy pipes! We soon
hunted our blankets in the soothing warmth of the
coals. As I lay half asleep, half awake, in No-Man \s~
Land of dreams, a small wraith-like cloud drifted
right across our camp-fire! It came from Nowhere
and seemed bound for the same bourn, vanishing;
into the tops of the stunted beeches below. Was it
a restless soul from Ataga'hi the Cherokee en-
chanted lake under Clingman Dome; or Tsusgina'I
'The Ghost Country 1 ?
There was a soothing fry of the fire-sticks, a
sputter of an angry spark, the distant hoot of a
hunter owl, we pulled our blankets closer, and
Daybreak!
The dawn was very cool. There came mistily
spilling into the sleepy, cloud-filled valleys a soft
amber glow, becoming roseate, then golden. The
LOOKING TOWARD CLTNCJMANT DOMIC (Of)<) KlvICt)
FROM SILER'S BALD (6600 FKKT)
THE LURE OF THE
GREAT SMOKIES
BY
ROBERT LINDSAY MASON
.WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BOSTON AND NEW YORE
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1927
COPYRIGHT, IP37, BY ROBERT LINDSAY MASON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
TO THE MEMORY OF
MY FATHER
A PENNSYLVANIA COVENANTER
OK THE
DUNCAN AND RENFREW CLANS
OF OLD SCOTLAND
CONTENTS
FOREWORD xv
I. BUYING A MONOLITH SMOKY MOUNTAIN
TERRAIN i
II. 'OLD AS METHUSALUM' 17
ill. THE WILDERNESS ' THREE DAYS IN HELL ! ' 22
IV. THE NAME * SMOKY MOUNTAINS' 42
V. PROFESSOR GUYOT'S PETS 50
VI, ANGLK, SCOT, CELT 57
VIL THE BLOODY GROUND OF THE SMOKIES 62
VI I L TREKKING SKYWARD 86
IX. His CABIN His CASTLE 107
X. OLD-TIME SMOKY MOUNTAIN RIFLES AND
RIFLEMAN 135
XL THE OLD 'SMOKY' SHOOTING-MATCH 160
XII. SADDLE-BAGS, KIRE-WATER, AND WITCIIKS 177
XIII, FAMOUS HUNTICKS OK TIIIC GREAT SMOKIES 210
XIV. ABE COGGLK'S TARIKK 234
XV. A RAID IN THE SMOIUKS 248
XVL OLD CHEROKEE TALES AND LEGENDS 262
XVII. THK VISITOR 297
ILLUSTRATIONS
LOOKING TOWARD CLINGMAN DOME FROM SILER'S
BALD Frontispiece
'VAGUE SHADOWS BEGAN TO FORM': SOUTHDOWN
SHEEP IN FOG OF EARLY MORNING ON GREGORY
BALD xvi
MAP OF THE NATIONAL FORESTS OF THE SOUTHERN
APPALACHIANS IN RELATION TO PRINCIPAL MOTOR
HIGHWAYS 2
COLONEL W. H. THOMAS (WILL-USDI) 6
From a photograph of 1858 reproduced in the Nineteenth
Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology
MOSS-COVERED ROCKS BELOW RAINBOW FALLS ON
THE MILL CREEK TRAIL TO MOUNT LE CONTE 12
Photograph by Thompson Company
HUGGINS HELL FROM ALUM CAVE TRAIL TO MOUNT
LK CONTE 18
Photograph by Thompson Company
RAINBOW FALLS IN WINTER 22
Photograph by Thompson Company
BETWEEN THE CLOUDS: FROM SAND MYRTLE TOP 30
Photograph by Thompson Company
SNOW-CAPPED PEAKS OF MOUNT LE CONTE 38
Photograph by Thompson Company
GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAIN RANGE BETWEEN THUN-
DKRHEAD AND GREGORY BALD FROM CADE'S COVE
MOUNTAIN 42
Photograph by Thompson Company
x ILLUSTRATIONS
MAP SHOWING THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN NORTH
CAROLINA AND TENNESSEE ALONG THE TOPS OF
THE 'GREAT IRON OR SMOKY MOUNTAINS' AS SUR-
VEYED BY A JOINT COMMISSION OF THE Two STATES
IN 1821 48
From the original
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAIN RANGE FROM GREG-
ORY BALD 52
Photograph by Thompson Company
'UNCLE' JOHN MYERS, OF TUCKALEECIIEE COVE: A
FINE TYPE OF ' DUTCH ' SETTLER OF THE SMOKIES 58
MAP OF THE OVERKILL CHEROKEE SETTLEMENT ON
THE LITTLE TENNESSEE RIVER AT THE FOOT OF
THE GREAT SMOKIES 70
From the Memoirs of Lieut. Henry Timberlake (1762) in
the C. M. McClung Historical Collection
THE DANIEL BOON TREE, SHOWING INSCRIPTION 76
From an old photograph
SAND MYRTLE AND BALSAM FIR ON SAND MYRTLE
TOP, MOUNT LE CONTE 88
Photograph by Thompson Company
UNCLE HENRY STINNETT AND HIS 'WOMAN' 98
A MOUNTAIN WOMAN IN HOMESPUN 98
MOUNTAIN-PEAKS ABOVE THE EARLY-MORNING
CLOUDS FROM THE TRAIL TO GREGORY BALD 104
Photograph by Thompson Company
A TYPICAL MOUNTAINEER'S CABIN 108
Photograph by Thompson Company
POSING FOR HER PHOTOGRAPH WITH THE FLAX-
WHEEL 114
ILLUSTRATIONS xi
PRIMITIVE MOUNTAIN GRIST-MILL ON MILL CREEK
NEAR MOUNT LE CONTE 118
Photograph by Thompson Company
SUGAR-MILL IN THE SUGAR LANDS NEAR ELKMONT 126
A Row OF ' BEE-GUMS ' 126
PREPARING MOUNTAIN HONEY FOR THE MARKET 130
WILD-GOOSEBERRY-PICKERS, CADE'S COVE 130
'UNCLE SAMMY' BURCHFIELD AND HIS JAMES BEAN
FLINTLOCK 140
IMPLEMENTS OF THE SMOKY MOUNTAIN GUNSMITHS,
USED FOR MAKING BULLETS, RIFLING GUNS,
ETC. 152
CLARINDY STINNETT, BILL STINNETT'S WOMAN 156
THE 'LONG HUNTER ' AND THE KING'S MOUNTAIN
RIFLEMAN ARE HERE IN THESE CABINS 160
UNCLE LEVI TRENTHAM WITH HIS BEAR-TRAP AND
FAMOUS ARMSTRONG RIFLE 172
'BLACK BILL' WALKER AND HIS SIX-FOOT RIFLE
'OLE DEATH' 172
SEQUOYA (SiKAwY?) 178
JOHN Ross (GITWISGUWI) 178
PREACHER JOHN ON WEEKDAYS 190
THE WELL-THUMBED BIBLE OF THE MOUNTAINEER:
UNCLE HKNRY STINNETT 198
BLACK: BILL'S FATHER AND MOTHER 198
xil ILLUSTRATIONS
BEAR-HUNTERS AT 'BLOW-DOWN' IN THE SMOKIES
UNDER THE ' DEVIL'S COURTHOUSE ' 2 1
JOE COLE AND HIS 'BEAR-PEN* AT INDIAN GAP 210
THE AUTHOR'S 450-PouND BEAR 220
A SPIKE-HORN BUCK KILLED AT THE LOWER END OF
THE SMOKIES 230
BEN PARTON AND THE Two PLOTT BEAR DOGS
4 JOHN ' AND * CHARLIE ' 230
TALL MOUNTAIN FERNS 234
Photograph by Thompson Company
'ABE' AND HIS 'HOSSES' 238
WORKING ON THE i PUBLIC WORKS' 238
'SNAKING' LOGS, A MOUNTAINEER'S JOB 242
A TRAM-CAR 242
1 FIRE ON BRESHY ! ' 246
A 'FIRE SCALD,' THE GRAVEYARD OF THE TREES 246
REVENUERS WATCHING A MOONSHINERS' TRAIL IN
THE 'ENEMY MOUNTAINS' OP THE CHEROKEES 250
'MASH-RAKES,' RETORT, WORM, ETC., EXHIBITED
BY 'CEPH' REMINE 250
THE 'SQUIRREL-HUNTERS * PUT TO WORK BY BLANK-
ENSHIP 256
A STILL WITH A 'THUMP-KEG,' A MODERN CON-
TRAPTION THAT DOUBLE-DISTILLS AT ONE OPERA-
TION 256
ILLUSTRATIONS xiii
ANOTHER VIEW OF THE * SQUIRREL-HUNTERS' f STILL 260
THE 'SQUIRREL-HUNTERS' LOOK ON HELPLESSLY
WHILE THEIR STILL GOES UP IN SMOKE 260
OLD SWIMMER (AYUN'INI) ; THE UNCLE REMUS OF
THE CHEROKEES 266
ANNIE Ax (SADAYI) 266
'SOURWOOD MOUNTAIN' 286
ALUM CAVE CLIFF 304
Photograph by Thompson Company
GOING TO THE STORE IN THE ' COVE' 310
THE HOUSE THAT JACK (HUFF) BUILT 314
Photograph by Thompson Company
TROUT STREAM AND WATER-POWER MIDDLE'
PRONG OF LITTLE RIVER 318
Photograph by Thompson Company, reproduced by cour-
tesy of the Knoxvillc Chamber of Commerce
Except as otherwise indicated the illustrations are from
photographs by the author.
FOREWORD xvii
sun poured his shining yellow treasure over the dis-
tant azure mountains and the fog-sea of silver and
violet shot with gold began to stir dreamily and to
rise. All too soon a mist enveloped our camp. Out
of it came the silvery tinkle of a sheep-bell. Vague
shadows began to form and a magnificent flock of
Southdowns came across the dew-wet grass to in-
spect us,
The whole flock nosed our gunny sacks and cu-
riously examined the ashes of our dead camp-fire.
One black-faced ram seemed more inquisitive than
the rest. My bedfellow rubbed his sleepy eyes and
sat up.
1 Those sheep want salt ! ' he stated laconically and
lay down again.
We soon found this to be true, for presently two
stalwart mountaineers with drooping hat brims came
out of the fog toward us carrying a bag of salt, the
ever-present gun over the shoulder of one of them*
The fine sheep gathered confidently about the two
herders as they put the salt upon jagged boulders
cropping out of the fog-laden grass. The men nodded
pleasantly to us and after their task was done came
over to chat. There ensued tales of feuds between
cattlemen of bygone days when mountaineers shot
each other for the privilege of dominating this de-
sirable feeding range above the clouds.
As we sat upon the rocks talking, the brightening
sun caught the soft woolly backs of the sheep and
turned them to fleece of gold. All was wrapt in
the unreal mist of morning like the setting of an im-
mense pastoral painting. 'My God! 1 exclaimed my
artist companion under his breath, 'who could paint
it?' We stood dumb with the wonder of it.
xviii FOREWORD
After our two mountaineer friends had departed
to the other side of the divide headed for the 'store
in the cove/ we followed those pesky sheep most of
the day trying futilely to photograph them, but at
every flutter of the hand or menace of the camera
they would scamper far afield. We finally succeeded
in a meager way.
At dusk our two North Carolina friends of the Big
Silence returned from their errand. As we stood
there in the twilight, a small flock of ravens flew
overhead bound for their roost in Alum Cave up the
range near Le Conte. Raising his gun, the younger
mountaineer fired at the somber birds before his
friend could restrain him. Down fluttered one of
the great grosbeaked creatures like an ill-omened
blot out of gathering dusk.
The elder man seemed very much agitated, ' Don't
never do that!' he protested vehemently; 'don't ye
know hit's bad luck?'
The great, black bird fluttered helplessly about
the ground and the dog which accompanied the two
men attacked it, but was called off. The raven
(Corvus corax principalis) with immense threatening
beak pluckily stood its ground. It would have
measured five feet from tip to tip. It proved to be
only stunned, and, stumbling awkwardly to its wings,
it again took flight to rejoin its comrades.
* Don't never do that ag'in, boy!' the elder moun-
tain man scolded. 'Hit's seven year o' bad luck.
They're human jest like we air, pickin' up what (hey
c'n git hyar and thar and don't never do nobody no
harm!'
As the two turned to go to their herdsman's cabin
down the mountain-side, we thought this incident
FOREWORD xix
thoroughly exemplified the life of the Smoky Moun-
taineer of the Big Silence. This man had a fellow
feeling for his comrade of the wilderness. Similarly,
the bird also was a creature of Nature, to take with-
out grumbling what she had to give with good will
or ill abundance never; only a scant sufficiency to
keep life within the body. Enduring cold, hunger,
hardship, silently and without complaining, he be-
lieved in a God who was hard perhaps at times,
but just; who dispatched him on errands of mercy
sometimes even as the raven was sent to keep Elijah
from starving. Like the bird of the wilderness, he
was Nature-wise, profiting in mercy from experience;
wary always of the wolf's attack; taking whatever
crumbs fell from Nature's table, thankful even for
those.
R. L. M.
THE LURE OF THE
GREAT SMOKIES
CHAPTER I
BUYING A MONOLITH
SMOKY MOUNTAIN TERRAIN
WHEN the National Parks Commission began to cast
about in 1925 for the location of a National Park in
the eastern half of the United States, the Great
Smoky Mountains, practically unknown since the
creation of the world, were found to measure up to
National Park standards, which are parentheti-
cally speaking very high. It might be stated here
that the National Parks Commission is not seeking
to reserve 'picnic grounds/ but rather to establish
natural museums of one sort or another for the edu-
cational benefit and cultivation of our people*
Being compelled to discontinue three other parks
which did not measure up to the high standards
required by the Parks System, the Commission had
to find substitutes, preferably in the Central East.
The Great Smokies seemed to meet the require-
ments as also did the Virginia Shenandoahs.
But when the Great Smoky Mountains came under
their direct attention, after a thorough inspection
the Commission was amazed to find mountains of
such prodigious base altitude with all the flora and
fauna indigenous to their zone up to the compara-
2 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
tive latitude of Canada, actually within the thickly
populated center of the eastern half of the United
States.
The Commission, whose ultimate head was Mr.
Hubert M. Work, Secretary of the Interior, and
Mr. Robert Sterling Yard, Executive Secretary of
National Parks, was inspired with the idea of segre-
gating the Great Smoky Mountains as a National
Park. Mr. Work appointed as his personal Com-
mittee of selection Congressman H. W. Temple of
Pennsylvania, chairman; Colonel Glenn S. Smith,
secretary; William C Gregg, vice-chairman; Harlan
P. Kelsey, and Major W. A. Welch, of the National
Forestry Commission. But, as the Government
never spends a red cent for the purchase of National
Parks, the people must furnish the money. Accord-
ingly, as the State Line separating North Carolina
arid Tennessee, established by deed of cession to the
United States as territory south of the Ohio Fcl >ru-
ary 25, 1790, but not officially surveyed until 1821,
ran down the watershed of the whole sixty-five-mile
length of the Smokies, the burden of the initial ex-
pense fell upon the people of these two neighboring
States.
The State Line established one hundred and five
years ago was fixed to settle forever interminable
land disputes and lawsuits which had been initi-
ated by various corporations owing to discrepancies
caused by faulty and insufficient surveys previous to
this time. A joint commission was appointed by both
States, with their surveyors, which made a complete
and final survey to establish a permanent line, be-
ginning at the end of the line run by McDowell,
Vance, and Matthews in 1799 at the Cataloochee
BUYING A MONOLITH 3
Turnpike Rock at the head of the Smokies, and
ending on the line separating the States of North
Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. The Smoky
Mountain line ended at its sixty-fifth mile-post
blaze on a beech tree in the mouth of a creek on the
south side of the Little Tennessee River.
On this joint commission of 1821 representing
Tennessee were Alexander Smith, Isaac Allen, and
Simeon Perry, with Robert Armstrong for surveyor.
North Carolina was represented by Commissioners
James Mebanc, Montfort Stokes, and Robert Love,
with William Davenport, surveyor. The line survey
was completed and subscribed to in August, 1821.
It forever ended lawsuits which had to do with
supposed erroneous allocation of an elusive water-
shed the famous appellate case, for instance, of
Hugh Stevenson vs. William Fain which established
the good intentions of the commissioners appointed.
The map made by these commissioners was dis-
covered by accident in the archives at Nashville in
1896.
A preliminary estimate of the approximate cost of
initiating the purchase of such lands as were de-
sirable for the proposed National Park was found to
be in the neighborhood of $1,200,000. Owing to the
indefatigable energy of Colonel David C. Chapman,
of Knoxville, Tennessee, Chairman of the Smoky
Mountain Conservation Association, and W. P.
Davis, president of the latter organization, ably as-
sisted by Mark Squires, of the North Carolina Park
Commission, $1,066,693.91 was raised by school chil-
dren, bankers, business men, religious and social or-
ganizations, and the general public in less than
eleven months.
4 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
On the strength of an unusual popular interest in
the project, Congress was asked to pass an enabling
act to establish a National Park in this region. On
May I2th a bill for this purpose was introduced in
the Senate by H. W. Temple, Senator from Pennsyl-
vania, Chairman of the Southern Appalachian
Parks Commission, which allowed a minimum of
150,000 acres to be acquired initially with a maxi-
mum of 704,000 acres as a limit, at which time the
Government would assume the tract as a National
Park and administer the same under appropriations
available to the Parks Commission for fire trails,
roads, and general supervision. This enabling act
also provided for national solicitation of sufficient
funds to purchase the maximum acreage.
Ten days later, May 22d, President Coolidge signed
the enabling act making it a law, after the unanimous
consent of Congress, which had adopted the Senate
bill, the House substituting the latter for its own to
expedite its passage.
Of Tennessee's gift of over a million her State
legislature voted to pay for two thirds of the Town-
send tract acreage of 78,000, including many of the
highest tops of the Smokies, Knoxville paying one
third. February 23, 1927, the North Carolina legis-
lature voted two millions to be applied to the ultimate
purchase of acreage for the proposed National Park
provided Tennessee procures its equivalent either in
money or lands. Even if all the Townsend tract was
not available to the high standard set by National
Park authorities, the remaining Townsend acreage
as a state park would act as excellent 'buffer lands/
or area for reforestation, to the proposed Park nat-
ural museum. The spirit of enthusiasm displayed by
BUYING A MONOLITH 5
both States has been excellent. North Carolina also
vested the right of eminent domain to condemn
such lands as were necessary for the proposed Na-
tional Park. At a meeting of Park authorities early
in February, 1927, the two governors of Tennessee
and North Carolina, Austin Peay and Angus Mc-
Lane respectively, participating, the ultimate acre-
age astride the State line was established at 428,000,
with privilege of adding any future desirable acreage
necessary to the maximum of 704,000 as limited by
the bill signed by President Coolidge. Much credit
has been due Dr. B. O. Bryson, of North Carolina,
and Horace Kephart, the author, and altogether it
has not been easy sailing for the Park promoters of
the people at large, or for the citizens of North Caro-
lina and Tennessee who started a momentous move-
ment to buy a whole mountain range and present it
to the citizens, not only of the United States, but of
the world.
If an arrow, representing a scale length of four
hundred miles, were laid from each point of the
compass on a map of the eastern half of the United
States, with each barb touching the confines of the
Great Smoky Mountain National Park, this tre-
mendous mountain range of thirty-seven peaks in
all seventeen of which are not .identified accord-
ing to Professor Arnold Guyot's surveys in 1856-60
would lie equidistant from the Great Lakes, the
Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mis-
sissippi.
In these days, when easy automobile travel shifts
the transient population at will, it can be seen that
with good roads the Great Smoky Mountain
monolith is within reach of all citizens in the eastern
6 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
half of the United States. What has been available
for only a comparative few to enjoy in the past can
now be made accessible to all even to a much greater
extent than the wonders of the Rockies have ever been.
The reason for the prevalent astounding ignorance
regarding this mighty mountain range is easily de-
duced from topographical and historical study.
The Parks Commission cannot be wholly blamed.
The mountains have existed since creation, but, like
Mahomet's, the Great Smokies could not come to
the Commission, so, perforce, the Commission must
come to the Smokies! At least the knowledge of their
tremendous significance must do so.
The most vital reason for ignorance concerning
this unique mountain range has been due to the fact
of its utter inaccessibility. There has been only one
road over the Smokies during their entire history,
and this an imperfect one built merely as a make-
shift. Other traces and trails were worn by the
moccasined feet of Cherokees and flintlock gunmen
for four hundred years. Woe to him who should lose
his way therein which he often did.
Colonel W. H. Thomas Will Usdi (Little Will),
as the Cherokees lovingly called him was adopted
when an orphan by one of their counsellor chiefs,
Youna-guska (Drowning Bear) , and was made chief
upon the death of the latter at the Indian's sugges-
tion. Thomas was placed in charge of Cherokee
affairs at the Yellow Hill Reservation, North
Carolina, by the United States Government in
1841. This little remnant of the Cherokee Nation,
after the removal to the Indian Territory in 1838,
numbered only about 1220 souls. The removal was
conducted in such a vicious and disgraceful manner
BUYING A MONOLITH 7
that it was no wonder that the white chief turned
against his Government and adopted the cause of
the Secessionists upon the outbreak of the Civil War.
He resigned his position as government agent at
the Qualla Reservation in 1861 to join the Con-
federate cause, and, as a strategic measure to hold
the wavering Cherokees who were offered bribes of
all sorts to desert their ' Little Will, 1 he employed the
total number of fighting men about six hundred
to build the only road that has ever spanned the
backbone of the Smokies. This road was built at
Indian Gap above the headwaters of Little Pigeon
River at an elevation of 5317 feet. It was an im-
possible grade from its very inception, and during
the sixty-odd years of abandonment since that time
it has fallen into such disuse that now only a trace of
it remains, and this is difficult of negotiation even on
horseback. 1
There has never been any other road over the
Smokies except bear- and man-made trails. Only
travelers afoot could traverse its steeps from the
Tennessee side of the divide or from the North
Carolina slopes. The sinuous trails worn knee-deep
in some cases by Indians were precarious enough at
their best to the uninitiated, and often misguided
wayfarers vanished forever in the intricate maze
never to return again. It may be that their restless
souls arc yet wandering in Ataga'hi, the Cherokee
enchanted lake somewhere between Bradley's Fork
and Eagle Creek in the cliffs under Clingman Dome
a lake no living man has ever seen !
* In connection with the building of this road an interesting inci-
dent IB told in another part of this volume concerning the capture
and torture of a white man named Nealy and an Indian who re-
vealed the location of a lead mine on the Hurricane.
8 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
Geologically, the Great Smoky Mountain Range
is an archaic-based monolith sixty-five miles in
length. Its integral composition is about as perma-
nent as can exist against erosion, that formidable
enemy of the exposed mountain peak. A composition
of crystalline rock topped with deep humus and
luxuriant vegetation guarantees the peaks of the
Smokies the minimum of effacement by the ele-
ments.
Ninety per cent of the rocks composing the
Smokies are quartz conglomerate; the remainder are
slate or blue limestone conglomerate. With a slate
base, as at the headwaters of Little Pigeon River at
Indian Gap, which is probably a mile In depth
perhaps more erosion reaches down to archaic,
the oldest in the world. These crystalline rocks arc
the result either of sediments that have changed to
slate or of schists that have gone through various
stages of metamorphosis.
The igneous rocks, such as granite diabcse or rose
quartz, which were solidified while in a molten con-
dition, are often exposed, as in broken-topped folds
on Miry Ridge, an offshoot paralleling and imping-
ing on the big ridge. Toward Guyot, the eastern
peaks of the Smokies are quartz crystalline rocks
along the top of the divide and also mica-bearing
conglomerates which have been squeezed or boiled
while under terrific pressure. Great 'graybacks'
graywacke? clutter up the ravines and block the
mountain-sides where erosion and freezing and
lightning have chipped them from the great blocks
above. But even these monster boulders some of
them twice the size of a large house and their
original mortises, are deeply covered with giant
BUYING A MONOLITH 9
moss, laurel, and rhododendron in Nature's en-
deavor to effect a pleasing ensemble by covering up
the destruction caused by her greatest enemy
erosion. Great beds of sedimentary character,
formed entirely of the shells of ancient sea animals,
compose the rest of the geological depository of the
Great Smokies. Where the shore line of this ancient
sea that deposited the crustaceans was originally
cannot be ascertained, but that tremendous up-
thrust required to lift a mountain range from its
depths was cataclysmic enough to melt some of the
mountain rocks like butter. Ancient crustaceans
are occasionally found deep in unfrequented gorges
of the Smokies.
Like Neptune, the Smokies must have emerged
dripping wet and covered with barnacles and sea-
weed. Slips and faults caused by this eruption have
left most of the folds and plane strata that face north-
west on the Tennessee side tilted upward at an angle
of from twenty to sixty degrees. This fact alone
accounts for the abundant retention of moisture on
the Tennessee slopes where springs abound and
canteens arc a superfluous article of the hiker's
equipment. Every 'Bald' and every peak has its
spring sometimes two, as at Double Spring in the
Narrows east of Siler's Bald, where only fifty feet
apart the twin springs at the top of the divide send
their waters toward the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf
of Mexico respectively!
On Miry Ridge, at an elevation of 4900 feet, the
igneous quartz fold is broken and worn at its apex so
that the outer rims hold moisture which transforms
the collected deep humus into a mire and acts as a
great vase to hold the most magnificent display of
io LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
flame azalea which it has been the fortune of the
author to behold. An old gold mine map, left by a
man upon his deathbed, describes this * trace' as a
1 Black Mud Hole '!
To the extremely siliceous nature of its rock com-
position is accredited the physical endurance of the
Smokies. At the eastern end around Guyot this
siliceous material forms several peaks over six
thousand feet high, and in a few instances, as at
1 White Rock/ an outcropping of quartz about twelve
miles west of Big Pigeon Gap, the white conglomer-
ate can be seen above the tree-tops only at rare
intervals by travelers along the top. This quartz has
some narrow veins of gold which have been changed
from their original condition until now gold is found
only in small quantities, as in the upper waters of
Little River near Elkmont. A miner can barely pan
enough gold to keep him from starving while a vein
opened and analyzed on the farm of Levi Trentham
at Elkmont was too poor to justify mining, bringing
in the assay only about $1.27 per ton of rock. A
little panning has been done on Abram's Creek in
Cade's Cove also.
Thunderhead slate, Clingman granite, and Cade's
Cove conglomerate of sandstone and graywacke all
tower into tremendous buttes and have changed
very little since the beginning of time. In fact the
entire composition of the Smoky Range is a guaran-
tee of Nature against any progressive efTacement by
erosion for ages yet to come.
All of the soils on the Great Smokies are deep and
strong even over the high peaks and gaps. They are
mostly brown and black loamy clays and the loams
support a strong growth of plants able to stand the
BUYING A MONOLITH 11
cold due to altitude. On the erosive soils that are
washed from this formation we find the heaviest
growth of timber well supported, and as the f eld-
spathic beds decay soonest they produce the excel-
lent fertility of the soil, while the more siliceous
beds remain firm and unweathered.
The basic foundation of the Smoky Mountains is
a terrible, giant monolith of varied conglomerate
sixty-five miles long, of rather forbidding counte-
nance when viewed in the more serious and lonely
aspects of Nature, such as storm, frozen fog, or
thunder-cloud. It is then that the beholder is rather
estranged from intimacy with the sixty-five miles of
solid rock, buttressed and braced with its cross-
and counter-ridges countless in number, clothed in
the abundant garments of soil and tree and shrub,
when its serene moments of vast benignity and
grandeur are for the moment withdrawn or veiled in
a more forbidding presentment.
The Smokies have few outliers on the Tennessee
exposure, but what few do occur are the magnificent
picturesque rims of upland coves that spread their
peaceful expanses right up to the feet of the towering
peaks. Cade's Cove is one of these at an altitude of
approximately twenty-three thousand feet between
the outlier Rich Mountain and the Smokies; this
cove is seven hundred feet higher than Tuckaleechee
Cove and lies nearer the big peaks. Cade's Cove
was the temporary home, years ago, of Charles
Egbert Craddock, famous author of 'In the Ten-
nessee Mountains.' It is one of the prettiest spots in
the Smokies and according to tradition was owned
by an Indian by the name of Cade.
Sugar Cove is another obscure cove, little known,
12 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
which lies right up under Thunderhead and the
Gregory Balds off Fork Ridge, at an elevation of
about four thousand feet. Only two families occu-
pying a single cabin lived there beneath the towering
hills at the time of the author's last visit several
years ago. Other 'coves' arc Emcrt's Cove, Wear's
Cove, Miller's Cove, etc.
The occurrence of the cove formation is not so
prevalent upon the gradually sloping contours of
North Carolina, as these billow away into shapes of
ever-receding and countering ridges which leave lit-
tle room for those odd little plateaus called 'coves/
as North Cove, North Carolina, which are indeed
picturesque little havens of rest and isolation,
barred from the disturbing activity of the world,
where primitive customs are still carried on with all
the vigor and interest of frontier days. The type of
people also belongs to days that are a hundred years
past and may never return again.
Abruptly off 'Bullhead 7 and Lc Contc and the
Saw Tooth Mountains lies Gatlinburg, in a larger
cove, which has had all the business activity of a
prosperous little mountain town since the discovery
of its peak, Le Conte, within the last few years.
At Alum Cave 4917 feet elevation on the
route to Le Conte from the headwaters of Little
Pigeon, are reniform masses of dark gray sandstone
and conglomerate containing pyrites. Alum and
epsom salts are deposited by trickling streams of
water. At the time of Dr. Safford's (State Geologist
for Vanderbilt University) visit in the summer of
1855 his party suffered extremely from the cold at
night, although it was August, and he states that
'there was a wagonload of each of the salts epsom
MOSS-COVICR1CI) ROCKS JJKLOW RAINBOW FALLS ON THE
MILL CRKKK TRAIL TO MOUNT JLK CONTJG
BUYING A MONOLITH 13
and alum at either end of the cave or rock house.
Lenman also gives a similar description in 1856. At
the present time there is only a small amount of the
salts, as hikers keep it from collecting in any ap-
preciable amount. Alum Cave was discovered by a
Cherokee chief, Youna-guska, who trailed a bear to
it. The mountain formations around Alum Cave
and Rainbow Falls remind the climber very vividly
that he is approaching immense volcanic slopes. He
often finds himself precariously balanced upon the
knife-like edges of the main divide on the State Line,
as at 'The Narrows/ where he is in immediate dan-
ger of sliding off into a state of dissolution, or disil-
Jusion, as well as into the State of North Carolina
or Tennessee or both, either or ether!
In the Saw Tooth Mountains eastward toward thfe
waters of Big Pigeon one finds the most grotesque
Chapes of all the Smoky Range. Especially is this
true of all peaks east of the Grass Patch and New
pound Gap, where the State highway survey for a
six per cent grade is now made, to cleave the back-
bone of the main divide a few miles east of Thomas's
old Indian Gap road built by Cherokees during the
Civil War. All of these volcanic peaks were meas-
ured with great care by Professor Arnold Guyot, of
Princeton, as were the remaining mountains and
gaps clear to the waters of the Little Tennessee at
the Western end-
Guyot was a Swiss Alpine glacier scientist who
game to this country in 1841 on account of political
disturbances. He lived as a humble tutor in Paris
during the years of 1835-39. Four years later he was
heading scientific papers before the Smithsonian
Institution, which were translated as he read. His
14 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
readings before the Academy of Sciences attracted a
great deal of comment. In 1855 he accepted the
chair of Geography and Geology in the College of
New Jersey at Princeton, married the daughter of
the Governor of New Jersey, and made his subse-
quent home in the United States. Four of his sum-
mer vacations were spent in the study of the Unaka
and Smoky Mountains. His Tennessee friend
Buckley named one of the most prominent peaks of
the Smoky Range after the friend of the Confeder-
acy, Joseph Le Conte, who was chemist at Charles-
ton for the Secessionists during the Civil War and
later went to the University of California as geolo-
gist. Guyot also accepted one of the peak names
as a courtesy from S. B. Buckley, who conferred the
same courtesy upon Dr. Safford, State Geologist at
Vanderbilt University, naming the peak north of
Le Conte 'Mount Safford/ besides accepting the re-
turn courtesy for himself from his friends. The
exact location of Mount Buckley given by Guyot,
however, is not known.
Here in these strange mountains that had such a
peculiar fascination for the scientists of that day,
the adventurous mountain-climber sees the eyrie of
the great golden eagle and hears the weird cry of
their young far above the verdantly clad cliffs be-
yond possibility even of closer inspection. If he ven-
tures too near, he is in danger of a vicious attack by
the great winged parent birds, who do not hesitate
to make an onslaught against anything on two legs
or four.
Engineer J. T. Holt, of Knoxville, who probably
knows more about every foot of the Smoky Moun-
tain terrain than any living man, once beat off an
BUYING A MONOLITH 15
attack by the giant birds while crawling under the
rhododendron on Mount Le Conte in order to make
a survey. He attributes his escape to the matted
mass of undergrowth which protected him. The
eagle that swooped at him rushed through the air
with the speed and roar of an express train, but could
not get at him owing to the protecting bush. No
more fitting place could have been selected by the
king of birds than this 'heir of 'slicks' and 'lettuce-
beds' as all mountaineers term such tangles.
Going westward into Porter's Gap, New Found
Gap, and Mount Mingus, the mountain-climber
gets into a more comfortable expanse of mountain
terrain. From here to the farthest extremity at
Gregory Bald, forty miles away, the linking ridges
are nearly as high as the peaks they connect and
their altitudes are never less than four thousand
feet! This altitudinal rule of high connecting
ridges was a source of comment by the scientist
Guyot as being exceptional, and this rule varies only
slightly enough at New Found Gap to let the State
highway through above the Grass Patch on a six per-
cent grade. For the most part the remainder of the
back of the Smokies is practically level for moun-
tains.
All of these combined facts of inaccessibility, high
approach, and the limitless tangle of undergrowth
are responsible for the complete isolation of this
primitive wilderness, practically unknown except to
a few hardy mountain-climbers, bear-hunters, and
scientists.
Little did anybody, years ago, anticipate that the
people of two States, North Carolina and Tennes-
see, would ever become so aroused over the values
16 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
of this wilderness, artistic, beautiful, and of scientific
interest, that they would contemplate buying a whole
mountain range with its environs reaching from Bry-
son City, North Carolina, to Sevierville, Tennessee,
and from Big Pigeon on the northeast to the Little
Tennessee on the southwest, comprising in its origi-
nal maximum Park estimate about 740,000 acres.
In this, the dream of the tragic, fate-ridden
Cherokee, whose blood, with that of the early white
settlers, stains every foot of the soil of the Smokies,
may hereafter come to a realization, and the moun-
tains become the 'happy hunting ground' of his
vision.
Many waters rush down the deep gorges and
flowered gulfs of the Smokies, spilling busily over
their mossy, rounded boulders and churning their
noisy froth through deep ravines that rarely see the
light of the Nund-a-yali. Although none of them
cleaves this Titanic rock garden for sixty-five miles,
they furnish power for many tiny primitive grist
mills. On each side of the precipitous divide they
send their waters onward toward the Atlantic and the
Gulf of Mexico respectively, passing through many
cities and villages.
Buttressed and braced mightily against the cease-
less wear of time by flinty peaks on both sides, full of
the wealth of flower, tree, and shrub in all their
beauty, these mountains sweep eastward as far as the
eye can reach. To the westward the deep abutments,
almost a mile high, tower over the Tennessee coves,
and then drop sheer to the peaceful little high-lying,
shut-in valleys where the quiet smoke of the humble
mountaineer's cabin threads upward, secure in their
confident majesty of seclusion.
CHAPTER II
'OLD AS METHUSALUM!'
WHEN I asked Bill Stinnett, one of my mountaineer
friends, how old he thought the Smokies were, he
squinted a critical eye upward to where the jagged
blue skyline met the clouds, bit off a fresh chew
of home-made twist, and dryly remarked, 'Old
Smoky? Wai, I dunno. She mought be older f n Me-
thusalum ! '
As a matter of record, the Great Smoky Moun-
tains were 5095 years and THREE DAYS old not in-
cluding SUNDAY when Methuselah was prattling
about his father Enoch's knees! If the reader doubts
this quaint statement of my friend of the big hills,
let him read his Bible or his Josephus.
The Smokies were hoary with age when the Rocky
Mountains were mewling infants in the lap of
Mother Nature- The THREE DAYS may have been
thousands, even millions, of years in length or
not it matters little. We know at least that the
twenty-four-hour day could not have begun until
the sun and moon were created on the FOURTH
DAY, and perhaps even then, a DAY may have
measured twenty-four years or more. As * Preacher
John' Stinnett, of Greenbriar Cove, used to say,
' My guess is as good as your'n, an', contrary-wise,
I am jest as much entitled to my guess as you are
to your'n !'
Enough to know that ' In the beginning God cre-
ated/
There are only four books which we can consult
18 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
for the verification of the great age of the Smokies:
the Bible, Josephus, Cherokee tradition or myths,
and the Book of Nature which has many distinctly
printed leaves.
The abundant geological conglomerate formation
of the Smoky Mountains has one of the oldest ar-
chaic forms of bedrock known that belonging to
the very Genesis of geology archeozoic layers
to be read from the bottom upward. Metamor-
phosed sediments exist here as well as those caused
by terrific heat and boiling. The intense heat at
some prehistoric age was brought about by a cat-
aclysmic upthrust of archaic origin. The immense
beds of calciform rock of sedimentary history, re-
vealing an* ancient sea full of mollusks and marine
crustaceans, are plentiful ir the foothills.
If one examines closely the flinty scarps of any one
of the very few cliffs which he finds exposed in the
Great Smokies in the deepest and most unfrequent
ravines, and takes the trouble to scrape off the lichens
with his penknife, he will discover sealed there for-
ever in a flinty sarcophagus the concentric con-
volutions of barnacles of the Cambrian age of the
Paleozoic era. These were deposited in, or com-
posed, the limestone beds that lay at the bottom of
the sea at one time when the Smokies were covered
with water, before the Creator commanded them
to come forth from the face of the deep, which was
'without form and void.'
When as a boy the author saw a prehistoric
cephalopod now in the Smithsonian Institution at
Washington which his father had discovered in a
loose pile of crumbling shale or disintegrated slate,
on the side of one of these historic foothills, he could
OLD AS METHUSALUM 19
not realize then, even in the wildest childish fancy,
that a plesiosaur had probably snapped at this same
sea animal, or hydrazoons that floated on the pre-
historic sea around the Smokies. Possibly a pter-
odactyl with web wings on his little fingers and el-
bows, on a pleasant evening on Le Conte in pre-
historic days, had snapped his fanged jaws at
similar bugs before some cave-man's hole-in-a-cliff !
When bats were as large as airplanes it must have
been some heyday of a time in the Smokies when a
mosquito got after a man! But there are no mos-
quitoes in the Smokies at present, only gnats. But
even a gnat on the pterodactyl scale must have at-
tained the size of a bumble bee and an elephant
Kama'ma u'tanu, 'Big butterfly/ as the Cherokee
terms it would have, with great difficulty, backed
himself into the Shenandoah's hangar! As to the
dinosaur, the ichthyosaurus, and the paleosaur, let
some scientist spout his Latin and his Greek!
Regarding the Bible accounts, and those of Jose-
phus, 'on the THIRD DAY He commanded the land
to come up from the depths of the sea and He called
it "dry land" and "earth,"' part of this land was
the great wrinkled divide which now separates
North Carolina from Tennessee.
The ancient Cherokee also has his explanatory
myth of the Creation and the Flood handed down
through the ages. The myths of the Tsaragi
Cherokee who made the Smokies his happy hunt-
ing ground until the 'whites came on the eastern
sea* and who tenaciously spilled his blood against
the Anglo-Saxon for its possession, literally reek with
stories of giant insects and birds and reptiles. He
had a name for every creature even up to those of
20 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
the present time. So, for instance, the little yellow
moth that flits about the fire at nighttime is Ttin'-
tS.wft meaning that 'he goes in and out of the
fire ' ! He also had one for the chickadee. He spoke
his language with parted lips.
Among his myths of the prehistoric reptiles we
find UTagti the 'hornet as big as a house'; the
monster fish Dakwi' ; the great turtle Saligfi'gl ; Tla'-
nuw2/, the great hawk; Ukte'na, the great horned
serpent; giant lizards, Gi'ga-tsuha'tt, or the great
bloody-mouthed pleistodon; and the crawling be-
hemoths Diy&'hSll he of the 'great glistening
throat.' These monsters were accustomed to despoil-
ing the villages, but there were brave warriors who
raced them through swamp and cliff in order to de-
stroy them and forever rid the seven tribes of their
scourges of death and disease.
But the Cherokee's story of the creation has not
a monkey in it! In truth, there is no evidence that
he knew what a monkey was, and even if he did it is
very probable that he would have considered it
much beneath his dignity to descend from an ape.
And that the Cherokee was further developed in his
folklore and tradition than any other American
Indian is readily admitted by all eminent ethnolo-
gists. The Cherokee varied the usual method of the
creation by assisting in it himself; the sun being
raised for illustration each day until it was in
the proper position and the earth cool enough for
comfort and for the propagation of life !
It is rather odd that with his intense love for liv-
ing things he did not leave a particular name for the
Smoky Mountain section instead of for the whole
range the 'Unakas,' meaning 'White Mountains/
OLD AS METHUSALUM 21
But he did leave many names both in North Caro-
lina and Tennessee applying to rivers, peaks, gaps,
and he also left some little pottery on the Watauga
and one known petroglyph on Siler's Bald, discov-
ered by Professor Charles E. Mooers, of the Univer-
sity of Tennessee, with the author in 1917. His
flints strew the whole environs of the big mountains.
Outside of these small contributions to the history
of the Smokies, his most important legacy has been
his myths, which are many and of locally significant
value.
It has been a long time since the plesiosaur poked
his ugly head downward into the milky waters of
Ocklawaha Mud River of North Carolina, at
the dictation of the Chief of the Forest, who lived
beyond the skies and directed the affairs of the
Cherokees, but the deep mystery of all this ancient
past is still here. It everlastingly haunts the great
gulfs and the hills and ravines of the oldest mountains
in the United States, perhaps the world. It lingers in
the perpetual Indian Summer haze which saturates
the hills with its romance, from whose potent spell
the beholder can never escape.
CHAPTER III
THE WILDERNESS 'THREE DAYS IN
HELL!'
ANY panoramic photograph of the Great Smoky
Mountains in this volume (9631 A-7) will contain
somewhere in its expanse one hundred and thirty-
seven species of trees and a hundred and seventy-
four varieties of shrubs. Every kind of tree and
shrub which ordinarily occurs in this zone, up to the
cold latitudes of Canada hundreds of miles to the
northward, is existent here. In the varying alti-
tudes of these mountains there is one grand con-
centrated garden. It is not surprising that the Cher-
okee and the early white settler loved its generous
provision.
To an abundant rainfall, combined with a deep
moisture-retaining humus, together with the fertil-
ity of eroded feldspathic beds with which the envel-
oping humus is permeated, this luxuriant vegeta-
tion is due. The upper layer of peat-like soil is
often four feet deep and lies on top of loamy clays
which assist in retaining collected surface water.
This retaining under-clay, characteristic of the high
secluded ridges, makes ideal bathtubs for the black
bear. Mountaineers call them 'b'ar wallers/ i.e.,
i bear-wallows/
Many of these * wallows' are scattered at inter-
vals on high, isolated ridges and 'sags' in the thick
laurel. To come upon a bear's private bathroom in
the rhododendron is not a rare occurrence. Bruin is
RAINHOW FALLS IN WINTER
Ice slalactile 24 loci long; stalagmite 36 feet high
THE WILDERNESS 23
just so much of a pig that he is fond of wallowing
in clear rain water. The grizzly likes swift running
water, but the black bear in his native haunts is
exceptiona 1 ly fond of a more modest privacy. As
showers frequently occur in these high altitudes in
the spring and summer, Bruin is never without an
excu.'-ie for a good souse.
Scarcely a day passes in the spring and summer
months but that some shower is pattering down a
gorge and sweeping onward and outward into the
clustering coves, while thunder echoes among the
hills perhaps far below the beholder. Many times
there are two or three of these incipient storms
going on at once within eye- and ear-shot. At
these times one cannot help recalling a certain weird
game of tenpins with which Hendrick Hudson's
grisly crew entertained themselves in the Catskills.
After the storm-cloud swings onward, the rain-
drops patter down upon the undergrowth from the
giant trees, and the swollen streams leap down the
ravines with such increased strength that often the
rounded boulders grind against each other like great
millstones. The sound is as ominous as that of the
deep, rumbling bowls.
Above the timberline on the 'Balds' the firing of
a revolver in the rarefied atmosphere sounds very
much like the popping of a cork, and the would-be
celebrator is disgustedly disappointed. It is the
home of the Big Silence. Perhaps on a hazy summer
afternoon the sojourner may hear in the far distance
the clear cry of a towhee ' joree' the mountaineer
terms the bird. Occasionally at evening there may
fly overhead a small flock of those ill-fated, somber
birds, the ravens, on their way to the clefts of Alum
24 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
Cave cliffs to roost for the night, or a great owl on
feathered, silent flight after his quarry.
If a camper arises with the sun on these high tops
and goes out past the Narrows toward the slopes of
Clingman Dome, he sees Bruin's trail in the dew-
wet grass pressed down where he has passed back
and forth during the night to his feeding grounds on
either side of the high divide, or comes upon a
1 biting- tree ' in the edge of the spruce or balsams.
The black bear is mostly a nocturnal feeder, and
lucky is the observer who catches him at his break-
fast in some mast-tree in broad daylight. One also
finds the * sign ' of a deer where he has stopped to rub
his itching horns against a slender sapling. The high
altitudes are usually so cool that the fur of forest
animals is heavy the year round, but it is heaviest
after winter hibernation. The deep fur of the ' stock-
killing' bear is the heaviest because he kills and eats
the best of beeves.
In winter the descending storms often take the
form of frozen fog which flaunts weird 'petticoats'
like silvery Spanish moss from every tree and twig,
while snow and sleet whip mercilessly across the
vast spaces, often driving the mercury down to
forty degrees below zero, and woe to the hapless
wanderer who has lost his way in this hard and
lonely wilderness.
A lonely herder of 'cow-brutes' once told the
author that he was caught in a frozen fog on a ' Bald/
and that, in spite of the fact that he had plenty of
wood, he could not pile enough of it upon the fire to
keep him warm. The flaunting flags of the * petti-
coats 1 formed on the rafters and chimney of his
cabin, swinging weirdly in the blast that entered
THE WILDERNESS 25
every crevice. Said he, ' I jest got what cow-brutes
I hed an* jest come down offen thar afore I froze
to death ! ' And most mountaineers do not wear un-
dergarments of any description !
Dr. C. V. Deaderick, of Knoxville, used to be
fond of relating a tale in regard to one * Dad' Bivins,
a mountaineer who lived alone in the high hills.
'Dad' did not so much as wear B. D. Vees. The
intrepid old mountaineer strolled down to a moun-
tain sawmill one bitter winter morning where the
lumberjacks were endeavoring to thaw out their
machinery so they could get it going. The following
conversation occurred: *
"Mornin', Dad! 1
"Mornin'/
'Pretty cold last night !'
4 Yep. A leetle grain.'
' You didn't come all the way over from home this
mornin 1 , surely? 1
1 Nope. Slept in th' woods/
'How'd you keep from freezin' to death?'
1 Built up a far * agin a holler tree. Hit holped
some.'
'All alone?'
'Nope. Hed my dog with me/
'Where is he?'
'He's up thar. Froze to death!'
In connection with the 'Dad* Bivins incident it
may be said in defense of the average Smoky Moun-
tain settler that he is inured to all sorts of exposure
and one rarely hears of a case of 'pneumonia fever'
as it is termed, even with all the apparent shortage
in the underwear market. 'Uncle' Henry Stinnett
1 Fire,
26 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
once came into possession of a heavy undershirt
which he valued so highly that he wore it all winter
for fear of taking cold if he removed it. This was a
wise precaution on his part, for there was no dupli-
cate !
The people in these high altitudes have not been
taught to take advantage of protection against cold
such as is found among folk in the upper part of the
United States or in Canada where similar tempera-
tures are found. The very hardiness of their frames
seems to be guarantee against exposure; this in
spite of the fact that among many the bathtub is an
extraneous consideration. They are very careful in
regard to undue exposure in this regard, for then the
pores of the skin are more subject to congestion!
This is especially true of the winter season; in the
summer many enjoy a plunge in some cold mountain
stream, both young and old.
The author once came upon a family of jubilant
children enjoying the time of their lives skating in
their bare feet over a thin sheet of ice in front of a
cabin door in spite of the remonstrances of the
mother, who declared with some vehemence, 'You
young uns quit skeetin' on thet ice! If airy skift o'
snow comes, er a freeze, you try to take your death ! '
and made the cheerful little fellows come inside to
the fire.
In one other instance a lady visitor in the summer
time suggested that the women-folks dress for a
shower bath down under the mill race where the
water spilled over in a shimmering fall, but this was
objected to by the solicitous mountain mother, who
insisted that 'them galsll take their death doin'
thet. They hain't been wet all over yit and they
ain't a goin' to be nuther!'
THE WILDERNESS 27
Professor Guyot, upon whose meteorological ob-
servations and measurements in these great moun-
tains in 1856 are based our present Weather Bureau
observations, estimated that in the Great Smokies
the thermometer registered three degrees lower for
every thousand feet of altitude. This being true, one
can readily estimate the average temperature for
a summer night on top of the Smokies, or how much
colder on a winter night it may be in the highlands.
Reckoning at a reasonable average, the tops of the
highest peaks in the Smokies must have a lower
temperature than the valleys by at least eighteen to
twenty degrees winter and summer.
The writer well remembers one August when en-
camped on Siler's Bald at an elevation of 5594 feet
with Professor Mooers, of the University of Ten-
nessee, that during those summer nights the party
suffered extremely with the cold. Although our can-
vas beds were literally stuffed with grass and moss, we
were compelled to arise in the night and build a fire
in the cooking furnace in order to keep from freezing,
although some of us were in felt sleeping bags!
The author also recalls very vividly one cold rain-
storm in July at the same camp when the lightning
flashed back and forth across the tents under the
stunted beeches in a cold fog of fire. It was awe-in-
spiring to be caught in the cross-fire of the elements.
A certain spring in the ' meadows' of this moun-
tain seemed to flow more abundantly at particular
times than at others, and Professor Mooers, after
a diligent study of the phenomena, not due to fall-
ing moisture, attributed the rise and fall of the water
level to barometric pressure and forthwith we chris-
tened it 'The Barometer/ much to his amusement.
28 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
During arid months in the surrounding lowlands
miles below, water is most abundant on 'Smoky/
As a natural result of frequent showers in these alti-
tudes, not too inconvenient for hikers, one finds in
the deciduous tree masses many giant specimens.
There are great pillared tulips many of them
twenty-five feet around ; cucumber trees with their
odd red fruit dangling high in the branches not
of the 'fifty-seven' variety! curly ash; bird's-eye
maple; 'curly' cherry; walnut; hickory; locust; all of
the oaks; chestnut, many of them without blight;
spruce; balsam; plumed peawood termed 'rattle-
box' by the mountaineer; feathery hemlock; gum;
wahoo; persimmon; sassafras; sycamore; holly; yel-
lowwood or linn; beech; pine; cedar; spice in fact,
what have you? There is no tree indigenous to this
zone that is not found here in its most perfected
state.
All of these giants are ready and willing to be
friends to man if he lays not a wasteful axe at their
roots. As to shrubs and flower, there seems to be no
limit except the size of the botanist's field book!
What a sight this mountain range, towering among
the clouds, must have been to the fiery, impetuous,
dictatorial De So to in the summer of 1539 when, on
his fruitless search for gold, he penetrated into the
Cherokee country within a few miles of the present
Cheowah Dam in the Nunda-yalL His guide, an un-
willing Cherokee princess, held as hostage, very
easily led him away from his yellow metal in this
tangled wilderness, and escaped.
This region is so vast and impenetrable that it
will never be thoroughly explored, and from this
fact arises a part of its fascination. There are 'hells'
THE WILDERNESS 29
of tangled undergrowth that will never be entered.
This is one of the three things of which the native
mountaineer is afraid. The other two are fog, which
obliterates all familiar ridges and trails, and a swollen
stream in the dark.
He always avoids these dangers and, in fact, is
superstitious about them. He is otherwise afraid of
nothing he can see with two eyes; neither the wolf
at the door nor the 'revenuer.' The writer agrees
with him in regard to crossing swollen streams in the
dark, having endeavored to negotiate one under
trying circumstances in order to avoid a high cliff
trail and rattlesnakes. If the opportunity offers it-
self again, he will remain on the near side, even
though it means camping in the woods all night in
the rain.
Owing to the fact that the old Indian trails are
sinuous and confused with those made by cattle and
other stock, people are often lost in the wilderness of
the Smokies. In the Rockies, the experienced hiker
can keep his main mountain peaks in view, but in
the Smokies, when he is engulfed in trees, shrubbery,
and interlocking undergrowth, he soon loses his sense
of direction and cannot extricate himself. All his
ridges and valleys look alike even if he climbs a tree
to look out. It is then that he begins to doubt his
compass, and, as crazed wanderers have done in the
past, he throws it away, thinking it no longer a faith-
ful guide. Indeed, the author was apprised of one
case where a mountain traveler had taken two com-
passes along as an extra precaution against just such
an occurrence and had thrown them both away ! The
lost man, under such desperate circumstances, is at
an utter disadvantage unless his shred of common
30 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
sense directs him to follow down a stream, which will
eventually lead him to a settlement somewhere;
otherwise his bleaching bones will surely decorate
the wilderness.
The writer and two camping companions once res-
cued such a victim, a seventeen-year-old boy, half-
starved, in the ridges on Lufty Creek. The boy's
senses were so confused that, half-frightened at the
sudden appearance of human beings, he was upon
the point of running away from rescue even. His
hallucinations of fear were partly due to the fact
that he was ' locoed ' to use a Western term
from eating horse-chestnuts, or ' buckeyes/ He had
been subsisting for days on roots, blackberries, and
acorns, and had eaten one raw squirrel which he had
killed with his last cartridge.
It developed that he had met two Cherokee In-
dians, a man and his squaw, who were hunting ' sang '
ginseng in the deep wilderness, but they had
been of no use to him in finding the trail again. No
doubt they were as much amazed as he, for his ques-
tions went unanswered except by stoical grunts.
Getting frightened and suspicious of their tacitur-
nity, he had fled at breakneck speed away from
safety and the two harmless redskins.
At another time, C. L. Babcock, of the Babcock
Lumber Company, although an experienced woods-
man, lost his way and was discovered by his engi-
neers three days later plunging down the bed of a
stream, wildly crying over and over, 'Who arc you?
Where am I?' He had thrown his compass away,
but his instinctive knowledge had directed him down
stream in the direction of safety. His broken body
was saved only after careful nursing.
THE WILDERNESS 31
Colonel Return J. Meigs, in 1797, who was locat-
ing and surveying the Cherokee Indian boundary
line, under one of the numerous treaties, running
the line from Kingston, to the now famous, ' Meigs's
Post/ was once hopelessly lost in the ' Devil's Court-
house ' at the head of Defeat Ridge, mistaking it for
another mountain which should have lain behind
him. He was saved after several days of exposure by
accidentally coming upon a settler's cabin far down
toward the coves,
In connection with this incident it might be men-
tioned that when Meigs ran this line from Kingston
he established a point on the top of the Smokies
where the magnetic meridian intercepted the water-
shed at south 76 east from the junction of the Ten-
nessee and Clinch Rivers ; at this point he established
what was later determined as 'Meigs's Post/ the
corner for an immense tract of land claimed by two
land companies. One of these companies had brought
suit for recovery based upon the inaccurate memory
of old residents of the Smokies who placed the loca-
tion of the ' post ' eleven miles east of the real point,
or near Collins Gap at the head of the Sugarlands.
The true location involved the fate of over a hun-
dred thousand acres of land.
J. T. Holt, of Knoxville, ran the line from Kings-
ton a hundred years after Meigs, found the line well
defined as far as the Chilhowees, and located the
true point west of Miry Ridge. In running such me-
ridians engineers allow a variation of the magnetic
meridian of one degree for every twenty years; in
this instance Holt found the variation for the hun-
dred years a fraction over four and one half de-
grees, duplicating Return J. Meigs's survey exactly
and saving the tract of land in Judge Peck's court.
32 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
During Meigs's survey in 1797, he ran into such
difficult terrain around the north side of Miry Ridge
that he was forced to go around the 'roughs/ He
placed an Indian blanket on a pole atop a ridge run-
ning at right angles and picked up his line from this
mark. This gives the origin of the name t Blanket
Mountain/ as it is known to-day; a picturesque peak
running off the 'Long Arm* from the eastern ex-
tremity of the odd white quartz mountain now
known as 'The Mires' and supposed, according to
an ancient manuscript left by the 'Peck Heirs' in
possession of Holt (the Knoxville engineer men-
tioned), to be the location of a lost gold mine.
There is probably no living man to-day who is
better acquainted with every foot of Smoky Moun-
tain terrain than Holt. He is a slightly built, wiry
man with keen gray eyes, rather inclined to modesty
when approached about his exploits and adventures
in all sorts of weather in the uplands of the Great
Smokies. Endurance and determination like his is
the only guarantee against the tricks of the wilder-
ness. But even Holt was not proof . He has narrowly
escaped with his life on several occasions, when he
has lost his way in the big hills.
At one time during an early spring he was lost at
a high altitude for three days in a drive of frozen fog
and snow. Said Holt of the incident:
'And what I mean, I was surely lost* No mistak-
ing that. I can generally squirm my way out of a dif-
ficult situation by exercising a little judgment mixed
with a little common sense, but here was a case of
where I was caught unexpectedly. The fog shut
down like a lid on a kettle clapped tight.
'There I was on top of Tater Ridge, high up,
THE WILDERNESS 33
twenty miles from the nearest cabin and couldn't see
ten feet in front of me* And those fog petticoats soon
began to flap and cold! Whew! The wind must
have gone through me and come out on the other side.
I was in a devil of a situation with no one near me.
I firmly believe that it is not colder at the North
Pole than it is on top of the Smokies at an elevation
of 6500 feet in the winter time!
1 1 followed the ridge, cutting under it to'keep out of
the blast. Thought I could make my way, but very
soon found that I had lost all sense of direction. It
is hard enough when one has the clear horizon, but
in a fog it's hopeless, I floundered downward to keep
out of the terrible blast and then realized very for-
cibly that I was lost. I had no compass. I was going
on to a point to meet Higdon, my man, and he had
the instruments. Down I went to a stream bed ; my
only salvation.
1 1 tried to keep on the banks, but couldn't owing
to undergrowth. I fell into the water; my clothes
froze upon me, but I kept going, more dead than
alive, expecting to land in Tennessee somewhere
about the Sugarlands. But the third day out, after
building a fire after a fashion at night to thaw out
and not trying to sleep, for if I had I would never
have awakened, I landed in Waynesville, North Car-
olina, more dead than alive! Now how is that for an
engineer?
'That kind of business is most dangerous, and I
owe my life to the fact that I found the bed of a
stream and stuck to it, though I was practically
frozen stiff in my clothes. It was a hell, plenty, a
hell of ice and snow and frozen fog such as I never
want to experience again!'
34 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
Several years ago on Deep Creek, North Carolina,
a squad of timber cutters came upon the genial
skeletons of two men in a sitting posture facing each
other. Between them was an empty, basket-covered
demijohn of ancient vintage. The rotting clothes of
one skeleton had brass buttons. The two skulls
grinned at each other in ghastly reminiscence over
the fatal flagon. They had literally outdone Rip Van
Winkle in his famous sleep. Perhaps it was a grim
joke played by Fate upon a sheriff and his bootlegger
captive who had connived to overcome that soli-
tude of the great wilderness and both had succumbed
on the way to jail.
Below Clingman and about two and a half miles to
the northeast where towering cliffs upon the side of
the very highest peak of the Smokies are exposed, a
party of two hikers, A. A. Chable, of Knoxville, and
his brother, after being lost in the 'down-log' dis-
trict where a hurricane uprooted much timber about
twenty years ago, came upon a dormant glacier. For
three days these men struggled through this block-
ing cribbage of tangled trees, making most of their
way along the giant trunks, often falling out of sight
in the underbrush between them, only to struggle
upward again to their footing.
At night they could scarcely find space enough to
erect a small Baker tent. Once they pitched it in a
cavity left by an upturned tree. Their bed made
under the small tent was fairly comfortable between
the tangled roots of the hemlock, but their slumbers
were so interfered with by marauding wild cats and
the visit of an inquisitive panther that they slept
little. They ran upon numerous ' signs ' of big game,
but were too famished to pay any attention to it.
THE WILDERNESS 35
They kept up this unequal battle until they were
upon the point of exhaustion. After endeavoring
futilely to get bearings by climbing tall trees, they
finally emerged on the top of Clingman Dome more
dead than alive. Striking a beeline for the Sugar-
lands from the Dome, they came upon hundreds of
tons of ice packed away under the deep humus below
an immense cliff.
It seemed to be a natural refrigerating plant. Be-
hind the great solid wall of ice churned and gurgled
the melting ice water which had its outlet some dis-
tance down the mountain-side among giant, moss-
covered boulders. Having, fortunately, some lem-
ons, they refreshed their exhausted bodies with real
lemonade. Whether this glacier, which was found in
the early part of June, is a duplicate of the famous
ice-making cave of Kane County, Pennsylvania, re-
mains to be seen, as a party of investigation under
the direction of Mr. Chable is being organized to
examine the odd phenomenon.
Of all the local names for * coves/ ridges, gaps, and
'hollers' which have existed for many years in the
wilderness, those which have been given by the white
Anglo-Saxon have best withstood the test of time.
These titles have a very valuable, though homely,
descriptive quality, so that he 'who runs' may read,
though he may be a fool and get lost in spite of them.
For instance, we have the 'Tater Hill,' an odd-
shaped, conical mountain just over the North Caro-
lina line opposite the 'Devil's Courthouse' at the
head of Defeat Ridge, where Return Jonathan Meigs,
the Connecticut Indian agent, was lost in 1797. The
sides of this ' Tater Hill ' seem too steep even for trees
to stand upright. It had a weird aspect one morn-
36 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
ing of frozen fog when the author saw it through
limbs and twigs flapping with the warning icy ' pet-
ticoats. 1
There are many ' Devil's Courthouses' and * Hells'
in the Smokies, but the one with the most repelling
aspect is just here westward from Defeat, that in
which Meigs floundered. It presents an odd amphi-
theater filled closely with laurel and interwoven
rhododendron. The vast theater of green seems to
hold other odd formations that might easily be
taken for the judge's bench, bailiffs, and jury. No one
knows whether His Satanic Majesty holds court here
or not, for bears are the only holders of its secrets
and of course Bruin rarely ever speaks above a
whisper!
The true frontierman's fashion of descriptive and
incidental titles is a very valuable one. For instance
we have such names as: Stockin' Holler, Ramp
(wild onion) Cove, Kettle Holler, Coffee Pot Creek,
Buck Horn Gap, Lost (i.e., disappearing) Creek,
New World, New Found Gap, Pierce's Improve-
ment, Tater Ridge, Deer Camp Prong (' prong'
means branch), Sugar Cove (maple trees), Bear Wal-
low Branch, Slink Ridge (a young deer is a 'slink'),
Miry Ridge, Cold Spring, Buckeye Gap, the Long
Arm (ridge shaped like an arm) , Fish Camp Prong,
Gill's Tar Paper Camp (more modern), Panther
Creek and Panther Ridge, Double Spring (i.e., a
spring on each side of a divide east of ' The Narrows,'
where a man must walk along the crest of thin rock
between North Carolina and Tennessee), Bear Pen
'Holler,' Briar Ridge, Fallen Oak, Arrow Tree Fork
(arrow cut by Cherokees on ash), Dripping Spring,
Jake's Creek, Blow Down (hurricane-destroyed tim-
THE WILDERNESS 37
ber), Hurricane River (where the hurricane started),
Defeat Ridge (Meigs admitted he was * defeated* in
trying to climb it), Trinkling Falls (onomatopoetic),
Roaring Fork (roars when high), Deep Creek, Eagle
Creek, and others too numerous to mention.
The Anglo-Saxon has a peculiar way of twisting
names to suit his own humor, as he has that of Curry
He Mountain off Buck Horn Gap, near the Spruce
Flats on the headwaters of Middle Prong of Little
River. This name originally was derived from the
Cherokee name for a spring salad of which the In-
dians were fond and which was found at this place.
The name was Gulahl'yl, or, abbreviated into the
Lower dialect, Gfirahl. There are several of these
Gurahi places in North Carolina and Tennessee.
According to his idea of the fitness of things, the An-
glo-Saxon from Wessex and Ulster County called it
1 Curry He,' and in order perfectly to balance things
named the mountain lying in juxtaposition to the
eastward ' Curry She! 1
Who can blame him? The lonely mountain needed
a companion in this wilderness among the savages.
This also presents a very forcible argument against
the endeavor to retain the beautiful Indian names.
The incomprehensible name will always be twisted
by the mountaineer, and will often be abbreviated.
So Tuckasegee becomes plain 'Tuckyseej,' and Cata-
loochee is 'Catalooch,' What is more hopeless?
But, after all, his homely names are more easily un-
derstood.
This great wilderness has its brighter, as well as its
darker, sides. At least the vastness has its beauty, if
one is wise enough not to explore it too far. On the
western open spaces of Clingman Dome one comes
38 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
upon Christmas trees the black balsam with its sil-
very, frost-like branches. It seems that these heavy
pendent branches weighted to the grass need only
a few brightly colored candles to bring Santa Glaus
from behind one of them.
Among the thickly growing poles of the balsam
timber, between which a man with a pack can only
with difficulty squeeze, the sun rarely ever shines, so
closely interwoven are the branches. The soft carpet
echoes with no tread, a bird rarely sings, and in the
uncanny, death-like stillness one hears only the weird
soughing of the wind above. Here in the early
summer the 'boomer' an odd little brown squirrel
which seems a cross between the ground and the
gray squirrel gets in his harvest. He seems insati-
ably fond of young balsam cones and travels in
droves at this time, snipping off the young branches,
severing the luscious cones, and dropping the twigs
to the ground until the whole forest is carpeted with
them.
Said a mountaineer, in speaking of a visit of those
little squirrels : ' I come up hyar a few weeks ago to
git me some balsam' (blisters of the balsam furnish
a valued medicine for the mountaineer) 4 and hit ap-
peared to me like these woods was alive with boom-
ers ! If I'd had a gun I could 'a' killed me a sack full.
Them leetle critters was a lappin' and cuttin' every-
whar as fur as I c'd see! They wa'n't leavin' nothin'
but the tree!'
At the Narrows the author has watched the 'bat-
tle of the clouds' for hours at a time. Here the south
winds bearing mist and heavy vapor repeatedly as-
sault the battlements of the brusque north wind
across the narrow ridge-like backbone of granite,
THE WILDERNESS 39
only to be thrust back in curling breakers against the
high shore of the Great Smokies. Days upon days,
and nights upon nights, this silent battle continues
with relentless insistence, and when the battalions of
the south wind are torn to shreds against the defense
of the northern warriors, back they go, and, gather-
ing new force, hurl themselves in another assault
upon the barrier.
There are natural gardens on the 'Balds' where
sheep great picturesque Southdowns content-
edly graze, returning to cover under the hills at even-
ing. Often they are thrown into panic at night by
some prowling wild animal and plunge upward to
some camper's fire for the protection that man of-
fers, their bells excitedly tinkling in the darkness.
Some of them get lost in the wilderness, as do their
human companions.
But there is hope for both.
A mountaineer's child wandered out upon the
rugged hills above the 'Sinks' and could not be
found. The alarm was spread and soon many moun-
taineers were out with their guns and dogs in search
for the youngster. They scoured the hills for two
days and nights, to no avail. Nor did they find any
'sign/
'Uncle' Henry Stinnett, a devout mountaineer of
simple faith and truly 'Norman blood 1 for his
father was an Englishman who read his Bible,
prayed, as he said, 'that the Lord might give back
the young unM
' I went to bed that night,' he related simply, 'to
sleep, but sleep worrited me. I dremp that the Lord
showed me whar the young un mought be hid. Hit
appeared like hit was jest up under a log asleep an*
40 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
the pattern of the ridge whar it was was showed to
me like a pitcher' (picture), 'an' I knowcd whar the
ridge was. I jest called the s'archers together an*
told them whar I believed the child to be an' I went
with 'em, an' thar, jest like I dremp it, was the leetle
feller curled up under an old stump that hed blowed
over in some leaves. He was asleep jest as I had seed
hit in the dream. He didn't appear to be hurt none.
Hits mammy was shore glad to git it back!'
Sometimes the wayfarer is not so fortunate in the
trackless ridges. Dazed in a snowstorm or blizzard,
he may wander into a bear trap set in closely woven
bear-made trails in which a man cannot stand up-
right. Such was the sad case of a blacksmith by the
name of Huskey, who passed over Blanket Moun-
tain one winter in spite of warnings by experienced
mountain men at Elkmont in the Sugarlands,
Said 'Uncle' Levi Trentham, in speaking of the
tragedy, 'We warned the old man not to go, but go
he would in spite 'n o* hell an' high water! He got up
thar top o' Smoky a skift o' snow was fallin' when
he left hyar an' got bedevilled in the snowstorm
a comin' up an' the frozen fog got down on him an'
drivin' cold like hell a hootin' for sideways, an' got
into a b'ar trail a thinkin' hit was a path. He got
his foot cotched fast in a big b'ar trap an* drug hit
aroun' thar in the snow an' fog a right smart an*
they found him next spring under a pile o f bresh
whar he'd crawled an' he was as dead as a doorpost.
He'd been thar no tellin' how long. These fellers as
sets b'ar traps 'thout markin' 'em is jest doin' the
general public a injury. Them traps c'n be marked
with a sourwood switch jest as easy as not, but the
matter 'th a plenty of 'em is they're jest too lazy an'
THE WILDERNESS 41
triflin' to take the trouble! They're jest too triflin'
to live ! '
So it proves that the wilds of the Smokies must be
followed after a fashion already established, or not
at all.
CHAPTER IV
THE NAME ' SMOKY MOUNTAINS'
A WHITE-HAIRED, pink-eyed race of diminutive Al-
binos were the first recorded inhabitants of the Great
Smoky Mountain range and its environs. This odd
people left one or two mounds in northern Georgia
and southern Kentucky, but no other records. They
seem to have been a race of no especial activity, for
when the warlike Creeks advised them to vacate
their territory, they complied with the manifesto
without a murmur. The Creeks were subsequently
pushed to the southward of the Little Tennessee
River by the more numerous and important tribes
of the Cherokees, a branch of the Iroquois. We have
the name of the Cherokee as 'Cheraqui' by French
invaders and 'Chalaque' in the Spanish records of
De Soto's and Martinez's expeditions as early as
1539-
There is not a name nor a sound contained in the
Cherokee language which can be interpreted or
translated as meaning 'Smoky Mountains'; al-
though the Cherokee records are most voluminous
because of the excellent alphabet, invented by one
of their number, a half-breed by, the name of Se-
quoyah, who went to the Indian Territory with the
Removal in 1838 and from thence to Texas, where
he disappeared forever, endeavoring to spread his
invention to other Indian tribes.
If the Cherokees ever called that natural division
of the great mountain range to-day included be-
tween the Big Pigeon and the Little Tennessee
THE NAME SMOKY MOUNTAINS 43
Rivers by any other name than 'Unegas/ or 'White
mountains/ the fact would have been definitely re-
corded, for the Cherokee not only had his name for
everything, but historians and alphabet as well.
There isn't any doubt but that Old Swimmer, the
Uncle Remus of their tribes, would have been de-
lighted to give the information.
Had these Indians the Tsaragi ever called
the Great Smoky Mountains by a synonymous term
in their own language, it would have been ATALI-
GWA' GIS'IU-YUS'TI (Attalee-gwa Gees-kez yoos tee)
'GREAT MOUNTAINS LIKE SMOKE.' But there never
was any such title. They told Lafayette County
Pcnnsylvanians, when visiting them on a parley
about furnishing warriors to help Washington re-
duce Fort Duquesne the old frontier name for
Pittsburgh that they had crossed Atali-gwa', or
'Great Mountains/ to get to Fayetteville, but this
is the only reference by the Cherokees to any definite
name even for a part of the range, except the name
'Unega' meaning 'white/ In fact, they also called
the paleface settlers 'Unegas/ and in one battle
around old Fort Loudon cried, 'Come! Come! The
Uncgas arc fleeing!' TJie name 'Unega' became
finally corrupted by the Anglo-Saxon to ' Unaka/ by
which name the whole mountain range was known
to scientists and historians for years. By adding the
Cherokee name for mountains, we have their name
for these mountains as ATALI UNEGA, or ATALI-GWA'
UNEGA the GREAT WHITE MOUNTAINS, which
they were no doubt called by the redskin at that
time.
There are two good reasons for the title 'Unegas'
given them by the Tsaragi. One of the outstanding
44 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
characteristics of the entire mountain range is that
at some places especially below Big Pigeon
even at the present time, the white quartz conglom-
erate, of which the upper part of the mountain sky-
line is composed around Guyot and the Sawtooth
Mountains, occasionally projects above the black
balsam.
The intrepid surveyor Holt describes one of these
projections about twelve miles west of the Cata-
loochee Turnpike on top of the Smokies as ' gleam-
ing white ' in the morning sun. This particular pro-
jection is known as 'White Rock' in the surveyor's
notes. A part of an immense quartz boulder had
been chipped out by lightning years ago leaving a
deep cleft from which issued a spring used as a
watering place by the ravens and eagles that fre-
quented the spot.
The second explanation of the name ' Unega, '
given by the Indians, is that, owing to their consist-
ent high altitude, the Great Smokies were almost
constantly covered by snow, frost, or frozen fog from
early autumn to late spring.
For forty-four years after the admission of the
Watauga Settlement on the Holston to North Caro-
lina in 1777 the range was known as the 'Great Iron
Mountains/ When the division of Washington
County, or District of Washington, was made by
North Carolina in November, 1777, including prac-
tically all of the present State of Tennessee, the line
was designated by the North Carolina Assembly as
Maid off' with the following boundaries:
Beginning at the northwestern point of the County
of Wilkes, in the Virginia line ; thence, with the line of
Wilkes County, to a point twenty-six miles south of
THE NAME SMOKY MOUNTAINS 45
the Virginia line; thence, due west to the ridge of
the Great Iron Mountain, which, heretofore, divided
the hunting grounds of the Overhill Cherokees (see
Timber-lake's Map) from those of the Middle Settle-
ments and Valleys; thence, running a southwardly
course along the said ridge, to the Uneca (Unega)
Mountain, where the trading path crosses the same,
from the Valley to the Overhills; thence, south, with
the line of this State adjoining the State of South
Carolina; thence, due west to the great River Mis-
sissippi ; thence, up the same river to a point due west
from the beginning.
Thus it is that the State of Tennessee was once
called Washington County, and the Great Iron
Mountain or Smoky Mountain was the east-
ern boundary.
The first mention of the name ' Smoky Mountains'
historically was contained in an account by General
Campbell, of Abingdon, Virginia, March 28, 1781,
or four years after this boundary was run by the
North Carolina Assembly, In the 'Virginia State
Papers' we read an account of a reprisal and attack
on the Middle Towns of the Cherokees situated on
the headwaters of the Little Tennessee, North Caro-
lina, by the French Huguenot leader, John Xavier.
In spite of recent treaties, the white settlers were
being constantly annoyed by bands of marauding
Cherokees who pillaged and plundered at every
opportunity.
Coming from his Fort Lee on the Watauga ' with 1 50
picked horsemen, Xavier started to cross the " Great
Smoky Mountains " over trails never before attempted
by white men, and so rough in places that it was
hardly possible to lead horses'! As was customary
46 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
with this intrepid young leader for Xavier was
then only twenty-six years old he not only got
across the Smokies successfully, but he surprised the
Indian villages, burned them, captured a number of
prisoners, and killed many of the marauders. No
one but Xavier would have tried such a perilous
expedition in the middle of winter over mountains
where no white man had ever been before !
Ramsey, in his 'Annals of Tennessee/ in 1853, ' re-
grets that so many Indian names of euphony and
beauty have been abandoned in favor of the " Anglo-
American " names 1 which ' no doubt grate harshly on
the ears of the Cherokee/ such as 'Smoky* for
'Unaka/ etc. The primitive settler of the Smokies
doubted very seriously whether anything ever grated
harshly upon the ears of the redskin at the time of
Xavier 's trip except the frontiersman's tomahawk or
1 butcher knife/ as the hunting knife was then called.
Indians were often scalped alive to furnish amends
for some never-forgotten butchery of the mountain
cabin inhabitants who had come to live in the wil-
derness.
Charles Lanman, in his 'Adventures in the Wilds
of the United States/ mentions 'The Great Smoky
Mountain/ He ascended 'it' near the location of
Clingman Dome which is the highest peak except
Mount Mitchell.
Professor James M. Safford, State Geologist for
Tennessee and Instructor in Mineralogy at the Van-
derbilt University in Nashville, seemed to be con-
scious of a distinction in that sixty-five-mile length
of the Unegas contained between the Big Pigeon and
the Little Tennessee Rivers when in 1869 he stated
in an official report after a study of its rocks, * I will
THE NAME SMOKY MOUNTAINS 47
now call the mountains by the name of " Smoky."'
This title had probably been more or less familiar to
the settlers since 1781. Safford's 'Anglo-Saxon* set-
tlers had a fashion of naming things descriptively.
After a thorough search through the records of the
French botanist Michaux in 1787 and those of his
son of a later date read before the Philadelphia So-
ciety for Scientific Research, there is no mention of
the name 'Smoky/ although these two scientists
dined with many notables of both Tennessee and
North Carolina. Mention is made of the 'Black
Mountains' where Mount Mitchell is now located.
In 1848, Thomas L. Clingman, then a member of
Congress from North Carolina, got into a dispute
with Dr. Elisha Mitchell, mineralogist of the Uni-
versity of North Carolina, about the relative heights
of Clingman Dome and another high mountain of the
'Blacks* which Dr. Mitchell had measured some
years previous. Dr. Mitchell had been making sur-
veys for several summers on an appropriation of
two hundred dollars a year allowed by the State
Assembly. The dispute over the two mountains
waxed so hot among their respective adherents that
'many supposed/ so runs the account, 'that Dr.
Mitchell had by mistake surveyed "the Dome," the
highest peak in the Smokies/
In order to establish the claim which he thought
correct, Dr. Mitchell set out in the summer of 1855
to make a remeasurcment of his mountain. This ex-
pedition was the direct cause of his death. Three
months later searchers came upon his body, in a per-
fect state of preservation, lying in a pool of ice-cold
mountain water fourteen feet deep. He had evi-
dently slipped on a mossy stone high above the
48 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
mountain stream and had plunged headlong to his
death.
Clingman's 'Dome* was later found to be thirty-
one feet lower than the mountain which to-day bears
the name of Mitchell, according to Henry Gannett 's
* Altitudes.' The author a few years ago was among
the balsams on the peak of Clingman and found there,
impaled on a stick and thrust upright in a pile of
loose stone, a card with the inscription: * THE HIGH-
EST PEAK IN THE UNITED STATES ' ; so it seems that
the dispute is not entirely settled yet.
Certain it is that the map prepared by the joint
commissioners of the twin States of North Carolina
and Tennessee in 1821 bore the combined name
'THE GREAT IRON OR SMOKY MOUNTAINS' in bold
type across the page of the survey, and was duly
signed, not only by the commissioners themselves
with the date, but also by the two official surveyors.
Thus ended all dispute of name or of ownership of
lands impinging upon one of the most difficult ter-
rains in the United States, over which surveyors and
line-runners had fretted for many years. The line
runs exactly down the very top of the watershed of
this great range. After lying in the State Archives
at Nashville in a pile of rubbish for seventy-five
years, this map of 1821 was found accidentally by
State Archivist Quarl in 1896. A copy is shown in
this volume.
It is not surprising that the white settler dropped
all Indian names wherever he could as quickly as
possible, especially the Tennesseean, for to him all
Indians looked alike and only a dead Indian was a
'good Indian' ; the Cherokee reciprocated the feeling
with good measure, for he always refused to have
* } 1 IV
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THE NAME SMOKY MOUNTAINS 49
anything to do with the Franklinite in the way of
treaties or agreements. Although the perpetually
white mountains may seem * Unega ' to the Cherokee,
yet the romantically direct Anglo-Saxon preferred
to call the sixty-five-mile range of solid rock by a
name which was more descriptive and which he more
readily understood ; thus he called it ' Smoky,'
CHAPTER V
PROFESSOR GUYOT'S PETS
PROFESSOR GUYOT was only forty-three years old
when he began the study of the Smoky Mountains
and the Unakas. For ten years he kept at his pet
hobby during his summer vacations while he was
mineralogist and geologist for the College of New
Jersey at Princeton. Four summers of these ten
years 1856, '58, '59, '60 he spent in the Great
Smoky and * Black' Mountains of North Carolina in
which latter range is located Mount Mitchell, the
highest peak east of the Rockies (elevation 6711
feet).
The Princeton scientist was born in the beautiful
little Alpine village of NeufchHtel, Switzerland, dur-
ing the fall equinox of 1807 and came to America in
1840 after he had spent four years (1835-39) in Paris
as tutor. He had always made mountains his study.
He was a recognized authority on the markings of
glacial ice in his own country and his meteoro-
logical observations made for the Smithsonian In-
stitution are the present basis for those of our own
Weather Bureau.
Guyot had been a minister, but had found Eu-
rope at that time rather cramped quarters for clergy-
men of Protestant beliefs. Like all truly great sci-
entists, he harmonized his studies with his religion
and wrote many books and articles on Evolution,
the most particular of which was his ' Evolution and
Its Relation to Religious Thought' (1887).
The Swiss scientist at once attracted attention in
PROFESSOR GUYOT'S PETS 51
Boston with his brilliant mind and clean-cut reli-
gious convictions, and although his scientific papers
and lectures had to be translated, yet his appearance
before the scholars of Lowell Institute was an event
which no man of letters could miss. Advancing re-
markably in his study of the English language, he
was soon elected to the Chair of Geography and
Geology of the College of New Jersey in 1855. It was
then that he took up as a systematic work the meas-
urements of the mountains of the eastern United
States for the Smithsonian Institution, besides read-
ing many learned papers before that body.
In his Smoky Mountain observations and meas-
urements, Professor Guyot was ably assisted by two
stout young engineers, Grandepierre and Sandox.
Another enthusiast, S. B, Buckley, of Tennessee, ren-
dered doubtful assistance to the meticulously care-
ful Swiss by 'starting his base altitudes too high, 1
thereby drawing the criticism of Guyot that ' Buck-
ley's measurements are too great by 60 to 130 feet ' !
The Princeton professor was so very careful with
his own observations that, in one instance, in taking
the barometric reading of Luftee Knob, just off the
main divide of the Smokies in North Carolina (el-
evation 6238 feet), he apologized for a 'possible lack
of accuracy within a few feet,' stating that he was
'interrupted by a storm while taking measurements
at this point 1 ! 1
In a paper read before the Smithsonian Institution
in 1859, speaking of the Unaka, Professor Guyot said :
Though its highest summits [Unegas] are a few
feet below the highest peaks of the Black Mountains
[Mount] Mitchell, 6711 feet, it presents on that ex-
1 American Journal of Science, September, 1857, and November,
1860.
52 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
tent of sixty-five miles [full length of the Smokies] a
continuous series of high peaks and an average eleva-
tion not to be found in any other district, and which
give it a greater importance in the geographical struc-
ture of that vast system of mountains. The gaps or
depressions never fall below 5000 feet except towards
the southwest beyond Forney Ridge; and the num-
ber of peaks, the altitude of which exceeds 6000 feet,
is indeed very large.
And this from an Alpine scientist! The 'number
of peaks' actually average one to every two miles!
It might be added that the actual number of peaks
has never been established, although appended to this
chapter is a list of gaps and peaks that were con-
scientiously measured by Professor Guyot ; yet the
location of many of them has not been ascertained
with any degree of absolute certainty.
The names that the Princeton professor and Buck-
ley gave these peaks were mostly out of compliment
to scientific friends, and others had personal sig-
nificance, such as 'Thermometer Knob'; we wonder
what happened to his thermometer up there. His
friend, Joseph Le Conte, received a signal honor in
having one of the most unique peaks named for him,
Le Conte, born in Liberty County, Georgia, and
later Professor of Geology and Mineralogy in the Uni-
versity of California, served as chemist for the Con-
federacy at Columbia, South Carolina, during the
Civil War.
Others are Mount Henry, named after the Secre-
tary of the Smithsonian Institution 1 ; Mount Safford
1 Joseph Henry was really the directing spirit of the Institution,
which was founded with the gift presented to the United States by
Smithson, of England, who wanted it applied to a scientific purpose.
PROFESSOR GUYOT'S PETS 53
after the State Geologist at Vanderbilt University;
Mount JBuckley, after the doubtful scientist of the er-
roneous high base altitudes S. B. Buckley; Peck
Mountain, after Judge Peck, who owned the 'land'
on which the peak stood. ' Bull Head/ not included
as such in Guyot's list, was probably the ancient
name, after the famous Cherokee Indian of that
name, Uskwale'na, which, being translated literally,
means 'Big Head/ and refers to a jutting peak that
lies off toward the present Gatlinburg at the outer
promontory of the three mountains Le Conte, Cur-
tis, and Safford.
Some other names are more or less obscure in their
origin, but, as they appear in the list, the author ap-
pends some explanation as it occurs. A few names
are self-explanatory, but in the main, acquired titles
are taken from events which had local significance to
the settlers who ' squatted ' on lands attained under
grants many of them founded on Indian treaties
that expired overnight from both North Carolina
and Tennessee, dating back to the 'Lost State of
Franklin/ which furnished the most inextricable
mess as to titled possession in the history of recorded
properties. Because of this obscurity of origin in
lands it is just as difficult to trace names of moun-
tains, peaks, and gaps in the Smokies.
The appended list as given by Guyot is published
in the hope that a little more data shall come to light
regarding their names and origin. Although many
of these peaks have no applied identification at the
present time and though even the location of many
is involved in mystery, like many other items of in-
terest in the Smokies, it can be truthfully stated that,
in spite of the fact that the general American public
54 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
has been remiss regarding their knowledge, our great
scientists have not failed in study and interest. In
the main, all of these peaks, thirty-five in number,
composing the back and main bracing of the Smok-
ies, have been named for seventy-five years.
One unique group of three mountains Le
Conte, central, Mount Curtis, western peak, and
Mount Safford, north peak stands out from four
to five miles away from the main divide like a grand-
stand of the Creator; placed so that man might more
conveniently view His handiwork. There they are
three giants of titanic formation, their heads often
above the clouds; their shoulders draped with wind-
swept mantles of snow, or robed in the soft garments
of spring, an everlasting monument to their scientific
godfathers who loved them and toiled over their
slopes to conquer their mysteries. There they will
stand millions of years with feet planted in eternal
slate and granite and rear their lofty heads still
higher, for their sleepless sculptor Erosion will only
carve their towering altitudes into greater heights
and their fantastic shapes into still greater artistry*
PEAKS BEGINNING AT BIG PIGEON AND RUNNING THE
ENTIRE LENGTH OF THE STATE LINE BETWEEN
NORTH CAROLINA AND TENNESSEE
(Guyot's List)
Thermometer Knob 6157
Raven's Knob (head of Raven Fork, North Carolina?). . . 6230
*Tricorner Knob 6188
Mount Guyot (so named by S. B, Buckley, of Tennessee) 6636
Mount Henry (named for Secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution) 6373
* Not definitely established.
PROFESSOR GUYOT'S PETS 55
Mount Alexander (probably named for Stephen Alexander,
Professor of Botany at Princeton 1803-83) 6447
*South Peak 6299
Three Brothers (highest or central peak) 5907
Thunder Knob 5682
Laurel Peak (Laurel Top) 5922
*Reinhardt Gap 5220
Top of Richland Ridge 5492
Indian Gap (road built by 'Little Will' Thomas, adopted
Cherokee chief) 5317
*Peck's Peak (named after owners of the Peck's Grant
lands) 6232
Mount Ocona (from Cherokee 'Egwanulti,' or 'Ocona-
lufte,' with the 'lufte' omitted) 6135
Right-Hand , or New Gap (present gap of proposed Ten-
nessee state road to meet road from North Carolina. . . 5096
Present group above Bull Head-
Central Peak Mount Le Conte 6612
fWest Peak Mount Curtis 6568
North Peak Mount Saflbrd (after Tennessee State
Geologist, Safford) 6535
JBull Head (not included in Guyot's list, probably named
after Uskwale'na, Cherokee chief) 6400
*Cross Knob 5931
^Neighbor 5771
*Master Knob * 6031
Tomahawk Gap 5450
,Alum Cave 4971
Alum Cave Creek at junction with Little Pigeon 3848
Road Gap (east toward Smokemont, North Carolina, from
Grass Patch) 5271
Mount Collins 6188
Collins Gap 5720
*Mount Love 6443
Clingman Dome (mountain in dispute with Mitchell, 6680,
Gannett) 6660
*Mount Buckley (after S. B. Buckley) 6599
"Chimney Knob 55*8
*Big Stone Mountain 5614
*Big Cherry Gap 4838
* Not deiinitely established, t Not known who named for.
t United States Geological Survey, S United States Geological Survey, 6680.
56 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
*Corner Knob 5246
Forney Ridge Peak (North Carolina) 5087
*Snaky Mountain 5195
Thunderhead Mountain 5520
*Eagle Top 5433
Spence Cabin 4910
"Turkey Knob 4740
*Opossum Gap 3840
North Bald (Parson) , 4711
Great Bald's Central Peak (Gregory) 4922
South Peak (Gregory, 'Little* Bald) 4708
Tennessee River at Hardin's 899
* Not definitely established.
CHAPTER VI
ANGLE, SCOT, CELT
THERE is no other spot in the United States that
has seen bloodier struggles of frontiersmen against
savages, or of French against English colonists,
than the immediate locality surrounding the Great
Smoky Mountains. In these mountains, thanks to
their isolation, as in no other the original American
frontiersman has been preserved. Let no one say
that the people of the Smokies are not Nordic! For-
eigners are very few in number in this region, which
has also a smaller percentage of foreign-born popula-
tion than any other spot in the United States. * An-
glo-Saxon ' is a meaningful term when applied to the
people of North Carolina and East Tennessee. It
means that here exists the purest strain of that or-
igin, and that, because of the isolation of the people
in the untouched mountains, this blood has kept its
original force and individuality.
The generic meaning of the Friesic Anglo-Saxon
may be applied to these mountain people, who are
descendants of old Scotland's borderers who helped
the Irish Presbyterians fight for their separation of
Church and State, Englishmen who sought release
from royal Episcopacy, and the original Palatinates
who scorned court sycophancy in their decadent
countries. They have preserved in a fortunate en-
vironment their original instincts and conditions
along with their primeval forests. This region is by
no means an American * melting pot' far from it!
58 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
Yet its people are as individual, upstanding, and
clean-cut as the vast mountain spaces in which they
live. They are still the frontiersmen and frontiers-
women of a hundred years ago with much the same
ideas and habits of living. Very possibly this is the
last tragic stand in the United States to-day of the
deerslayer days.
Assisted in the bloody past by their various allies
wherever they could find them in the contest be-
tween governments, England, France, Spain, and
Holland hotly fought each other for dominance.
And the Smoky Mountain settler, on the ground and
ultimately to occupy it, found himself beset on every
hand, not only doing his own fighting, but the fight-
ing of his contending government as well. He had a
complex problem, and his final patience wearing out
he decided to take the problem into his own hands.
Witness the temper of the Tennesseean who crossed
the Great Smokies and hewed out a civilization for
himself with practically no military assistance.
All of these national rivals, helped at times by the
Cherokee, the Creek, and the Shawano, took part in
one of the most formidable contests that was ever
carried on to conquer a vast territory. In the latter
part of the seventeenth, during all of the eighteenth,
and well into the nineteenth century, warring states
and nations used this terrain as a battlefield. As a
result there is not a peak, gap, stream, cove, or
valley which has not been the scene of massacre,
scalping, or tomahawking, of ambuscade or torture.
Treaty after treaty was made between Indian and
settler, or with the controlling government local
or foreign until treaties began to be considered a
joke by the rampant Tennesseeans, who were con-
'UNCLE* JOHN MYERS, OF TUCKALEECHEE COVE
A fine type ot ' Dutch ' settler of the Smokies
ANGLE, SCOT, CELT 59
vinced that the dispute could only be settled ' by the
sword, the right of all nations.' From the very
earliest appearance of white Anglo-Saxons in any
numbers until the tragic finale in 1838, when ten
thousand Cherokees were herded like so many cattle
and forced across the Mississippi at Cape Girardeau
by the fiery Jackson many of them dying from
exposure in the dead of winter the wilderness was
a hell of murder and reprisal, treachery and intrigue.
Said old Junialuska, an able chief of the banished
tribes, * If I had known Jackson would be against
us, I would have shot him that day at the Horse
Shoe 1 (Battle of Horse Shoe Bend when the Indians
were allies of Jackson). Junialuska had depended
too much on ' Old Hickory.'
In connection with this tragic episode of the re-
moval was the fateful assassination of 'Old Charlie/
the Cherokee Chief who dared, with a handful of
followers, to rebel against United States troops com-
manded to effect the removal. Fleeing to the Smokies
with his small band, existing on roots and herbs with
little else to eat for weeks, he was induced to sur-
render by ' Little Will, 1 their beloved Colonel Thomas
and promised immunity by the United States troops.
He surrendered and was treacherously shot by a
firing squad. His followers, however, formed the
nucleus for the present band of Cherokees occupy-
ing the Qualla Reservation in North Carolina, num-
bering 2833 souls in 1927. It is believed that the
soul of 'Little Will' never fully recovered from the
shocking effects of the treachery of Jackson's troops.
Spaniards who first set foot upon the western
continent, then a wilderness of uncounted Indians,
were quickly assimilated by the Indian tribes of the
60 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
tropics and sub-tropics. The French in America also
had been absorbed by the half-breed of old Saint
Lawrence and the Saskatchewan. The Dutch inter-
married with their English neighbors around New
Amsterdam.
But none of these things happened to the Anglo-
Saxon. The individual, hard-hitting race that was to
go into such territory as the Smoky Mountains and
its environs had conquered too much. It was in the
habit of assimilating, not of being assimilated.
The result of European warfare of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries was a lacerating conflict
for America's settlers combined with the most in-
sidious intrigues that could be imagined. The un-
happy settlers and the aboriginal Indians were the
sufferers on their own fighting ground.
With the defeat of the awkward golden galleons
of Spain, her conquests were at an end. But she had
already gained a foothold in America which was to
make things difficult for England, France, and later
for the United States as well. The Spaniard used
chicanery, trickery, and bribes among the Chero-
kees, the Creeks, and the Shawanos. The French used
the Iroquois. Both furnished ammunition as well
as stealthy advisers. England and the colonists
suffered the consequences. What possessions their
descendants hold are lands of the old frontier which
they have earned or their immediate forbears have
gained through trials and bloodshed of the most
sacrificial sort.
The cabins of frontier days yet exist in the Smokies
with their porthole-like, diminutive, shuttered win-
dows sawed through the thick logs. Many of the
flintlock rifles are yet in possession of their original
ANGLE, SCOT, CELT 61
owners or in the hands of sons or grandsons. Some
of these thick- walled, fort-like buildings of two
rooms bear the marks of tomahawk or Indian bullet.
About all of them hangs the romance of frontier
days, the odor of wood-smoke, the aroma of dry-
ing herbs dug from the woods, or of dried vegetables
laid aside, as was the custom in the hard days of
history, for winter sustenance.
Lean lines of strength mark the faces and bodies
of the mountain people accustomed to climbing
steeps physical and spiritual. There is in their de-
meanor the quiet courtesy that takes every one at
his true worth, devoid of blandishment or pretense;
that expects a return of honesty and hates evasion
or equivocation; that is ready and instant in hos-
pitality to the stranger. They hate dishonesty with
a simple, quiet hatred that says little, but the honest
may always expect to receive genuine and warm
consideration.
CHAPTER VII
THE BLOODY GROUND OF THE SMOKIES
THERE was no back eddy of settlers into the Smoky
Mountain region from the upper central part of the
United States. Practically all of the settlers of Ten-
nessee came from Pennsylvania, Virginia, or North
Carolina; there were very few, if any, from north
of the Ohio. If the pioneers got into the great hunt-
ing grounds in lower Ohio and Kentucky, or what
is now known as Tennessee, they had somehow to
cross the Great 'Middle Mountains' called Unegas
or Great Smokies. The great tides of emigrants that
moved westward across Ohio from the teeming
settlements of Pennsylvania during the latter part
of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the
eighteenth depended upon governmental troops for
protection ; they had the advantage of wagon trains
and military escorts. The southern frontiersman had
none of these.
So it was that the citizen of the 'Lost State of
Franklin ' had to shift for himself, first, last, and al-
ways. This condition developed such extraordinary
leaders as Boon, Xavier, Bean, Shelby, Robertson,
Wallen, and Walker. Neither our English nor our
own American government took very readily to this
loose-limbed backwoodsman of Tennessee-North
Carolina who had a way of acting on his own in-
itiative when things went wrong and they nearly
always were going wrong. These shifting govern-
ments seemed to think he was able to take care of
THE BLOODY GROUND 63
himself; and he was! He had republic-building
blood in his veins.
With the high tide of immigration from Eng-
land, Scotland, and Ulster County, Ireland, pour-
ing in from two important ports of America Dela-
ware and Charleston in England's ship bottoms,
hordes of the purest Anglo-Saxon race literally filled
the Southland east of the Blue Ridge Mountains,
Alleghanies, and the valleys of North Carolina and
Virginia about 1750. Very few of the Charleston
immigrants went back as far as the Smokies; these
great mountains seemed to draw the Scotch and
Irish from Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Irish
Presbyterian seemed particularly to seek the fore-
front of activity and to form the rasping edge
against the Indian menace, and when the bars of the
Smokies were let down by the Indian Treaty they
milled over the great tops into the Tennessee wil-
derness. The Irish Presbyterian loved a fight. At
the Donnybrook fairs he had loved to flail with the
black thorn stick the pates of many a lusty young
lout of a Celt and now that his flailing was to be
done with bullets and gunpowder he accepted his
responsibility and was true to it.
One of the best threshings the author ever saw
given an evildoer was administered by one of these
mountain Irishmen to a criminal who had broken
into his home. The victim bore it meekly as his just
deserts and went his way, although he had the repu-
tation of being a killer.
Scanning the annals of the great immigration move-
ments of colonists we come upon the names of Eng-
lish, Scottish, and Irish forbears who had already
made old country history and who were as prominent
64 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
in parliamentary affairs as on the battle-grounds
of history. Ulster County, Ireland, furnished thou-
sands alone owing to religious strife. When England
endeavored to impose a state episcopacy, there was
further conflict with these free-thinkers and be-
lievers. Other vital partialities of rentals in favor of
state religionists affected them as tenants who had
been discriminated against in favor of Catholics.
England furnished many passengers to ships bound
for America because of the high taxes. The New-
gate Prison was filled with debtors who owed petty
amounts and who were helpless against the hounding
of sheriffs and constables. Poverty stalked abroad
and many sold themselves as indentured servants
to future masters in America to pay for their pas-
sage, and virtually became slaves upon their arrival.
English press gangs were continually adding their
quota of unfortunate victims who were waylaid and
slugged into unconsciousness only to awake far
out to sea on their way to be sold in American ports.
White slaves in the eastern territory of America
were constantly escaping from their masters, as
evidenced by many advertisements appearing in
Benjamin Franklin's paper, the ' Pennsylvania Gaz-
ette,' and making their way to 'the southern col-
onies/
Every class of society was represented in the
hegira from the fogs of the North and the Irish Seas
to the great wilderness; ne'er-do-wells with a fair
sprinkling of the cavalier type added to the general
exodus of the stout Covenanters. Irish adherents
of the Covenant were of the grimmest fighting stock.
They expected no easy task in the new contest of a
civilization against the Indian. They had not for-
THE BLOODY GROUND 65
gotten the ' Black Oath* of Charles the First nor the
wrongs allowed by an indifferent king. They were
more than ready with their part of hate when the
War of Independence against unjust taxation with-
out representation was launched.
They were not in the habit of being the pawns of
kings nor sycophants of their courts. They thought
for themselves and acted for themselves also. The
natural result was that England's brigs and bark-
entines were filled, hold and cabin, with these in-
spired emigrants who had fought for England, Scot-
land, and Ireland under great leaders, whose govern-
ments had not properly appreciated their services.
Conquest was in the air and independence was their
obsession. They, like the Roundheads of 1620, were
seeking liberty for action. They were going to a new
continent where there were no kings with selfish
motives and no religions which were trying to thrust
unpalatable tenets down their throats; they were
going to a country where even the ignorant savages
wore valuable trinkets of pure gold which could be
bought for a song.
After arriving in Pennsylvania these hordes
moved down the valleys of least resistance, which
were the traders' ' traces.' The Indian! trader broke
the pathway of advance. He was the forerunner of
civilization, following the old Indian traces which
threaded the American continent in every direction,
by which the various tribes kept in communication
or which they used in warfare, for the Indian was
always restless.
The trader was a respected personage among the
redskins and was rarely molested. Pennsylvania
traders brought back valuable peltries which they
66 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
had obtained for a bit of metal, a knife, a gun, or a
brightly colored piece of cloth. This proved such a
lure that the number of traders increased until there
was complaint to the Crown, and King George is-
sued a proclamation requiring all traders to possess
a license recorded in due manner, but neither settlers
nor traders paid any attention to this dictum.
' Long hunters' like Boon then took the path from
Pennsylvania and Delaware. These induced small
companies of friends to embark to the new land or to
an outlying fort which was often one hundred and
fifty miles ahead of the tide of settlers. These friends
induced their friends until the tide was at its flood
moving down the valleys of the Appalachians into
Virginia and North Carolina. In 1750 many com-
plained that they were 'cramped for room 1 !
Halted by the Cherokees on the south, who were
showing an increasing irritability, the swelling level
began to rise to the shores of the Great Smoky
Mountains, where the Irish were flailing the Indians
with their powder and ball. The Freelanders were
getting more restless as the tide rose higher: over
the Great Smokies was a wilderness in which not a
white man lived; the Indian was the 'cumberer of
the ground,' and, backed by the English, -or French
Government, prevented them from occupying the
Promised Land.
Irritation grew more intense, trading sharper,
fretting keener, until one single murder occurred
such as the killing of Boyd at Boyd's Creek. A
white settler at work was shot in the back from the
bush; a man at his plough; a woman going to the
spring after a bucket of water; a man splitting
boards in the forest. It was the work of Indians.
THE BLOODY GROUND 67
Settlers began grimly to realize that the redskin was
not so kindly disposed after all.
Reprisals followed these isolated outrages. Mem-
bers of the offended families shot the guilty redskin*
Other Indians skulked, on the lookout for vengeance,
from sheltering tree and rock and cover of the forest,
shooting down children and their mothers at the
doorways of their cabins. It was not very long be-
fore reprisal leapt at the heels of reprisal until the
whole country was aboil with Indian hate. The
white Saxon's deliberate punishment consisted in
scalping savages, often alive, and clubbing squaws
to 'let them out of their misery.' Mean half-breeds
and renegades from the Cherokee tribes added to
the turmoil by thievery and the plundering of set-
tlers' cabins upon their own initiative. The French
stirred up the pot of hate in many instances, by
secretly furnishing arms to the Indian, until the
whole wilderness was stewing with a devil's broth of
murder, massacre, and ambuscade.
Settlers took their rifles with them as they
ploughed the fields or split boards in the woods. One
minister, Cumings, carried his to church with him,
placing it in a very dignified manner in one corner
before beginning his sermon. His shot pouch and
powder-horn he hung handily on the corner of his
pulpit. He literally carried the sword and Bible in
either hand.
Things went from bad to worse; appeals to Eng-
land brought no response, or an evasive reply. She
seemed interested only in levying taxes upon the
colonists until, in their extreme resentment, they
resolved to pay no taxes under the Stamp Act
and formed themselves into an organization termed
68 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
'The Regulators' which was to enforce a hearing by
the Crown. This was the first growl of the colonists
at England which was to manifest itself later in open
rebellion.
Although the Regulators' cause was just, it lacked
popular support and met decisive defeat in armed
combat with Governor Tryon at the Allamance.
But France to further her own ends kept pressing
the Cherokees against the colonists at every op-
portunity, until in 1756 the settlers began to re-
alize very vividly that the Indians were allies of
the French. Old Atakullakulla, one of the influen-
tial Cherokee chiefs, had promised warriors to go
against the French at Duquesne, but it was clear
that he had regretted his promise. The French
were building forts along the Ohio and the Saint
Lawrence and had induced the Cherokees to cease
giving aid in building the fort at Loudon.
But when Fort Duquesne fell to Washington and
his Provincials on November 25, 1758, the Indians
began to waver. The fall of Quebec the next year
and the subsequent Spanish cession of Louisiana to
France, of Canada and Ohio to England, left the
Cherokees without a footing; but the settlers had
no easy task to convince the Indian of his precarious
standing. His hopes were renewed by the fall of Fort
Loudon in the midst of the Overhill nation and the
surrender of the garrison under Lieutenant Demer6.
Colonel Grant with an army of 2600 men began
reprisals on the Cherokees in June, 1761, which
brought them to their senses and the realization of
their fading hopes. He destroyed the French out-
posts, burned fifteen villages, capturing a number of
prisoners, and drove the remainder of the warriors
THE BLOODY GROUND 69
into the Smoky Mountains, where they lived like
beasts, eating roots, killing their ponies for food;
their chiefs dead; hope gone; in misery and want;
torn by factional disputes over their respective
political Rallies. Smallpox, brought over in the slave
ships at Charleston, broke out among them, and
weakened by sickness and death, ammunition gone,
they could resist no longer and were willing to make
any terms with their white enemies.
Colonel Stephen, with a large force of Virginians,
met at the Long Island of the Holston, now known
as Kingsport, Tennessee, a large delegation of Cher-
okees. Their chiefs arranged a peace treaty sepa-
rate from that made at Charleston by Ata'gul'kalu'
Atakullakulla who was recognized as 'em-
peror 1 by the English. Lieutenant Timberlake, of
the English forces, anxious to have this treaty re-
cognized, took three Indians to England to ratify it,
but after making the long and arduous journey was
received coldly by the Crown. Timberlake gave an
account of this journey in his 'Memoirs/ published
by J. Ridley, of London, in 1765, together with a
map of the Cherokee Overhill Settlements, with
their respective chiefs and population. In this vol-
ume was a 'curious Secret Journal taken by the In-
dians out of the Pocket of a Frenchman they had
killed.' Possibly a French spy against his govern-
ment.
But the Hopewell Treaty at Charleston entered
into by the 'Little Carpenter/ described by Bar-
tram, the botanist, as a 'man of remarkably small
stature, slender and of very delicate frame, but a
man of superior abilities/ stood with the King of
England, The Little Carpenter had done every-
70 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
thing in his power to stop the fighting, recognizing
that France's reign in the colonies was at an end.
On the conclusion of peace between England and
France in 1763, by which the whole western territory
was ceded to England, a great council was held in
Augusta, attended by all southern Indians and the
colonial governors of Virginia, the Carolinas, and
Georgia, at which Captain John Stewart, superin-
tendent of all the southern tribes, explained to the
Indians the new condition of affairs. A treaty of
mutual peace and friendship was concluded on
November loth of that year,
It was then that the great gateway of the Smokies
that opened into the Tennessee wilderness was set
ajar. Under the leadership of such mighty frontiers-
men as Walker, of Virginia, Smith and Daniel Boon,
of the Yadkin, the tide of immigration broke across
the mountains in spite of every effort of the author-
ities to stop it. All treaties with the Indians were
disregarded. It burst through boundaries estab-
lished at Augusta, overran fixed lines, and inundated
all agreed reservations of the Cherokees who tried
to stem the tide by sending representatives to Eng-
land, all to no avail. The result was that, when
England declared war on her colonists after their
resistance to the Stamp Act, in 1776, the Indians
readily went to the standard of their new allies
hoping to redress their wrongs.
Many Indians could not understand why a gov-
ernment should turn against her own and were not
able to comprehend fully the quarrel which the
colonists had taken up with their mother country*
But they listened to the persuasive voice of the
tempter and joined England.
CADE* 3 COVE
Creek
Calderwood
t /tor.y 1 jjj>f-
-'^Ser
HANO-OYSR
HOUUTAIH8
V!^'
U). u B hif th*
CHEKOKEE COUNTRY,
<>,H,HM/t, ,//*</ ftlifS/t, fftM ,
ft A/ Hcnn IWlwrUv A // /
./ /// // tiwntfy
rAs Vnni i j>ol < / He ul men > y ' //< // Tnwn tint f
HM/I t t'fl'tj/ttttHrJfftt l/ity urn/ ft' HtV
,ft/ Otirruuro
MM~,&^
f litltti > S/tr (rt<
MAP OF THE OVERKILL CHEROKEE SETTLEMENT ON THE
LITTLE TENNESSEE RIVER AT THE FOOT OF THE GREAT
SMOKIES
Modern names added with the typewriter
THE BLOODY GROUND 71
In all the agreements with the white man, the In-
dian was the loser. He was finally shorn of all his
ancient territorial claims, including the best hunting
range in the Smokies. These treaties were also a
farce in so far as permanency was concerned. Before
any official settlement was made and definite boun-
daries established, the Anglo-Saxons had moved for-
ward to occupy new ground * temporarily* as in the
Watauga Settlement (1772), the first white nucleus
in Tennessee, which proved to be permanent. Both
Tennesseeans and North Carolinians considered the
Indian unworthy of notice except to be scalped, and
always swept him aside with characteristic direct-
ness. "*
England, recognizing a valuable ally in the re-
sentful Indian, readily took him on and stood for him
against the white borderer who made self-adjusting
occupancies of territory overnight and without
treaty. There was not an Indian but harbored some
resentment against the white settlers who were tak-
ing his country. Particularly he hated the Tennes-
seean and refused even to enter into treaty with
him.
There was not a white settler but had had some
member of his family murdered from ambush, cap-
tured, tortured by fire, or scalped by some skulking
redskin. England's treaties meant nothing to the
settler; she had never listened to his pleas for re-
dress or for troops. Forthwith he resolved to handle
his own affairs after his own fashion. His indiffer-
ence increased after the attempted enforcement of
the Stamp Act until it flamed into actual rebellion
and a declaration of war by his adopted country.
Being immediately concerned in England's affairs
72 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
did not cause him to lose sleep, but he was deter-
mined to throttle England's wilderness ally, the
Cherokee of the Smokies.
The Cherokee seemed to realize that his last hope
was to place his newly adopted country across the
seas between himself and utter extinction; in this
he could not be blamed. England supplied the In-
dians with clothing, hatchets, guns, and ammunition
from the Lakes to the Gulf. Bounties were offered
by King George for the scalps of Americans, and
then the merry war was on ! The fight that had been
merely a skirmish before was now war to the hilt
between settler and Indian, Anglo-Saxon and red-
skin.
English printers in Charleston sent out circular
letters to all persons in the back country from Kas-
kaskia to Baton Rouge suspected of royalist sym-
pathies asking them to repair to the Cherokee Na-
tion headquarters and join the Indians in a common
attack on the white settlements. King George could
have done nothing better to crystallize the Amer-
icans' determination. Settlers began strengthen-
ing their forts and their cabins for real siege war-
fare, cleaned their guns, and whetted their hunting
knives.
Parties of white settlers attacked scouting parties
of Indians hiding in the wilderness around cabins;
attack and counter-attack followed until the
southern valleys were alive with man-hunting
squads bent on scalping, burning, pillaging, and de-
struction of the cruelest sort. The big hills of the
Smokies were alive with marauding expeditions.
There were no soldiers. Only such natural leaders
as Boon and Xavier took the lead of the sorties.
THE BLOODY GROUND 73
Every man was for himself. Every cabin became a
fort behind which straight-shooting backwoodsmen
with Decherd and Bean rifles let loose a deadly
barrage. Often women and children, endeavoring
to gain the protection of the riflemen, were shot
down and scalped before the very eyes of belea-
gured and outnumbered garrisons.
Realizing their common danger, the border States
organized for a concerted blow. In the summer of
1776 four expeditions manned by backwoodsmen
started from Virginia, North and South Carolina,
and Georgia and plunged into the Cherokee terri-
tory to wipe out all old scores forever and settle with
England.
In August the army of North Carolina, 2400 wil-
derness gunmen and frontiersmen, equipped for the
most part with the Decherd or Mills type of rifle
shooting the small, hard-hitting ball, some with
the old Queen Anne and Broad Arrow and Crown
muskets of the English, struck the first Cherokee
town at Stika'yi, or Stecoee, on the Tuckasegee,
The Americans burned the Indian village, trampled
down the corn, killed a few straggling redskins, and
went on their resistless way of destruction. The
towns within sight of the great tops of the Smokies
upon Oconalufte, Tuckasegee, and the upper part
of the Little Tennessee in the Valley of the Nunda-
yali the Noonday Sun and at the foot of the
Great Smokies, thirty-six in all, were burned, and
as their smoke ascended in the vales of the moun-
tains, cattle were driven into the fields to trample
the crops and then killed and butchered for the sus-
tenance of the raiders.
Before such an overwhelming force, supplemented
74 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
by three others simultaneously advancing from
other directions, the Cherokees made feeble resist-
ance and fled with their women and children into
the Great Smokies, leaving their devastated fields
and villages behind them.
At Waya Gap of the Nantahala Mountains in
North Carolina, the Indians tried to make a stand,
and a terrific hand-to-hand conflict followed with
its resultant scalping, ambuscade, and tomahawk
slaughter. Daniel Boon was in this fight and lost a
brother. The Americans here lost forty men killed,
wounded, and scalped. The Indians were repulsed
after a bloody conflict. Of their number one was
found to be a woman painted and armed like a brave.
Every warrior taken by the whites was scalped
alive, except those who were spared for sale at auc-
tion as slaves. Two Indian women and a boy were
also captured and, against the protest of the blood-
thirsty backwoodsmen, were sold as slaves, bringing
twelve hundred dollars.
At one place a party of Indians was cut off from
escape* Sixteen were killed and in a personal en-
counter 'a stout Indian engaged a sturdy white man
who was a good bruiser and an expert at gouging'
(i.e., thrusting out the eyeballs with the thumbs).
4 After breaking their guns on each other, they laid
hold of one another, when the cracker had his
thumbs instantly in the other fellow's eyes, who
roared and cried "canaly" "enough," in English,
"Damn you," says the white man, "you can never
have enough while you are alive!" He threw him
down, set his foot upon his head, and scalped him
alive; he then took up one of the broken guns and
knocked out his brains. It would have been fun/
THE BLOODY GROUND 75
the narrative runs, 'if he had let the latter action
alone and sent him home without his night-cap to
tell his countrymen how he had been treated.' So
much for the aroused settlers.
Another characteristic record of the parlous times :
'Some of Williamson's detachment, seeing a woman
ahead, fired on her and brought her down with two
serious wounds, but able to speak. After getting
what information she could give them, through a
half-breed interpreter, the informer being unable to
travel, some of our men favored her so far that they
killed her there, to put her out of pain.'
Still another: a few days later 'a party of Colonel
Thomas's regiment, being on a hunt of plunder, or
some such thing, found an Indian squaw and took
her prisoner, she being lame, was unable to go with
her friends. She was so sullen that she would, as
the old saying is, "neither lead nor drive," and by
their account she died in their hands; but I suppose
they helped her to her end!'
The effect of this concerted bloody war of upwards
of six thousand backwoodsmen, the most cruel of all
antagonists, with many scores to settle with the
Indian, was appalling. Fifty Cherokee towns had
been burned, orchards cut down, cattle and horses
killed, personal effects plundered, hundreds of them
killed or starving in the caves and rocks of the
Smokies, living on acorns, chestnuts, and wild game ;
many of them dying of exposure, hundreds sold into
slavery. From Virginia to the Chattahoochee the
destruction was complete. It was the answer of
America's backwoodsmen to England.
But the War of Independence was not over yet.
The settlers had still to reckon with their foe across
76 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
the waters. Although the apparently friendly Cher-
okee chief Atakullakulla, the 'Big Emperor,' sent
word that he was ready with five hundred warriors
to fight against England, other Cherokee chiefs re-
fused to be a party to the compact, especially to the
accompanying cessions of land on the Tennessee side
of the mountains. Dragging Canoe Tsiyu-gun-
si'-ni and old Iskagua Blue Sky with Cam-
eron the Tory backing them, were especially hostile.
But most of the conquered Indians moved out of
this region farther to the southward, where they
established five villages at the State line where
Tennessee joined Georgia.
In April of 1777 the legislature of North Carolina,
of which Tennessee was then a part, offered bounties
of land in the 'New Territory' Tennessee to
able-bodied men who would volunteer against the
remaining hostile Cherokees. Under this act the
State found plenty of rangers who were willing to do
border duty in cutting off Indian raiding parties,
which were accustomed to crossing the familiar
trails over the Smokies and pouncing upon unpro-
tected white settlements. In this way the settlers
already in Tennessee were given such ample pro-
tection that they were able to send assistance to
their besieged friends in Kentucky who were sorely
pressed by the Shawanos. Up to 1769 Tennessee had
not a single white settler below Kingston on the up-
per border line.
Daniel Boon had, however, hunted on the Wa<-
tauga earlier than that and had left an inscription
on a tree near the present Boon's Creek, two and a
half miles northeast of Jonesboro reading;
THE DANIEL BOON TREE
THE BLOODY GROUND 77
D. Boon
Cilled A. BAR On
Tree
in , ThE
yEAR
1760
Nine years after Boon's inscription Captain William
Bean, of Pittsylvania County, Virginia, the first set-
tler in Tennessee, built his cabin on Boon's Creek.
Early in 1780, the British, having conquered
Georgia and South Carolina and effectually broken
all resistance south, Cornwallis, the braggart Fergu-
son, and the merciless Tarleton turned their atten-
tion to the long-limbed Tennesseeans and North
Carolinians who had scourged their wards the Cher-
okees so terribly. The bumptious Creeks, always
ready for a scalping party, commanded by Mc-
Illivray, and a number of [Cherokees under local
chiefs, together with Tories, decided to converge on
North Carolina and Tennessee mountaineers and
teach 'the mountain banditti' as Ferguson termed
them the lesson of obedience. They had better
have let these terrible backwoodsmen alone.
A number of Tennesseeans gathered at a barbecue
for a shooting match were interrupted at their pas-
time by a paroled prisoner, Samuel Philips, bearing
a message from Ferguson, who asked their immedi-
ate surrender, with the threat that, if it was not
forthcoming, he would 'cross the mountains, hang
every one of them, kill every man with arms and
burn their settlements to the ground.' A pretty full
schedule for Ferguson.
Up to this time the border fighters had confined
78 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
their efforts to the more immediate demands of In-
dian fighting, a method of warfare which after some
severe lessons, they were beginning to understand
perfectly. Now they felt that the time had come for
greater action. They resolved not to wait for Fer-
guson, but to go after him.
Accordingly, without orders or authority as
usual without tents or supplies, or commissary
lines, these upstanding fighters of Virginia, Ten-
nessee, and North Carolina assembled at Syca-
more Shoals on the Watauga nine hundred and ten
riflemen in deerskin doublet and tasseled buckskin
shirts with belts of Indian beadwork, with caps
of coon- or mink-skin, or felt, into which they had
thrust a sprig of green, or a bucktail. Every man
carried the long, hard-hitting, small-bored rifle after
the pattern of Decherd, Mills, or Strutton guns,
shooting seventy balls to the pound, a tomahawk,
and a 'butcher* knife. None of the so-called ' offi-
cers f had swords and not a bayonet or a piece of can-
non, or a tent, was to be seen.
Ferguson had sworn that ' all Hell could not drive
him from King's Mountain!' To strike such a blow
at the British commander with his trained troops
these backwoods fighters had to leave their homes
unprotected against Creek, Cherokee, and Shawano.
They, however, had always fought with one hand
Upon the plough and the other upon a rifle. They
knew border warfare now with all of its trickeries
and stratagems, learned at fearful cost. Even before
they mounted upward toward Ferguson, they heard
that the Cherokee was again upon the warpath, but
pressed on to make quick work of the English brag-
gart/
THE BLOODY GROUND 79
Xavier, of French Huguenot family, born in Shen-
andoah County, Virginia, in September, 1745, tried
to arouse all of the white colonists to the immediate
danger, but succeeded in securing only a handful of
men. They had all been impoverished by the war
and had paid their last dollar for land entries and
taxes in the new territory and their cause seemed
gloomy at best; in fact it was at this time that the
colonists' spirits were at their lowest ebb. At the
last moment, Ferguson, with some of the brag taken
out of him by the reported assembly of determined
mountaineers, -tried to get a message to Cornwallis
for reinforcements, but the mountain scouts caught
the messenger and his plans were learned.
With only nine hundred and ten riflemen, wet to
their skins and shielding their gun-pans with their
hunting shirts to keep their powder dry, the British
were defeated. Ferguson was killed along with 284
of his men, 180 were wounded, and 700 prisoners
were captured, with 1500 guns. The Britisher also
lost wagons and supplies purloined from wealthy
Whigs. The battle lasted only an hour. Ferguson
had sworn that he would never surrender to the
'damned mountain banditti*! Needless to say,
John Xavier commanded one of the detachments
which did such deadly work during that brief hour.
The frontiersmen's bullets sped to their mark so
surely that the British general, fighting bravely to
the last, could not use his cavalry, for his riders
were shot from their saddles as fast as they could
mount.
1 Nolachuckey Jack' lost one brother in that fight.
Tarleton was recalled from North Carolina and
Tennessee. A sword ' was presented to each of the
8o LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
valiant commanders, Xavier and Shelby, on behalf
of the Americans, probably the first weapon of that
sort either ever possessed.
A short time after that the brave Huguenot leader
crossed the Great Smoky Mountains in one of the
coldest months of the winter to punish some ma-
rauding Cherokees on the North Carolina slopes.
With one hundred and fifty picked horsemen he
accomplished the feat, although he 'crossed trails
never before attempted by white men,' punished the
recalcitrant redskins losing only one man, and re-
turned safely to his rendezvous at Fort Lee at the
Watauga Settlement.
The great Treaty at Hopewell followed, a much
more extensive and far-reaching one than any ever
before negotiated with the Cherokee. Still another
was entered into at Echota, the peace capital of the
Cherokee Nation. But the Tennesseeans continued
their reprisals whenever they felt like it, arousing
the intense hatred of the Indian and often involv-
ing their government in embarrassing situations. A
letter by the Indian agent Martin at Echota in 1787
reported that the Tennesseeans, after a particularly
severe reprisal for the killing of a white settler by
an Indian, said that 'the country had been given
them by North Carolina and that they intended to
take it "by the sword which is the best right to all
countries/"
The expeditions against the Cherokees at this
time by the Franklinites as the Tennesseeans
were called caused a great deal of consternation
and alarm among the Indians when these long-limbed
woodsmen started a land office to dispose of all ter-
ritory south of the Tennessee River including the
THE BLOODY GROUND 81
Cherokee capital at Echota. The white Saxon was
determined to be forever rid of the red menace.
To try to chronicle all the treaties and reprisals
until the final expulsion of the main body of Cher-
dkees to the Indian Territory in 1838 would lead to
endless repetition, but suffice it to say quoting
Agent Martin again ' Could a diagram be drawn,
accurately designating every spot signalized by an
Indian massacre, surprise, or depredation, or cour-
ageous attack, defense, pursuit, or victory by the
whites, or station, or fort, or battlefield, or personal
encounter, the whole of that section of country
would be studded over with the delineation of such
incidents. Every spring, every fort, every path,
every farm, every trail, every house nearly, in its
settlement, was once the scene of danger, exposure,
attack, exploit, achievement, death.'
So much for the bloody ground of the Smokies*
During this intense warfare between the Anglo-
Saxon and his red foe, Spain ensconced in a fort on
the Chickasaw Bluffs at Memphis, stirred up the
trouble at every opportunity until the surrender
of Cornwallis at Yorktown and the preliminary
Treaty of Paris (November 30, 1782), when the
utter hopelessness of the situation began to dawn
upon the Cherokees. From that time, under the
leadership of John Ross, an able half-breed chief,
the Indians tragically endeavored to save a remnant
of their nation.
But when the fiery Jackson succeeded to the pres-
idency, they recognized their case as hopeless until,
with the herding of their people like cattle in the
dead of winter (1838-39) at Cape Girardeau, where
many of them died of exposure, they passed into the
82 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
Indian Territory, leaving only about 1220 souls at
the Qualla Reservation in Yellow Hill, North Car-
olina. They were too few to cope with the power-
ful white man who had banished them from their
'happy hunting ground given to them by the Great
Spirit since the Beginning,' to quote an address once
presented to the assembled nation by one of their
great prophets.
It was a sad end for the original American race,
but it is the record of two strong races thrown into a
conflict from which only the stronger could emerge.
It was then that the Anglo-Saxon, having con-
quered another people, shouldered his rifle, his axe,
and his salt-gourd and trekked to a new home in
peace, confident now of his security in a wilderness
home of which he had dreamed, free of a terrible
menace. He was now rid of the English, the French,
the Spaniard, and the Indian. In this respect we are
reminded of a certain Wiltshire rhyme:
THE HARNET AND THE BITTLE *
A harnet set in a hollur tree,
A proper spiteful twoad was he;
And a merrily zung while he did zet
His stinge as shearp as a bagganet;
'Oh, who so vine and bowld as I,
I vears not bee, nor wapse, nor vly.
A bittle up thuds tree did dim,
And scomvully did look at him;
Zays he, 'Zur harnet, who giv thee
A right to zet in fhuck there tree?
Vor ael you zets zo nation vine,
I tell 'e 'tis a house o' mine!'
1 The Hornet and the Beetle, written in 1400 in the dialect of the
present Smoky mountaineer!
THE BLOODY GROUND 83
The harnet' s conscience velt a twinge,
But grawin' bowld wi his long stinge, .
Zays he, * Possession's the best laSw;
Zo here thee sha'sn't put a claaw!
Be off, and leave the tree to me,
The mixen's good enough for ye I'
Just then a yuckel, passin' by,
Was axed by them the cause to try:
'Ha! ha! I zee how 'tis! 1 says 'e,
They'll make a vamous nunch var me!*
His bill was shearp, his stomach lear,
Zo up he snapped the caddlin* pair!
MORAL
Ael ye as be to laaw inclined
This leetle story bear in mind;
Vor if to laaw you aims to gwo
You'll find they'll attus zar 'e zo;
You'll meet the vate of these here two
They'll take yoar cwoat and carcass tool
The italicized words are identical with those of the
present folk in the mountains!
He had fallen out of the frying-pan of England
into the fire of his adopted country, which he had
extinguished with his very life-blood, the blood of
the Celt of Ulster, the Saxon of Wessex, arm in arm
with the Huguenot, the Hollander and the Frank.
Old World in his astuteness, new world in his am-
bitions -for freedom and a home undisturbed in the
wilderness which was big enough for all Saxons!
He was the 'yuckel ' that snapped up both the beetle
and the hornet!
A great many students of history may wonder
why so many Indians were scattered outside the pre-
cincts of their Upper, Middle, and Lower Towns at
84 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
the foot of the Smokies prescribed according to
authenticated maps in Washington Archives and to
Timberlake's record. The answer lies in the fact
that a great many well-to-do settlers were able to
buy Indian slaves. Small colonies of Indians were
located on such plantations as at Wear's Fort to-
ward Gatlinburg and other isolated settlements,
quite a distance from the main Indian nucleus in and
near the Smokies. These Indians were employed in
basket-making, weaving, dyeing, and were expert
with the spinning wheel and other implements the
use of which was taught by the English and Amer-
ican governments. These small, isolated colonies
were also an illustration of a better understanding on
the part of the two races where there existed only
good will and where bloodshed, did not enter*
John Hillsman, of Amelia County, Virginia, in
1802 an ancestor of the writer was one of these
extensive landholders, occupying what would now
comprise about fifty blocks in the center of Knox-
ville, who employed Indians upon his wilderness
plantation. The Indians encamped upon his lands
seemed peacefully disposed and gave no trouble.
Similar instances of good relationships between the
white man and the redskin seemed to endure and to
prove the exception to the rule, but in the'inain, the
Anglo-Saxon and the red man were not good com-
panions in the intense struggle for the domination of
the North American continent.
Oddly enough, the garrison soldiers under Demer6
at Old Fort Loudon in 1756 had many Cherokee
maiden sweethearts who more than once saved their
lives by giving out advance information of con-
templated attacks by their warlike nations. When
THE BLOODY GROUND 85
censured for this, many of the Cherokee women
proudly boasted of the fact that they had white
lovers within the fort! Even romance makes odd
mates under times of violent stress and durance.
It goes to prove that the Anglo-Saxon-Celt was a
creature of his environment and that he not only did
his own fighting but his loving as well; and who
knows but that even his love affairs were a parcel of
his strategy born of the hardships of the wilderness
by which he was able to circumvent every scheme of
the wily savage to prevent him from founding his
eminent republic?
He was an upstanding man able to take care of
himself under all circumstances, who commanded
every situation, feared neither king nor devil, and
believed in a Supreme Being Who directed all things,
ruled his destiny, and kept his powder dry.
CHAPTER VIII
TREKKING SKYWARD
AXJDUBON, the French naturalist, persuaded Daniel
Boon to attempt his memoirs to contain some of his
1 thrilling adventures.'' After a very labored essay at
"the wonderful beauties of the forest' and mention
of the strange (?) disappearance of an Indian fishing
on a log in the woods, 'whereupon he straightway
fell into the water and was seen no more,' Boon gave
up the task. The hand trained to pull the hair-trig-
ger of a Decherd could not flourish the quill, and
Boon was exceptionally proud of 'Old Betsy/ his
rifle. He was glad to show his French friend how he
could hit a target or ' bark' a squirrel a method of
killing it by concussion when the ball was fired very
closely under the squirrel, often splintering the bark
of the tree, but not touching its body.
Boon and Audubon were in Lieutenant John
Xavier's fort on the Watauga at the, time, and the
chronicler of those days said that ' Boon made a fine
appearance going about the fort in his copperas-
colored jacket and brass buttons with his hair done
up in a queue and wearing a felt hat!' It might be
added that, contrary to popular belief, Boon never
wore a coonskin or bucktail cap. He was quite
averse to the practice, possibly owing to the fact
that he might be mistaken for an animal and shot
while crawling through the brush to elude his omni-
present enemy, the Indian. He did not tarry long at
the fort as an officer under the famous Xavier ; mill-
TREKKING SKYWARD 87
tary life was too Irksome and he fretted at the con-
finement it entailed. One fine day the call of the
woods proved too strong, and, taking his beloved
' Betsy' in the hollow of his arm, he left word with a
subordinate that he had 'resigned' and disappeared
into his beloved realm, the trackless forest!
While on the lower Yadkin in 1750, Boon was
haled before his church for 'using outrageous oaths'
toward a fellow settler who dared to move within
ten miles of his cabin. Only in recent years 'Uncle'
Robert Trentham, of Elkmont on the 'East Prong*
of Little River, said that he was going to move back
'furder into the woods because it was gittin' too
crowded ' ! This specific outburst was occasioned by
the sight of a pack train carrying camper's supplies
into Jake's Gap near the home of his son Levi Trent-
ham. The nearest cabin to ' Uncle' Robert was then
ten miles away!
So it was with the rare backwoodsmen of the old
days. They sought the freedom of isolation. The
true frontiersman adopted for a possession what he
saw with his own eyes in the unclaimed wilderness
and defended this adoption with his rifle. As illustra-
tion, Boon, in company with Samuel Galloway, both
hired by Henderson and Company in 1764 to explore
the Cumberlands for the purpose of taking posses-
sion, after passing through the Great Smokies, saw
great herds of buffalo grazing in the valleys, and ex-
claimed : ' I am richer than the man mentioned in the
Scriptures who owned the cattle on a thousand hills
I own the wild beasts of more than a thousand
valleys!'
The immense land grants of the Tennessee wil-
derness offered by the Assembly of North Carolina,
88 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
of which State Tennessee was then a part, in Novem-
ber, 1777, at practically the cost of their survey, in-
duced many of the settlers of North Carolina as well
as those of Virginia and Pennsylvania to cross the
Great Smokies into the promised land. These grants,
of course, were menaced by Indians until 1838, when
the Cherokees were banished into the Indian Terri-
tory by President Jackson in spite of the untiring
efforts of John Ross, an educated half-breed. The
act established entry offices in several counties to
'lands which have accrued, or shall accrue, to the
State by treaty or conquest, are subject to entry etc.'
These entries had reference to the Washington Dis-
trict which then practically included the present
State of Tennessee.
Provision was made for the opening of a land
office in Washington County to accept entries at the
rate of forty shillings per hundred acres about
ninety-six dollars allowing each settler who was
head of a family to take up as much as six hundred
and forty acres for himself, a hundred acres for his
wife, and the same amount for each of his children.
Thus it was that a man with three children, for a little
over a hundred dollars, could not see to the end of
his vast estate. And the State of North Carolina put
a premium on conquest in so doing. It is no wonder
that the Indian lost his happy hunting ground in less
than sixty years!
A subsequent act extended these generous priv-
ileges of land grants much further, allowing every
settler who had a log cabin erected four hundred
acres so located as to include his improvement. In
addition he had the right to purchase a thousand
acres adjoining him at a cost which only amounted
SAND MYRTLE AND BALSAM FIR ON SAND MYRTLE TOP,
MOUNT LE CONTE
TREKKING SKYWARD 89
to the expense of selection and survey. This was the
open door through which settlers poured into the
Tennessee wilderness over every trail, gap, or Indian
trace in the Great Smokies. There being no wagon
roads, settlers of the more pretentious sort did not
move their families at once, but staked others who
went to the new lands, or held them by proxy. All
sorts of curious cavalcades began to move to the new
territory of the wilderness, where not a single white
person had lived up to eight years previous outside
the old fort on the Watauga. It was a land move-
ment that can only be compared to the migration of
the forty-niners later in American history.
This very act of the North Carolina Assembly has
been the cause of hopeless entanglement in deeds to
land in Tennessee records up to the present time and
also has been the source of many legal contests be-
tween land companies with priority claims and with
the original settlers or mountain people of to-day.
It can be readily surmised that priority of claim with
a cabin on the * improvement* held its strength at
law on the point of possession. As a direct result of
these conditions, up to within a few years ago cabins
grew like mushrooms overnight in many mountain
glens, and engineers and would-be occupants of con-
tested lands have boasted that certain cabins were
built in twenty-four hours! A small 'crop' of pota-
toes usually accomplished the trick of 'homestead
rights,' although the crop was rarely weeded or gar-
nered.
On a trip through the Smokies a few years ago, the
author and his friends passed one of these deserted
"improvements' on the Dripping Spring trail. At
that time in going up the mountain there was not a
90 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES'
sign of human habitation other than a rather strag-
gly crop of potatoes. Our party had slept in the open
with saddles for pillows. But on the return, a week
later, a brand-new cabin occupied the clearing and
smoke filmed upward from the new stick chimney!
We learned afterwards that our movements were
misinterpreted by contestants for the land and that
the cabin was the answer to all land-hunters!
There have been many personal encounters of a
serious sort between crews of contesting entrants,
some of them resulting in tragic shooting or cutting
affrays, but the winner of the hand-to-hand fight
was generally the owner of the cabin who shot to
kill 'trespassers/ This preliminary cabin-building
was always the herald of a hotly contested lawsuit for
which priority of possession must be proved, other
things being equal.
- This inextricable entanglement of records has de-
prived many an honest and deserving mountaineer
of his just possessions, either because he neglected to
have his land grants registered properly or because
he forgot the conditions which required him to plant
crops upon his 'improvement' to hold his squatter's
rights according to surveys of former years. But
exploiting land companies who held immense tracts
generally 'allowed' the poor mountaineer who had
held these acreages since the beginning, for which his
ancestors had shed their blood, perhaps, a 'home-
stead' of a few scant acres! This righteous 'conces-
sion' was many times made merely because of fear
that the Anglo-Saxon temper might take a notion to
'feud it out/
Many timber companies realized to their sorrow
what this meant. It generally resulted in fired tracts,
TREKKING SKYWARD 91
the fire set in the leaves at the opportune moment
when the sap was up in the timber and a high
wind blowing a fire disastrous in its effects which
would sweep thousands even millions of acres
of fine trees to their destruction. So they dare not
stir up this Anglo-Saxon tendency to punish the
stealing of his rights to the land. Many fires in
Smoky Mountain timber are yet to be explained.
They generally occur at a time when the standing
trees can be most easily damaged when the sap is
up.
The list below immediately discloses the reason
why land records were so inextricably entangled
that even a ' Philadelphia lawyer' could not pro-
perly unravel them:
TENNESSEE'S CHAMELEON-LIKE RECORD AS A
COMMONWEALTH
FIRST SETTLEMENT:
The Watauga Association 1769 to 1777
Part of North Carolina 1777 to 1784
(Land grants issued)
Lost State of Franklin 1784 to 1788
(More land grants besides those honored to
North Carolina Continental Soldiers of the
Line)
Back to North Carolina 1788 to 1790
(More grants)
Territory of the United States 1790 to 1796
(Privilege of grants which fortunately were not
taken)
State of Tennessee 1796 to now.
(Ungranted lands became property of the State
and by an act of the Tennessee legislature of
1903 were to be sold and the proceeds used for
schools.)
92 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
In all about eighty thousand grants are on record
with their unknown aggregate of acreage in such an
inextricable mess that it is utterly impossible to ap-
proximate even how many acres were granted by
either State!
Naturally, when the subject of land grants is men-
tioned to the State Archivist of Tennessee, he tears
his hair ! An income tax report would be far easier.
The North Carolina Assembly had closed its land-
grant offices only once during its period of activity,
from June, 1781, to May, 1783, when they were
opened to gain proceeds to pay her Continental Line
officers their arrears for Revolutionary service*
The original settlers on the Watauga, who later
formed the Watauga Association, in 1772 bought
from the Cherokee Indians all of the country on the
waters of that river for six thousand dollars' worth
of merchandise and a few muskets. Land grants
were issued by North Carolina immediately upon
adoption of the Watauga Association in 1777 and
continued thereafter to be issued by every supervi-
sory government, except during the two years before
mentioned, that took over the Tennessee Territory.
Even the State of Franklin continued the practice
under Xavier after 1784 when the Territory was
named in honor of Benjamin Franklin. Xavier's new
republic also honored grants from the parent State
of North Carolina for her Continental soldiers, while
at the same time conducting its own land entry
offices. But the unwieldy job of policing a new State
which was composed entirely of a wilderness full of
Indians and warring settlers, without funds or mili-
tia, was too much even for the statesmanlike quali-
ties of the French Huguenot. His men could not
TREKKING SKYWARD 93
leave their homes unprotected long enough to serve,
so the State of Franklin asked to be readmitted to
the good graces of the North Carolina Assembly in
1788.
This time her Assembly acted more wisely than
before. Profiting by the former experience with the
truculent and independent Irish and Scottish Pres-
byterians who did not like the Indian, she ceded her
territory to the United States of America after two
years of troublesome possession with the privilege of
more land grants! This, our ever- wise Uncle Samuel
thought was going too far and he declined very as-
tutely to take advantage of the land-grant issue, but
agreed to honor grants for which pledges had been
given already. After two years, Tennessee was ad-
mitted to the Union (1796).
Thus the State of Tennessee ceased her wander-
ings at the doorstep of Uncle Sam. But woe to the
Keeper of the Archives! Six times the traveling
State changed her allegiance. Five of these times
she was an orphan child of an unwelcome and dubi-
ous disposition whom nobody wanted; not even
her own self-constituted parents and supervisors of
the State of Franklin. They could not control her
disposition to wander. The redoubtable Xavier even
was the victim of political disorders in North Caro-
lina, her parent State, was once arrested for treason-
able acts in refusing to countenance ' just f taxes, and
was tried in the court-house at Hillsboro, but was
rescued by his loyal admirers. No attempt was
made to recapture him. Her border warfare was a
constant drain on the men and resources of the new
republic.
The control of these independent borderers, who
94 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
usually acted on their own initative with no sem-
blance of organized discipline, was not only a deli-
cate matter but an impossible one. It was a mighty
accomplishment even to herd together the nine hun-
dred and ten riflemen to punish Ferguson at King's
Mountain and it required still greater genius than
Xavier's even to keep them together afterward.
These fine coloneers had too many superhuman tasks
to perform. They could not fight and look after their
homes and crops at the same time. It would have
required a standing army of a hundred thousand
men to govern and police the wilderness against the
Shawanos, the Creeks, and the Cherokees, with their
powerful allies.
This wilderness warfare bred men of rare individ-
uality and initiative. With scarcely an officer among
them, with no commissary, with shirts wrapped
about their gun-pans to keep their powder dry,
these riflemen had fought and vanquished trained
troops from England under Cornwallis and Fergu-
son at Yorktown and King's Mountain. The par-
ticular government under which they happened to
be citizens interested them very little, as they usually
managed matters according to the needs of the situa-
tion and according to what means they possessed.
Indeed, their government changed hands so often
that half the time many of them did not know in
what commonwealth they lived. The State line
wriggled back and forth like a serpent across the
terrain so often from the Cumberlands to the Ten-
nessee, Mississippi, and Holston Rivers, finally rest-
ing upon the top of the Smokies, that one settler
naively remarked after another meeting of the North
Carolina Assembly, 'Back in No'th Ca'liny agin,
TREKKING SKYWARD 95
hey? Wai, I'd jest as soon live thar as anywhars.
That's whar I come from! Leastways, I ain't keerin*
as long as I ken move 'thout gittin' on my hoss!'
So it was with the Tennesseean and his traveling
State! But one thing never changed. That was the
High Sheriff of North Carolina. The word 'sheriff'
was of Anglo-Saxon origin and so was he, and
he never forgot that taxes to the State of North
Carolina were due. Consequently many tracts and
homesteads went under the hammer for ridiculous
amounts. Even the elusive land grant record was no
match for him.
An ancestor of the author's family bought at auc-
tion the whole present County of Grainger, Tennes-
see, comprising seventy thousand acres, for the ex-
travagant sum of $281.10, which was the amount
due the aforesaid representative of the law Octo-
ber 8, 1799, for back taxes delinquent to the State
of North Carolina and its land-granting Assembly. 1
The other constant hardship of the settler was the
ever-present Indian menace. These two were inev-
itable death and taxes!
When the door of Opportunity was opened by the
forementioned land grants, the trails of the Smokies
began to be filled with trekkers to the new-world
wilderness of plenty. Small householders gathered
their meager effects and mounted the steeps that
spanned the backs of these giant mountains or went
through the gap of the Big Pigeon. These Indian
trails were known only to a few intrepid hunters and
the red man. Borrowing some sort of beast of bur-
den a raw-boned, flea-bitten nag ofttimes from
a friendly settler or Indian, the Anglo-Saxon voy-
1 Deed in possession of the author.
96 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
ageur placed upon its back all he had in the world.
He and his family trudged over the gigantic steeps
to a new home in the great wilderness which pro-
mised more room than the 'cramped quarters' of the
Blue Ridge and North Carolina valleys!
Migration literally rushed across the Great Smokies
under the leadership of such men as Boon of the
lower Yadkin, Walker of Virginia, and Wallen and
Smith, in spite of every effort of the authorities to
check it. King George of England issued a proclama-
tion October 7, 1763, forbidding all provincial gov-
ernors to issue land grants, or land warrants, to be
located on any territory west of the mountains but
the Anglo-Saxons paid no attention to it ! Before one
treaty was ratified by the home government, others
were rapidly entered into by settlers and land com-
panies who traded the lands of the Indians for va-
rious paltry considerations and a fraction of their
real worth. The boundary of the redskin's country
changed too fast to keep any accurate record. Many,
such as Timberlake of Virginia, tried to ratify im-
portant treaties with England by taking influential
Cherokee chiefs along with them to seek a personal
interview with King George, but were met coldly,
the Crown not wanting to take cognizance of unof-
ficial representatives.
So the settlers of North Carolina and Virginia, led
by the hardy Irish Presbyterian fighters, trekked
over the top of the Smokies by the shortest route. It
was a great land-grab movement in spite of its Indian
peril, a movement for small holders to gain posses-
sions at a nominal price. During these stirring times
the border never lacked valiant defenders, for each
backwoodsman doing border service received a grant
of land.
TREKKING SKYWARD 9 7
Although many settlers banded together for this
perilous passage across the gigantic mountains, yet
many small and pitiful cavalcades entered upon the
hard journey alone. The tales of homesteaders, iso-
lated upon their grants of land and attacked by
skulking Indians, massacred, burned, or carried off
as slaves into the Cherokee villages, had reached the
ears of many settlers. Some of the more timid ones
were deterred, but, for the most part, the migration
was not noticeably checked.
The watchful borderers on the tops of the passes
in the Smokies helped to make conditions safer.
Their duty was to prevent surprise attacks upon set-
tlers on both sides of the mountains who were at the
mercy of marauding Indians or renegade tories who
refused to take any oath of allegiance. These watch-
ful border riflemen did a valiant service, but, as was
characteristic of backwoods militia, they served with-
out any vestige of organization and dropped their
duty when their personal affairs had accumulated,
leaving matters as hazardous as before. These trek-
kers were not of the class nearer the coast that loved
broad acres with slaves. For the most part, fortu-
nately, they were men and women who knew how
to do things, craftsmen, builders, fashioners of wood
and metal, weavers, spinners, gunmakers, iron smelt-
ers, wheelwrights, welders of copper and brass
the armorers of England and Scotland hewers,
masons, hunters and riflemen. They could not only
make their own guns, but knew how to shoot them
unerringly as well.
There were no slaves among the bordermen. The
frontiersman despised such. He had no respect for
servile men or women and very little for their mas-
98 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
ters. His code of ethics got down to fundamentals.
Perhaps a trader now and then owned ' Guinea nig-
gers 1 brought over from Africa to the seaport of
Charleston in the slave ships, but, for the most part,
slavery was an institution unknown and little re-
spected among the borderers. It smacked of laziness
and was contrary to the borderman's religion which
was very rigid. He literally had no room for the
negro. His cabin was small, with only one room, and
he could not make the black his equal. Besides this
his Bible taught him that Ham was cursed of God
for a sin of vulgarity. All well-disposed men were
born free and equal to his way of thinking and no
man had a right to enslave or yoke another. His life
was one of fighting on the vanguard of civilization
and a slave would have entailed social complica-
tions, to say the least, and would have compelled a
man to associate intimately with a being whom he
did not consider his equal. The black man is to this
day a curiosity in the big hills, and the writer re-
members with some interest how the presence of a
negro cook in a bear-hunter's camp astonished some
of the mountaineers.
So the traveling homesteader carried his own pack.
He possessed only the deerskin (jerkin) shirt upon
his back, his Decherd, Bean, Strutton, or Mills
rifle, an axe, and a salt gourd. There was not a van-
ity case among the effects of his ' woman ' except per-
haps a 'sugin' x of bear-oil with which, after Indian
fashion, she anointed her hair and kept it sleek. The
single beast carried, perhaps, an iron kettle; always
an axe; a few well-worn quilts; a blanket; a 'butcher
knife,' as a hunting knife was then called; and an
1 A small bottle made of a gourd.
E
<
TREKKING SKYWARD 99
auger, a very necessary tool in erecting a cabin. This
last tool was very often carried by some member of
the family. If the man had seen better days, a spin-
ning wheel was somehow fastened to the pack which
moved upward over the sinuous trail worn knee-
deep by the Indians after centuries of use.
With a scant supply of powder and home-made
bullets for his hand-made gun beautifully fash-
ioned by himself and made to suit his own stoop of
shoulder and his trusting family, all fearful of the
skulking Indian, he set forth after spending all night
at the foot of the Smokies with a friendly settler.
At the friend's cabin he received final instructions as
to his course, perhaps the two of them talking far
into the night.
With what beating hearts they must have ascended
the steeps! The keen eye of the man, ever wary,
scanning every vista, noting every quivering leaf,
every bent twig, every displaced pebble or piece of
moss, hearing every sound whether customary or un-
usual. Ears alert, eyes keen, with noiseless moc-
casined footfall, he led the way with his wife often
with small children in a pitiful file that threaded
its silent way upward to the clouds.
A rain cloud off below in some cove threshed out
its showers upon the Indian settlements, or the
biting snow peppered down upon the dried leaves of
the underbrush. But onward and upward this silent
cavalcade moved, the mother hushing the whimper-
ing child in her arms with the threat of Indians!
The question often comes to mind, why do moun-
taineers walk single file even in the broad ways of
our cities? The answer is here. The man, the de-
fender, walks in front. Indians, bears, panther, rattle-
joo LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
snakes. Children, mother, all he has in the world,
and the pack on the back of the beast. Is it any
wonder they walk in single file? Every time we see
it we should remember our ancestors with reverence
and take off our hats.
The trails of the mountains are narrow and deep.
Every slight turn brings a new vista with its possible
lurking danger. The redskin also walks thus, but to
stalk better and to spring off the trail more quickly
at the sight of his enemy.
A twig snaps. The man is on the alert instantly.
But it is only an acorn or a dead limb which the wind
has shaken down from the roof of the trees. He him-
self avoids twigs in his path so that he may hear more
perfectly above his own deep breathing as he climbs.
There is another crash of a falling limb, but his trained
ear hears another sound that is different and which in-
creases in intensity each straining second. He steps
quickly behind a tree and holds up a silencing hand
to his loved ones. They too stop with their hearts in
their mouths. The noise increases and becomes the
beat of frantic hoofs upon the earth and a panting
deer, with hanging tongue, breaks into the open
through the brush.
Despite caution, he instinctively lifts his rifle to
fire. The hunting instinct is strong within him. But
fortunately he is too late. Directly in the deer's
course he sees in a second the lashing of a tawny tail
high in the trees ; there is a flash of a muscular brown
body with claws outspread downward through space ;
a great panther falls heavily upon the terror-stricken
creature, and the yellow fangs sink deeply into the
beautiful doe's neck. There is the swift mauling of a
great paw. The man is quick. Leaping forward with
TREKKING SKYWARD 101
drawn hunting knife before the great yellow panther
can strike at his new antagonist, he sinks the blade
deep into the heart behind a muscular shoulder.
Mortally wounded, the panther strikes back vi-
ciously, rips open the leather doublet from wrist to
elbow, and tears a great ragged gash along the woods-
man's arm. But he does not notice it. He watches
his antagonist's green eyes until they dull in swath-
ing lip and final shudder. The deer is already dead,
her neck broken by the panther's swift blow.
Awe-stricken, the frontiersman's 'woman' darts
quickly forward in alarm to her 'man's* defense.
She sees the blood upon his sleeve and gasps. She
springs to help staunch it, but he pushes her gently
aside.
'I ain't hurt none,' he says grimly. 'Jest breshed
me. Go back to the young uns!'
Accustomed to obeying him, she moves quietly,
yet with apprehension, back to her accustomed place.
She watches him with doubtful belief at his hurt.
The hunter tears a piece of clean cloth from a bunch
of rifle-patching taken from his shot pouch, stays the
wound, and stoops to examine his prey. 1
It is evening and they have traveled far and long
with nothing but grains of parched corn to eat, fear-
ing to light a fire for dread of the Indian. The man
now prepares a camp for his family under the lee of a
shelving rock off and under the trail. The horse is
unloaded and tethered in a small grassy patch near
by in the open where a stream trickles under the
laurel. Lugging his two victims of the chase to the
rock, he proceeds to hang them by their hindquarters
1 A composite picture of real occurrences told by backwoodsmen
coming across the Smokies to live in Tennessee.
102 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
to a stout limb preparatory to skinning them, which
he deftly does with swift strokes of his hunting knife.
Presently an exclamation escapes him. There is
an odd wound in the shoulder of the deer. With the
point of his knife he plucks out a broken piece of flint
embedded in the sinew. So some one else has been
on the chase! He glances apprehensively about him
and alertly listens for a moment to the trees sighing
in the evening winds, but there is no other sound.
Only the sun slants his setting rays upward on the
pillared trunks of the tulips and hemlocks. Indian !
Always the threat of the Indian. Will it never cease?
It seemed the personification of intensity, this
warfare of the fittest. The deer, the arrow, the pan-
ther, and the white freeman. Who shall win? All
these things flash through his mind as he is skinning
the panther and the deer. With characteristic Scot-
tish frugality he puts the broken flint in his shot
pouch. Being of a fat, white flint, it might prove
handy for a shower of live sparks from his firing-pan.
Perhaps the unseen foe might furnish the flint for
his own downfall. Who knows?
He proceeds with his task of skinning while his
helpmeet spreads the well-worn quilts and blanket
for the night's rest and puts her baby to her breast.
With great care not to start too large a blaze, he
kindles a small fire with a fire bow, Indian fashion, in
the crisp, oily skin of birch bark plucked from the
underside of a fallen tree. Hejroasts some of the veni-
son, appetizing to hungry ones, seeing that others
are supplied before he helps himself and going on
short scouting sorties to be sure that the horse is
tethered fast and that no skulking enemy is waiting
for the cover of gathering darkness. He assists in
TREKKING SKYWARD 103
the tucking-in of the little ones and while others
sleep keeps vigil by the glowing coals, alertly listen-
ing to the noises of the forest, punctuated by the
stealthy footfalls of prowling denizens of the woods
attracted by the smell of roasting meat.
The night is chill, but the overhanging rock re-
flects the heat inward and protects his little company
from the biting winds of the high altitudes. Now
and then he slips down to where the nag is tied to see
that all is well and gazes for a moment up to the sky
where the silvery moon cruises on her rapid course,
leaving behind a wake of flying cloud. Toward morn-
ing heavy sleep closes his eyes and he catches a fleet-
ing rest, but that is all. - ,
The two skins make quite a heavy pack when the
camp is astir in the dawn, but he lightens the load
as best he can and shoulders most of the meat that
is left after breakfast, while the panther's carcass,
with the offal, is buried deep under a heavy rock at
the bottom of the stream where it will slowly decay
without chance of scent or discovery.
Knee-deep in the well-worn trail of the Indians, they
reach the top of the mighty range of the Smokies.
They turn for a moment to look back at the hills
to the eastward leaping like a mighty sea in crested
waves of blue to the distant horizon. To the north-
west lie the peaceful coves of the Tennessee wilder-
ness sheer below in the deep valleys like emerald
sheets in the shimmering azure of Indian village
smoke. There is the Promised Land. Above, the
flying mists touching the earth scud onward like
spread sails leaving their homeland. Tears fill their
eyes. But it is only for a moment, for they hear the
hail of the vigilantes beyond on a high open ridge
104 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
and they answer. They are back to the new world
again. Stern reality returns like a strange night-
mare.
They are warned not to go farther, for the day is
again lengthening into evening and skulking shadows
have been seen in the rocks below to the westward.
These men in buckskin and leather, some of them
with coonskin caps, are a hardy, weather-browned
lot. But they are joyous to see a newcomer, a white
man, and they are relieved.
As supper is prepared over a small fire the
Indian menace is present here also the travelers
offer some of their venison to the rangers, who eat
ravenously, for their vigil has been long and hard.
Other outposts come silently in and are made wel-
come. All talk of Indians. One of the rangers exhib-
its a fresh bloody scalp crowned apeak with a blood-
stained eagle feather.
* Old Eagle Top ! ' he grins proudly. ' Got him from
behind a rock this e'en-tide!' The man is a Scotch-
man from the Hills of Cheviot, famous in the border
warfare of the Covenanters. They strike up a warm
acquaintance.
The voyageur questions minutely as to the loca-
tion of the savage and they agree on certain matters
concerning the broken flint which is exhibited.
'Thar'll be more to be thocht of when the de'il gets
na hame tonicht. I ken they'll Venge him!' the
borderer prophesies thoughtfully.
A copper-colored face slips silently into the circle
about the camp-fire. In the black hair of the Indian
are feathers of the blue jay. The woman starts back
instinctively shielding her child. 'Nay! He'll na
harm ye!' the Scotch borderer admonishes reassur-
t TREKKING SKYWARD 105
ingly. 'He's air friend. That's Tlay'ku' the Blue
Jay, He is the foe of Old Eagle Top who stole his
bride awa'.' With that he laughs and tosses the
bloody scalp with its stained feather over to the
young redskin.
'Tlay'ku' plucks the top knot of old Awahili
the eagle, an' weel may he!' exclaims the Scot with a
laugh as the Indian snatches up the trophy and slips
out of the circle again and disappears in the dark-
ness. 'He's weel glad to hae it!' the border scout
chuckles as he turns to warm his hands by the fire.
The ' painter's' panther's, skin is shown about
to all with pride as to its size and color. After a little
good-natured haggling, the traveler trades it for a
precious bit of powder and a few bullets.
After a restless stay of a few days, during which
the sojourner does a little border duty himself and
contracts to take the place of the Scot two moons
hence when the other must go to his 'bairns,' the
family receives minute directions in order to avoid
marauding redskins that are adrift in the forest, and
a few instructions as to the most desirable land en-
tries. The departing guest is given a crude message
painfully scrawled upon birch bark to be delivered
to friends upon his arrival. He leads his small
cavalcade downward into the great coves of the new
wilderness, ruled over by the redoubtable Xavier and
his hardy band of followers, that spreads its marvel-
ous expanse to the reaches of the great Mississippi.
Perhaps he meets Boon returning from one of his
numerous trips to Kentucky for salt at the Licks and
trades a little of his precious powder for enough salt
to fill half the gourd tied at the saddle of his nag.
He is doubly fortunate if he meets the great Xavier.
106 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
In either case their conversation turns to fresh
accounts of marauding Indians and their massacres;
tales of reprisals and scalpings by settlers and of the
burning of Cherokee villages by enraged backwoods-
men. They receive due warning as to routes to be
taken to avoid skulking bands of redskins, both
Cherokee and Creek, out for pillage and plunder
headed by Old Iskagua or Dragging Canoe and abet-
ted by the degenerate Tory, Cameron, that infest the
backwoods colonies; perhaps drunk with the pale-
face 'firewater* rum from Charleston harbor.
But they go downward with hearts beating faster
than when they came up the steep slopes to the east-
ward. They descend into the home of their dreams
with game plentiful, towering forests, rich soil for
planting, hard work, and dangers on every hand, but
land, land, for the asking. Dangers add to, rather
than detract from, their eagerness, as they go with
willing hearts and anxious step to help found a new
republic. '
CHAPTER IX
HIS CABIN HIS CASTLE
THE frontier cabin of America should be emblazoned
upon her coat of arms. The historical movement of
this cabin across the whole of the American con-
tinent from the first built by the English at James-
town in 1607 to the last built on the final frontier
of Alaska has always heralded the vanguard of civ-
ilization. When we think of the frontiersman, wher-
ever he may be, we see the cabin with its fort-like
aspect and its primitive rifleman protected behind
its heavy walls; of its peaceful smoke filling the val-
ley showing a home under durance but a home
nevertheless making a way in the wilderness for
the mighty tread of civilization.
It is the emblem of the American, this cabin. It is
individual. It is like no other cabin on earth. It
appeals to every true American and awakens quick-
ened visions of upstanding men, fearless fighters, de-
termined home-makers, invincible republic builders.
At once it suggests danger, hardship, endurance, and
courage ; poverty also but happiness.
It suggests clean-mindedness and good citizenship.
It implies the loss of the sordidness which often goes
hand in hand with the wealth of a country and
ours is wealthy. It has its appeal for Americans be-
cause, somehow, they feel that they were better men
in those homes. The temptations of congested living
were not there in the wilderness. Death lurking
around the corner every day will make men and
io8 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
women alert. As it is written in our hearts so it
should be emblazoned over our national doorways.
We recall many famous Americans born in these
cabins: Jackson, Lincoln, Boon, Shelby, Robertson,
Crockett, Houston, Blount, Custer, McKinley, Xa-
vier, Nancy Ward, Eleanor Dare, York; in fact the
list might be indefinitely continued down to Spen-
cer who lived in a hollow tree. Practically all of
our frontier leaders of the Old South came from
humble cabins, and certainly all of the leaders in
Smoky Mountain history lived in them. From
Jamestown to Nome, from Kaskaskia to Baton
Rouge they have dotted the continent.
As the cabins were in the thrilling days of Xavier,
Boon, and Crockett, so are they yet in the Great
Smokies. We find no gilded palaces in these big
hills. The cabins that hold within their walls all the
romance of frontier days many of them built a
hundred years ago are of plain hewn logs. Good
stout logs they are from virgin timber hacked out
with the patient, sure blows of the axe.
They not only sent out fearless men who curbed
the rampant redskin with a pretty stiff bit, but also
furnished eagle-eyed sharpshooters for battle. At
Loos, Longueval, Ypres, and the Argonne Wood,
along with their Scot kinsmen from the Cheviot and
Grampian Hills, many of them fell with their smok-
ing rifles in their hands. They are now buried in
little crude cemeteries dotting the obscure coves of
our Smoky Mountains, while their fathers, who
fought the Indian, cherish little crumpled bits of
bright-colored ribbon attached to medals of honor
given them by the nations of Europe and by our
own. All came from humble mountain cabins that
HIS CABIN HIS CASTLE 109
film their thin wisp of smoke upward into the thin,
pure air of the highlands.
The Anglo-Saxon's home in the wilderness of for-
mer days was literally his castle. He built it pri-
marily with the idea of defense. He was living in
bloody strife with the Indian and the French, as well
as his English relatives who undertook to compel
him. Ensconced behind heavy timbers, well-hewn
and solidly set, with only a couple of small port-
holes for windows and these encased in heavy shut-
ters, he could fight as long as his provisions held
out.
This was literally the case with many forts, such
as those at Loudon and Watauga Old Fields settle-
ments, except that their tall stockades were rimmed
with sharpened logs set upright in the ground and
the house of the settler and militiaman combined
was set against the inside so that he could battle,
every man to his own household; a platform con-
nected each fighting unit so that defenders could
be concentrated at any threatened point within the
enclosure.
But many intrepid settlers undertook to brave the
Indians and their French and English allies within
their own homes, or group of homes built near each
other for mutual protection. Necessarily, the house
itself must be his castle, and right sturdily was it
built. A very few of them were constructed so that
the upper story overhung the lower, or basement
frame, offering the added advantage of enabling the
defenders to fire directly down upon attackers.
These old cabins had no especial need for win-
dows for ventilation, for sufficient air crept through
the interstices of the logs where 'chinking' did not
no LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
entirely close the cracks. The 'chinking' between
the logs was accomplished with various bits of clap-
boarding or chips set in soft, sticky yellow clay or
a matrix of moss and clay. Many times the sleeper
found himself almost covered with miniature snow-
drifts upon waking from slumber in the morning,
or with frozen breath sheeting his 'coverlids.' His
cabin proved to be his sleeping porch also. Porches
and rocking chairs were later creations of days of
ease after war ceased. What hardy men and women
this living bred! They were almost proof against
exposure.
Handsome chimneys of selected rock, well set,
with proper draught stood at the end of a single
room. If building rock was scarce a tall pen of care-
fully laid oak strips was laid in soft clay to the peak
of the house and above it, firing hard in the heat.
Mountaineers in general object to the use of this
chimney, owing to the risk of fire, unless the whole
structure is firmly set upon a base of stone or slate.
Slate was always used for the base of the chimney
because it would not 'bust* or burn out.
A study of Smoky Mountain cabins of to-day
virtually gives their history, since very few of them
have suffered any material change except in addi-
tions of sawed lumber to furnish more commodious
quarters for a growing family or to allow a ' spare '
or guest room. These cabins were generally warm
because of their thick walls. One characteristic the
visitor may not understand and that is the open door
even in very cold weather. Whether this is an ex-
pression of the desire for freedom of movement or
curiosity as to passers on the trail, the author could
never determine; it certainly could not be the desire
HIS CABIN HIS CASTLE in
for fresh air ! Only in the severest weather is this door
closed.
But a roaring wood fire genially fills the fireplace
behind the 'dog-irons' shaped like a dog? and
the customary handforged shovel and fire tongs
stand beside the chimney with the leather bellows
for starting a recalcitrant blaze. The characteristic
smell of wood smoke that greets the nostrils of
the visitor is inescapable. The certain odor of snuff
about the hearthstone is contributed by the women
users of the household. Some of these fine old Scotch
backwoodsmen use it also, but they take it in the old-
fashioned way snuffed up the nostrils; not from sil-
ver mounted snuff boxes but from the little round
tin 'drum' they buy at the cove store! * Uncle'
George Powell, of Cade's Cove, was one of these
addicts; he could also knit socks in the old-fashioned
Scotch way.
Great puncheons, two or three inches thick, rum-
ble under the footstep even if one walks ever so care-
fully over the floor. These were hewn from great
poplar slabs usually and sometimes they were bored
at the sills and pegged tightly with dowels. Every
sill, sleeper, and puncheon was carefully hewn with
the loving inspiration of the new homebuilder.
Small, ladder-like stairs mount upward at the
immediate side of the 'fireplace' to mysterious
regions above, the 'loft.' Here some of the younger
members of the family slept. The very tiny ones
either retired with their parents or were snugly
tucked away in an odd little trundle bed which was
shoved under the larger bed of the older folks. But,
generally, all of the family, including visitors, slept
in one room! This custom due to the lack of
i 12 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
space, of course led to many an embarrassment
on the part of the visitor or local school teacher
whether man or woman not thoroughly accus-
tomed to disrobing, in the presence of others ; while
the members of the family gathered about the fireside
showed no intention of going to bed at all. In fact
that privilege was assigned as a courtesy to the guest
first I But custom and environment produce many
manipulations of the acrobatic order even as the
modern Pullman does.
At least the unacquainted could cause no more
commotion than the Tennesseean who was visiting
his friends in North Carolina and was asked to go on
a railroad trip which involved a night in a sleeping-
car. When asked politely by the porter if he desired
to retire, he answered in the affirmative, though he
could see no bed. But, after the miniature bunk
was presented to view, the lodger disappeared. The
rear door of the Pullman opened rather suddenly a
few moments later and a mountaineer's voice rang
through the car: 'Everybody shet their eyes. Here
comes old Tennessee and Nawth Ca'liny too!' He
was carrying his clothes on his arm!
The loft of the mountain cabin is usually redolent
with the odor of drying herbs and simples, or strings
of red pepper and cornfield beans, in the slow de-
hydrating process of other days. Our settler was
a firm believer in primitive medicine, and a small
bottle of 'balsam* from the blisters of 'she '-balsam
on the high mountains was one of his most prized
possessions for * kidney trouble ' ; sometimes it was
even administered to raw, open sores to hasten their
healing. 'Gall of the earth* was another very bitter
root which was a cure-all for many complaints. He
HIS CABIN HIS CASTLE 113
also made castor oil from the castor bean and 'sang'
ginseng was almost as effective for him as re-
juvenation glands transplanted by the Austrian sci-
entists of to-day.
Up here in the loft also were piles of shelled
corn which attracted nocturnal tribes of wood- or
pack-rats, swarms of buzzing wasps were eternally
busy with nest-inspection, or * dirt-daubers' mud
wasps worked with their tiny air hammers laying
new arching corner-stones of dried mud. Altogether,
the loft is the most interesting place in the house.
Here one may find an old calfskin, or buckskin,
covered trunk full of ancient papers as the Xavier
papers were found by Ramsey or land grants of
other days. A dusty loom may be uncovered, stored
away here forever, driven out by the competition of
the more modern prints which are cheaper and more
colorful to the mountaineer. Even as jean was
supplanted by denim until the official uniform of
the Smokies to-day is the blue 'overhauls' over-
alls jean itself supplanted buckskin in earlier days.
But the wonderful patterns these old looms have
turned out! Perhaps one fine day the interested
visitor may be able to persuade 'Aunt Clarindy 1 or
'Aunt Marthy Ann' to get her 'man' to dust off her
loom and she will begin weaving such famous de-
signs as 'The Battle of Monmouth' or 'Hearts and
Flowers ' or a ' coverlid ' of ' Thunder and Lightnin' ' !
The spinning wheel may be more handy and, as
it is still used to-day in Big Greenbriar Cove, the
'woman' of the household may be induced to pose
for her 'photograft* beside it. If the visitor would
like to have a pair of real woolen socks, here is his
chance, for she will ' card ' the wool and spin it for
H4 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
him, but not for pay! Oh, no! She would be glad to
give them to him. If he cared to offer her a ' pre-
sent ' of say ' whatever's right * that's different ! She
tells very interestingly of the weaving of jean
wool with cotton ' chain ' for her ' man's ' breeches.
This cloth, tough as buckskin, but not nearly so
soft, was then dyed with walnut juice or 'dye-rock*
ochre and it had the texture of very fine-
grained sandpaper. Needless to say that to a man
not accustomed to underwear! well, he preferred
the soft buckskin of his own tanning if he could kill
a deer. Many of these 'fustian breeks' were stiff
enough to stand alone and, if bagged at the knees
which they invariably were and stood upon the
cabin floor, had the appearance of a man in suspended
animation about to do the broad jump flat-footed!
Deer also furnished rawhide for moccasins in the
old days and a chronicler in camp with Daniel Boon
stated that owing to the fact that these rawhide moc-
casins were not waterproof it 'was an odd sight to
see the campfire ringed with stakes upon which these
moccasins were drying so they would be ready for
use on the morrow!' Indeed, one noble backwoods-
man was so put to it by dire necessity that he ' sat up
all night fashioning a new pair, tanning the leather
with the deer's brains/ working it with his hands un-
til it was soft and pliable and then cutting it into
shape and sewing it with thongs from the deer's
tendons.
The spinning wheel, invented by an Englishman
about 1550, was in general use among the American
colonists who made their own wheels or employed
a wheelwright to make them. Even the Cherokee
'Indians around the Smokies were taught its use when
POSING FOR HER PHOTOGRAPH WITH THE
FLAX-WHEEL
HIS CABIN HIS CASTLE 115
they were the wards of the English government be-
fore the American War of Independence and became
expert weavers and spinners. A famous Cherokee
wheelwright of North Georgia furnished most of the
wheels for the Qualla Reservation and his beautiful
creations were much sought after by both white
and redskin spinners. Many a honeymoon couple
in their new cabin were given this useful gift.
Up here in the loft, too, the intimate visitor may
inquire as to the cause of certain scars upon the
logs to be told that 'Gran'pap fired at the Indians'
through a crack in the logs and the scars denote
the redskin's spiteful reply! Such bullet marks are
rarely, if ever, caused by feudmen in the Smokies,
for, strangely enough, these great mountains have
been free of this particular scourge of undying hate
that has characterized other mountain precincts, such
as the Cumberlands. Truly, it may be said that
there is very little envy or jealousy of any sort among
these Scotch-Irish folk of the big hills.
The author has heard of only two * feuds' which
have resulted in killings or ambuscades where
parties have waylaid each other in the trails, and
these were unquestionably traced to 'blockade'
liquor and -in-laws; they were short and swift while
they lasted and could be classed only as family
quarrels in which no outsider was concerned. The
clannish spirit of the Anglo-Saxon maintains here,
so let him beware who offends them as a race!
Every log of the frontier cabin was hewn with great
care and precision and expertly 'scribed' at the cor-
ners for the neatest fitting. It is a common occur-
rence to hear a mountaineer say of a certain expert
cabin builder, 'He was the best scriber I ever seed!'
n6 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
By this is meant that when this man's logs were set,
owing to careful measure and hewing, they fitted
perfectly at once with very little alteration ; and this
meant quite a saving in work when the heavy beams
must be lifted into place by many men, or with a
team of oxen and a block and ' tickle, * as many term
it. Fortunate was the home-builder who had only to
roll the heavy timbers over on the others a little for
a slight trimming and was not compelled to take
them down entirely.
So, the custom of 'log-raisin" was quite an event
for the frontier home-builders. A great barbecue
was generally prepared for the willing workers who
came for miles over the Smoky Mountain trails with
their rifles. Fun ran rampant at these times. There
were many willing hands and some not so disposed ;
these latter were twitted a great deal and were the
butts of many good-natured jokes.
4 Gals ' were plenty to serve their men, and many a
log-raising was the scene of a wilderness courtship.
The newly-weds were also the victims of rough fun.
Venison was spitted and roasted, and if the roof was
not placed the first day, the company camped out
under rough lean-tos made of the bark of the great
trees that went into the cabin while sentinels paced
the trails watching for the ever-skulking Indian.
The sleepers placed their Decherds or Beans handily
so that they could instantly be used at the
first alarm. Often a great pot of bear meat, with its
appetizing flavor of wild onions, or 'ramps/ was
stewed, and other meat was added as the hunters
brought in game of all sorts to serve the needs of
the workers. He who works must eat and the back-
woodsmen often chided the slackers who were found
to possess excellent appetites at any rate*
HIS CABIN HIS CASTLE 117
Boards were split for the roof from straight-
grained oak by means of a 'frow' Hallowell's
' Primitive and Archaic English ' gives the definition
as a 'contentious woman/ but the 'splitting' use is
not defined ! and placed always in the dark of the
moon as boards put up in the 'increase 1 of the moon
invariably cupped or warped! The mountaineer
always remarks about a 'cupped' roof, 'Ah, them
boards was split and laid in the increase of the moon ! '
and nothing can make him believe otherwise. The
boards themselves were twice the length and size of
ordinary shingles and were very heavy.
Where ' imported * iron nails were not to be had at
first, these roofing boards were made much longer
and tied down by long poles anchored to the ridge-
poles at each end, or rocks were laid upon the tying
poles Swiss fashion. After crude forges and smelters
were built in the Smokies, as at Pigeon Forge, every
nail was forged and headed by hand. Some of these
hand-made nails are to be seen in the older cabins of
the big hills.
Fortunate was he who possessed an adze and an
auger, for these utensils were highly useful in build-
ing cabins. Some few door latches and hinges were
fashioned out of soft iron, but for the most part not
only the latches were made of heavy oak, but the
hinges also, and the latter heralded far and wide the
entrance and departure of a member of the house-
hold if not assiduously greased with soft soap from
the soap gourd. A leather thong was attached to the
latch and thrust through a small hole in the door
giving rise to the hospitable expression, "You uns
come to see us. Our latch string's on the outside!*
And this humble string truly illustrates the hos-
Ii8 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
pitality of the southern mountaineer, for he will en-
tertain friend and foe alike. He never turns a caller
away from his door and his all belongs to the guest,
little or much. He has been known to deprive him-
self and his family in order to give the best of com-
fort to his friendly visitor.
The author very keenly remembers th6 loud la-
ment set up by one particular youngster of a back-
woods family as he ate a solitary meal by the light
of a pine knot thrust between the logs of a moun-
tain cabin in Spruce Flats. One plate and a spoon
constituted the utensils with which he ate his fried
chicken, but that fried chicken supper soon lost its
attraction, for it consisted of the martyred pet rooster
of the aforesaid youngster whose sorrow was incon-
solable. At his expense the very best had been fur-
nished for the visitor.
After the log-raising was over and the roof cov-
ered, generally a backwoods dance tested the staying
powers of the new puncheon floor to the tuneful jigs
of some borderer's fiddle. Backwoods liquor, or rum
from Charleston, tested their equilibrium in doing
the wilderness Charleston in the form of certain
Irish jigs and Scotland flings combined, but the
old covenanters frowned on these things, and if the
event was not broken by the cry of 'Indians' it
usually ended in a goodnatured rough-and-tumble
fight. The contestants in these combats were al-
ways compelled to 'make up' afterward, as man
power was a very valuable asset in parlous times and
external foes kept it so.
It was the religion of the bordermau, combined
with his daily facing of danger, which kept him true.
He had suffered too much on account of both. His
PRIMITIVE MOUNTAIN GRIST-MILL ON MILL CREEK NEAR
MOUNT LE CONTE
HIS CABIN HIS CASTLE 119
fathers had fought State religion under Charles I,
and after this English gentleman's wig had been
clipped close behind his ears, they had formed a Par-
liamentary Government for England, endeavoring
to prevent a conflict which they foresaw would split
England's power, but were unsuccessful. They had
fought the Catholic in northern Ireland's border war-
fare for the same reason. So when Sunday came
they assembled on the new puncheon floor for ser-
vices, singing the hymns of Calvin which filled the
wilderness with wild sweet music.
Many came "for the event, carrying their rifles.
The preacher stood his rifle in a corner, very gravely
hung his shot pouch and powder horn on the corner
of the improvised pulpit, opened his well-worn Book
which had seen many campaigns in northern Ireland
and Scotland, and as one chronicler puts it/ preached
most alarming but with some profit!'
What deep-throated amens must have come from
the men in deerskin doublets and tasseled hunting
shirts, and how unerringly the bullets of argument
must have found their mark. If the redskin in the
brush could have understood what it was all about
he would have capitulated then and there. These
services generally lasted all day and no one left! So
much for the Indians ! And so much for the religious
fervor of the old Covenanter who wrote his agree-
ment back in Scotland with blood from his veins!
His text must have been around the theme of Elijah's
vision with the young man Elisha, * And they that be
for us are more than they that are against us!'
After the great events of the log-raising were at an
end, the various settlers of the States of Tennessee
and North Carolina shouldered their rifles and went
120 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
home to their crops to see what mischief the Indian
had concocted during their absence, or perhaps went
to another barbecue to repeat the performance, for
many were the homes being built during those stir-
ring times in the wilderness of the Smokies. The
backwoodsmen left the completion of their friend's
cabin to his own personal whims and fancy.
These little individual conceits took many ingen-
ious forms. Crooked laurel roots often furnished
unique racks and hooks to hang things on. Perhaps
a pair of Indian chickens were left the bridal couple,
or a tame 'wild' turkey such as 'Uncle* Henry
Stinnett possessed at the 'Spicewoods' cabin; this
turkey 'Uncle Henry* had raised from an egg. The
fowl's natural instincts called her to the woods every
spring but she faithfully returned every autumn to
peck at flies around the kitchen stove. Her favorite
perch was upon the roof of his cabin where she
would watch for hawks and take after them if they
came too near the chickens in the side yard.
The horns of the deer slain for the barbecue often
went up over the ' fireboard ' mantel to hold
the borderer's most priceless possession, his rifle.
This weapon represented no small outlay. Its cost
approximated one hundred dollars and even more if
it was an especial example of the gunmaker's art and
it had the maker's name set in a silver plate in the
barrel such as 'Decherd,' a famous Pennsylvania
gunmaker; or 'Mills,' his apprentice; or 'Bean/ of
the Watauga Settlement; or those of his sons, James
or Baxter; or 'Strutton,' or others equally famous.
These important instruments of death pitched a
tiny ball with very flat trajectory and required a
minimum of powder. They were prizes which the
HIS CABIN HIS CASTLE 121
Indian always sought after, for it made him more
dangerous in war and increased his peltries con-
siderably. If the Indian could kill a white man and
thus capture his rifle, he was distinguished among
his fellows thereafter. If he could not succeed in
trading the white man out of his rifle, which was
valued above all else, his next alternative was to
lie in wait and murder his enemy at his plough,
or riving boards tor his home in the woods, or
hunting.
One settler became aware that an Indian was fol-
lowing him in the brush, but, not knowing the red-
skin's exact location, resolved to discover it. He
suspected that a certain tree shielded the savage,
and, rushing by it as if to go on his way, turned
quickly as the redskin was in the act of raising his
tomahawk, plunged his hunting knife into the
Cherokee to the hilt, scalped him, and carried the
bloody trophy home. It was all in the work of the
day.
These fine rifles that hung over the 'fireboard' of
the settler's cabin meant not only defense, but pro-
vision for the daily wants of his household, for the
big game of the woods was so plentiful that it was
not difficult to stalk. Boon lay in wait near the Salt
Licks of Kentucky, sprang upon the wild buffalo,
and killed them with his hunting knife. It were just
as useless to try to borrow a backwoodsman's wife
as to ask for the loan of his rifle.
Every gun had its pet name, as Daniel Boon's
' Old Betsy' or Walker's 'Old Death.' The 'Betsies'
of those days shot about seventy balls to the pound,
while Walker's gun of immense bore, built for bear-
hunting, pitched only about thirty-five per pound,
122 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
and was as long as its owner, who was over six feet
in height. 'Uncle' George Powell, of Cade's Cove,
flattered Boon's memory by naming his famous
flintlock 'Old Betsy' also.
There were other implements belonging to the gun
that hung on the same peg with it, contained in the
shot pouch* The bullet mould of the ball which the
gun projected was often left at the fireside where the
owner had been accustomed to melting up new pro-
jectiles for the Indian hunt or the chase. There was
'patching,' the 'twister' for removing obstructions,
the buck tip which accurately measured charges,
tallow, flints of various sorts and sizes for the lock,
'pickers' for priming the 'touch hole,' and many
other little individual conceits of the owner's con-
trivance.
Boon was captured by the Indians once when he
was going on horseback to the Salt Licks of Ken-
tucky with two kettles to boil out salt for his neigh-
bors on the Yadkin. The salt gourd was a very es-
sential article of every household and had to be kept
filled. It was filled very often with rock, or ' alum '
salt so called by settlers which was powdered
in a mortar or dissolved into brine which was al-
lowed to evaporate, leaving the crusty deposit.
Besides presiding over the salt gourd the 'woman*
of the household had other light diversions, such as
sweeping with the heavy hickory split broom made
from a single piece of wood. The author has seen
these made in the mountains and marvels at the
patient craftsmanship required to split a great white
maul into thin ribbons, which were tied around the
middle allowing them to spread much like a worn
'toothbrush' of the mountain woman. White oak
HIS CABIN HIS CASTLE 123
and hickory 'splits' also made very excellent baskets
and bottoms for chairs. The high old-fashioned settle
for the living-room fireplace was rarely used in the
Smokies; there wasn't room for it. Instead, a small
bench might find its place by the walL The visitor
really marvels at the lack of furnishings in the
mountain cabins. A mountain man when questioned
about this replied, 'Our wants is simple an' ef they
was a fire I guess we'd be less desolated!'
One noticeable characteristic of more modern
times is the use of newspaper for papering cabin
walls; the most striking pictures, such as brightly
colored tomato-can labels, are placed in prominent
places, and the colored reproductions satisfy the
desire for decoration in lieu of framed works of art.
The author was flattered to notice on one occasion
a picture of his own handiwork so honored uninten-
tionally. The hanging of it thrilled him with a
secret pleasure which he doubts a noted gallery of
art could duplicate.
A very necessary contraption, ignored in literary
annals, was the 'ash-hopper.' This was built in V--
shaped form, with its frame, out of heavy boards
concentrating within a drain very similar to a square
funnel, so to speak. In this were deposited wood
ashes from the chimney; water was filtered through
it, producing an amber-colored concentrated lye
which was mixed with fat or grease and used as ' soft
soap.' The product was the texture and color of blue
clay and usually too odoriferous even for the rugged
tastes of the average backwoodsman.
Another makeshift, where necessity was the mo-
ther of invention, if not the stepmother, is the ever-
present sled. One does not find a single mountain
124 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
home of to-day without this odd method of transport
for wood, and many times it is used for general haul-
ing. Because of the narrowness and steepness of the
trails it becomes the only possible vehicle for carry-
ing loads from one place to another. Its two runners
are made of stout oak curved slightly upward at the
front ends. The rigid frame is mortised into the
runners and a hook for a 'single-tree' is handy for
hitching the horse or ox or jennet. One cannot help
being reminded of its primitive origin at every sight
of this unique contrivance; though there is no snow
or ice in the summertime, it goes merrily upon its
way, awkwardly sliding over root and stone and dry
mountain path.
The borderman was always an adept in many con-
trivances, one of which was 'piggin,' barrel, and keg
making. The 'piggin,' as old as Chaucer himself,
was an odd pail, of red cedar usually, with the han-
dle on one side made of an extended stave with a
'hand holt' cut in it. Its principal use was to 'tote*
water from the spring or to hold milk for the primi-
tive milkmaid. Kegs were made from red cedar and
barrels from oak. The backwoodsman used a very
ingenious instrument similar to a compass plane
which 'scribed' the edges of his wooden staves al-
ready pressed into position so that they fitted with
airtight perfection. Pliable hoops of first growth
white oak or hickory, lapped and notched at the
ends in order to hold, were tightly driven down on
the finished creation.
The wonder of the ages is the hollow tree 'bee-
gum.' The mountaineer sought in the woods for a
hollow tree of suitable size ; usually one which was
charred by fire was preferred. This was sawed into
HIS CABIN HIS CASTLE 125
sections and two supports for the honey were driven
through holes in the sides criss-cross fashion and
about a foot apart from the middle. This finished
'gum' was capped with a slanting roof, to keep out
the weather, and the lower end set snugly upon a flat
rock and notched on one side for an entrance for the
captive workers. The workers themselves were us-
ually taken in spring from a wild-bee-tree, chopped
down and robbed of its sweet store. Wild-bee hunt-
ing was an exciting sport because of the pointed
remarks of the bees, when disturbed, in defense of
their home. A dense, heavy wood smoke assisted the
robbers. The queen was always carefully preserved
in order to guarantee the contentment of the colony
in their new quarters in the frontiersman's side yard.
Bee-trailing was an art in itself. In one shed in the
Smokies were 256 of these hollow tree 'gums/ pre-
served and developed by one mountain homesteader
in Cade's Cove. 'Poplar-blossom honey* was the
most prized, and fortunate was he who lived near
a grove of 'tulips, 5 for that was guarantee that the
honey would possess the much-desired ambrosial es-
sence. Honey was, in many ways, used as a substi-
tute for sugar in the household. In later days the
visitor was given his choice as to ' long sweetenin' '
honey or ' short sweetenin' ' crude brown
sugar. Out of this custom grew a very amusing
experience of two guests who were asked to stay for
dinner at a mountain cabin.
After seating themselves the two were requested
to 'retch and take!' in other words, 'help your-
self.' 'We hain't got much, but ye're welcome to
what we have ! ' was the hospitable invitation. When
it came to so-called 'coffee/ which was in reality a
126 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
cheap grade of chicory, the agreeable hostess asked
the usual question, 'long sweetenin' or short?'
'Short/ one of the men guessed, since he didn't
wish to appear ignorant of backwoods custom. His
hostess picked a lump of sugar from the bowl, bit off
half of it T and deposited the remainder in his cup.
This action did not escape his companion, who very
readily answered the repeated question as to his
sweetening by quickly replying, 'long sweetening,
please!' The obliging hostess stuck her finger in a
dish of honey, swabbed it about until it had a gen-
erous acquisition and wiped it off on the edge of the
second cup and passed it down the table with a
smile !
Curious and quaint are many customs and the big
hills would not be what they are without them. One
of these the author participated in unwittingly. He
was invited to take a certain seat at a table where
lumberjacks were being temporarily entertained in a
mountain home. Great, strapping fellows they were,
in mackinaws, and with 'cutter' nails in their boots
leaving an imprint in the sanded cabin floor at every
step. After being courteously seated by the host,
who was a fine type of mountaineer, the cruiser
made a grumbling remark.
'What d'ye say? 1 interjected the mountain man
at once.
'I said "he got my place"!'
The host boiled in an instant. 'H I! You hain't
got no "place"! Nobody's got any " place" at this
table an' I want that deestinctly understood. This
is no boardin' house, young feller! This is my table
and hit's a free country. Them as don't like hit can
feel free to step outside! I don't want no loggin'-
SUGAR-MILL IN THE SUGAR LANDS NEAR ELKMONT
A ROW OF ' BEE-GUMS '
Made of sections of hollow trees, notched at the base for
entrances
HIS CABIN HIS CASTLE 127
camp manners 'round hyar and I ain't a-goin' to
have J em nuther!' with a plaintive accent on the
'nuther'!
Whew! That was the true frontiersman's resent-
ment at modern manners with a vengeance! It
dated back to England, and the mountaineer was of
English descent too. King George must have turned
over in his grave.
With all due respect to ignorance of mountain
cooking, the visitor may not fancy a certain sort of
' pie ' with which he may be served at any meal of the
day perhaps for breakfast. It is a conglomeration,
a 'mommick' or 'gaum,' to use mountain terms, of
boiled dough and either apples or peaches with NO
sugar! Biscuits, however, are many times only for
the delectation of visitors, as the mountaineer's staff
of life is cornbread. The former are of a healthy
size and may require the original French process of
'twice-cooking' before they are done, yet, with his
appetite sharpened by the keen mountain air, the
guest may finally be able to encompass their gener-
ous proportions.
.More generally he will find corn 'pones,' for great
fields of corn seem to be the unfailing source of food
for both man and beast. Rarely, if ever, is wheat
raised ; sometimes buckwheat is seen, but this usu-
ally is the source of harvest for bees, without which
no mountain cabin is complete. The cornfields fill
every cove and mountain-side with their rapier-like
blades and with an accompanying sweet perfume.
Corn furnishes meal for bread, fodder for stock, and
sometimes also conflicts with the Volstead Act.
In this connection a certain tale is told about a
neighbor of a mountain settler who called with a
128 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
jug in a sack and asked to buy some 'corn.' The
homesteader asked, as a matter of course, * quart er
bushel?'
'Cracklin' bread' in the winter time is a much
more palatable form than the sodden slugs of wa-
ter and cornmeal which sometimes weight the eater
down to the depths of gastronomic despair. ' Crack-
linV are made from the brown crusted residue of
rendered lard or grease and are used for seasoning an
otherwise unpromising 'mommick' of water-ground
meal (i.e., corn ground in the primitive mountain
mill, the possession of every mountain cabin). The
Indian's method of grinding his meal for ' kanahena/
or 'tamfuli,' was by the use of a primitive mortar
and pestle. In peregrinations around the Smokies
one comes occasionally upon curious relics of frontier
days high up on a smooth shelving rock which may
be dotted with puddle-like holes where grinding was
done by the redskin, under a shadowing beech or
near a mountain stream.
But the inventive settler learned to harness the
plentiful water power going to waste under his nose.
He hitched it to quaint little 'rat-power' mills which
hang over many churning rapids like some curious
sort of water-ousel's nest. At every turn of their
turbines, these little mills shake from stem to stern,
but they accomplish the duty allotted to them and
many of them throb violently the nights through in
order to finish their appointed tasks. Mountaineers
use the mills of their neighbors, never forgetting to
leave a 'toddick' or toll for the use of the owner,
thereby quaintly paying their rent according to an
unwritten law of frontier days.
The machinery of these quaint water-power affairs
HIS CABIN HIS CASTLE 129
is always fashioned by hand and their stones chis-
eled out of great round and flat boulders of the hard-
est metamorphosed mica conglomerate, dragged often
from the stream beds by a yoke of oxen. The 'flut-
ter wljeel' which drives the machinery is a form
of turbine, though the containing box is often not
cased up and is no larger than a common dishpan.
Often the flume chute is a hollow log! The frontier
artificer always made use of such advantages as he
possessed and necessity always was the mother of
invention.
The main article of mountain diet three times a
day may consist of boiled white beans seasoned with
fat bacon. The bacon itself fried and submerged in
thick flour gravy or plain composes the other
dish. There may be one other dish of 'gravelled'
potatoes cooked whole with the same bacon gravy,
or, in season, cooked with green 'cornfield* beans.
Butter there is, if there is a cow. The butter is usu-
ally white owing to boiling water having been applied
to the churn to hasten the process started with
patient, labored strokes of a dasher which has been
packed with a ring of splash cloth at the plunger
hole.
There is no danger of gout on the backwoodsman's
diet. It seems to furnish plenty of man-power, for
the writer lias seen wiry big hill men take up a sack
of brown sugar weighing over a hundred pounds and
walk apparently without effort up the longest and
steepest ridges, declining any assistance and making
light of the matter.
Under the floor of the Smoky Mountain cabin,
covered by the thick puncheons which are easily
lifted aside, is the proud store of 'preserves/ wild
130 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
gooseberries, huckleberries, and peaches, in jars.
Here are also great five and ten gallon jars filled with
a fermenting mixture of cucumber * pickles' in a
combined fluid of soured honey and water, or mo-
lasses and water, with a small admixture of cloves,
perhaps. It is supposed to turn to vinegar, but rarely
does in time or eternity. Lengthy pilgrimages to
certain ridges or coves in the upper mountains which
contain a wealth of either huckleberries or wild goose-
berries are made by parties of mountain folk bent on
laying up their winter store of much-treasured pre-
serves. In answer to questions propounded by each
other as to the best 'pickinV they will say about a
favorable quantity of either berries, 'They's of 'em
on Miry,' or in the Sugarlands, or Pine Mountain
wherever the location may be meaning by the
expression 'plenty/ If the mountain folk ever are
amiss in their production of garden ' sass' it is due to
a lack of custom, for the ground they possess could
grow the most wonderful vegetables in the world.
Here under the floor, maybe, mixed among other
innocent-looking jars, one may find a jug of moun-
tain 'dew' a pre- Volstead concoction. The word
' Pre-Volstead ' is used advisedly for no one ever
makes blockade liquor! And, furthermore, no one is
supposed to ask whether it is made in a laurel-cov-
ered thicket near by where musically 'trinkles' a
crystal mountain stream. That deep and mysterious
information it is the privilege of the host to impart of
his own accord, or not, in accordance with his own
discerning judgment of the comer.
If the guest is suspected of being a 'revenuer' or
is 'agin' the practice, the aforesaid secret will re-
main a secret to the end of time, whether or not the
I
i
HIS CABIN HIS CASTLE 131
visitor can make shrewd surmises as to the frequent
'toting' of various sacks of meal and sugar to a se-
cluded spot. His common sense at least tells him
that there is no cabin on this trail and, even if there
were, enough provisions are being carried there to
support a logging camp of husky timber bruisers.
At least the guest will not be asked to make a visit
even in the region of the aforesaid spot unless the
backwoodsman absolutely trusts his new friend.
One of my mountain friends asked that a photo-
graph be taken of 'Old Huldy,' meaning the afore-
said machine. There was a humorous twinkle in
his eye as he made the request, which was po-
litely refused. The explanation to him was logical
enough to convince him that sometimes even the
best of friendships would not stand the strain if a
raid was made, subsequently, when even the best of
friends would not be above suspicion. The author
had been on both sides of the mooted question and
had raided considerably with the 'revenuers* and he
did not wish to be unjustly accused because of his
former associations! We parted better friends than
ever!
The frontierer is a handy man with tools, metal,
and wood, and if he uses this knowledge to twist a
copper worm and to fashion a ' flake-stand ' out of a
hollow stump and rivets together plates for a copper
retort, that is decidedly his business, and so is the
penalty, for that matter, with the * sheriff* with
whom he has to deal. He brought this knowledge
from Scotland where distilleries flourished and if he
is to blame it is because he has not quite caught
up to the trend of the times being some hundred
years behind them! If he offers a 'nip' to his es-
132 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
teemed guest before breakfast, that is also his way,
that of a hundred years ago, of being hospitable and
he will certainly not be offended if the guest refuses,
for that is the latter's sacred privilege also. Certainly
the guest cannot be blamed for a breach of etiquette
in refusing to swallow a fiery draught which has the
temperature of hot lead and will shake him to his
very depths.
So, asnoone makes blockade liquor in the Smokies,
the National Park authorities will have no trouble in
enforcing the federal dictum. Even a sufficient fore-
warning is not necessary, for all men shall be con-
sidered gentlemen until found to be otherwise. It
might be useful to know that, generally speaking,
practically all mountain women are against ' block-
ading.' In this they are probably a century ahead of
their liege-lords.
The man of the mountains is 'overlord' of his
premises. Though the woman is greatly neglected,
and performs a tremendous amount of hard labor,
yet she does not occupy the place of a 'squaw 1 ex-
actly. If she does not bear children, she is 'weak';
if she cannot hoe corn, or plough, or hold her side
of the crosscut saw, she is merely ' not good help to
her man'! But she is ashamed to be discovered
working in the fields, it may be said to her credit.
Secretly she recognizes there is something amiss and
lays it to poverty and ' lack of hands/ She is rarely
mistreated, except through ignorance, and if she is
suffering she finds ready sympathy from her 'man/
There seems to be a deep regard between the two
and divorce is rarely known. They may 'separate/
but rarely are the courts required to make the sepa-
ration legal.
HIS CABIN HIS CASTLE 133
The spinning wheel, brought into the valleys of the
Blue Ridge and the Appalachians by those fine
guardsmen who battled on the fighting line of civili-
zation with the Indian, the French, and the English,
has all but disappeared with the now dust-covered
loom. The smoke of the flintlock has faded into the
mists of the past; there is nothing left but the cabin
with its fine memories of these things. Will it too
disappear? Will only the fine specimen of Anglo-
Saxon of a hundred years ago be left, or will he also
become a tale of yesterday?
The writer was deeply impressed with the solitary
grave of a fine sharpshooter of the Argonne by the
side of a little chapel in a picturesque cove of the
Smokies, upon which lay some brightly colored bits
of paper representing flowers, laid there in reverence
and respect by loving members of his mountain
family. This loose-limbed, stalwart lad of the big
mountains, like many others of his acquaintance,
had blazed his way on September 29, 1918, through
the line established by von Hindenburg as impreg-
nable, shooting with his American rifle as his fa-
thers, who defended forts back in the frontier days
of the Smokies against the murderous redskin, had
shot their way to glory. He had accomplished the
thing for the world instead of the country of his
adoption; and for history.
He was a member of the Thirtieth Division, com-
posed of the National Guard of Tennessee and North
Carolina, and was now laid to rest in the ground for
which he had fought and for which his fathers had
struggled so nobly. His father, now more feeble than
before, cherished little brightly colored bits of bunt-
ing clasped by medals of honor given to the boy by
134 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
foreign nations and his own. The writer could not
help wondering whether of all this fine Anglo-Saxon
race of a hundred years ago there would finally re-
main only some brightly colored bits of history here
and there to speak of his deeds, his heroism, and his
sacrifice for his country.
CHAPTER X
OLD-TIME SMOKY MOUNTAIN RIFLES AND
RIFLEMEN
IN every cabin of the backwoods republic of the
Great Smoky Mountains from the early part of the
eighteenth century up to only a few years ago, the
slender and artistically modeled flintlock rifle with
its 'bird's-eye 1 maple or ash stock of graceful lines,
its unwieldy long barrel of soft iron and longer ram-
rod of straight hickory, its shot pouch and powder
horn, hung upon pegs of buck horn above the 'fire-
board ' or mantel. This quaint old flintlock later
many of them were altered to the cap-and-ball type
epitomized the very existence and survival of the
old Anglo-Saxon who had moved to a new country
to mend his fortunes and to establish the freedom
which he desired and did not possess in the boiling
political caldron of Europe.
Even back to the first settlement of the English
in America at James Town in 1607, the original
American was a rifleman in every sense of the word.
He had used the Broad Arrow and Crown musket or
the Queen Anne musketoon and even the British
navy blunderbuss against the enemies who were
endeavoring to seek a foothold in his new country*
His forbears, many of them, had loaded the old fire-
and match-locks against the Catholics and Episco-
palians in the Grampian Hills or the rough country
of Ulster County, Ireland. So gunpowder made a
pleasant incense in his nostrils when he alighted at
136 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
the Delaware Breakwater and the Charles Town
Capes seeking new country and even Indians, if they
disputed his way. He was determined to have elbow
room and peace on this globe even if he had to fight
for them !
His many descendants who filled the Virginia
valleys and the beautiful big blue hills of North
Carolina and spilled over the high dam of the Smok-
ies were almost literally born with long rifles upon
their shoulders. For that matter, a great many
settler women of early America were no molly-
coddles. They could shoot straight with the rifles
of their men as well as broil deer- or bear-meat or
whirl a spinning wheel. Almost from the time a boy
was able to shoulder one of these deadly, heavy
shooting weapons of the Decherd, or Leaman
of Charlottesville, North Carolina or of the Bean
or Duncan type, he was learning how to fire with
'p'in'-blank' (point-blank) aim or being taught how
to load it so it did not 'cut its patchinY or to mould
a perfect, spherical bullet so that it did not pitch or
'sail* or drift.
Daniel Boon was only ten tears old when his
father presented the proud boy with a light type of
rifle which he used until he was able to swing one of
the big Decherds like his father, only with a great deal
better effect. Dan's father was of the fighting Quaker
blood and believed also in shooting his way to peace*
The real active warfare against the Indian had its
direct inception in the backwoodsman's confidence
in the Decherd and Leaman type of rifle. These fire-
arms were radically different from the old-smoke-
belching, noise-raising, clumsy matchlocks and
musketoons of French and English origin which al-
RIFLES AND RIFLEMEN 137
ways kept the triggerman guessing what he was
going to hit, if anything, and burned his eyebrows
oil in the bargain.
The Decherd or Leaman was a small-bore, hard-
hitting, long rifle some of them attaining a length
of six feet two inches of soft iron mined from
American hills, drilled by skillful American gun-
smiths. It used the minimum of American powder
and lead which exactly suited our Saxon-Scotch taste
for frugality as well as accuracy. It had a report like
a whip quoting Audubon's description of Boon's
Yadkin rifle and the lash of its missiles cut deep
and keen. The British lion had a touch of its sting
in 1776 and the Smoky Mountain Cherokees were
never without its hot reminder until the Removal
in 1838. The French at Fort Duquesne also felt it
and even Braddock too when Washington's Coloni-
als, accustomed to Indian warfare, sheltered them-
selves against the hailstorm of bullets behind trees,
spurning the doubtful protection of the British
hollow square.
Every cabin of the Smokies possessed this valu-
able weapon which meant everything in the estab-
lishment of a home in a wilderness full of game and
prowling Cherokees, Creeks, and Shawanos; to these
may be added their allies, French, English, and
Spanish invaders. This long rifle was as necessary
to the primitive American's home as was the axe, or
the salt gourd, or for that matter a wife! For,
without the rifle, there could be no enduring use for
an axe, a salt gourd, or a mistress to reign over an
humble cabin in a wilderness surcharged with dan-
ger. The more effective the weapon and the surer
the woodsman's aim, the greater the stability of all
138 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
things, including even governments that chose to
dispute with parental authority across the seas and
to stand alone.
It can be truthfully stated that the mountain-
eer's 'woman* never disputed the supreme place of
the rifle in the consideration of every well-regulated
backwoods home. She never pouted when her ' man f
was required to shoulder it and venture forth into
the wilderness in the quest of sustenance or to up-
hold the rights of a republic. If he did not come
home, very well. Such were the mysteries of God.
If he was opulent enough to leave a light type of
rifle with her for the protection of the household dur-
ing his absence, she felt safe enough and with mute
acquiescence she bade him go. She and the bairns
could manage somehow. And they usually did ; this
was the hard lot of our colonial women. If he re-
turned safely, so much the better, although there was
rarely a kiss at the loved one's return ; outside of a
momentary gleam in his eye, he, too, betrayed no
joy in the meeting after months of separation.
Such were the hard days which bred hard men
and women to all outward appearances, but let it
not be mistakenly supposed that they did not love
with a fierce and intense passion every minute pos-
session animate or inanimate, even what would be to
others the most unimportant knick-knacks. Woe to
anyone who interfered with their property. The
most disconcerting enmity is that which betrays
very little outward sign and these people to-day do
not wear their hearts upon their sleeves. They fur-
nish the most dependable and sweetly enduring
friendships, and, when it is earned and deserved, the
most lasting disregard.
RIFLES AND RIFLEMEN 139
So was the rifle loved, along with all it accom-
panied or personified, by these stalwart knights of
fustian, jeans, and deerskin. The Smoky Mountain
rifleman of a few years hence made his own gun from
iron dug from his very hills. He was acquainted
with every eccentricity of his created weapon, knew
its every whim, and shot accordingly. Only the
steel, which he could not make, was imported from
New England and from Birmingham and Swedish
and Belgian factories, 'in Charles Town ship bot-
toms, or bought from traders along the old Indian
Traces. This was paid for in pelts, since currency
was scarce. Smoky Mountain settlers were skilled
workers with tools. Boon's father was a blacksmith,
his grandfather a weaver, and the mighty hunter
himself was a wagoner. Many of these backwoods
colonials were adepts in many crafts; indeed one
man boasted of fourteen separate professions and
was in addition skilled in medicine.
So there naturally sprang up many expert gun-
makers who showed their talent in the manufacture
of these more scientific types of long rifles. They pro-
claimed their own right to fame in the letters of gold
or silver bands set in the long iron barrels of famous
flintlocks of their fashioning. Among such we find
names to conjure with, such as 'Baxter Bean,' the
gun of 'Uncle' George Powell, of Cade's Cove,
'James Bean,' the flintlock of 'Uncle' Sammy
Burchfield Powell's brother-in-law, 'Alfred Dun-
can,' the famous Marcellus Armstrong gun, ' Dick
Strutton,' the old 'Petersburg,' and the 'Gibson,'
made by two brothers, Ike and Bill Gibson, of Wai-
den's Creek, in Sevier County. These were best-
known among old backwoodsmen. There were many
140 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
unnamed guns equally deserving of fame, as artistic
and effective, which were entitled to as much honor-
able consideration, with which their maker-owners
shot their way through the wilderness.
They, however, proudly and justly related inci-
dents of exceptional performance and stood ready at
any time to prove them, provided they had 'good
luck/ as Boon remarked to Audubon on the occasion
of exhibiting his marksmanship. And this * luck' was
a fortunate loophole for any adverse case of nerves
or faulty ' patchin' ! ' They never deserted their guns
at any time, though they suffered the severest hard-
ships. Boon went without bread, sugar, and salt for
months while in the Kentucky wilderness, and Crock-
ett likewise while fighting the battles of the irasci-
ble Jackson, the Indian hater, or while on a bear-
hunting electioneering expedition for Congress.
The rifle of the old Smoky Mountain backwoods-
man was his fighting shadow. He never stepped
beyond the confines of the deep wilderness without
it, and, a significant index of custom, he never does
so to this day. When one meets a stalwart mountain
man of the present time, one sees the inevitable rifle
carried easily and gracefully in the hollow of his arm
even as were those of our ancestral deerslayers. It
matters not if it be an 'automatic/ a 'pump' gun, a
breech- or muzzle-loader; there is the same easy,
swinging, alert tread of silence, a frowning at unnec-
essary noise or the inadvertent snapping of a twig
if hunting and not the least betrayal of surprise
at the most unexpected occurrence; the keen eye,
the unerring aim, the firm pressure of finger upon
trigger.
The gun of the backwoods settler of the Great
.qtjfjgl^^
'UNCLE SAMMY' BURCHFIELD AND HIS JAMES BEAN
FLINTLOCK
Note leather cover to keep rain out of the firing-pan
RIFLES AND RIFLEMEN 141
Smokies was as unique and as characteristic as the
Anglo-Saxon himself. He had enough individuality
in his make-up to fashion a rifle with original lines
decidedly artistic as well as effective. It is probably
true that Jacob Decherd, Leaman, and others created
the rifle which found most general use throughout
the southern mid-colonies before and after 1753 but
not one of these rifles showed the graceful lines of the
so-called 'Kentucky' pattern made at Charlottes-
ville and on the Watauga Settlements which was so
much sought after by backwoods riflemen. None of
the Pennsylvania gun-maker's masterpieces had that
beautifully hollowed and curved butt that is found
in Boon's gun or other famous guns, such as the
*Bean' and 'Duncan' and * Gibson.' Boon carried
his famous 'Kentucky' type of gun from North
Carolina and it should be more truly called the ' Old
Smoky' brand rather than the * Kentucky,' for this
gracefully modelled gun was quite common among
the famous hunter's kinsmen and other famous
Indian fighters in North Carolina and Tennessee.
The Kentucky type was very probably made at
Charlottesville, North Carolina, after the Leaman
model in Pennsylvania.
The Baxter Bean gun belonging to Powell of
Cade's Cove is a splendid example of the Old Smoky
flintlock. It was the claim of Uncle George Powell
that his gun was made after the Boon pattern and he
did Boon the honor of naming his favorite 'Old
Betsy' in memory of the noted Yadkin hunter who
fought Cherokees all over the Smokies with Sevier*
Previous to the French War and the American
Revolution, however, there was, to quote Charles
Winthrop Sawyer's f Firearms in American History ' :
142 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
at this time evolving a distinctively American fire-
arm the long rifle which, of all firearms . . . had
the greatest influence upon history, both American
and foreign. Up to this time the world had been con-
tent with missile weapons which were not accurate*
Each generation had perfected its kind of weapons
and believed them to be the best possible. Each
generation had produced men so endowed physically
and mentally as to be able to get from their weapons
all the accuracy of which they were capable. But
that did not mean that the weapons were weapons of
precision. The bow could send an occasional arrow
to the mark, circumstances abetting, but the bowman
could never guarantee his shot in advance* . . . Be-
fore the advent of the American rifle there never had
been such a thing as even an approach to precision in
a weapon of offence, and, strictly speaking, precision
is yet ungained; but, there is, and long has been, a
dose approach to it. The designers of the American
flintlock took the first firm step, and to American
ingenuity and science about every succeeding advance
is due.
It was about 1700, 1710, when the Colonial period
was more than half passed, that there came to the
eastern part of Pennsylvania and its borders an ad-
vance guard of a host of Germans and Palatine Swiss
who at home were artisans and many of them gun-
makers. Central Europe, which included their
home country, was then the only place in the world
where rifles were made and used in considerable
quantities.
Rifles having either straight or spiral grooving had
been constantly in use there since Gaspard Kollner
of Vienna became celebrated for rifled guns as early
as 1500- And rifles were in the same stage of un-
development in 1700 as they were two centuries
before. They were short, heavy, clumsy, an inch or
RIFLES AND RIFLEMEN 143
so in bore, terrific in recoil, spiralled and deep
grooved by guess and not by knowledge of cause and
effect, slow to load, more powerful but only a little
more accurate than a good smooth bore. The bare
lead ball was driven down the barrel by blows of a
mallet or hammer upon an iron ramrod, and after
the first shot had fouled the barrel the loading of a
rifle frequently occupied fifteen minutes or more.
The immigrant gunsmiths began in America an im-
mediate output of their wares for use upon the abun-
dant game of their country.
To this might be added, 'including Indians'!
But the shooting conditions in Europe and in
America were very different But in America
the pioneer traveled the immense wilderness, de-
pendent upon his weapon for food and life. The
weapon must be accurate, and must waste none of its
powder charge, hence a long barrel was necessary.
Ammunition sufficient for a long period must be car-
ried on the person; hence a small-bore weapon, that
charges might weigh little. It was important that
the sound of the shot should be the least possible,
that it might not reach the ears of the distant savages;
therefore the barrel needed to contain the greatest
possible amount of metal, to absorb sound vibra-
tions, and yet be manageable. Speedy repetition of
fire was absolutely necessary if the rifle was to be a
competitor of the murderous Indian's bow; hence
there must be improvement in seating the ball.
All these changes did not occur at once. Pioneers
and gunsmiths consulted and experimented and
changed and improved a little at a time here and
there until, perhaps as early as 1750, a new form of
weapon had come into general use. This was the
long, slender, graceful, heavy, small-bore rifle, using a
ball of an ounce in weight, and in Kentucky times of
144 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
half-ounce weight, which could be fired in rapid
sequence because the ball was lubricated. Who in-
vented a greased "patch" is now unknown, but it
was a stroke of genius, and was the perfect adapta-
tion of means to an end. No heavy iron ramrod, de-
forming both the ball and the grooves, and no cumber-
some mallet was now needed. No great amount of
time was used in loading the pioneer's rifle. In the
stock of the gun there was a little box with a hinged
cover. In it were kept a lot of circular pieces of
greased linen or leather, all the same size and cut
with a die. The powder being poured into the barrel
and the rifle held perpendicular with the butt on the
ground, one of the greased patches was laid on the
muzzle, concentrically, the ball placed on it, and
pressed into the bore with the thumb. Then the
light wooden ramrod was drawn from the thimbles,
the head put to the ball, and with one long sweep
of the arm the lubricated ball slid down the barrel
until it stopped upon the powder. A few whangs of
the ramrod expanded the ball by flattening it so that
it held its position. The powder was fine of grain
and quick of ignition; therefore when the rifle was
fired the impact of the explosion acting against the
inertia of the lead caused the ball to expand cir-
cumferentially and, with its cover, fill the grooves,
preventing the escape of gas and receiving rotation.
Upon exit from the muzzle the unfastened patch
became detached from the ball, which flew toward
the mark. And so patiently and ingeniously had the
pioneers and the gunsmiths experimented, some lit-
tle idea of the relation of the velocity of flight had
dawned upon the new American riflemakers, and,
allowing that the distance was under one hundred
yards and the area of the mark ten square inches or
more, a ball directed by an experienced marksman
was almost sure to find the mark.
RIFLES AND RIFLEMEN 145
Indeed, a company of Virginians, under command
of Captain Crescap, gave an exhibition at Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, in 1775, of the straight shooting qual-
ities of the new long rifle. One man held between his
knees a board measuring five inches wide by seven
inches long on which was placed a bull's-eye of paper
the size of a dollar; and his brother, at sixty yards,
without rest, planted eight one-ounce bullets in suc-
cession through the bull's-eye! This was quite the
usual thing for Smoky Mountain riflemen, who potted
Cherokees with the same precision or shot wild tur-
keys by 'braining' them in order to prevent injury
to the meat.
To quote Mr. Sawyer further (and what he says
here is very important) :
Now for the first time there was a weapon which
was capable of repeating consecutively for a large
number of times its first performance. Now for the
first time could an intelligent man be sure of the -
limits bounding his own capabilities and those of
his weapon, and by brains and experience get to
know the limits within which he and his weapon
could do the same thing time after time, unvaryingly,
like a machine. And now, for the first time in the
history of the world was there a community of men
with absolute power of life and death over all others ;
an aggregation of men without leadership, without
realization of their terrific and unconquerable power,
living their simple lives and doing their daily duties
without ambition for conquest and supremacy. But,
unintentionally, unrealizingly, they were the power
that made possible a new nation.
So much for the invincible gun of our valiant back-
woodsmen who, 'without realization of their uncon-
146 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
querable power/ stood for independence and 'elbow
room' in the mountain fighting against French, Eng-
lish, Spanish, and their Indian allies. American
colonial destinies were not materially influenced by
these remarkable weapons until the war with Eng-
land but American rifles and riflemen did quite a bit
of execution in the French wars and among the
Indian allies of the French the Iroquois and Sha-
wanos for some of which they have not properly
received recognition, culminating in the tremendous
slaughter which Smoky Mountain riflemen inflicted
upon their enemies in the Southern Colonies of Vir-
ginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Many of
these backwoods gunmen stripped with their rifles
the French forts from the Saint Lawrence to the
mouth of the Mississippi, although they were prac-
tically only one tenth as strong as both their French
and English enemies. The enemy savages were al-
ways abundantly supplied with French or English
muskets as the occasion arose, but these large-bored,
clumsy, inaccurate pieces were no match for the slen-
der-barreled, straight-shooting, hard-hitting rifle of
the mountain frontiersman*
It was very rare that the wilderness man could
ever see more than a part of his adversary, but he
made the most of that, and either maimed or killed
his enemy who hid behind tree, bush, or rock. One
of the Brunswick and Hessian officers, who were
fighting the Southern highlanders at that time, wrote
that 'the American riflemen are terrible'! Another
diary confessed from observation that 'the American
riflemen could, in a good light and with no wind, hit
a man's head at two hundred yards and his body at
three hundred.' General Howe, cooped up in Bos-
RIFLES AND RIFLEMEN 147
ton, wrote to England about the ' terrible guns of the
rebels ' ! He offered a reward among his Britishers
for the capture of one of these terrible guns, and very
soon one was captured, accouterment and all. He,
however, did not count upon curtailing the appro-
priations for war expenditures in the Colonies when
he sent a marksman back to his home country to
exhibit the effects of this direful weapon.
In the case of Braddock an officer wrote that his
men rarely saw an enemy during hours of fighting!
His thirteen hundred soldiers were as helpless as
sheep, fighting Indians in the bush where they could
not be seen. It was the training which the American
received in the Southern Colonies which was so valu-
able when the time came to shake off the unwise
government across the seas. And the bushwhacking
American riflemen under Washington were the only
things which saved Braddock from utter annihila-
tion. It was the same with the French at Quebec*
To quote Mr. Sawyer further:
It was not New England and New York gun and
musket users who did the brunt of the fighting . . .
it was mid-colonial riflemen. . . . Great Britain, for
one, let the lesson go unheeded. America, naturally,
kept on making rifles in proportion to her rapidly
increasing population, and their influence upon
economics, politics, government, and history, instead
of diminishing after the Colonial period, increased
with the country's progress and future wars.
There were several primary reasons as we see, be-
yond possessing a good gun, and besides an iron nerve
tempered by a vigorous outdoor life for the old-time
Southern mountaineer's unerring marksmanship.
148 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
One of course, was his absolute knowledge of his
equipment, which he had made with his own hands;
another, scarcity of ammunition which trained him
to make every shot tell ; and last, but not least, was
the shooting-match, dealt with in a following chap-
ter.
The first national notice of the Smoky Mountain
shooting- match, which thereafter became famous
the world over, was when Ferguson, ensconced at
King's Mountain, invited some Tennesseeans who
were engaged in their favorite practice to disperse
immediately. The answer of this small company of
Tennesseean and North Carolinian frontiersmen was
the terrible one-hour battle of King's Mountain and
the bragging British general's humiliating defeat,
his twenty-six hundred trained troops overcome by
the galling fire of only nine hundred mountain rifle-
men shooting the long rifled flintlock.
These famous shooting-matches, conducted up to
and after the Civil War, were events of the
most picturesque and interesting character at which
all mountain clansmen gathered. Until such matches
were prohibited by modern laws against gambling,
they were not only a test of eye and trigger-finger,
but a proof of gunmaking ability as well; for it was
very often the case that each shooter also made his
own weapon. Of course the individual gunmaker's
pattern was fashioned after famed shooting weapons
of the time, but in the main his marksmanship pro-
claimed his skill at guncraft too.
The very fact that the Southern mountain frontier
gunsmith and marksman could manufacture, at his
crude forge, with its scanty, home-made equipment,
a short-range firearm of comparatively unvarying
RIFLES AND RIFLEMEN 149
accuracy and hard-hitting qualities, is extraordinary,
and no feat to rival it is found anywhere in his-
tory. It seems all the more remarkable when one is
thoroughly conversant with the circumstances of
his environment and his lack of scientific tools.
Considering the infinite expert care with which
modern firearms are created, with all the necessary
complicated machinery involved, it strains credulity
to conceive of the wilderness mountain man not only
shaping his rifle barrel and mountings at his crude
smithy's shop of logs, but also actually producing
the ingots of metal from which they were made.
Yet he did it, and did it well.
In his case Necessity was the actual progenitor of
a gun, that absolute thing by which he must live and
maintain his daily safety. The literal wolf at the
door of his cabin supplied sufficient incentive, if any
were lacking, after the figurative one was annihilated.
Incidentally it might be stated that the figurative
wolf has never left his doorway.
The Southern mountaineer gunmaker of colonial
times, on up to the Civil War, could not produce
steel with his crude blast furnaces. These were fired
by gigantic bellows of leather operated by the most
primitive, lumbering machinery, driven by the water
power of the tumultuous mountain streams. Such
smithies as these were found at Pigeon Forge on the
Little Pigeon River and in Union County, Tennes-
see, between Loiston and Paulette, and on Hesse's
Creek of the Hurricane country. He was compelled
to depend on the stage road from Baltimore and
Philadelphia and the great Indian Trace from
Charles Town for the small amount of steel which he
used.
ISO LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
The blast furnaces at which he smelted the iron
ore dug from the mountains were great, ungainly
truncated cones of mica conglomerate sometimes
measuring sixteen to twenty feet across the base and
towering thirty feet high. The necessary air blast
was furnished by great leather bellows operated by
giant wooden wheels in which were thrust at intervals
iron pegs, which in turn moved the bellows levers.
The accompanying noise was awesome and echoed
from the sides of the mountain gorges often through
the long hours of the night when a ' run f of metal was
being made from the blast tower. It was from pigs of
soft iron thus poured and cast that the resourceful
mountain craftsman made his rifle barrel. Mountain
men with whom the author has talked about this
primitive machinery were inclined to be amused at
its appalling clamor.
The immense hammer descending with repeated
blows upon a gigantic anvil to hammer into shape
the red-hot metal was moved by the same method
of wheels and pegs. Said 'Black Bill' Walker, of
Walker's Valley, in speaking of the forge: *I never
heerd sech a rackity-rack! Ye'd think the heavens
was fallin' down! Them fellers aworkin' thar in the
sweat an' gaum reeminded me more of the gate to
the bad place! And at night, ye c'd see the red light
of hit acrost the mountains fer miles an* hear thet
hammer thumpin' tell hit seemed to jar the earth
into a quake; but thar J s whar I got the metal fer my
gun "Ole Death"' 'Black Bill's 1 six-foot flintlock
that shot a two-ounce ball.
With infinite patience the mountain gunsmith
shaped the embryo barrel into the desired octagon,
either by welding together the folded edges of a
RIFLES AND RIFLEMEN 151
4 scab* of iron a half inch by four inches by four feet,
with a cavity left through the center protected by an
iron rod, or by boring the entire length of the octag-
onal piece to the proper caliber for a half-ounce ball
or for a No. I or No. 2 'buckshot/ using a finely
tempered drill and using it very carefully, be
sure of that ! The welding of the ' scab * edges to pro-
duce a barrel was not a very popular method among
mountain gunsmiths, however, for it required too
much labor to smooth the inside bore sufficiently
to rid it of the ridge caused by welding. In the for-
mer operation two bits were used to ream out the
crude interior cavity thus formed; these were the
'rag-bit* and the 'long-bit/ Then began the real
work; cutting the rifling. This was done skillfully
or not, according to the workman's ability.
The spiral grooves of the rifling were cut with a
very crude but very ingenious makeshift of his own.
This machine consisted of a spiral cylinder, or guide,
of hard wood accurately planned with home-made
calipers as shown in Figure 6 of the illustration op-
posite page 152 ; a stiff wooden, or steel, rod; a head-
block; some small steel saws and a little ground-hog,
or bear, oil. The wooden spiral shown in the photo-
graph was used, only a few days before it was set up
for its picture, by ' Uncle' Henry Stinnett, of Spruce
Flats, for rifling a light squirrel gun, the barrel of
which was as long as the cylinder shown. The ' twist*
of this particular gun was only one half revolution
to the length and was made to carry a No. 2 buck-
shot. Obviously enough, according to old-time gun-
making methods, the larger the bore say a half-
ounce ball the longer the barrel in order not to
get too sudden and violent a * twist' for the missile.
I 5 2 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
For a longer barrel, naturally, there was required a
longer cylinder or screw.
By increasing the number of longitudinal circles
in planning the spiral, as shown in Figure 6, in pro-
portion to the length, a more violent or a quicker
twist to the ball was obtained. Thus, for the larger-
sized missiles such as the half-ounce ball the
length of the barrel often attained to six feet and
over, and the revolution was one and one half times
the total length. Any greater percentage of twist
in the larger rifles, or even in the smaller ones men-
tioned, would according to gunmakers of former
days cause the ball to 'sail/ drift, or curve as a
pitched ball from a leaguer's hands. Five lands and
five furrows were the usual number for the smaller,
or what is known as the 'squirrel' rifle, while seven
of each was the usual number for larger bores.
The wooden spiral shown in the photograph of an
old screw guide is five feet long and three inches in
diameter. Into it are cut five lands * landings' in
mountain dialect and five furrows. Five corre-
sponding stiff pieces of leather can be seen project-
ing into the furrows; these serve as guides and are on
both sides of the headblock, ten in all. The heavy
piece of wood is called a 'headblock' because it is
shaped like a head simple! The grooves of this
Cylinder were measured by a pair of wooden cali-
pers such as are shown in Figure 6, and laboriously
cut by hand.
' After the crude barrel was pierced from end to end
by the proper drill, and an iron slot affixed to the
end of the spiral, into this slot was inserted a stiff,
square-ended wooden or steel rod in the manner
shown in Figure 5 for the cutting rod. About two
IMPLEMENTS OF THE SMOKY MOUNTAIN GUNSMITHS,
USED FOR- MAKING BULLETS, RIFLING GUNS, ETC.
In the middle cut Figs. I and 2 are targets used in old-time
shooting-matches, Figs. 3-5 are rifling implements, and Fig, 6
is a pair of calipers
RIFLES AND RIFLEMEN 153
inches from the opposite end of this rod was fixed a
leaden sheath moulded in the smooth bore of the
gun before any rifling was cut, so as to give snug-
fitting qualities, and made permanent on such a
foundation as shown in Figure 3. Into the leaden
sheath thus formed were sunk longitudinal slots to
fit one or more flat steel bands at equal distances
compatible with the number of furrows desired. In
these steel bands sharp transverse teeth were filed
as shown in exaggerated size, Figure 4. The teeth of
these saws were square. Later, when the rifling was
accomplished and it was desired to dress the lands
to a* curved surface better to fit the spherical per-
imeter of the missile, saws with the desired curve on
their outer edges were guided by a slug of lead
moulded into the furrows and attached to the boring
rod. The edges of the lands were then beveled
slightly by the best gunmakers, such as the Gibsons,
Bean, and Duncan, in order to prevent the gun from
shredding its patching.
The usual depth of the furrows was one half the
width of the lands. Anything deeper than this
caused the gun to cut its patching in a different way;
that is, by the undue escape of gas around the ex-
pelled bullet. As the operation of cutting advanced,
the saws were raised in their leaden sheaths from
time to time by inserting a thickness of paper under
them.
The general working position of this crude rifle-
cutting machine is well shown in Figure 5. Both the
gun barrel and the machine were immovably wedged
and the spiral cylinder was carefully manipulated
by hand. When two or more furrows were cut, the
saws were turned to a new position and the opera-
154 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
tion renewed. Saws of excellent temper and tough
steel only were used. Both the saws and the frio
tional surface of the leather slugs working in their
spiralled grooves of the wooden guide were liberally
lubricated with ground-hog oil or bear grease. The
guide itself was pushed carefully back and forth by
hand.
The breech of the gun was closed with a screw
plug, the free end of which was lengthened and
flattened so as to form a tang which was finally
firmly screwed to the stock of the completed gun.
Then came the mountings.
These were also laboriously prepared and re-
presented patient skill with the hammer. They con-
sisted of trigger, trigger-guard, flint-chop, firing-
pan, sights, ramrod sheath and thimbles, 'taller*
(tallow) box, butt-plate, and such extra fittings and
decorations as the fond gunmaker might choose to
clothe the iron child of his brain and patience.
Lastly came the stock of the gun. Sometimes the
mountings consisted largely of brass, but usually
they were of wrought iron in the earlier days, as
skilled workers in brass were few and far between.
Front sights very often were made of gold or sil-
ver; gold in the case of the Armstrong rifle shown in
the illustration of Levi Trentham. The barrel of
this famous weapon also had three threads of gold
embedded between the fore sight and the muzzle by
way of expressing an idea of ornamentation of its
creator, Alfred Duncan, whose name plate appears
on the barrel near the rear sight, engraved in a strip
of thin gold also. The stock of this gun is hand-
somely ornamented with carved brass showing
scenes of big-game hunting, fish, etc., but there is
RIFLES AND RIFLEMEN 155
no striking resemblance of the carvings to the life-
like characteristics of Nature's originals.
Often the professional marksman, who made a
regular business of shooting for beeves at the moun-
tain shooting matches, had made for his sights a
thin sheet-iron cover, in the upper middle arch of
which was a pin-hole letting through a tiny bit of
light upon the 'bead* which was accentuated there-
by and was supposed to lend an advantage to the
ingenious shooter.
Alfred Duncan received one hundred dollars in
gold for making the Armstrong gun in the year 1828
for D. P. Armstrong, who lived in a two-story log
cabin near a Cherokee Indian settlement on the old
Indian Trace from Virginia. Mr. Armstrong pre-
sented this valuable gun to his son, Marcellus Murat
Armstrong, when the gunsmith completed his
masterpiece and right proudly was it received by the
aspiring young rifleman. The gun's original stock
of curly cherry was, however, the unfortunate vic-
tim of the old saltpeter 'contraband 1 McSpadden
powder, made near Newport, which literally ate the
wood and metal to such an extent that both had to
be replaced by those of latter-day manufacture. For
this reason the fine gun had to be shortened six
inches in repairing, although its original length was
over six feet ; it weighed thirty-six pounds and shot a
two-ounce ball with splendid and consistent accu-
racy in spite of the gold decorations!
The stock of the frontier gunmaker's production
is famous for its graceful lines and its gunner-made
fitness. It was fashioned of beautifully grained, well-
seasoned woods, generally of * bird's-eye* maple, ash,
* curly' cherry, or black walnut, and this part of
156 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
the gun was the recipient of the gunner's best art.
In the right side of the slender stock was usually
placed a receptacle with a spring lid, called a
'taller' box, which held a lump of deer or mutton
tallow for patching-grease and some finely cut
patching slightly used cloth preferred. Fre-
quently there was an additional cavity in the butt,
with a lid also, for the reception of flints and an ex-
tra flint-chop and screw, perhaps. Trigger, flint-
chop, thimbles, sights, butt-plates, and firing-pan, all
received the most delicate modeling possible under
the circumstances. Lastly, the ramrod itself was
fashioned with equal care and of even straight and
selected wood. This was to push the ball with its
greased patching firmly down upon the powder.
The weapon's shot pouch was made of the softest
deerskin or calfskin and contained a bag of flints, a
gourd for bullets, called a 'sugin,' a * picker' or
sharp-pointed instrument resembling an ice-pick
for priming the touch-hole to the firing-pan, and
bullet moulds. Attached to the upper side of the
latter and convenient to the thumb was a 'trimmer,'
which acted as a knife to smooth the nib on the ball
left by the vent, leaving the cast missile perfectly
round. Often in the old flintlock's shot pouch might
be found flint and steel for starting camp-fires, but
usually the owner lighted his fire in the woods by a
flash from the firing-pan after temporarily plugging
the touch hole, or if powder was scarce which it
usually was by the old Indian fire-bow method
aided by oily strippings of birch bark.
By the side of the shot pouch hung the artisti-
cally curved powder horn, always a prolific field for
the hunter-decorator's carving. Also a charger for
CLARINDY STINNETT, BILL STINNETT'S ' WOMAN*
,RIFLES AND RIFLEMEN 157
consistently measuring an equal amount of powder
when loading; the latter was usually the tip of a
buck's antler.
'Uncle' George Powell, of Cade's Cove, Blount
County, Tennessee, who up to only a few years ago
used his old flintlock to shoot hogs at killing time,
was very particular about a certain kind of * grease '
flint which was found in plentiful quantities near
the old 'Equanulty' Trace now corrupted to
* Ekanetalee ' originally termed ' Eta Natuli' (' Old
Spicewoods') by the Cherokees. These flints were
also much sought after by Uncle George's neigh-
bors, the Cherokees, in the famous days of old
Junialuska and Younaguska (Drowning Bear). In
fact, Uncle George and his 'woman,' *Aunt Ann*
Powell, remembered well that when Younaguska
came to die, his braves carried him to the turnip
patch, as was the Indian custom, so that the illus-
trious red warrior might be plentifully supplied with
eatables in the happy hunting ground whither he
was bound. The mighty old Cherokee hunter's main
concern seemed to be regarding a plentiful supply of
these same greasy flints for his gun, which, of course,
was to be buried with him. To the writer, these
particular flints had the appearance of having been
oiled, and when struck in the pan of Powell's gun
'Old Betsy' gave off a live, fat spark. This famous
gun of the old deerslayer is now owned by John
Oliver, of Cade's Cove.
The rifleman of frontier days in the Smokies liked
slightly used doth for his patching better than he
did leather; usually the cloth was six hundred thread
linen, and a bit of this was carefully cut to proper
size for the bore of his gun, greased with tallow, and
158 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
laid upon the muzzle under the bullet, making the
missile fit the bore snugly, so that, when rammed
down firmly upon the powder, the ball flattened
slightly with light taps of the ramrod and stayed
put ready for a record shot, which was not uncom-
mon by any means. Besides holding the bullet in
place, the patch served in lieu of wadding to seal the
gun when the discharge occurred and the full force
of the powder was exerted behind the expelled mis-
sile. If the rifleman suddenly discovered in the heat
of the chase that he had no more patching, he quickly
moistened the ball with his tongue and dropped it
upon the dry powder charge in the barrel, where,
if the gun was carefully carried, it clung until fired,
the wet powder around the ball forming its own
emergency patching.
The ancient guns shown in the illustrations, of
course, are outlandish compared to the heaviest,
hardest-hitting rifles of present times, where the
rifle of to-day sublimely overshadows even less
modern rifles of yesterday; yet one must remember
that the ancient firearms herein described repre-
sent the first confident steps that American rifle-
makers made in any form of firearm^ that carried
with it any certainty of performance whatsoever
in either marksmanship or firing and were as far
superior to their predecessors, the old snaphance,
firelock, and blunderbuss as these in turn were an
advance over the old arquebus. Many times, too,
the old flintlockman had to watch his eyesight or he
would have it irreparably ruined by the flareback of
the powder pan when firing against a stiff wind. The
guns of the present interpose a solid wall of steel be-
tween firer and exploding cartridge.
RIFLES AND RIFLEMEN 159
The Smoky Mountaineer's flintlock rifle, ham-
mered from an ingot of metal forged from iron ore
dug from his mountains, in the natural order of
things gradually gave way to the 'store-bought*
barrel and rough-cast mountings for which the
would-be gunmaker paid twelve dollars (later
eight dollars), the barrel alone ready for rifling
costing but four dollars. This type was succeeded
by the more modern percussion cap-lock which sold
for practically the same amount* It is suspected by
the author that many connoisseurs of guns would at
the present time like to be able to procure these guns
for the same price! But, as time advances, enhanc-
ing the value of old things always, these two types
of guns were replaced by the lever-action rifle, just
as this in turn was partly supplanted by a sprinkling
of automatics, although the latter type is practically
unknown in the Smokies and the big hill hunters are
prejudiced against them. Only *city sportsmen*
carry them, and they are looked on askance by the
backwoodsman because he believes that such intri-
cate mechanism will fail him and 'hang' in an emer-
gency.
When the store-bought gun could be purchased in
rough-cast form more readily by the mountain gun-
makers, guncraftsmen sprang up like grasshoppers
in every mountain cove and cabin, and the' old-
time armorer, who proudly placed his name-plate
in silver in the barrel of his brain-child, stored his
headblock and screw-guide away forever. His trade
was gone, but not his reputation, for he had forged
a republic at his backwoods anvil.
CHAPTER XI
THE OLD 'SMOKY' SHOOTING-MATCH
IT is a curious anomaly of human nature that it will,
under the greatest duress, seek the most whimsical
pastimes. Aside from the terrific tension of the hu-
man mind under stress, there seems to be a part of
us that is always at rest and sane. Smoky
Mountaineers, amusing themselves at a shooting-
match at Gilbert Town, near Rutherfordton, North
Carolina, in the autumn of 1780, were more anxious
about who was going to win the prize than they were
at the time concerned about the destinies of the
American Republic. But when the English general
at King's Mountain thrust his saber into this po-
tential hornet's nest, very soon the fiery 'varmints '
were buzzing about his ears and stinging his trained
soldiery.
A paroled prisoner by the name of Samuel Philips
was sent from the British camp to remind these
roisterers that they should have other things more
important than shooting-matches and barbecues to
think about. The Americans accepted the gage and
straightway went after the red-coated general, their
long, graceful rifles primed and cocked, pans flashing
fire, and muzzles spitting death.
Forty years before this, after American gun-
makers had finally produced the accurate, long-bar-
reled, hard-hitting flintlock which seemed to fulfill
all the demands of backwoodsmen for their necessary
rifle requirements, the latter began to be fascinated
OLD SMOKY SHOOTING-MATCH 161
with its excellent shooting qualities. The old fire-
locks, matchlocks, snaphances, and wheel-locks of
English and French gunmakers were such blunder-
ing affairs, and consumed such an unbelievable
amount of powder and lead, that American gunners
quickly fell in love with this new rifle and its graceful
ways. More than that, they were actually able to
shoot twice in the same place! Still further, it was
not so dangerous to the shooter as it was to the in-
tended victim. Formerly, a marksman never knew
whether he or his prey would expire when he pulled
the trigger.
Even if it did not prove deadly to him, he might
perhaps have his eyes burned out by the backfire,
or be discovered trying to maneuver his burning rope
around to the powder pan and be shot with a poi-
soned arrow before he could let loose the terrible
explosion in the general direction of his enemy. The
guns of that time had no sights whatsoever. In
firing the old matchlocks and firelocks he was com-
pelled to roll the gun over on its side to prevent
spilling precious powder from the pan.
So, having a gun which accomplished what it was
supposed to do, accuracy in marksmanship began to
be the enviable result of skill, and was no longer
based on guess work. Now it sharpened down to a
matter of the keenest eye, the steadiest trigger-
finger, and the best judgment. So there arose the
most intense rivalry, not only between guns, but also
among marksmen. This or that type of weapon was
advocated warmly, but in the end the shooting-
match settled all claims. It also definitely rated the
shooter in the public eye. For many years after the
momentous advent of the great American rifle,
162 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
shooting-matches were very popular all over the
country. Davy Crockett, the famous deerslayer
Congressman of 1834, was a famous shot and ad-
mitted it.
Said he in speaking of his trip to New York City
at that date when his name was being mentioned for
the Presidency as a candidate against Jackson : ' I
now started to Jersey City, where I found a great
many gentlemen shooting rifles, at a distance of one
hundred yards, with a rest. One gentleman gave me
his gun, and asked me to shoot, I raised up, offhand,
and cut within two inches of the center. I told him
my distance was forty yards, offhand. He loaded
his gun, and we walked to within forty yards, when
I fired, and was deep in the paper. I shot a second
time, and did the same. Colonel Mapes then put
up a quarter of a dollar in the middle of the black
spot, and asked me to shoot at it. I told him he had
better mark the size of it, and put his money in his
pocket. He said, "Fire away." I did so, and made
a sleight-of-hand work with his quarter. 1
The shooting-matches of the Great Smokies,
where Crockett got his training along with some of
his predecessors, such as Boon and Sevier, were at-
tended by all mountain clansmen and, even in times
of stress, they were rolicksome affairs. Many were the
rough and good-humored jokes bandied about, claims
disputed and differences tried. Braggarts were stilled
and the modest marksman was often proclaimed the
Knight of the Ramrod to his own embarrassed
pleasure. And the winnings were not to be sneezed
at in those times. Reckoning that silver itself was a
scarce commodity and that peltries were often the
only means of currency, to purchase a beef and dole
OLD SMOKY SHOOTING-MATCH 163
It out with its ratings at so much a shot even this
economical method was not without its difficulties
among men who had no money to jingle in their
pockets.
Beef tasted different, anyway, after deer meat,
buffalo steaks, and bear ribs! So the lonely cow that
chewed her cud out under the beeches was queen
supreme, even though she was to be finally quar-
tered and carried to the four quarters of the wilder-
ness to feed hungry mouths. Perhaps and let us
hope so she was led away by some supreme
knight of the ramrod who vanquished all comers
'handrunnin'M If she had been endowed with the
supreme human intelligence while awaiting execu-
tion, she might have had the rare pleasure of wager-
ing to herself upon the marksmanship of this, or
that, contestant and of wondering into how many
pieces she was finally to be cut!
So, after the price of beef was 'made up* that is,
sold at so much per shot in advance by the promoter
the shooting-match date was set. It was at just
such a barbecue and match that Ferguson figured so
prominently and unintentionally! The barbecue
itself was merely a free guarantee attraction during
the important ceremonies and is equivalent to giving
away an automobile at real estate sales. The bar-
becue was a buck or doe roast spitted before an
immense fire to satisfy the gastronomic demands
of lusty backwoodsmen, who were accustomed to
deer meat. There were, no doubt, roast potatoes
Indian tubers Indian corn-maize cakes, Virginia
tobacco, and last but not least plain corn liquor with
a sprinkling of Jamaica rum.
But the shooters did not for one moment think of
164 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
imbibing fire-water during the competition, as they
knew that they might as well relinquish the prize to
teetotalers from the very beginning. Fire-water was
no insipid thing in those days and included rum from
Charleston, or gin from the East Indies, brought
over in English, French, and Spanish ship bottoms.
A few friendly Indians were no doubt present, not
tasting of the rum, however, for rum and Indian
never mixed well. Parenthetically, it might be
added that Indians were absolutely innocent of fire-
water before the advent of the paleface and to the
latter's questionable inventive talents may be at-
tributed the downfall of the red man. At least he
was directly charged with the iniquity by Youna-
guska, the great chief of the temperance ribbon
among the ancient Cherokees. It can be stated with
absolute historic truth that the Indians knew no-
thing of fermented juice except a vile mess of sour, de-
caying mulberries which they gave De Soto in 1539
and which the explorer's followers declared the ' best
they ever had/ These mulberries were brought from
a high mountain in the Smokies called Kuwa'hi
'the mulberry place* probably Clingman- Dome.
But the Indians watched with some jealous con-
cern and envy these remarkable rifles that did such
unusual execution. The fine knights of the flintlock
were very careful that the Indian did not get into
his mischievous hands any of these guns with which
they practiced and went barbecuing in the very
midst of national ferment and distrust. But he made
his sportsmanship pay, which accords with all usual
customs of proverbial Scot frugality and economy.
He sold enough shares in advance for the shooting-
match to pay for the beef. Deer meat at that time
OLD SMOKY SHOOTING-MATCH 165
cost only a lonesome shot in the wilderness and the
effort of carrying it home; but beef was different; it
was valuable and tasteful to appetites satiated with
venison. But powder and lead were also valuable
and scarce.
The price of a shot at a target for beef accord-
ing to old frontier custom was a shilling. A cow
or steer was worth from twenty to thirty dollars in
their money, which, allowing for decrease in pur-
chasing power, nowadays would amount to about
two hundred to three hundred dollars. The price of
a shot for mutton was twelve and one half cents, a
wether selling then for seven dollars. Beef or mut-
ton was worth considerably more than venison.
When enough shareholders had entered, the pro-
moter announced the great event far and wide, and
all mountain clansmen gathered forthwith at the
date set, provided there was no unusual Indian up-
rising. Crops were negligible and therefore not an
obstacle to attendance; a house-raising or a dance
might interfere, or a brush with the British or
French, but these were comparatively ordinary
events; the great event was the shooting-match. It
may be said to their credit that preachers also at-
tended these affairs with much gusto. What a rat-
tling of flintlocks and accouterment as every can-
didate cleaned and oiled for days before the event-
ful hour! What feverish and careful casting of bul-
lets; what search for fat flint for the chop, good firm
patching, and what a skirmish for good powder!
Lean, lank Bill Swaggerty, of Sevier County, said
of these occasions and Bill's quaint version was
merely a modern rehearsal of a century past:
' We all planned foment the day. Thar was many
166 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
a feller thet come with a "piggin' full o r expection,"
as the sayin' goes, and went away empty-handed.
I'd throw by a leetle canch x o' corn fer my nag an*
put out too.
'Thar'd be that, or tharabouts, over fifty on 'em
as'd shoot, regular and straight th'ugh, ontell they
was up-ended by a better man. More'n thet'd be the
mixin' crowd lookin' on, plaguein', devillin' t'others
and takin' on ginrally. An* they all hed rifles too, but
many o' them wa'n't wuth shucks nairy rifle ner
man. The lookers'd bet some on the shooters, what
leetle they had to bet.
'Yes, some fellers'd wear them coonskin caps jest
fer show; a few on 'em black mink. In my time a
few'd wear the soft deer or doe skin shirts their
women'd cut fer 'em. Only Injuns'd wear britches
made thet away. An' some on 'em'd wear rawhide
cut inter moccasins, but them fellers 'z kind o' shif -
less and never minded gittin' their feet wet, fer a
moccasin'd never keep a feller's feet dry on th'
yearth; they'd slip mighty, goin' downhill too ef the
ha'r wa'n't turned forrerds to ketch a holt. We allus
wore brogans cut square out er tanned hides an' ye
couldn't tell which foot belonged to which until atter
ye wore 'em a leetle. They'd soon wear t' shape.
'Jeans wuz thar a plenty. They shore was rough
to a feller's hide ! But I reckon anybody kin git used
ter anything in time. I'd ruther wore the deerskin,
though hit wa'n't waterproof none; they was some,
too, when a feller made a extry cape to come over his
shoulders, sometime two capes, but them was too
onhandy and soggy to hunt in.
* Ye'd see all kind o' sights thar. Shooters'd come
*' Chance 'or bit.
OLD SMOKY SHOOTING-MATCH 167
from fur an* nigh totin* guns thet was wu'thless and
guns 'th gold and silver in th' barr'ls. Guns thet'd
shoot right whar ye'd hold 'em and t'others y'
couldn't hold when they was shot, they'd pitch their
balls so crooked. Me and some others shootin' the
old Bill or Ike Gibson -guns they'd rule out fer ex-
perts er they'd set a handicap thet wuz mighty hard
to jump. We'd either have to shoot a crooked barr'l
er fire a slut of a gun thet'd strip her patchin' 'r
some slow-firer 'at 'd never go off 'tell y' 'd lay her
down! I jest plumb quit when th' rulers'd begin to
handicap onless a pa' eel of us'd git mad and beat 'em
anyhow. 'Twa'n't no fun firin' a crazy gun. I was
lucky onc't and driv off the cow-brute J on her own
hoofs, hide, taller, an' meat!'
According to the old chroniclers there were plenty
of partisan spectators in those fine days. News
travels with extraordinary rapidity in the back-
woods. Any event above the ordinary speeds from
tongue to tongue by trail, field, and wood; as a
result, the bleachers were full. But the spectators
were not allowed to hector the contestants. This
rare privilege was alone accorded to the latter, and
even they indulged only when the score was close
and the interest hot. But many were the boasts and
banterings before the event. Wagers were exchanged ,
some of them grotesque and impossible of fulfill-
ment; others remind one of modern inane collegiate
agreements. One of this kind was entered into be-
tween a big, black-skinned backwoodsman and a
primitive Baptist preacher, who was wiry and
'mimicky' and 'a antic feller/ as Black Bill Walker
puts it. The wager was that either would faithfully
*Cow.
168 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
imitate the prize-cow's offspring securing its morn-
ing's meal at the mother's teats if the other won in
target shooting. The loser was also to 'beller' loudly
like a calf that was hungry.
"I won/ said Black Bill, laughing uproariously,
' but d'ye know thet preacher wouldn't pay his score ?
No, sir! Why, them fellers'd 'a' made me do it ef I
lost. I'd 'a' died laffin' ef he had, 'cause he was
kinder tetchy and anticky anyhow and he'd been a
sight fer the world! And they'd never ceased to call
him "Sooky " and " Calfy." As hit was, they done it
some anyways. Hit'd bin a heap sight funnier ef
thet cow had been a steer! '
Such was the rough fun of the backwoods.
Applejack and cider flowed freely, however, stimu-
lating the spirits of rivalry and frolic. Drinking was
indulged in very rarely by the contestants them-
selves, who refrained wisely on account of the stake
and their own reputations. But it cannot be doubted
that imbibing was the long suit of the romping spec-
tators, who had nothing to lose in the outcome ex-
cept some small cash or a few skins at the most, per-
haps a 'bastard' rifle made up of various authenti-
cated and unauthenticated parts. But the stalwart
marksmen with their beautiful masterpieces of the
gunmaker's art in their hands were the princes of the
occasion; they were the cynosure and envy of all
backwoodsmen's eyes.
The most honorable in the assembly of marksmen
would not heckle an opponent during actual shooting,
as this was considered a breach of etiquette, rough
as backwoods 'etiquette' might otherwise seem.
But many were the sly means taken to shake a rival's
nerve, and these were considered legitimate. Never
OLD SMOKY SHOOTING-MATCH 169
was a man's gun tampered with, or bad powder or
faulty patching served to him. Unwritten courtesy
of this nature was accorded every contestant, high
or low.
Said ' Black Bill' Walker, of Tuckaleechee Cove,
naively admitting to the writer that a bushel of raw
turnips placed within easy eating distance of his
competitors always turned the trick: 'They'd never
think about raw turnips breakin' their aim, but I've
allus noticed thet a man full o f green turnips couldn't
hit a barn ef he was fastened up in hit, much less a
small dot the size of a dollar at sixty yards! He'd
shoot like he had the buck aguer an' thet's the wust
thing I c'd imagine a feller bein' plagued with!
Sometimes I'd banter a leetle,' he confessed, with a
humorous twinkle, "specially arter they brashly
ruled me out as a expert an* t' others bemeaned me
fer all they c'd think. I paid 'em back a talkin'
'round. Y' see I'd got so lucky at shootin' I'd
ginrally drive off the cow-brute by her halter an'
there wa'n't no chanct fer nobody elst.'
Before the war of the Revolution both English and
French powder was of fine grain and quick of igni-
tion, but afterwards these imports ceased for the
most part unless smuggled through Charleston or the
Capes, and the famous rather infamous Me-
Spadden powder came into general use among the
Smoky Mountain colonists because there was no other
to be had. This powder was manufactured by John
McSpadden a few miles west of what is now known
as Newport, Tennessee, on the rim of the upper
Smokies and it was so filled with raw saltpeter that
it destroyed many an historic gun by eating out its
stock, firing-pan, flint-chop, and barrel. This powder
iyo LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
was also shipped to New Orleans by river boat dur-
ing the Mexican War.
Later, when the Civil War was beginning and
guns of civilians were proclaimed contraband by the
military authorities of the contending armies, many
fine rifles were ruined forever by being concealed in
caves and hollow logs in the Smoky Mountains by
'scoutin" refugees fleeing from conscription. It is
interesting to note in this connection that back-
woods colonials so despised war and its interference
with their liberties that they very often waylaid
parties of foraging soldiers who came into their coves,
whether they were Northern or Southern. One of
these parties of foragers was thus ambushed by a
force of backwoodsmen near a graveyard in' 'old
Tuckaleech.'
Dan Headrick, a 'Dutchman/ was a member of
such a bushwhacking force and fired on one of the
foragers who rode a gray horse. It was just after
dark and Headrick was concealed behind a tomb-
stone. The soldiers, supposing themselves to be out-
numbered, hastily departed by the way they came.
Like the riflemen of 1780, they were at a shooting-
match also when they received the news of the ar-
rival of the foragers. * Black Bill,' in his rare, imita-
tive way, described the incident thus:
* A pa'cel of us was scoutin' t' keep outen the arm-
ies an' we was havin' a shootin'-match 'r some such
er matter to pass the time in th' woods and Dan
Headrick's leetle gel come runnin' cryin', "Soldiers!
Pap! Soldiers!" She was all out er breath an' we
hurried down.
* We had our guns already an' we made to waylay
'em in a old graveyard. We knowed they hed to go
OLD SMOKY SHOOTING-MATCH . 171
by thar ter get out. But old Dutch Dan Headrick
he got all in a swivet and he fired to kill, while we
was only aimin' to skeer 'em. We hadn't nothin'
agin th' governmint, neither No'th ner South. We
was tryin' to live peaceable and mindin' our own
business. The upshot of it wuz that Dannel hit
his man.
' I says, " Dannel, what hev you done?"
' Dannel was all nerveous like. He sez sezzee, " I
ist done a plenty to them blasted f urriners ! They ist
come by my tombstun an* I ist seed a dark thing thar
a horst-back an' I ist then up 'th my gun an' let him
have damnation plenty! Fire flew out er my barr'l
ten foot an* he ist fell off a grabbin' his horse's bridle.
He kep' up with it ontell they was all out o' sight
down the trail!'"
Lead was so scarce that the frontiersmen sought
it far and wide, by fair means and foul. Following
the saying, * All's fair in love and war,' two men by
the name of Neely and Roberts nearly came to a
tragic end in an attempt to discover the source of the
Cherokee Indian lead supply which seemed in-
exhaustible. The Indians would trade none of it
during the perilous days of the Civil War, although
the mine was known to be somewhere in the Hurri-
cane River country.
The two lead-seekers bribed a young Cherokee
buck with liquor and gold to reveal the location of
the Indian supply. Walker also told of this in his
inimitable way. Said he:
'Ben Partridge, a Injun friend of mine I'd got
neighborly with to learn Injun huntin' ways some,
come excited to my cabin door one mornin 1 at sun-
up. He kep' sayin', "Um! Injun hurt. Injun say
172 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
Oom! Oom! Big hurt heap! Fire burn Injun. Die
by Injun law!"
'I said, "What's the matter with ye, Ben?"
'"Neely. Thomas. Big Chief . Thomas. Little
Will. Injun say Ooh! Big hurt much! Injun burn
big heap! Die by Injun law!"
' I was much intrusted then in Ben's tale, so, to
git the straight of it, I went right to Colonel Thomas,
who was buildin' the Indian Gap road then ter keep
the Indians busy an* keep them out er war an' he
told me th' hull tale thet'd jest happened.
*As I reecollect, Neely had bribed this young
Cherokee thet was burnt to tell whar the Injun lead
mine was. They was a man by the name o* Roberts
mixed in it. The Indians at Yaller Hill hed tortured
the young feller tell he told who got him drunk and
give him the money. So they an' their Injun women
had all three tied and was heatin' a rock to torture
them all with. They hed put up the young Injun on
the red hot rock and he had told all he knowed with
awful sufferin' 'th splinters aflame and stuck in him,
the meat comin' off his feet on the rock, an' the
squaws was pickin' up splinters ter stick in Neely
an' was goin' to roast him when a friendly Injun
tore out to Colonel Thomas an' he come down thar
from whar he was buildin' the road at Indian Gap
an' he come thirty mile quick a horse-back an' saved
Neely.
'Thomas had a council of some sort er other and
Neely agreed not to tell whar the lead was so long as
he lived and the penalty if he did tell was death and
tommyhawkin' to him an' his fambly. He never
told. He knowed better'n to! So nobody has ever
knowed. Roberts wa'n't along with Neely at the
OLD SMOKY SHOOTING-MATCH 173
mine, but later Neely started to lead the way an'
show Roberts at dead o' night, but turned back at
the creetical time. Hit was only knowed thet them
Injuns waded in the Harricane up to their waists, fer
they was watched an' their jerkins was wet thet fur.
Thet was all thet people discivered thet follered the
trail. They'll never nobody know, to my mind ! '
In speaking of powder difficulties, Walker said in
another conversation: 'Thet old McSpadden powder
was shore a disapp'intment! Hit'd fizzle and smoke
like a fuse an' many's the time I could win a silver
dollar a bettin' I could load a gun with it, lay her
down, grab her up again and fire at a target afore she
went off!'
Such faulty guns were the usual handicaps which
were set against such 'experts' as 'Black Bill'
Walker, Swaggerty, 'Preacher John' Stinnett, his
brothers Bill and Henry, 'Uncle George* Powell,
' Uncle * Sammy Burchfield, of Cade's Cove, and
' Devil Sam' Walker. For the most part, such fam-
ous guns as the Decherds, Beans, Gibsons, Duncans,
Leamans, 'Old Petersburgs,' Dick Struttons, etc.,
were almost ruined when hidden in damp places in
the woods and in caves to escape confiscation, but as
the ' scouters ' usually went along with their weapons,
these received jealous attention during their conceal-
ment in mountain fastnesses.
They were brought to the shooting-match,
cleaned, oiled, and tested to see if rust patches had
formed in them during their exile. Many of the rifle
'experts' aforementioned were among the 'scouts'
and 'bee-hunters' who roamed the woods to escape
conscription in a war which they claimed was unjust
and of no concern to them* The slave law was un-
174 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
known; negroes in their community were con-
spicuous by their absence; and Lincoln and Grant
might have been governors at the North Pole so far
as they were concerned. 1 But these same experts were
often hired to shoot for prizes by men whose sports-
manship was much keener than their marksmanship.
The distance of the target at these affairs was at
first sixty yards. The company of Virginia riflemen
under Captain Crescap in 1775, who gave an exhi-
bition of shooting at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, used
this distance. Later, it was reduced to fifty yards.
Every one shot from a 'rest' except when some
violent braggart interrupted the peaceful ceremonies
with boasts that he could vanquish all comers hand-
runnin', shootin* offhand, or layin' down. Then all
contestants concentrated on the agitator until he was
sufficiently squelched and proceeded with the exer-
cises. The claimant was usually so full of the
' spirit* of the occasion that he was not wholly aware
of the disturbance he provoked.
The prize beef, when won by seyeral contestants,
was forthwith butchered with hunting knives
'butcher knives' and dismembered into the fol-
lowing portions according to the backwoods stand-
ard of value:
First Prize Hide and tallow.
Second and Third Prizes Hind quarters.
Fourth and Fifth Prizes Fore quarters.
Sixth Prize Remaining parts and lead
from the targets (which
was never wasted).
1 Tuckaleechee Cove ' scouts,' however, did secretly furnish con-
traband provisions to Burnside's starving troops bottled up in Fort
Sanders by Longstreet's artillery on the Cherokee Bluffs.
OLD SMOKY SHOOTING-MATCH 175
The targets were clapboards charred black. Upon
each of these was placed a white spot of the con-
testant's own selection which served as a bull's-eye.
Every marksman had his own method of 'centering*
his shots; that is, he chose his center upon the first
shot if it was satisfactory. The main idea was to hit
it thereafter.
A favorite style of bull's-eye used by Smoky
Mountain marksmen is shown in Figures I and 2.
It consisted of a soiled slip of paper preferred to
new in the lower edge of which was cut an in-
verted V with a one-inch diamond one half inch
directly above the V. The marksman aimed at the
apex of the inverted V and at fifty yards the tra-
jectory of his missile would, if the weapon was truly
aimed, place it in the center of the diamond.
When the marksman had chosen his center, a
cross was made through the center of the shot with
a knife by one of the judges, who was generally a
reputable man of the community. The shooter then
proceeded with his allotment, whereupon the board
was laid aside for future reference. All bullet holes
were filled with cornstalk pith as they were made.
If a tie resulted during the shooting, the wagering
grew correspondingly spirited according to the
popularity of gun and gunner.
It was not an uncommon thing for an entrant to
deposit his dollar and at the finish drive off all the
prize, beef, hide, and * taller* upon its own hoofs with
the target lead to boot stowed safely away in his
shot pouch. However, if he did this many times, he
was outlawed into the 'expert' class and was not
allowed to participate again except under a severe
handicap, which usually consisted of being com-
iy6 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
pelled to shoot a faulty rifle which had a rust pit in
its bore, or a crooked barrel, or cut its patching.
As it was then conducted, this fine sport was not
considered gambling. But the wagering grew so
heated and liquor became so rampant, and civiliza-
tion which is a curious thing grew so meticu-
lous that this honored pastime was cast into limbo
here in the Great Smokies. Indeed, some fine primi-
tive church members had their reserved-seat tickets
in Paradise revoked by gargoylic deacons, stewards,
and elders, who formerly indulged in the same inno-
cent pastime, but who had their puritanical ears to
the ground and heard the rumble of the chariots of
Zion!
The more effete man becomes, it seems, the less
thoughtful he waxes in regard to Nature's children
and Things. So vanished the famous shooting-
match which bred men who made our country safe
for vandals of the wilderness, who sell scenery acre-
age and primitive customs for bungalow front-foot
lots a flivver thrown in.
Would that the old-time shooting-match of the
frontier Smoky Mountaineer could come back to its
own! Would that Americans could see the giants of
the old woodsman's days confidently treading the
turf of some leafy clearing again, the pungent smoke
of his old flintlock arising like a magic incense out of
the alchemy of the past to honor the shrine of the
Chief of the Forest, and to make us dream of our
sturdy forefathers!
CHAPTER XII
SADDLE-BAGS, FIRE-WATER, AND WITCHES
THE log castles of the Smokies shelter the Dissent-
ers of yesterday. Here are the Calvin Huguenots
of France, the fighting Scotch-Irish Presbyterians
of North Ireland Plantations, the Scotch of John
Knox, Netherlander from the valiant armies of
William of Orange, the Bohemians of John Huss,
Baptists of Roger Williams of the Puritan colonies,
English Dissenters of Wycliffe, Germans of Martin
Luther's Ninety-nine Theses, Methodists of Calvin
and Whitefield the valiant soldiers of a turbulent
religious Renaissance of Europe and America.
They have laid aside their bloody rifles, but their
well-worn Bibles bespeak other battles just as vital
and as faithful. Tear-stained are many of these
mute volumes, and dog-eared with age, but their
spiritual conflicts are written deeply within their
eloquent pages.
It is a significant fact that not a rosary nor an
Episcopalian prayer-book can be found in the whole
rugged sixty-five-mile length of the Smokies. Any-
thing that can be construed as 'form' or liturgy, or
a prescribed method of worship is looked upon with
suspicion here; as something foreign and strange by
tliese simple folk who demand absolute personal
liberty in their faith; the abolition of any man-made
obstruction to their direct approach to their Creator.
With them, the veil of the temple was rent in twain
ages ago, and any self-styled priest, prelate, bishop,
178 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
cardinal, or what-not is merely blocking the way with
some covert scheme of his own, or of his organiza-
tion, to monopolize the Holy of Holies to which they
have as much right as he.
It is evident that America was peopled by the in-
iquities of Europe and the terrible persecution of
Protestantism in England, France, Scotland, Ire-
land, Wales, Germany, and the Netherlands for two
centuries beginning with the seventeenth. The non-
conformist Episcopalian congregations as we know
them to-day were not instituted until 1789, two
years after the Virginia State law against Dissenters
was repealed, giving the rights of free speech and a
non-taxed religion to all instead of a few.
Thousands of these war-ridden and desperate
people came to America seeking relief. A hundred
thousand Scotch Presbyterians arrived in one year
in Pennsylvania and moved onward into the great
Indian traces, populating the Southern colonies
across the Unakas and the great arched back of the
Smokies.
Huguenot Calvinists, such as John Sevier (Xa-
vier), the de Lanets, Le Quires, Crocketts, Stinnetts,
Pilleaux (French refugees in England), Brokees,
Millards, and Waddells; Baptists like Mulkey, at
Watauga, Isaac Lane who fought with Boon under
Sevier at King's Mountain, Jubael Stearnes, the
Conners, the 'Murphey Brothers,' Ireland, Waller,
and Hillsman; Quakers like Boon, Hicks, and Dodd;
the Welsh families of Reese, Thomas, Davies, Rich-
ards, and Cumings; Scotch-Presbyterian Covenant-
ers by the score with such outstanding names
as Ross, Walker, McGill, Bracken, Vann, Camp-
bell, Renfrew, Mclntosh, McClung, McGillivray,
SADDLE-BAGS AND WITCHES 179
McCarter, Powell, Grayson, McCormack, McDon-
ald, Duncan, McGoldrick, McGIamerie, and Mc-
Allister; such Irish fighting Calvinists as Adair,
Roddye, Shiels, Doak, Dougherty, Barten, Galpin,
Duggan, Dungan, and Durroon; Netherlander,
such as Myers, Hedrick, Womack, Gambold; Eng-
lish followers of Wycliffe and John Whitefield
Manning, Hall, Robertson, Shelby, Bell, Tren-
tham, Hightower, Houghton, Hillsman, Johnstone,
Cooper, Calvit, Siler, Hughes, Morris, Tipton,
Reeve, Greer, Burchfield, Rose, Bryson; German
Lutherans such as Esslinger, Wagner, Weisgarber,
Lingenfelter, Naumann, Ryehoff, and Schultz.
John Ross, the Cherokee statesman and peer of
Jackson ; and Sequoya George Geist the Ger-
man half-breed inventor of the Cherokee alphabet
which preserves much of the interesting history of
this outstanding Indian nation, were descendants
of such settlers by intermarriage with Cherokees,
The families that have made Cherokee history were
nearly all of this mixed descent as distinct from the
usual 'squaw man'; they are the Doughertys, the
Galpins, the Adairs of Ireland; the Rosses, Vanns,
and Mclntoshes of Scotland. With this accession of
white blood these Indians maintained a conserva-
tism of statesmanship which dominated their na-
tional councils. From such white blood came the
famous chief and orator Younaguska.
The Church of England in America continued to
harass the former Dissenters of England who had fled
to America for relief. Not many free-born Americans
of to-day realize that evangelistic Dissenters, whether
Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Quaker, Congre-
gational, Moravian, or Calvinist, were baited by
i8o LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
Virginia sheriffs, magistrates, and the courts in the
eighteenth century. They were thrown into prison,
persecuted, whipped at the post, mobbed by the
drunken, lawless element, and publicly attacked
without redress. The harrying that had been the fad
in northwestern Europe became the fashion in cav-
alier Virginia. It may be popularly sung that Vir-
ginia was the ' Mother State' of the Southland, but
the husband of her first marriage was exceedingly
cruel to her children.
In 1643 it was ordered by the Governor of Vir-
ginia, who was the appointed champion of the Church
of England, that 'no minister should preach, or
teach, publicly or privately, except in conformity
to the Constitutions of the Church of England, and
non-conformists were to be banished from the Col-
ony,' and this noxious law was not repealed until
1776. A little Congregational Church of one hun-
dred and eighteen members, established by a Mr.
Harrison, was enjoined by the Episcopate Gover-
nor *to depart from the country'! Every taxpayer
within the Commonwealth of Virginia was com-
pelled to contribute to the support of the State
Church and all non-conformists who absented them-
selves from religious services were punished by se-
vere fines, which were collected by State sheriffs and
bailiffs and the rich were obliged to pay the fines of
their poorer brethren. Shipmasters were punished
if they * brought Dissenters into the Episcopate
Colony of Virginia.'
Especially upon the New Lights, or Separates
(Baptists), Methodists, and Free Quakers, however,
fell the ire of the State-Episcopate union. Some
thoroughly Calvinistic Presbyterians who endeav-
SADDLE-BAGS AND WITCHES 181
ored to kick over the traces of their synods were as
promptly rehitched by a public averment of allegiance
to the Scotch Covenant churches and the Westminster
Confession; this action by church authorities had a
tendency to cool the ardor of any prevailing evangel-
istic tendencies on the part of the Blue Stockings.
For the most part, the fighting Presbyterians the
Scotch and Irish did not dwell long in quarrel-
some Virginia. They had seen real fighting in the
Irish Plantations and they wanted genuine diver-
sion; polemic discussion was too tame; this they left
to their more scholarly exponents who remained to
parry doctrinal swords with the Episcopates* What
stomach the North-Scot and Irishman had for fight-
ing they carried to the back wilderness of North
Carolina and Tennessee. Upon these valiant souls
rests much of the glory of Smoky Mountain border
warfare. Baptists and Methodists followed in their
turbulent wake to Tennessee. Before the American
Revolution, both of these denominations on this con-
tinent had only a superficial knowledge of their
brethren, though there was continual correspond-
ence with England's churches. But before the war
with England, the Baptists, among them such fire-
brands as Jubael Stearnes, John Weatherford, John
Ireland, Tidings Lane, Lewis Conner, chaplain in the
American army, the 'Murphey Brothers' William
and Joseph and William Marshall, uncle of Chief
Justice John Marshall, stood hitched to fight the
Church of England in Virginia. Patrick Henry, the
great liberalist, did his honorable part toward reli-
gious as well as political freedom.
The great Baptist, Roger Williams, carpenter and
farmer, second only to William Penn in the red man's
182 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
confidence, who preached to the Indians after being
driven from the Plymouth Colony, had many con-
verts who trekked to the Southland and became the
tenacious foes of State religion, George Whitefield,
whose bones now repose in a crypt under the pulpit
of his old Federal Street Presbyterian Church in
Boston together with his well-thumbed Bible, and
his saddle-bags, led the cause by an astounding ora-
tory which swayed the masses at that time. Baptists
and Methodists alike, claiming their evangelistic
authority from God only and the open Book, did not
hesitate to attack the sins of the Church of England,
public and private, and thereby drew the fire of its
authorities.
For their temerity they were thrown into prison,
mobbed, and beaten; then arrested for 'turning the
world upside down and disturbing the benign peace
of the Commonwealth 5 ! Arrested, they were given
the choice of desisting from their preachments or
spending a season in jail on bread and water. They
chose the latter to a man*
Crowds to whom they preached gathered before
their prison gratings. When the authorities erected
a wall before their prison windows to prevent meet-
ings as in the case of John Weatherford the
congregations gathered beyond the wall and raised
a handkerchief on a pole to signal to the martyr
when they were ready. Weatherford, possessed of a
stentorian voice, preached successfully thus in spite
of the obstructions and 'many were blessed of the
Lord of the martyrs as were those who heard the
apostle Paul in chains. * Many other preachers met
a like fate, enduring all sorts of public and private
indignities.
SADDLE-BAGS AND WITCHES 183
A few were publicly whipped, then freed. John
Weatherford, in 1775, brought before magistrates
for ' inciting religious rebellion against the Common-
wealth of Episcopate Virginia/ was freed upon the
insistence of Patrick Henry, lover of liberty, and we
suspect his famed utterance, ' Give me liberty or give
me death/ had as much religious significance as
political. Another arraigned man was actually de-
fended by the State attorney who exclaimed at the
trial, 'Let them alone! You will only further their
cause by persecution!'
His prediction was true. The disciples of Wesley,
Calvin, Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, Knox, and Roger
Williams were scattered to the farthermost reaches
of the Southern colonies and into the wilderness of
North Carolina and Tennessee, carrying their gospel
of freedom as expounded from their open and well-
thumbed Bibles.
Everywhere these messengers went they were heard
by immense throngs of wilderness folk. From gar-
rison to garrison they traveled, horseback, afoot, and
by boat, carrying the news of the martyrs. Thus
began the reign of the saddle-bags. No trail was too
steep, or too icy; no streams too turbulent or too
angry to bar their response to the call of distress*
They buried the dead in the wilderness, and attended
the sick and dying. George Whitefield had preached
sixty-five hundred sermons when he finally climbed
the stairs of the Presbyterian parsonage at Newbury-
port and, with his candle sputtering to its socket,
delivered his last one to a mass of people gathered in
the village lanes. John Asplund, a Swedish back-
woods preacher, in 1782, traveled seven thousand
miles in eighteen months visiting two hundred and
184 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
fifteen ' congregations. 1 Many eager settlers had not
heard the gospel for years. Often they stood in snow
to their knees before some backwoods 'tabernicle'
and listened with rapt attention for hours to these
far-famed expounders, or sweltered in the close con-
fines of a mountain cabin or log schoolhouse.
The inspired prophet of God was always welcome.
His home was where he hung his saddle-bags. An
aura of glory hung about his head as did the halo of
the olden saints. He never received a cent in re-
muneration for his services, nothing except his board
and lodgings perhaps a horse was loaned him to
make his next post. Living out-of-doors almost con-
stantly, he was not only robust but possessed of a
good appetite, and the homesteaders always gave
him the best of Southern hospitality. In return he
gave them spiritual comfort and, often, having
medical knowledge, he gave them pills as well.
A story is told of one of these tireless itinerants
who had called unexpectedly at the noon hour at a
backwoods cabin when the men of the house were
absent. His hostess, however, welcomed him and
proceeded to prepare a chicken dinner catering
to the visitor's well-known failing. Try as she could,
the fowls all seemed unusually skittish perhaps
they had witnessed the preacher's arrival! the
frontier woman could not capture one. In despair
she repaired exhausted to the barn where lay the
minister's saddle-bags. Combining faith with works,
she kneeled to pray for Divine help.
While upon her knees in her desperation, she was
startled to hear an agonized, muffled squawk and
lifting her eyes caught sight of a tousled feathered
head protruding from one of the saddle-bags a
SADDLE-BAGS AND WITCHES 185
possible gift from a previous host. Quickly she arose
and, with a prayer for forgiveness, she put the
chicken in the pot and served it, to the gastronomic
satisfaction of her guest who unctuously praised her
skill.
Repairing to the barn to be on his way, he dis-
covered his loss. Slyly guessing as to the source of
his dinner, he lifted his head reverently and there
came upon the startled ears of the guilty woman
waiting outside to beg forgiveness, the divine pro-
nouncement: 'The Lord hath given and the Lord
hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord ! '
Although the success of border fighting around the
Great Smokies was mainly due to Irish and Scotch
Presbyterians, yet very few, strange to say, are
found there to-day. This is explained by a president
of a prominent Southern Presbyterian college as be-
ing due mainly to the fact that these frontier fighters
sought the ultimate peace of the plains and the val-
leys. Their obsession was 'out' and 'back of be-
yond,' Again, although they were a very religious
people, they were not given to 'stump speaking/
The primitive Baptists and Methodists would al-
ways address an audience wherever they found it
and were decidedly evangelistic. The Presbyterian
synods demanded restraint and erudition.
The lack of erudition did not seriously hamper the
Baptist or Methodist backwoods primitive. If he
felt 'called' and under examination by his elders
passed doctrinally, he was usually 'ordained' to
preach. Doctrinal differences, moreover, bothered
denominations very little in those times. Disputes
over 'predestination and election/ 'salvation by
grace/ 'infant baptism' and its form, 'confirmation/
186 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
'falling from grace/ and ' backsliding ' were lightly
touched upon when two or three denominations were
preaching from the same log school-house! It was
only after the cog wheels of civilization began to
run more smoothly that the emery wheels of argu-
ment began to flash fire as the tools of polemic dis-
cussion were sharpened. Because of their superior
training, in the main, Presbyterian saddle-baggers
were more than a match for their Episcopate breth-
ren. For that matter all denominations gave the
latter several boxing bouts of Scriptural interpreta-
tion on faith and works.
The natural spontaneity, the familiar dialect, and
glib wit of the followers of Roger Williams and Wes-
ley, i testifying from experience/ captured the fancy
of the backwoods hunters and trappers. Then, too,
many backwoods Calvinists joined these two de-
nominations because there was no other conveniently
at hand. Plainsmen Calvinists neglected their op-
portunities too long. To-day, many Smoky Moun-
tain coves boast of two, sometimes three, small
churches, usually Baptist or Methodist, or both.
Very often one finds two of Baptist persuasion,
Primitives, or 'Hardshell' and * Missionary' ; the lat-
ter more modern. Often there may be a third which
is usually Methodist and 'shoutin' Methodis" at
that! For that matter, no restriction exists to-day
against 'shoutin 1 ' anywhere, if one feels in the mood.
In fact, this is almost a certain guarantee that the
preacher's Biblical exhortation has scored a bull's-
eye.
The writer once attended a 'shoutin' service' in
one of these mountain coves which, oddly enough,
was presided over by a fine scholarly Presbyterian
SADDLE-BAGS AND WITCHES 187
gentleman, president of a prominent college accom-
plishing a fine work among the mountaineers not
' mountain whites/ as there are no ' mountain blacks'
a negro is unknown. The congregation was to be
addressed by a Primitive or 'Hardshell* Baptist
preacher of mountain persuasion.
Naturally, the preacher's doctrinal discussion was
rather loose and 'disjointed/ but what he lacked in
Baptistic erudition was more than supplied by his
exhortative powers on 'salvation by grace' which
rang true enough, vociferously rang, through the
valleys. His century-old form, dating back to bor-
der days, was quaintly in place among his people.
So was the singing.
The women quavered a plaintive, hesitant tenor,
gaining strength with a breathless rhythm of un-
bridled 'sopranner.' The older men accompanied
with a tremulous bass suggestive of husky-reeded
bassoons swinging with alarming crescendo into the
next stanza without the customary pause for breath.
All kept time, even the preacher with heavy feet
clamping on the hard puncheons of the leg school-
house.
The younger women never forsook the snuff
brushes with which they massaged their gums, spit-
ting out the doorway when within spitting reach.
If it was not, they usually arose, carrying a baby
always, and went to the doorway to bridge the dis-
tance. The drinking bucket was handy for all and
mothers dribbled their babies' ginghams and bare
legs with an over-solicitous sloshing of the gourd-
dipper and retired abashed at having interrupted
the services by their awkwardness. But in spite of
all these accompaniments the old-fashioned hymns
i88 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
were sung with a wild, sweet sadness which re-
minded one somehow of long ago Scotland or Eng-
land, and of the old longing for rest free from trib-
ulation.
The preacher took his text from a familiar pas-
sage. With all of his shortcomings, his delivery never
lacked candor and sincerity, and, though halting at
first, gathered momentum with much approval on
the part of swaying older members who voiced their
assent with deep 'amens' and 'yes, yes!' Reaching
an exhortative climax, he broke into the singing of a
very old and familiar tune to them. Quavering
and quaintly touching, it was joined in with fervor
by all:
When I can read my title clear
To mansions in the skies;
I'll bid farewell to every fear
And wipe my weeping eyes.
They chanted with a tearful fervor which had its
climax in such pent-up emotion that some of the
elder women in Israel arose and began to walk about
in their joy, singing, weeping, clapping and shaking
hands with every one, and exclaiming that they
'loved everybody/ There was such a chorus of
emotional response that it must have warmed the
preacher's simple heart; his meeting was a success!
But an odd thing happened.
As though a water tap had been turned off, the
commotion ceased. While all were on their feet the
meeting subsided suddenly to ominous quiet. It
was as if a chorus had received invisible command
to instant silence. Where the whole mountain had
rung with the stridency of shouting, now all was
deathly still. In the interim of silence an aged sis-
SADDLE-BAGS AND WITCHES 189
ter was heard to remark in a stage whisper to one
of the men: 'Jim, gimme a chaw er terbaccer. I
hain't nary a bit!' It was true backwoods, but it
was also an anticlimax. The fine, quiet gentleman
of the synods was not asked what he thought of
this bit of ancient Calvinism, a variant from modern
repression.
The persecution of the saints in Virginia had its
direct effect in a great 'revival* which broke over
the Southland in a startling manner. Everywhere
people talked of the 'baptism of fire' the equal of
which could only be recalled in the Welsh * visita-
tion' of nearly a century ago. Conviction of sin
stalked abroad and the 'Devil was arrested in his
high-handedness/ 'Licker-makinY horse-thievery,
dishonesty of weights and measures, immoral
practises, 'dancin', fiddlin 1 , and gamblinY with de-
ceptions of all sorts received their quota of blister-
ing fire from the pulpits of the backwoods with their
predicted punishment of 'hell and damnation/
Many hardened old sinners of the copper worm and
flakestand untouched by former preaching
came weeping to the meetings and surrendered their
stills to be chopped up by the parson. Intended dis-
turbers, urged on by fire-water courage, went away
trembling, pierced by the keen and barbed shafts of
backwoods oratory. Indeed, some of the quaking
converts had merely to be looked upon by these
terrible oracles of the gospel to be 'pierced by the
arrow of conviction' and become 'so burdened by
the weight of their transgressions that many thought
them deranged' until they won the fight "and come
through.'
Occasionally these meetings were blocked by some
igo LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
stalwart evildoer. A backwoods blacksmith had
sworn that he would * thrash the saddle-bags off'n
any preacher that commenced any gawspel fantin'
'round hyar ! ' and had his gang of followers. But the
preacher, somewhat of a man himself, promptly
pommeled the blacksmith into submission then and
there. With such excellent advance advertising, the
meeting flourished, with the obstructionist among
the first converts.
The wilderness saddle-bagger never received any
remuneration for his service. Matthew Hillsman,"
son of the Amelia County Virginian, John Hillsman
one of the first converts of the State of Franklin,
and one of the first to erect a settler's cabin on the
present site of the city of Knoxville in 1803 paints
an excellent picture of the early colonial knights of
the saddle-bags. Said he: 'Among the settlers were
many excellent people, a fair proportion of them
being professors of religion, the larger part being
Presbyterians. But there was no church organiza-
tion or minister of any sort in the place or near it.
The citizens had built a good-sized log schoolhouse,
and occasionally visiting ministers would occupy it
as a preaching place. Although I had been preaching
three or four years, I had never received a cent for
preaching ... no Baptist preacher in Tennessee at
that time, so far as I know, received anything for
preaching, or ever expected to. With the Baptist
preacher of that day' (it was also true of other de-
nominations) 'the first thing to do was to make a
living, then preach all he could. . . , The first gift I
ever received for preaching was a bag of flour and a
dressed hog and these were from a good Presbyterian
brother!*
PREACHER JOHN ON WEEKDAYS
SADDLE-BAGS AND WITCHES 191
In glancing over the annals of that time we find
that many of these noble and unselfish souls were
wagoners, wheel <mghts, carpenters, blacksmiths,
farmers, soldiers, weavers, gunsmiths, barrel and
4 piggin'-makers. Spending their spare hours poring
over the Scriptures under the meager rays of the
pine torch or firelight of their cabins, they tried in
their humble way to interpret them. Their worn
and weathered books attest to their unselfish efforts
in behalf of erring humanity.
Often, ploughing their fields, these wilderness
preachers conned the sacred Book. One backwoods
expounder, 'Preacher John' Stinnett, of Little
Greenbriar Cove, admitted that 'one of the best
sarmints he was ever permitted to utter in behalf of
the Kingdom was giv' to him whilst he ploughed the
furrers of his leetle corn patch.' Said he: 'I jest
toted my Bible in a tow sack at the handle of my
bull-tongue* (single-bladed plough) 'and I steddied
hit at the turn o' the furrer and conseedered hit
through the rows. Come a Sunday mornin 1 at Meigs's
Mountain I deelivered hit with great liberty and I am
confeedent thet many war moved to compassion and
prevoked t* tears of repentance to cry out like Paul's
jailer, "what must I do to be saved?"' This con-
fidence, pathetic in its simplicity, is characteristic
of all Smoky Mountain preachers of the old school,
who, though handicapped by 'lack o' rarninY in
spite of it 'stand on the walls of Zion to proclaim
His truths' accomplishing more with what they
possess than many 'with Tarnm'!' Even if they
could, 'with Tarnm',' split orthodox hairs, in a
threatening wilderness they would have refused,
reckoning religious bedfellows as mutual sufferers
192 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
and guaranteeing to them only the most hospitable
of intentions. While there were outside foes, there
was no time for internal dissensions. The purveyors
of backwoods gospel suffered just as much as any at
the bloody hands of savages and had often come
home from distant appointments to scenes of blood-
shed and murder at their own hearthstones. The
families of some were foully murdered on the way to
worship and their bodies mutilated.
Though congregating under the constant threat of
danger, audiences were never lacking, and never grew
tired, although the preacher was often compelled to
carry a rifle to his pulpit. It was very evident that
the Indian needed a little missionary work. There
is no record of any missionizing among the Smoky
Mountain Cherokees earlier than 1732, when Chris-
tian Priber, a Jesuit, driven out of France a few
years previous, established himself in their villages.
Priber spoke six languages, English fluently. Jealous
of his growing power among the Cherokees, the Eng-
lish threw him in prison on a pretext, at Fredricka,
Georgia, where he died.
The preaching of Government Agent Joseph
Martin, of Tennessee, was evidently not received
by the Cherokees at their peace capital, Eschota,
with any degree of satisfaction according to an ac-
count left by Timberlake in his 'Memoirs/ pub-
lished in 1769. Says that English gentleman (on a
peace parley with the Cherokees), in his quaint
account with s's like /s: 'As to religion ' (Cherokees')
'every one is at liberty to think for himself (even
the Indians were Dissenters!) 'whence flows a di-
versity of opinion, . . . They generally concur, how-
ever, in the belief of a Superior Being. . . . They
SADDLE-BAGS AND WITCHES 193
believe in rewards and punishment, as may be evi-
denced by their answer to Mr. Martin, who, having
preached Scripture till both he and his audience were
heartily tired, was told at last, that they knew very
well that, if they were good, they would go UP; if
bad, DOWN; that he could tell them no more; that he
had long plagued them with what in no ways they
could understand, and, that they desired him to de-
part the country!' Another rebellion in Israel!
The Moravians established a mission on the
Yadkin, Boon's country, in 1752, where they were
friendly to the Indians. The Reverend Jonathan
Mulkey was probably the first Baptist preacher in
Tennessee at Sevier's fort at Watauga. Other min-
isters fought with the soldiers in the Indian wars,
such as Chaplain Hall, who shot the negro slave of
a trader by mistake in a raid on the Cherokees.
Scarcely any other denominations except the Pres-
byterian entered Tennessee until after the war with
England. Tidenee Lane addressed the first congre-
gation as a regular paid minister in Tennessee. The
Reverend Gideon Blackburn, a Presbyterian clergy-
man of Tennessee, opened a school among the
Cherokees in 1804 which failed from lack of funds. "
' Lack of funds' was the middle name of all preachers
of that time.
The Cherokees also had a * revival.' Synchronous
with the great colonial Pentecost was an odd tribal
disturbance among these Indians about 1812. It can
only be explained by mass psychology. It was a re-
ligious fanaticism similar to that which breaks out
sporadically in various parts of America to-day in
mountain-top meetings where scantily clad adher-
ents, divested of all worldly possessions, await trans-
lation in a 'second Coming* of the Messiah. ,
194 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
It seems that an alarming revelation was brought
to the Cherokees by the Creeks at Coosewata, as
'the only hope of the Indian race/ Cherokee priests
and medicine men began at once to preach a return
to the old life, in which they were to forsake the
white man's ways and be real Indians again. A
great medicine dance was appointed at Utsanali dur-
ing which the doctrine was expounded. At this great
tribal meeting it was explained that the Cherokees
were at fault for having broken the road which had
been given to them by their fathers from the very
beginning of the world. They had taken on the
white man's ways, and even some of them had books
and cats! The gods were angry and the game was
leaving their country.
They were to return to their old way of living, to
put on paint and buckskin, throw away their mills
and looms, kill their cats, and be Indians again;
otherwise swift destruction would follow. A terrible
storm was to destroy all but the true believers, who
must repair to the tops of the Smokies there to await
the day. Forthwith the true believers toiled up the
steep slopes, abandoning their homes, orchards,
books and cats, but they waited in vain for the
Creek prophecy to be fulfilled and again filed down
to their villages under the big hills sadder but wiser
Cherokees.
Whether the Creeks and the Cherokees were un-
consciously imitating the great revival in spiritual
matters in the colony is not known, but at any rate
that of the colonies counteracted to a great extent
the disastrous aftermath of the wars in which the
bloody pendulum swung to its farthest reach. The
fiery eloquence of the martyrs all but effectually
SADDLE-BAGS AND WITCHES 195
stemmed the alarming increase of social evils which
daily threatened to undermine the success won at
arms.
The paleface's fire-water had always been a source
of much concern to those who kept a hand on the
pulse of the frontier. All governments had prohib-
ited the sale of whiskey or rum to their wards, the
Indians, because of its disastrous effects. But when
the tide began to turn against England, her renegade
Tories, such as the 'squaw man* Cameron, made
deadly use of it to stir up trouble for the settlers.
The younger Michaux in 1800, following the bo-
tanical studies begun by his illustrious father, was
forced to promise his Cherokee guides 'as much
whiskey as they could hold ' before he could induce
them to take a step toward leading him out of the
trackless forests at the foot of the Smokies. From
this it seems that the white man's concoction was
even then getting a deadly hold. One of the most
tender romances of the old deerslayer days between
the white man and his erring red brother, later
weakened by drink, is contained in the rare attach-
ment between Colonel W. H. Thomas, 'Little Will/
as he was affectionately termed by his adopted
father, old Younaguska one of the counselor
chiefs of the Cherokees, who is supposed to have dis-
covered Alum Cave when he trailed a bear to its
den.
'Little War was only five feet four, while his red
champion stood six feet three in his moccasins, a
handsome Cherokee of athletic build and a great
orator among his people. A true Southerner of
Revolutionary stock, born in 1805, Thomas was a
posthumous only child and lived with his widowed
I 9 6 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
mother on Raccoon Creek, two miles from Waynes-
ville, North Carolina. His father was a relative of
President Zachary Taylor and of Welsh lineage.
While 'tending store* at the Indian trading post,
'Little Will' attracted the attention of the old chief
by his unusual brightness and aptitude in learning
the Cherokee language; informed of the boy's des-
titute circumstances, the big Indian adopted him.
After the brutal removal of the Cherokees by Jack-
son in 1838, Younaguska had no cause to regret this
act of kindness, for Thomas took care of him by
securing, as government agent, a home for his, bene-
factor.
Thomas also assisted remaining members of the
tribe about twelve hundred who had rebelled
against the removal under the leadership of old Tsali
(Charlie), their martyr who faced a military firing
squad; they were permitted to reside in five towns of
the reservation which Thomas laid out and named
Bird Town, Paint Town, Wolf Town, Yellow Hill,
and Big Cove. These remained under the supervi-
sion of Thomas as long as his adopted father lived.
Disgusted by the brutal methods of the removal,
in which the soldiery under General Scott hunted
down the Indians like beasts in the fastnesses of the
Smokies, Thomas resigned his government post
during the Civil War, and, in order to keep his
charges free from the vagaries of war, employed all
the fighting men about six hundred in building
the only road that has ever spanned the arched
back of the Smokies, that at Indian Gap which for
fifty years has been in disuse.
Younaguska, like most great orators, was a great
reformer and prophet. To him may be accorded the
SADDLE-BAGS AND WITCHES 197
unique honor of having organized the only temper-
ance society that was formed among Indians. His
own failing was whiskey. He had repeatedly tried to
conquer it. Once, after listening to a translation of
the Book of Matthew brought from the peace cap-
ital, he dryly remarked : * It seems to be a good book
strange that the white people are not better, hav-
ing had it so long/ But there is no record that the
old chief's temperance organization had its origin In
any adopted faith of the white man; it seemed to be
his own inspiration.
At the age of sixty, after a serious debauch, he fell
into a trance lasting twenty-four hours. Upon re-
gaining consciousness, he called a great council at
which he explained in an eloquent sermon which
melted even the stoical Indians to tears, that God
had permitted him to return to earth for a short
time to warn his people of the evils of intemperance,
and that they must banish whiskey from among
them. He had his friend Thomas write a pledge and
every Indian of his tribe signed it and until the day
of his death in 1839, at the age of eighty, whiskey
was unknown among the Cherokees.
An unexpected corroboration of this event was
given the writer by 'Aunt Anne/ the wife of ' Uncle'
George Powell, in her cabin on the Great Tellassee
Trace, or the old Toll Gate Road, at the lower end
of Cade's Cove. Told in her quaint and forcible
English, it made an impression never to be for-
gotten.
Upwards of ninety, but still very active and alert,
'Aunt Anne* was knitting socks for 'George' who
was 'the beatin'est man to wear 'em out she ever
seed!' An accident several years previous had de-
198 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
prived her of one eye, but the remaining one, glanc-
ing shrewdly over her brass-rimmed spectacles,
riveted the beholder with its sinister glance. The
subject of the old Indian chief had been mentioned.
At once she was interested. She laid her knitting
aside.
4 1 seed ole Younygusky die the fust time!' she
announced with the finality of one imparting mo-
mentous information. ' He was right out thar in th'
turnip patch 1 But he come to! He lay thar two
days, hand-runnin', dead and dead drunk be-
twixt it. Anyways, them Injuns had jest p'in'blank
figgered he was dead an' they was fixin' ter bury him,
Injun style, in the turnip patch so he c'd have a
chanct to bait on whar he was goin* ter the happy
huntin* ground, I reckon.
'I was jest a young un er some sech a matter,
wa'n't scarcely able t' recollect nothin'. But who'd
fergit sech a thing? Them Injuns was all bedecked
in sech finery as'd feather any fool's eye! Some-*
buddy hed found the pore ole feller in th' fence cor-
ner. He'd drunk too much o' this ole popskull and
white lightnin' licker these wuthless men dabble in
'round hyar. An' I reckon some o' my folks ' (Burch-
fields) ' was kittered up in hit some.
1 1 ain't no linkister, 1 but them Injuns was dronin*
over some f angled bald-dashery 2 but them as
knowed c'd figger out an' was takin' on somep'n
patherish 3 and quare. They'd h'ist thur hands an'
look to th' sky and chanty 4 sad-like. Made me feel
plumb skittish. Thar was his grave dug. Thar was
his gun, dog, an' a few arrers an' a jug o' water frum
the spring. An* I, leetle minx, was a wonderin'
1 Interpreter. * Baldachin? 3 Simple. Sing.
THE WELL-THUMBED BIBLE OF THE
MOUNTAINEER: UNCLE HENRY STINNETT
BLACK BILL'S FATHER AND MOTHER
He was a Covenanter Saddlebag Preacher; she was of the McGill
Clan of Scotland
SADDLE-BAGS AND WITCHES 199
what'd happen next; hangin' 'round 'th my fly-trap x
open!
1 All of a suddent, jest as they was goin* to put him
in, up he sot! Straight! An* they all fell bade much
afeered. I run! But my folks tell me't he preached
somep'n alarmin' an' hit was all about licker too;
that they sh'd be beminded not to tech it. I wisht
many times some o' my men-folks c'd 'a' larnt thet
sarmint! Mebbe they wouldn't be so much onder-
handed meanness in this cove!
'Well, the short and long of hit was thet ole
Younygusky hed them Injuns all givin' up licken
He had 'em all signin' some sort o' agreement to quit
drinkin'. An' when a Injun sets his hand in writin'
with all his devilment he's a-gqin' ter keep
his promise.
'Arterward when George come to live 'th me an'
showed int'rust to dabble in it and caddie * 'round 'th
his cronies, I jest th'owed it up ter him to p'in'blank
copy arter the Injuns an' quit makin' licker but my
words 'as jest like rain on a gander's back. He made
it, an* he made it good, as licker is, but whar's any
licker 'at's good? Hit's all devilment an' tribulation
ter women. That's what all these hyar peach trees
an' apples is planted 'round hyar fur, to make licker.
A sight has been made 'round this place* Been a
sight better ef all these trees hed perished fur the
want o' rain, er had the blast! 3
Til tell ye p'in'blank, thet ef Eve ever giv* ole
Adam a apple, he had it fust a-makin' whiskey outer
it! 'Tain't her doin's. They hain't no good in licker,
fust an 1 last* Not a drap! The pore ole 'Injun was
right!'
* Mouth. a Contend or dispute. * Blight.
200 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
Shortly before his death, the splendid old chieftain
called his tribe about him and, commending that
they depart not from their country, folded his blan-
ket about him for the last time and entered the
spirit world.
Not all the primitive backwoods preachers had
such a faithful following as this grand old warrior.
'Preacher John' Stinnett's ' Hardshell' Baptist
Church in Little Greenbriar had some diplomatic
exchanges with a secret order that persisted in hold-
ing lodge on prayer-meeting night. 'They war axed
to desist and change their meetin' time/ said the hon-
est old preacher in speaking of the incident, ' but they
war willful and determined on their downroad an* we
churched 'em an' withdrawed the hand o' fellowship. 1
Swearing received its quota of attention. The
famous Daniel Boon was before his church council
for 'using outrageous oaths' toward a neighbor.
Such was the usual treatment and is yet ac-
corded to those members who persisted in going
counter to local church discipline. Those who were
not willing to deny themselves attendance at 'dan-
cin', fiddlin' parties, and gamblin' at spot-cyards'
met a like fate if they were not also disposed to
attend a 'discipline meetin" and there apologize for
their waywardness. Habitual users and sellers of
'moonshine 1 who publicly flouted and disgraced
mountain churches were usually allowed a term of
probation if any regret for their actions was shown,
otherwise they were also dismissed 'without the
hand of fellowship.'
The 'old trapper of Tuckaleech,' 'Black Bill'
Walker, humorously recounted how he attended 'a
church meetin' onct, onbeknownst.*-
SADDLE-BAGS AND WITCHES 201
'Me an* Devil Sam Walker took a notion to
visit the Injuns over at Yaller Hill before the War'
(Civil). 'We was made welcome at a old chief's
cabin over thar that Devil Sam knowed. We was
axed to have some o' their " tomfoolery" * tamfuli
(kanahena) as they offered to all visitors ;Jmt I
begged off. I couldn't stand none o' their sour meal.
We went in, sot about tellin' tales; the old Injun
speakin' a manner of our talk, I was afeered an* I
slep' in a bed by a winder, but Sam, he slep' by the
fire, at least he made to.
1 Long in the evenin' another tall Injun come in
an 'the two of 'em got inter an awful argyment 'bout
somep'n or t'other. They'd switch about in the'r
cheers, argy an' turn the'r backs on t'other tell long
in th' night. Now we both tho'ght they was fussin'
'bout which was goin' ter git to stob x us fust while
we was asleep which we wasn't. I got much
afeered an' slid out th' winder fergittin' my gun. I
hollered like a hoot-owl outside an' Sam made as
if ter git a drink o' water an* he come out too. I
retched back an' got my gun, but I reckon Sam's gun
is thar yit, fer he never went back. The joke on us
was thet them Injuns was deacons in th' Baptis'
Church over thar an' they was arguin' as to whether
they was goin' t' church a man fer drinkin' er not.
Y'see they was talkin' Cherokee!'
Very few mountain ' stills ' can flourish long within
sight of a church spire if the organization is active.
Many of these tiny churches are visited only period-
ically by a minister as their small membership can-
not support a preacher alone. In primitive com-
munities he still comes a-horseback with his sad-
'Stab,
202 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
die-bags; in more modern districts he arrives with
much chug-chuging in a flivver. Nearly all conduct
a 'footwashing* service at least once a year, and
where there are two contending factions, with their
preachers, one hears the expression, 'Some washes
with Gregory and some with Hatcher/ that is, the
two leaders. During the interim when the meeting-
houses are vacant, 'old harp singings' with
shaped-note song-books occur, which are very
popular, the leader catching the pitch with a ' tuning
fork. 1
Immorality and superstition of the most mis-
chievous sort crept into the colonial wilderness as an
aftermath to war, together with the ease of prosper-
ity, front porches, rocking-chairs and cats! If
Nature abhors a vacuum, the Devil uses it for a
romping ground* In isolated instances men 'took
up' with women not their wives, living in apparent
defiance of laws and better backwoods standards*
Children born to such unions were invariably called
by the name of the misguided woman. One com-
munity, commanded by a frontier estate holder, sus-
tained the doubtful reputation of being entirely
populated by illegitimates, forty-five children and
grandchildren by five different ' wives/ Many of the
male progeny became outlaws for indiscriminate
murder and 'moonshine* activities. A few negro
descendants among these went by the racial name of
'Spanish/ In every case the descendants, whether
white or black, assumed the family name of the
mother; the title of 'Mrs./ which was slurred to
1 Miss/ was, in many cases, misleading. In one in-
stance only the 'super* wife occupied the same
house with the regular family, but in this case, the
SADDLE-BAGS AND WITCHES 203
child was spirited over the mountains by other
mountaineers to hide evidence from the sheriff.
This was an unusual and sordid case, but many
of the feminine heirs of these unions were not only
beautiful but accomplished thanks to Presby-
terian aid! Such cases are very rare and due to
ignorance. Mountain people, as a rule, possess an
inherent modesty that invariably inhibits such
waywardness.
But superstition rivaling Salem and old England
witch tales traced its shivery trail. Mountain com-
munities previous to the Civil War cannot be con-
demned unequivocally for this when London itself
was shaken with the exorcism of an epileptic youth
by seven ministers in Temple Church in the year
1788. Salem executed nineteen unfortunates and im-
prisoned a hundred and fifty for witch practice under
the misguided Cotton Mather in 1692. Similar in-
stances occurred in Scotland. Why should we con-
demn her fugitive citizens of our back hills who are
actually a century in the wake of civilization? These
mountain witch tales rival those of Meg Merrilies in
Scott's 'Guy Mannering.*
A whole mountain settlement in the early fifties
was upset by the doings of two witches, Anne Cam-
eron and 'Vice' Borden and their families, who
possessed the 'evil eye. 1 They were charged with
every queer and odd misfortune that had occurred
or was about to occur in the upland cove under the
shimmering blue of the Great Smokies. They were
avoided as if they were reeking with a scrofulous
poison and their families suffered from want be-
cause of the forced isolation from their community.
If met upon the trail in the woods, they were given
204 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
the undisputed right of way, for, woe betide what-
soever they fastened their malevolent eyes upon;
that creature or thing immediately became be-
witched.
If a cow had the 'lump jaw/ Vice Borden did it,
If a baby died of convulsions caused by neglect,
Anne Cameron was the cause of it. If a woman fell
and broke her leg; if a cow 'went dry/ or cream
wouldn't churn; a hound chased deer in his sleep; or
a yoke of oxen were poisoned by eating 'bubby'
(burbage) seed ; or if people were ' taken down with
summer complaint * (dysentery) it was the fault
of one of these two or both, or their families. Every
unexplained phenomenon was charged to their
devilish machinations. Children of the neighbor-
hood, overhearing mysterious whispers, were afraid
of their very shadows and shivered with dread until
bedtime, or cried out in their sleep. Even grown-ups
walked apprehensively when they were compelled
to be abroad after dark. A hunter shot a bewitched
bear that had a white spot in its forehead, a white
doe seen upon a mountain-side after dark was one of
these sorceresses upon a hellish prowl ; a were-wolf ,
shot at repeatedly by two marksmen that were
never known to fail, vanished unhurt until a gun was
loaded with a silver bullet, whereupon the wolf was
found dead the next morning at daybreak in the
Devil's Court-House an impenetrable tangle of
laurel at the top of the Smokies. In fact, there was
no end of trouble that these two witches were caus-
ing. AH sorts of primitive remedies were resorted to,
but the favorite was the usual silver bullet with a
cross cut in it, fired into the witch's effigy carved in
the bark of a beech tree 'nigh runnin' water,' where-
SADDLE-BAGS AND WITCHES 205
upon the guilty sorceress fell and broke an arm or a
leg, or 'jest p'in'blank drapped dead!' and the spell
was broken. It is best told in the archaic English of
the mountains.
The 'old trapper of Tuckaleech,' as 'Black Bill'
Walker termed himself, played the part of host in
his cabin back up under the big blue wall of the
Smokies. His 'woman* busied herself about ' vittles'
as guest and host sat at table, not deigning to eat
until her lord and master and his visitor were first
served.
The old trapper had seated his friend with the
remark: 'Jest retch in an' take out fer yer needs.
Them as brings manners hyar takes 'em away with
'em when they go!' With that seeming lack of con-
vention is immediately imparted the ease that exists
between gentlemen of the old school. Artificial
'manners' are dispensable with these fine courtiers
of the woods, yet their attention is quickly alert to
attend to any want and to urge upon the guest to
'eat what ye are a mind to an' don't be backward
none. Our eatin* ain't nothin* to brag on, but thar's
more whar this come from!'
The host, of giant frame, sipped milk. He dis-
dained 'baccer/ coffee, and 'licker.' Said he: *A
leetle sperrits is good ef they are good, but the sort I
usually come acrost in these parts I wouldn't feed to
my hog!'
After the preliminaries, the subject was skillfully
switched to witchcraft. ' My ole woman believes in
witches ! * the old trapper laughingly responded. ' But
I don't believe in no sech foolishness!' But there
was instant dissent from the head of the table where
stood his 'woman' with arms akimbo.
206 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
1 He does believe in witches, but he jest p'in'blanfc
won't say so! He believes in 'em worse'n I do.'
The shaggy old trapper leaned forward with fork
poised. 'Let me tell ye a leetle sarcumstance 'at
shows jest how much I believe in 'em,' he warned.
'Now, Will Ye can't make fun thet a way 'th a
seerious matter! You can reecollect how '
'Now,' he interrupted, 'ole woman, you can jest
let me tell my tale an' then if they's any time left,
why, you can tell your'n. I am goin' ter tell how I
feel toward 'em by reelatin' a leetle sarcumstance as
happened to me.' He looked teasingly at his * wo-
man.' 'And it consarns her a leetle too!'
Appearing a trifle abashed, the old trapper's wife
sat down in a split-bottomed chair. Evidently it was
to be a long tale. The Tolstoy of the big hills lifted
his shaggy head, grizzled slightly at the temples, and
was soon adrift in reminiscence.
'You've heerd o' people bein' rid to death by
witches while they was asleep? No? These doctors
lay it to nightmare as turns the trick, but I say hit's
witches! They're rid t' death and can't holp their-
selves. Thet was the earcumstance 'th me!
1 Every night, fer a spell, a purty lady, all dressed
in black velvet, ridin' boots, an 5 shiny silk hat, come
to my bedside, put a bridle on me, changed me to a
pony, an' rid me off. I was a pony. That I c'd see
when I looked down at my spotted hide an' hairy
legs an' hoofs. She rid me to a place in the woods
whar thar was a big cave, an' sech purty music an*
dancin* as went on in thet cave! Romm-ity romm-
ity rom ! Squeedle-de-deedle de dee ! I c'd hear them
fiddles an* the dancin'! They danced aft' they
played all night an* then she come out, mounted, an*
SADDLE-BAGS AND WITCHES 207
rid me back afore the peek o' day an' turned me
loose at the bed an' thar I was; my nateral body.
Next mornin' I'd be so tired I c'd scarcely lift my
head frum my piller!
'Well, that happened so many times I jest 'lowed
I'd hunt thet cave. I was tired o' bein' rid to death,
too, 'thout ever gittin' to dance none. So I hunted
these hills over, fur an' nigh. I even went up inter
the Devil's Court-House, as these happenin's was
as nigh the Devil's doin's as anythin' I c'd figgen
But I never found no place like hit nowhares. So I
jest tho'ght I'd trick my rider an' find out. I jest
made up my mind the next time she rid me I'd leave
some sign. I'd jest bite the bark o' thet tree I was
hitched to an' paw the log by the side o' hit an' let
fall some drappin's so I c'd find hit in the daytime.
Purty cute, hey?
'Well, hit wasn't long before she come agin. As
usual, she bridled an' saddled me an' rid me off.
Thar I was, a pony, standin' by the cave, hitched.
The music started an' she lit an' went in. I begun to
gnaw the bush an' paw the log somep'n treemen-
jious; an' the drappin's too. I pawed thunder out o f
that log, but somebuddy started yellin', 'Will! Will!
What on airth air ye doin' ? Tryin' ter kill me?'
'An' right thar I woke up. I was pawin' my ole
woman out o' bed an' was tryin' to gnaw the head-
board off the bed ! An' I was a awful fix! Now ! Thet
ought 'a' cured me o' witches, oughtn't hit? I ain't
had no faith in witches sence!'
'Yes, you have!' interposed his spouse, objecting.
'You shore do believe in 'em onless you have
changed mightily. How about the time when yore
Uncle Danny shot Vice Borden's picter in th' beech
208 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
an' she drapped crippled thet very minnit? And
how about the time Anne Cameron, that t'other
witch as lived on the Harricane, said as how Danny's
likely gal'd be a 'purty'n afore the year was up, 'an*
how her mouth 'as all drawed t' one side ontell her
beauty was plum' sp'iled? An' ye'll remember the
very minnit you an' Danny moulded a silver bullet
an' cut a cross on hit an' cut Anne's picter in the
beech down by the river and Danny stepped back
nine paces an' said, * In the name o' the Father, an 1
the Son, an' the Holy Sperrit,' an' fired the silver
bullet inter the picter, thet very minnit she drapped
crippled t' th' ground an' thet pore gal's mouth
straightened. Ye know ye believe in witches!'
4 Yes. I reecollect, ole woman, the time that
Anne's picter was shot. She was crippled as you say,
but she claimed she fell over her piggin' while she
was carryin' hot water to her churn when she done it ! '
4 Yes, but ye reecollect, Will, when you an' Danny
went down thar t' th' beech an' pulled thet bullet out
o' the tree, Anne drapped dead?'
'Yes,' admitted the old trapper, shaking his
shaggy head, ' I do reecollect now. But I am gettin'
old an' that was long ago. My gels an' boys has all
left me, gone everywhar an' got gels an' boys o*
the'r own. I wouldn't 'a' got old so quick ef the wild
game had kep' up; but when that begun t' git sca'ce,
I begun to fall off. That's what keeps a man young
an' makes him strong; hit's wild game an' the likes
o' hit without backer, an' bad licker. Thet's when
men was big an' strong an' hearty like my pap; he
was a saddle-bag Virginny Covenanter. I ain't
follered his footsteps none like I oughter 'r I'd be
better nor what I am! They churched me fer
SADDLE-BAGS AND WITCHES 209
drinkin' when I was a young buck an* full o* life, but
I hain't teched a drap sence!
1 I'm better off'n some o' the fellers thet lives down
in the coves nigh town. I live betwixt two fogs up
hyar. The upper fog lies high on the mountain tips
an' don't shet me out from the Almighty; but the
lower fog shets me out from the disputes preachers
is havin' 'bout which way is right; this an' t'other.
An 1 after all I may be better off'n what I think!'
CHAPTER XIII
FAMOUS HUNTERS OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
Yu'we-yuwehe' , Ha'wiyehyu'-wioe'
Ya'nu wne'guki' tsana'seha';
E'ti une'guki* tsana'seha';
Ya'nu nudunnelu' tsa'nadiska'.
', HA'WIYE'-HYUWE',
YU'-WE-YUWEHE', HA'WIYEHYU'-UWE'
The Bear is very bad, so they say;
Long time ago he was very bad, so they say; "
The Bear did so and so, they say.
Cherokee song to please the children
FEW hunters can rival the feats of Daniel Boon, or
those of Davy Crockett, one of the five survivors of
the Alamo, or of the powerful old Cherokee, You-
naguska, who drowned his bear fighting with it in
midstream. The deep, worn, sinuous trails of the
Big Smokies felt the moccasin tread of a number of
such stalwart hunters, to whose unerring aim many
bears, deer, and turkey succumbed. Crockett slew
in all about a hundred and fifty bears in his lifetime,
and Boon had to his credit a greater number of
buffaloes, many of which were slain with the hunting
knife around the Salt Licks of Kentucky where Boon
lay concealed. Leaping upon their hairy foreflanks,
he rode and stabbed them to death for fear that his
rifle shots might be overheard by the omnipresent
Shawanos by whom he was captured several times.
The achievements of numerous other Smoky-
Mountain riflemen, equally notable, have remained
unknown and unsung because of their natural
BEAR-HUNTERS AT BLOW-DOWN' IX THE SMOKIES
UNDER THE 'DEYII/S COURTHOUSE'
JOE COLE AND HIS BEAR-PEN 7 AT INDIAN GAP
A deadfall weighted with stones, with a baited figure-4 trigger
FAMOUS HUNTERS 211
modesty. This is the case with the most outstand-
ing, such as 'Black Bill 1 Walker, the Stinnetts, Ben
Parton, Levi Trentham, who slew a two-hundred-
pound bear with a pine knot, and many others. One
cannot enter their fort-like cabins without hearing
extraordinary accounts of bear-hunting and deer-
hunting that stir even the most sluggish blood; tales
of backwoods sagacity and steady trigger-fingers
that beat even the red man on his own ground. And,
these present-day hunters of the Smokies, up to a
few years ago, used the old flintlock with which to
kill their game!
* I allus was somewhat of a fool about the woods,*
smilingly reflected 'Black Bill' Walker, the 'old
trapper of Tuckaleech' as he termed himself, as he
lovingly fingered the trigger of his huge-bored,
muzzle-loading rifle, 'Old Death/ which fired a two-
ounce ball. ' I live in 'em jest because I love 'em.
When I was young they wasn't nothin* about the
mountains I didn't want to 1'arn, an* they wasn't
no resky thing I didn't want ter do!'
The old hunter sat in his favorite split-bottomed
chair inside the doorway of his cabin on the Middle
Prong of Little River in Tennessee, just up under
the high blue wall of the Smokies. * I never had no
b'ar t f run me but onct,' he added, 'but I reckon
that was onbeknownst ter him. But hit wasn't on-
beknownst ter me ! ' Black Bill laughed heartily at the
recollection of his discomfiture during the episode.
Of a figure decidedly Tolstoyan, with simple hab-
its of living to match, head handsomely grizzled
with a mass of heavy, iron-gray hair, Black Bill of
'Old Tuckaleech' breathed the vigorous atmosphere
of the mighty Nimrods of the old flintlock days when
212 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
Boon and Crockett trod the mountain trails of the
vast wilderness then known as the State of Franklin.
His cabin, a relic of Indian times, with its broad-
hewn logs, puncheons, and hand-riven boards, with
its single window like a porthole near the middle,
seemed to typify the old frontier.
Although the direct descendant of a Covenanter
Presbyterian saddle-bag preacher, of the Walker
and McGill dans of old Scotland, and of a position
above his environment, Black Bill lapsed into the
easy vernacular of the Southern mountaineer when
vividly recounting his experiences. Seventy years
of age, still alert of mind and body, his greatest
pleasure indoors consisted in perusing the 'Life of
Grant/ the Bible, and the Almanac. When con-
versing, he shot his words through closed teeth as
one would discharge a bullet from a gun. The firing-
pan of his humor was always well-primed.
He squinted his keen black eyes for a moment
across the valley at the fast-crimsoning mountain
landscape shimmering in autumn glory. 'Hit was
jest sech a day as this/ he recounted, 'when I had
the tussle with the crazy b'ar. I was up in the spice-
woods yander where ye see thet leetle gap in the
mountains. I was standin' behind a chestnut
watchin' th' trail fer a big buck 'at was usin' 'round
thar when I seed this big b'ar come a-shamblin*
along down the trail lookin' this way an' t'other. He
sorter stopped 'th his hind parts up on a log. But I
was afraid to resk shootin' him in them. So I pulled
up Old Death an' shot him in the eye.
'Well! He tuk straight toward me with some
power afore I c'd load my gun, which was a flint-
lock then. I racked suddent an' terr'ble 'round thet
FAMOUS HUNTERS 213
tree 'th thet b'ar atter me. I run so swift thet I c'd
a-cotched him by the tail ef it hadn't been so short!
I wasn't thinkin' o' doin' that, however. I was more
int'rusted in t'other end!
'How d'ye reckon I got outer sech a tight place?
Well, I jest kep' runnin' tell somethin' else happened !
Soon I seed the b'ar was crazy from the shot in the
eye. He blowed blood all over me, "Sw-oo-of !" an'
shammacked off inter the bushes suddent an' begun
to butt inter everything. I mighty soon got off outer
the way o' trouble an* loaded agin. Hit didn't take
but one shot ter finish him.'
The old hunter shook with hearty amusement, and
then added with a more thoughtful air : ' I was shore
resky them days. I was jest a plain fool in many ree-
specks. I remember Jeff Wear one time offered me a
hide of a b'ar ef I'd go inter a cave an' git it, so ter
speak. He made a spear t' stick her t' death with.
I stuck at her, but she splintered thet spear-handle
the fust pass she made. An' then I crawled in close
to shoot her, but she smacked the gun outer my
hand onct. See thar whar the marks of her claws is
too. She splintered the stock thar some. Thar was-
n't room fer both on us hardly in thet cave, but I'd
pull up close 'an shoot an' then duck fer her t' run
by ef she wanted to. I killed her an' captured th'
leetle cubs, but Jeff, he plum' fergot about the hide
in the flustration. Fool? I was jest plain resky!'
Black Bill's 'reskiness' was generally attested to
by his former hunting companions, the Stinnetts
f Preacher John, 1 who probably killed the largest
bear ever taken in the Smokies since early days;
Henry, a famous still hunter; and Bill, an excellent
trapper and guide.
214 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
The old black trapper's greatest hunting yarn,
told with all the becoming modesty of actual accom-
plishment, is the vivid account of a bear hunt which
occurred under unusual circumstances. Born in the
year of the Cherokee Removal in 1838, this frontiers-
man was a stout young buck of twenty-three at the
beginning of the Civil War in which he did not ' jine '
until later. He stood six feet two in his woolen socks
and weighed in hard muscle just one hundred and
ninety pounds. To describe him in his own words, he
was mostly muscle ' an' the rest, fool ! ' It was during
the perilous times of actual war that the big hunt
occurred.
'Longstreet was 'siegin' Burnside in Knoxville,'
said he, 'an' had him pegged up tight in Fort San-
ders. The air was tremblin' with cannon. Or hit
mought 'a' been me a-tremblin'! Thar was Sel Ir-
win, Johnnie Walker, Father, Devil Sam Walker,
Uncle Dan we calls 'em "Uncle" when they're
older, out of reespect Sammy Myers, an' myself.
We actually seed twenty b'ar thet day an' killed six!
Th' woods's swarmin' 'th b'ar. The reason was
I found out arterwards the mast had failed in all
the mountains but thar. I jest tho'ght I'd gone
plum' crazy an' was seein' things.
'Them was thoughtful times, anyways, with all o'
us wonderin' who next o' our kin'd be shot in the
war 'an not knowin' when we'd be tuk up by the
soldiers. I pinched my nose an' pulled my ears to
see ef it really was me standin' thar in th' woods.
Six b'ar in twenty-four hours is the record, sir, so fur
as I know f er numbers. For size, Preacher John Stin-
nett killed the biggest b'ar ever seed in these parts.
'To begin with, I wanted fer to take a hunt. But
FAMOUS HUNTERS 215
I couldn't git nobody ter go with me. Several men
thar in Tuckaleech refugeein' from the war vowed
they wouldn't go a step. So I jest gits up a chanct
fer provisions an' puts out alone one evenin'. I
stayed all night on Meigs's Mountain so I c'd be on
the b' ar 's f eedin' grounds agin daybreak next mornin' .
I found a power o' sign thar on the mountain.
1 1 comes suddent on my fust b'ar the next mornin'
as I crossed the mountain a leetle arter daylight. My
flint failed to fire the pan several times, but I man-
aged to shoot him finally an' he run off. I follered
ontell I come to a spring on the Timbered Ridge;
thar I looked acrost an* seed on the side of the ridge
another b'ar settin' on his hunkers rakin' up leaves
in a pile under hisself mighty serious, lookin' fer
chestnuts. He was comical. I whipped over the
ridge an' come up the knob under him. When I got
thar, he'd gone furder down inter the timber whar I
discivered him at the same business as before. He
appeared to be of a very solemn turn o' mind. I
looked about me an' seed six or seven b'ar thar doin*
the same thing!
'Well! Right thar I got nerveeous! I thought I'd
come to a b'ar convention ! But I drops on my knee
an' aims, but my flintlock was workin' bad. I pulls
the trigger, but the chop goes "che-whillick! che-
whillick!" And not a spark! The b'ar raises his
head an' blows "Sp-oo-ph" tryin' to wind me, but
not knowin' what he's skeered at. I takes out my
butcher knife silent an' turns the flint so they's a
sharp corner t' hit th' steel. The next time I pulls
they's a shower o' sparks to fill a pint cup an' the
smoke spurted. I had took rest agin a tree this time.
My b'ar drops in his tracks.
216 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
'YeVe heerd o' buck aguer? Well, right thar's
whar I got J'ar-aguer! I shivered an' I shook so I
couldn't load my gun an' I reckon I poured powder
all over the ground tryin' to hit th' muzzle. I had to
set down awhile. I was too eager. My b'ar had
rolled down a leetle holiur to'ards me, so directly I
went over to git hit* When I got thar hit was gone !
Not a sign of a b'ar anywhere. I had lost my prize.
I was in some wise put out. But I follered th' bloody
sign an* come to whar my b'ar was down agin a
holiur tree rollin* from side to side like a pet playin'.
I tuk good rest on a stump this time at the bulk o'
him. When I fired, he riz up an' made off with great
power inter th' bushes an' was gone agin.
1 1 soon seed that the place whar he was layin' was
bloody. Pools o* it. I knowed then I'd hit his vitals.
I run up quick an' mighty nigh stumbled over him.
This time I was so eager I hadn't primed my pan
good, so when I pulled the trigger, the powder jest
fizzled, "Ps-sh-sst! s-sst!!" seemed like a half-
minute afore she went off. But when she did go off,
the b'ar was tryin' to climb over a fallen hemlock an*
the bullet jest knocked him in under hit an' he sot
up straight under thar jest like a man. He took ter
groanin' an* thrashin* about like he had a awful
belly-ache. An' I reckon he had. His nose was high
in the air.
'The next time I was too eager agin an' shot him
in th' nose an' he begun to snort blood an' make
a terr'ble noise like he had th' asthmy. He looked
so nigh gone that I pulled out my butcher knife an'
thought I'd save a load by stickin' him. I sorter
punched him 'th my gun muzzle to find out whar his
ribs was to keep from hittin' a bone. " Che-whollop ! "
FAMOUS HUNTERS 217
he smacks the gun between his paws an* his teeth
clashed down on hit like a steel trap ! Y' c'n see thar
whar the marks is yit! So I shot him instead arter
all. I made shore he was dead this time, though. He
weighed nigh over three hundred.
' I took out his intrals an 7 lifted him to my shoul-
ders, but I had n't went fifty steps afore I run acrost
a leetle cub a shammackin' down a tree back'ards,
lookin' fust to one side an' t'other. We used to own
a leetle nigger in slave times we called General
Logan that'd rack up a tree nerveous jest like thet
leetle cub was a-doin'. I was jest takin' a rest to
shoot thet leetle b'ar when the bushes shook nigh the
tree an' hits mammy come up to a log an* looked
over at me. She skinned her lip back an' slathered
at the jaws, threatenin'. She was a treemenjeous
b'ar! So I turned my gun at her, aimin' right at the
white spot in her stickin' place at the throat, an'
fired.
'Arter the smoke cl'ared away I run up close to see
what'd become o' her. I heerd her some piece off
in the bushes bellerin' "Oh Lord!" -like that. "Oh
Lord!" Now thet might sound cute 1 to you, but
whenever a b'ar bellers "Oh Lord!" she's dyin'!
You c'n count on it. I heerd onct of a feller arguin'
with a b'ar about that. He jest stood up in front o'
th' b'ar an* he said, sez 'e: "You can jist shut up!
Ye needn't be a coward. Ef you had got the best o'
me, I wouldn't beller like a baby. I'd jest take my
medicine like a man an' say nothin'." An' the b'ar
did shet up!
'But thar was her leetle young un shammackin'
down the tree backwards an' I hadn't loaded yit, so I
1 Curious.
2i8 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
rushes over to whip him back up the tree agin so I c'd
git a shot. As I lit in the bushes around the tree,
1 ' Chow! Slosh! Slosh !" a old Ae-b'arriz right up at
me an* spit in my face! I c'd feel the warm breath
o' him. As I jumped back, I seed ayearlin* tharwith
him. Before I c'd load, all three o' them b'ar put off
together, Gen'ral Logan an' t'other two.
'So I goes over to whar the old she hollers "Oh
Lordy !" an* thar she lays with one paw hangin' over
a big hemlock log; she'd died tryin' to climb over. I
split her like I done t'other an' th'owed her high up
on the log away from the varmints. Arter I had
loaded my gun agin I found I'd rammed my last
drap o' powder down the barr'l an' hadn't a grain to
prime with. So I takes my picker an' picks out some
from the tech-hole to fill the pan. Then I rams the
ball down tight agin an* hurries on *th my load o'
b'ar meat, fer hit was gittin' late.
'Jest as I turned the top o' the ridge whar I'd
camped the night afore, I seed another b'ar rakin' up
leaves an' lookin' 'em over very keerful like he was
afraid he would miss somep'n very important. He
was on t'other side of a log an' I circled 'round to git
in below him, keepin* the wind right. I takes very
keerful aim, fer hit's my last load. He drapped in his
tracks. He moved jest a leetle arterward an* I ain't
so sure he's dead, so I steals up with my butcher
knife to stick him. I gits clost an' riz up an' stuck
quick, springin' back from the slap thet'd come ef he
was alive. None come. He was as dead as a pine
knot! I had jest p'intedly stuck that knife plum'
th'ough him an' inter the ground!
'I splits him like t'others an' th'ows him up on
th' log. He weighed nigher three hundred. Hit was
FAMOUS HUNTERS 219
now nigh dark, so I tuck my fust b'ar an' hurried on
lickety cut! I left my provisions and gun in a cave
at the Forks. I knowed I looked some frustrated when
I opened the door at home in Tuckaleech, and Uncle
Danny and Sammy settin' thar in th' firelight
talkin'.
'"What on airth's the matter, Will?" says Uncle
Danny.
' " I got a b'ar " I staggered out between
breaths, " an' seed twenty more!"
'Well, that astounded 'em much! That was the
beginnin' of the biggest b'ar hunt I ever saw! Next
day, Pap an' five of us went back up thar at day-
break an' by keerful plannin' an' lots o' shootin' we
got six more b'ar an' four of 'em was killed in ten
minutes by different ones. Pretty good work fer old
flintlocks, hey? Thet's the biggest hunt any green
boy ever had, I'll wager!
'Could I 'a ' killed more b'ar thet day ef I had owned
one o' them "atomatic high-powers" as ye call 'em?
Well, now, as fer shootin', they hain't nothin 1 agin
the old-time flintlock or cap-an'-ball rifle with me.
I'd jest as soon have " Old Death." But as fer quick
loadin', thet's another matter. You all would have
me beat, b'ilin' an' kittle. But lemme tell ye; ef we'd
had yore quick-shootin' guns all this time, they
wouldn't be no game left now to tell the tale! An'
hit's goin* mighty fast!
'Thar was a cow-brute killed by b'ars up at the
Crooked Oak jest t'other day whar I camped, an'
they was some pigs thet got tuk up by a big stock-
killin' b'ar thet's rangin' 'round the Devil's Court-
House up thar. I reckon I'll have ter take the old
gun out an' try him a crack.'
220 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
1 Doesn't constant firing, as in the hunt you spoke
of, alarm bears?' Black Bill was asked.
' No. Hit don't seem to. Leastways, they hear a
power o' noise about in the woods ; trees f allin* ; rocks
rollin'; lightnin' an' thunder; hit appears like hit
don't skeer 'em as much as ye'd think/
When questioned about deer bleating when shot
by hunters, the old Nimrod admitted that, though
he had literally shot hundreds of the timid creatures,
he had known only two to 'beller' when hit. He
stated, however, that they invariably bleated piti-
fully when caught by dogs.
'B'ars bellers,' he stated laconically, 'sometimes
when you shoot another of their kind. They show a
great int'rust in each other. I've seed cubs cry piti-
ful an' beller jest like children over their dead mo-
ther. When I was gittin' thet she-b'ar out o' the
cave for Jeff Wear, every time I'd shoot the mother,
them cubs would cry somethin' heart-rendin' ! I
crawled inter a b'ar's trail onct an* shot an old she.
Her yearlin' thet was with her run back an' jest fer
the space of one breath bowed hits head over her an*
cried the most human I ever heerd an' was gone. I
railly expected tears to come from the b'ar's eyes!
The dead mother was old an' gray.
'Preacher John Stinnett killed the biggest b'ar
thet was ever took hyar in these mountains. Thet
b'ar was a hoss! He was nine foot high, standin'!
'Dye ever see thet white pine he'd bit on Pine Ridge?
Can't quite retch it, can ye? The hide would kiver
any bed an' hang down on the sides. Preacher
Johnny was a comical hunter when he'd git excited.
He allus'd run like a stiff-legged jay-bird an' fire an'
fall back 'th regular military tic-tacs!'
THE AUTHOR'S 450-POUND BEAR
Uncle Levi attempting to 'stand under 1 it
FAMOUS HUNTERS 221
The old hunter arose from his chair and with his
own gun as a weapon he acted out the preacher-
hunter's maneuvers, prancing nimbly back and forth
over the puncheons until he was short of breath. The
'military tic-tacs' were certainly amusing in the ex-
treme as told by the old hunter. ' Git Johnny to
show ye ! ' he advised as he sat down panting and con-
vulsed with amusement. 'He knows I mock him!'
The writer certainly did not get Preacher John to
'show' him, but he did ask him about the big bear.
Ten miles due north from Walker's Valley and the
Spicewoods, by way of Spruce Flats the home of
Bill Stinnett and Buckhorn Gap, is the peaceful
and picturesque Little Greenbriar Cove where
Preacher John Stinnett lives. Amidst the heavily-
laden apple trees of autumn nestled his mountain
cabin. Back of it was the preacher-hunter himself,
rounding out a section of hollow tree for a 'bee
gum.' Tall, wiry, vigorous, with humor flashing
from keen gray eyes, the hunter had the genial
countenance which makes friends at once. Of the
type of colonial preacher who could shoot as well as
pray, he was the exponent of old-time Primitive, or
'Hardshell,' Baptists in Greenbriar. He was very
modest about his feat in killing the big bear.
Said he, in describing the event of his life: 'Hit
wa'n't nothin' to brag on't. Hit jest appears the
Lord sont me to thet deer-stand thet mornin'. A
whole pa' eel on us was camped at Shet-in lookin' fer
deer; Will Walker among us. Black Bill, he riz up
from his bed o' leaves thet mornin' an' he says sez 'e :
"Johnnie, I drempt about you an' a terrible big hoss
a-havin' it last night! He was walkin* on his hind
legs atter ye!"
222 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
'Well, I didn't think any more about his dream.
We was drivin' Shet-in thet mornin' fer deer. Bern'
young an' spry, I was to go to the upper stand at
Laurel Gap. Well, I had jest arriv' when hit appears
to me like I hears somep'n comin' the contrary way
from the Sam's Creek side. I watches clost an* I
sees the big varmint come about twenty feet foment
me out o' the fog. He appears to be tryin' to wind
me an' was skinnin' back his teeth ontell I c*d see his
gums. I jest brings my big gun to my shoulder an'
steps quiet 'round tell I c'd see his stickin' place an'
lets go. The smoke spurted an' he drapped in his
tracks. He was the biggest b'ar I ever seed, I reckon.
'That b'ar had been killin' three-year-old cattle
an' draggin* them in under the cliffs to eat. I think
thet mornin' he'd heerd the tinkle o' sheep bells over
on the Shet-in an' he was goin' over t' try a mess o'
mutton! I got four dollars and fifty cents for the
hide an' the dealer got twenty-five dollars.'
The dimensions of this immense black bear, given
by reliable witnesses who were present at the time,
are as follows: Total length from root of tail to base
of ears, nine feet. Breadth between the ears, eleven
inches. Spread of fore paws, tip to tip, nine feet,
two inches. The weight of the green hide, eighty-
two pounds. The bear was in poor condition and
badly mauled by an antagonist equally large but
younger. His tusks were well worn with age and
broken. He weighed, at a rough estimate, six hun-
dred pounds. If he had been in the excellent condi-
tion usual before hibernation he would have tipped
the scales at nearly half a ton ! A good bear, even for
a grizzly. And he was slain with a home-made flint-
lock fashioned by the hands of Preacher John!
FAMOUS HUNTERS 223
The bore of the rifle which slew the big bear was
an exact duplicate of Walker's "Old Death.' It
pitched a two-ounce ball. After making and testing
out many guns of various bores and sizes, the preacher
capitulated in favor of the excellent shooting qual-
ities of the heavy Walker gun. The latter was
1 fotched ' from North Carolina during colonial days
and no doubt figured prominently in the battle
against Patrick Ferguson at King's Mountain. It
had probably punctured a few red coats while its
younger brother slew the biggest bear in the
Smokies. Black Bill's father slew many deer and
bears with his flintlock, back 'in ole Virginny/
whence he removed to the banks of Little River,
called 'Canot' by the Cherokees, lured by land
grants and tales of extraordinary game, and being
a good old Scotch Covenanter preacher by the
alluring chance of trying its deadly ability on the red
Indian.
Although Black Bill's ancestors were Scotch, the
Stinnetts came from England where they were refu-
gees from the Huguenot persecutions, and were com-
pelled against their will to fight with the soldiers of
George III. Coming to America previous to the
Revolution, with a full stomach of hate, they were
ripe for America's fight in the War of Independence.
They now call themselves 'English* with Ameri-
can persuasion! Many of them were fighters as well
as preachers. 'Preacher John's' father was also a
'Preacher John'!
Preacher John's eldest brother, 'Uncle' Henry,
was present at the demise of the 'biggest bear/
Within hallooing distance of the monster's 'biting
tree' with its tusk abrasions nine feet up, he also
224 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
'had a tussle with a big hoss onct.' Contrary to the
usual North Carolina practice of running down bears
with 'Plott hounds' a cross-breed of Mississippi
bear dog with Smoky Mountain fox hound the Ten-
nessee hunters usually stalk their game, a method
which requires more finesse and skill. Tennessee
hunters will usually fasten their dogs at night to pre-
vent them from chasing deer 'without leave/
Uncle Henry did his stalking early in the morning
or * late of a evenin'/ 1 1 heerd a awful racket/ said
he, 'one evenin' jest at dusk, a blowin' like a forge
bellows. A puffin' and a blowin'. I snuck up within
a few feet of a big feller* (bear) ' 'at was pawin' out a
yeller jacket's nest in th' ground. He'd paw an 9 he'd
blow. When the yeller jackets'd git too thick fer
him and master him, he'd go over to a bank and slide
down headforemost a-wrigglin' from side to side to
rid hisse'f of 'em. Then he'd come back an' go to
work agin great fashion. He'd pawed thar ontell I'd
watched him fer some space. Finally, I 'lows I'd
try him a crack. I cocked my gun, but he heerd it
an' put off toward the roughs.
' My dogs had follered me onbeknownst, an' afore
I knowed hit, they was on his trail an' had him cor-
nered in a sink. Hit had got plum dark an' I
couldn't see him; so while the dogs was badgerin'
him I poked 'round with the muzzle of my gun on-
tell I felt his ribs an' let go!'
That was the last of a bear which tipped the
scales at over four hundred pounds. Uncle Henry
proudly pointed to the spot where the large bear met
his Nemesis. 'Thar hit was,' said he, 'an' hyar's
whar I stood/
The writer was with a party of mountaineer bear
FAMOUS HUNTERS 225
hunters returning from an irksome hunt among the
yellow beeches under Thunderhead when two * year-
lin's' ploughed out of a wet pokeberry patch and into
the river like two railroad trains running amuck.
1 Uncle Bill' Stinnett was much amused at the unex-
pected turn of events. Said he: * It wa' n't more than
fifty yards o' this place last week that I got their
mammy! She was a hoss too!
'I'd hung up a beef bone on a bush an' put some
scent on hit an' I come up over the ridge early one
mornin' in the rain, lookin' fer my two-horse buggy 1
(double-springed bear trap) 'when I heerd her snuf-
fin' th' wind an* blowin'. I seed her fust an* her
skin's hangin' down yander under the shed at my
cabin now/
UncleHenry wasaskedaboutpanthers. * Painters? 1
he queried with interest. * They is a few as uses about
here. They's one, I heerd, uses in Marks' Cove now.
One of the Jake Creek hunters seed his hinderparts
goin' th'ough the laurel t'other day. Dogs won't
hunt none thar . Thet painter's the reason, I reckon.
They'll all turn tail.
1 1 was comin' over ol f Smoky with my woman
and Ben, our oldest boy, a baby then. She was
carryin' him. A painter drapped down right in th'
path in front o' us. I didn't have nairy a gun, so I
jest tuk up a pole an' driv* him off!'
Preacher John showed interest in the query about
'painters.' 'I've cotched many a painter/ said he,
'in a b'ar pen on Blanket Mountain whar that var-
mint is seed now. I've ketched black foxes thar too.
George Rayfield an' me was huntin' at the Blow
Down whar we was camped onct an' was bothered
some thar with a old she-painter an' her cats. We
226 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
had barbecued a wild turkey an' some b'ar meat an"
I reckon the smell o' hit, as well as some thiglum 1
we'd mixed with water and wild honey we'd got out
o' a tree drawed 'em than They shore was hongry.
When our fires'd go down, they'd draw nigh, so we
cut the night inter watches t' keep th' fire up so they
wouldn't attackt us. We could plainly see their red
eyes glarin' an* hear 'em blunder inter the laurel
when we'd throw fire-brands at 'em to skeer 'em.
1 My fust deer? Hit was a spike buck. I was shore
proud o' hit. I killt hit runnin' with a flintlock. I
had ter hold on him fer a spell, fer hit didn't fire
prompt, but I got him/
Preacher John was asked about modern firearms.
* Hit's the city fellers with their high-powers 'at's the
ruination o 5 game. They don't stop when they git
enough an* game laws ain't nothin' to them. We was
a law unto ourselves an' we never shot a doe be-
knownst. As fer turkey, hit was allus the gobblers
thet got took up. We'd never shoot a fawn. As fer
b'ar; they was jest varmints, but if we c'd ketch a
cub without bein' scratched ter death, we'd save hit.
As fer them high-power, quick-loadin' guns, I don't
keer fer 'em. But hit's mighty onhandy 'th a muzzle-
loader when ye've wounded yer game an' he's dan-
gerous. But ye're liable to overkill yerself ef you use
them fast shooters. With muzzle-loaders, we'd never
shoot more'n we c'd tote; that is, after we'd become
hunters an' the newness hed wore off some.'
In regard to timber wolves in the Smokies, Black
Bill said he had killed several. All of his relatives
had heard them howl, but he had never heard one.
Said he:
z Metheglin is meant.
FAMOUS HUNTERS 227
'Nigh-sighted Bill Hitch an' me watched fer a
wolf at a doe's cyarcass where he'd slayed her onct
an' we shot him, but thet wolf run ten miles to the
top o' the Devil's Court-House afore he drapped.
One of the t'others was ha'nted, so they said, an' was
shot with a silver bullet hyar when we was all skeered
to death 'th witches in these parts.
'Ye speak o' high-power rifles. I can't say thet
I'd ruther have your'n than my ol' flintlock. They
go with dynamite an 1 sech. They're plumb dan-
gerous an' ye might kill somebody on t'other side o'
the mountain! Old Death's good at two hundred
yards, an' ye don't want ter git any furder away
from yer game, do ye? As fer fast loadin'; thet's a
different matter. But lemme tell ye. These fellers
'at's dynamitin' the fish an' shootin' each other in
th' bushes is the ones thet's doin' the damage. We
didn't have no game laws in our time an' we didn't
need 'em. We did have some principle, tho', an'
didn't shoot any more'n we c'd eat or give to desirin*
neighbors.'
1 What did you think of the war in Europe and the
big guns that shot projectiles weighing two tons?'
'Two tons! Why thet's more'n a hoss can pull!
Hey, hey! Don't know what they all meant! But I
reckon them as loves to fight, why, hit's better that
they kill each other all out an' git hit over with. Do
ye know I've figgered this war business all out this
way; now I might make ye laugh, and I might start
ye to thinkin' all them kings and high fellers has
got t'gether and says : ' ' Look hyar ! We're all gittin*
too pore 'th so many to keep up. Le's have a war an'
kill out a few!" So they jest stuck a stick inter the
hornet's nest an' let her b'ile! But she b'iled over
228 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
inter our country! Ef them fellers hate each other,
let 'em settle their own differences. We had enough
o' thet when my pap was livin'. We ain't fightin*
nobody's quarrel in furrin countries!'
Preacher John was of the opinion that in the next
war everybody should be compelled to use flintlocks;
'then they wouldn't kill out so many. Thar's my
boy/ his voice broke, * he come back all buggered up,
ain't wuth much now. He got the German's pizen
gas an* hit 'pears like he ain't the same. 'Course I
hain't complainin' none, but war is a awful thing an*
hit oughtent ter be ! If them people over thar want
ter sucker out, let 'em do their own weedin' ef
they've got too many. But they ought ter remember
thet the Book says thet them as takes the sword
must perish by hit.
* Now as fer spillin' the blood o' animiles, I ain't
got no conscience agin hit. That's a difF rent matter.
I don't hunt as much as I use ter, beca'se the Lord
wanted me fer to be a hunter an' fisher o' men. I was
a expert, ye mought say, at both huntin' an' fishin',
but now my ammunition is the powder of the Word
an' the bullet o' faith, an' ef I shoot straight, as I
used ter, I mought bring down game a heap sight
more vallyble, mebbe!'
Good old honest Preacher John! If pot-hunters
were as trustworthy and simple-hearted as he, there
would be no reason for the Weeks-MacLean game pro-
tection law, neither would there be any need for game
wardens and forest rangers threshing the bushes
of the wilderness to drive out willful and unprin-
cipled violators, scattering from cover. Such true
and honest sportsmen, Black Bill, 'Uncle' Henry,
Preacher John, and his brother Bill, Trentham and
FAMOUS HUNTERS 229
Par ton, would have classed these outlaws among
'varmints' to be exterminated without quarter un-
less they could adopt in their moral decalogue the
command: 'Don't kill any more than ye can tote!'
' Uncle ' Levi Trentham's views in regard to ' high-
power* rifles were very similar. He was engaged in
the usual habit of mountaineers after the day's ac-
tivities : that of toasting his feet by a warm wood fire
in his cabin in the Sugarlands. The cool of autumn
made his fire a very hospitable accessory to a gen-
uine welcome. He was not loath to discuss his ex-
ploit of slaying the 'two-year-old' bear with a pine
knot.
' Throw away yer high-powers ! ' he laughed. * What
d' ye want 'em fer? Jest git ye a good, heavy, pine
knot an' git to work! That thar b'ar was a pesterin'
me a good deal a-killin' my shotes up thar in th j edge
of the pasture. I jest 'lowed I'd git rid o' him. I sot
a big b'ar trap up thar whar the stock couldn't git
to hit an' whar nobody'd git cotched an' I waited.
One cold mornin' I went up thar t' look arter my
hogs. A leetle skift o' snow hed fell an' I wa'n't
lookin' fer my ole b'ar so soon. But thar he was; in
the trap, a-snarlin' an' a-snappin f an' layin' back
his tushes at me.
1 1 didn't have no gun, but the thoughts o' them
pigs I was losin' jest went all over me an' I flew inter
a temper. Thar was a heavy pine knot layin' thar
an' afore I thought I had snatched hit up an' was
belaborm' thet b'ar an' he was boxin' 'th me tryin'
to slap thet weepon outer my hand. We fit up an'
down fer a spell. Arter a while I giv' him a crack 't
seemed to daze him an' seein' my chanct I run in an'
let him have a good un on the ear an' down he went.
230 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
I had finished him. The hook o' the trap was cotched
on a leetle root no bigger 'n my leetle finger an* ef
he'd made a lunge, I wouldn't a been hyar to tell this
tale!'
Uncle Levi hunted over the Sugarlands with the
famous Alfred Duncan gun with the gold stripes in
the barrel. It had been altered to a ' cap-and-ball'
years before. 'That gun belongs ter Joe Armstrong
and was made fer Marcellus Armstrong in 1828 and
cost two hundred dollars in gold. Hit's all et up with
that ole McSpadden powder thet was made out o'
saltpeter durin' the Civil War an' I ain't hunted so
much with it of late on account o' hit. But I've
killed many a b'ar an' deer with hit. But as fer me ;
give me a good, heavy pine knot any day ! ' That was
Uncle Levi's favorite joke and he chuckled as he
slyly observed its effect. 'I think you hunters c'n
find thet same pine knot up thar whar I used it ef
ye'U take the trouble to look fer it as ye go out to find
yer b'ar! 1
'Uncle' Ben Parton, a slight, wiry man with a
deep, sonorous fog horn of a voice and a prominent
Adam's-apple was feeding two great bear dogs
Plotts near an ancient corn crib of quaint pat-
tern in his back yard.
'Don't tech them dogs!' he warned. 'Ye don't
never know what a damned Plott is goin' ter do!
They'll wag the'r tails while they're tearin' ye to
pieces! They're downright quare. What's more;
them dogs is got the quarest names I ever heerd o f
dogs havin'! Who in the hell ever heerd o 1 dogs
named John an' Charlie? Them's no names fer dogs !
They ought ter be named Lead, an' Rover an' Ranger.
Them's dogs' names. Them dogs got lost over hyar.
A SPIKE-HORN BUCK KILLED AT THE LOWER END OF
THE SMOKIES WHEN DEER-HUNTING WAS LEGAL
BEN PARTON AND THE TWO PLOTT BEAR DOGS JOHN
AND 'CHARLIE*
The dogs are cross-bred from Mississippi bear dogs and Smoky
Mountain hounds
FAMOUS HUNTERS 231
They belong in No'th C'aliny. Them No'th C'aliny
fellers allus uses dogs. Dogs ain't fit fer nuthin' but
runnin' deer an' killin' sheep. I keep mine penned
up on thet account.
I Still huntin' is the best way an' ef a man can't
still hunt a b'ar, he ain't much hand to hunt.
Traps'll git ye in trouble too. I sot a trap up yander
on that ridge whar ye see that gap Laurel Gap, I
call it. I was goin' up thar 'tendin' traps late last
fall an* I ain't thinkin' I'm anywhar nigh a trap when
" che-whop ! " went a b'ar's teeth jest like a steel trap
within a inch o' my leg! He didn't miss me fur! The
hair jest riz up all over me! That's the only time I
was ever good an* skeered in these mount 'ins an' I've
hunted a heap, fur an' nigh, too! That b'ar weighed
over four hundred 'th his socks on!
I 1 never did tell ye about Vars dennin' up in win-
ter? Levi Trentham an* me was out amblin' about
one heavy snow an' steddyin' tracks an' we seed
whar b'ars was comin' out o' a cave gittin' water. Y*
didn't know b'ar drunk water all winter, did ye? Y'
thought they jest holed up somewhar an' stayed.
Well, that ain't hit. We follered them tracks to a
cave an' arter plannin' a leetle, Levi, he ventures in
an' come out with the biggest yarn ye ever heerd.
"Thar's nineteen b'ar in thar ef they's a one!"
sezzee.
'Well, that cave was too narrer to do any shootin'
in, so Levi, he says sezzee, "I'll jest go in an' club
'em." He cut him a good healthy stick all right, but
it wa'n't long afore he come out faster'n he went in!
They was a awful tussle in thar o' some kind, fer
Levi, he didn't look the same when he come out!
His clothes was tore an* he was scratched up
232 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
siderable. I had to laugh. But Levi, he got mad.
He's got plenty o' temper anyhow an* he says, sezzee,
" Ef you think you are so damned smart, jest you go
in!" With that dare, I went in. An', gentlemen!
B'ar was everywhar! Layin' around asleep. Nothin'
but b'ar! Hit smelled worse'n any skunk den you
was ever in. So I come out too; more than satisfied
with what I seed.
'"Didn't ye bring nairy 'n with ye?" said Levi.
'"No. An' I hain't lookin' fer no b'ar fight
nuther!" I says, sez I.
'With that Levi put in with a bigger club an' a
butcher. " I'm a-goin' ter git me a b'ar er know the
reason why!" he says. I heard a scrimmage an' a
scramble an' I never expects to see Levi agin, alive.
The dust must V flew, fer Levi come out o' thar
directly, draggin' his b'ar, an' ef he was tore up be-
fore, he was wuss ner that now. He jest p'intedly
didn't have anything decent on him. That b'ar was
big all right, an' he'd stuck him an' was all bloody.
Ef them b'ar hadn't been sleepy an' doby they would
V et him alive.
'"Le's git anuther!" says I.
'"Hell! Git ye one yer own self!" sezzee. "I'm
a-goin' home! I know when I've got enough." With
that we shouldered our b'ar an' come away. B'ars
holes up in winter thet away. They'll sometimes
choose a hollur tree as one done when I seed b'ar
tracks in the snow leadin' to a tall sycamore. Up in
th' top o' that sycamore was a hollur Km' an' I seed
thet b'ar's head stickin' out o' thar one early snow
arter a skift had fell. I says ter myself, " I'll git you,
ole 'oman, come warm weather, an' yore cub too!"
'Well, I waited tell time an' slips down thar an'
FAMOUS HUNTERS 233
what d'ye reckon had happened? Thet tree had
blowed down in a heavy storm an* thar was the
mother, under thet heavy limb dead as a doornail,
an 7 thet pore leetle cub whimperin' as ef hits heart
would break! An' mouthin' over hits dead mammy!
I jest picked the pore leetle thing up an' fetched hit
along home 'th me an' the children played with hit.
But hit never seemed right. Hit died afore hit was
growed to any size* B'ars is awful fond o' one an-
other thet away, an' show a great feelin' fer the'r
kind.
* Would I ruther hev a fast-shootin' rifle? Wai, I
dunno. Mebbe I would an' mebbe I wouldn't. Ef I
was like ol' Sut Lovin'good, I'd jest carry a knife.
Old Sut carried two, one to fell th' b'ar with ef the
b'ar cotched the other in the tussle. That's jest too
p'in'blank resky! I'd rather have a good muzzle-
loader 'cause I'm used to thet. Ye can't shoot so
fast, but y' won't overkill yerse'f . The hardest time
I have hyar is ter keep what deer they is left in th'
mount'ins, I keeps my dogs fastened up so they
won't run 'em, but these city fellers comes in hyar an'
they persuades our boys ter show them whar th'
deer is an' then that's the last o' th' deer!
'Why, them dirty rascals come in hyar not long
ago an' killed thirteen head ; all they was in a drove
in the Sugarlands! Them devils had high-power
guns an' high-power whiskey an' they played hell.
Now what d' y' think o' sech a mess?
1 No. I'm sorter like Uncle Levi an' t'other fellers.
Don't kill more'n ye can tote an' don't drink no
more'n y' can walk under nuther with a gun. Thet's
the way ter hev game a-plenty fer all an' safety too P
CHAPTER XIV
ABE GOGGLE'S TARIFF
HOW THE LUMBER TRUST IS WIPING OUT THE
REMAINDER OF WHAT * UNCLE JOE* CANNON
SNEERINOLY TERMED THE 'SCENERY* OF THE
APPALACHIANS AND WHAT IT IS LEAVING BEHIND
WHEN the Great Smoky Mountains are added to
the fine list of our proposed National Parks, there
may be many things to which visitors may object.
One of these is that no one will be permitted to
pluck so much as a galax leaf or a bud from the area.
Rhododendron, laurel, and azalea blossoms will be
expressly protected. A lady tourist visiting one of
our Western National Parks desired very much to
secure some exceptionally fine blossoms that were
within reach. She had read the sign FOLIAGE AND
SHRUBS NOT TO BE MUTILATED, but the more she
looked at the beautiful buds, the more she desired
them.
She mentioned the matter to her husband. In-
stantly he demanded who would be so foolish as to
think that a citizen of this grand and glorious Re-
public could not so much as pick a bouquet. He was
warned by a quiet and courteous khaki-clad gentle-
man standing near that it was against the rules. But
he persisted, and thirty-five bluets cost him a dollar
apiece! The Commissioner in charge, who imposed
the penalty, stated that the fine was unusually light
and said to him, 'Suppose we let everybody in the
United States pick a handful of bluets, how many
by Thompson Company
TALL MOUNTAIN FERNS
ABE GOGGLE'S TARIFF 235
do you reckon would be left in the whole park system
of our country?' This was a pertinent question and
the citizen saw the force of the argument PLUS
the dollar per blossom.
But that is the least possible of dangers that are
imperiling our forests daily. This same man would
have stood aghast at the idea of touching a flaming
match to the dry landscape and jeopardizing mil-
lions of feet of standing timber, besides many hand-
some cottages and hotels. Yet the principle is pre-
cisely the same. Aside from that, a patch of bluets
is far more enhancing filling a shady dell than wilting
in some visitor's sweaty fist. Suppose, for instance,
that a tourist should take a fancy to a likely tree?
Or two trees? Or that he organized a corporation
and they took a fancy to several acres of trees, and
this corporation, combined with other firms, took a
fancy to a whole mountain range and began to bore,
burrow, cut, batter, and blast with sawmills, pulp-
mills, axes, crosscuts, fire, drouth, flood, heat, and
reckless destruction, and suppose there was no sign
of a quiet, khaki-clad gentleman with a badge of the
United States under his coat to say nay, and to jerk
the whole corporative gang up before a judge of the
Federal Court who could banish the batch to the
penitentiary in Atlanta and fine them a dollar for
every splinter dislodged from a tree or bush, and
every pebble displaced with dynamite and powder.
That is the Great Smoky Mountain National Park
idea in a nutshell.
Aloft on the very tips of the Great Smokies, sixty-
eight hundred feet above the sea level, with clouds
filming only a few feet overhead or spilling like
foamy cataracts over the low, parapetted gaps, one
236 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
may cast a glance in any direction and with his field
glasses see the tragedy of the Woods great tracts
of land bared of their mighty trees.
A towering hemlock, spreading its feathery tresses
to every breeze; a giant oak, hundreds of years old,
clasping deep the age-old rocks ; a rare tulip with its
perennial effervescence of spring; the locust with its
dropping blossoms of honey; the autumn beech with
its yellow sheen; the fiery crimson sourwood, gum,
and sassafras; the birch springing like a crystal
fountain from the woodland sod; the rare cotton-
wood with its jeweled center all, all are now often
regarded as so many board feet and macerated saw-
dust for the bizarre, jarring, greasy pulpmill.
It does not matter whether Daniel Boon actually
hunted over this trail, or that. Or whether Davy
Crockett killed a bear here, or there. Or whether old
Younaguska drowned his bear in Eagle Creek or
Professor Guyot discovered or measured this peak
or the other. It does not matter if the ancient Tim-
berlake visited this Indian village, or that, or even
that an eminent French scientist by the name of
Michaux or Audubon or even Bartram, ever set
foot among the trees of the Great Smokies which
have stood since the creation of man.
North Carolina has heretofore had the enviable
protection of sane timber-cutting in her flanking
Smoky Mountain forest reserve areas, such as Pis-
gah and Nantahala, but the Tennessee side of the
Smokies has suffered irrevocably from the lack of it.
According to the ideas of the author, even 'sane'
timber-cutting should never have touched a part of
the Great Smoky Mountain natural museum. It
should always have been preserved as it originally
ABE GOGGLE'S TARIFF 237
stood, absolutely untouched by modern civilization.
But the uninjured territory will undoubtedly form a
splendid nucleus for reclamation and for the pre-
servation of water power against erosion in its worst
form in fire-scalds and areas stripped even to the
stump by pulpmills, such as are seen on the Middle
Prong of Little Pigeon and in the Laurel Creek sec-
tion of the West Prong of Little River above Cade's
Cove. Here not even the whitened bones of the age-
old forest are left to show what once existed. The
gaunt contours remind one of the Bad Lands of the
Rockies.
Having 'Uncle Joe* Cannon's now famous re-
mark in mind, I asked Abe Goggle if he thought the
new tariff would have any accelerating effect or
words meaning that upon the cutting of timber.
Abe was standing at the head of the oiled 'slide*
in the deep timber of the Smokies with his loot rest-
ing upon a broken 'peavey.' After a few thoughtful,
preparatory puffs on his clay pipe, Abe said: 'I
don't know as it would, fer they're cuttin' the timber
fast enough now! Them new-fangled machines fer
cuttin' timber ain't what they're cracked up ter be
nohow; they'll give out an* break sooner n'r later.
The old-fashioned axe and crosscut is too durned
fast annyhow as it is. The timber is goin' like the
wind hed tuk hit! They're skinnin' the hills. Look
at 'em!'
Abe waved his hand expressively toward the
bleaching bones of the forest strewing the mountain-
sides in every direction. 'Now you wouldn't know
them hills,' he complained. ' I tried to foller the B'ar
Waller Branch trail up to whar I killt a big black
critter' (bear) 'only last fall come September, that
238 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
weighed nigh onto over four hundred, and, dern my
hide, ef I c'd make heads n'r tails out o' thet trail,
hit was so kittered up with bresh! An* thet bresh is
p'inted hell when she takes fire, fer hit jest sweeps
everything!'
A softened, almost tearful, look came into the lank
mountaineer's eyes.
'They usened to be nobody hyar but me an* my
woman. We settled hyar. We come from Nawth
Ca'liny an' all this was ourn th'ough hyar. We hed
children an' was happy, as happy as mo'tals gits
on this yuth, I reckon. I sot my traps an' ketched
most any kind o' game an* shot a heap too. We
lived as well as common; they wa'n't nobody 'thin
twenty 'r thirty mild o' hyar. I paid a dollar a acre
for this hyar land' the mountaineer waved his
hand to the skeletons of the forest whitening the
hills* 'Now!' he concluded, 'jest look at hit! Hit's
jest a all-fired mess an' these public works is doin'
hit!'
Once, too, I had met Bruin and slain him up there
in a deep, cool ravine clad in the varied colors of
autumn, but now, although the landscape was
decked in full verdure, it had passed its autumn for-
ever and was, with its decaying branches and under-
brush strewing the ground, a most abject sight.
Lizards hurried with scurrying feet over the bone-
like, dismembered cadavers of trees, and green
scum covered the once pure waters of Bear Wallow
Branch; tadpoles wriggled to the surface of the scum
and then down again at my approach.
Where was the once quiet seclusion and cool re-
treat? The oasis had become a desert; worse than a
desert, it was filth. The home of the bear, the deer,
WORKING ON THE 'PUBLIC WORKS*
ABE GOGGLE'S TARIFF 239
the catamount, and the turkey had vanished. The
blight of the tin can and the tariff had arrived.
I went in quest of my friend, the giant tulip, that
once stood twelve feet thick in a bed of ferns; a big-
hearted friend he was. Now, only charred and
broken stumps piled high with rubbish greeted me
everywhere; the gaunt, decayed frames of trees
pierced the sky and the points of dead hemlocks were
lifted in mute surrender like the spears of a con-
quered race. My every step startled blue scorpions
into activity among the parched and rotting under-
brush. A yellow diamond rattler, aroused from his
sun-bath, sang a brief warning and crawled lazily off ;
even he had lost his spirit.
Searching very diligently among the ruins for the
remains of my friend, I approached a clump that
looked strangely familiar in the drift of brush and
scattered pieces of bark. A twenty-foot section of
splintered wood, apparently once a tree of immense
proportions, lay fallen to the eastward. I mounted
the prostrate sides and came upon the bier of
my friend. The great torso of the giant was sun-
dered in three mighty sections; his heart had liter-
ally burst with his death. The remaining stump was
vast enough to mount a quartette of Abe's horses
for Abe was in the logging business now, driven to it,
like other children of the wilderness, by the force of
circumstances.
I saw the scene of my tulip's tragic death; the
shiver of the axes and saws; the mighty tremor of
the final surrender and the earth-jarring crash with
the clutching of mighty arms at other trees in the
final agony. Tears did I say tears? flooded me
and for remembrance, I stooped and pressed ap-
240 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
preciative lips to the mute side of the fallen martyr,
my friend.
But, here again the jar of the present banished
the past. Abe was busy hitching the block and tac-
kle to another giant poplar, almost a twin to my de-
posed friend. Moreover, Abe was swearing pro-
foundly at the lead horses, one a blind, wind-broken
beast; the other, a thin, yellow 'clay-bank* with a
narrow strip of soft leather over his nose in lieu of a
bridle, because, as Abe explained, his mouth was ' as
tender as a baby's' ! Abe readjusted the tackle, and
waved his hand to the driver, a boy of overgrown
years, who flourished his whip. The blind horse gave
a snort, squatted, and from his throat there issued
the most uncanny rumblings that ever came from
equine inwards.
* Who-ay ! ' shouted Abe. The horses stopped.
1 1 jest wanted ter tighten out thet chain an* see ef
I had thet grab right in thet stump. That damned
hoss can pull ef he does sound like he's a losin' his
dinner!' asserted Abe, pushing the driver boy aside,
'Gimme them lines! Ef I cyan't git thet log out o'
hyar I'll jest p'intedly pull the gears offen them
hosses! They can p'in'blank beat airy team o' oxen
in these yar mountains ef they're driv' right. That
off-hoss has jest nachally pulled so damned hard he's
pulled his eyes out! Giddap!'
There was a groan, a snap of the block; the clay-
bank and the black both lay to the load, squatted
trembling; simultaneously there issued the same un-
canny rumblings from the inwards of the black and
the load rolled over into the slide.
'Who-ay!' shouted Abe. 'I knowed I had thet
grab right in thet stump,' he affirmed. ' Fayette said
I didn't/
ABE GOGGLE'S TARIFF 241
The overgrown boy grinned sheepishly.
* Don't never try to Tarn yore Uncle Fuller nothin'
'bout grabs, son!'
The big iron-gray teams of the logging company,
a splendid contrast to Abe's lank mountain animals,
backed up to the train of logs left by the moun-
taineer at the head of the slide, hitched, and started
briskly with them down the gangway, its greasy
planes smoking with the friction of swift descent.
The giant that had so lately upreared his lofty head
among the stars was on his way down an ignomin-
ious chute smeared with crude oil.
A few moments later Abe's monster poplar and
two smaller hemlocks left the slide, and rumbled like
distant thunder on the corduroy road which spanned
the muddy remnant of the little mountain stream,
now teeming with tadpoles. The corduroy was the
chain which linked the oasis with the desert. The
oasis was the yet untouched timber above; the des-
ert the unmarked graveyard of putrefying masses
of rubbish and bark litter which, not only unsightly
in themselves, polluted the streams, killed fish with
bark acid, and furnished inviting kindling for dis-
astrous 'fire-scalds,' the worst and most effectual
effacement of the forest. Behind Abe's giant tree
came another train of 'logs' which were of pitiful
proportions less than six inches in diameter.
Beneath these trees sliding on the hollow drum of
the corduroy was a vile, ill-smelling slush and mire
which slimed their demise until they reached the
treacherous descent of the pole-road, where another
team took them to the log yard below. Every pole-
road, slide, corduroy, 'snake trail,' flume, or tram-
way became an open artery through which ebbed
242 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
the life-blood of the forest. Goggle's trail above the
slide on the bare earth was a 'snake trail' and
'snaking' logs was more or less the recognized duty
of the mountaineer with the aid of his oxen and his
lank mountain horses. At the head of the first log
in the chains sent down by Abe was a 'grab' of
malleable steel, *L '-shaped with an extra thumb or
hook, behind which each successive driver on the
descent linked his teams. The driver at the pole-
road would start the logs down the steep groove
worn slippery by constant friction, and then with
well-directed spurts, withdrawing adroitly into pre-
pared pockets along the trail, he would dislodge
them from each binding curve while the speeding
logs would shoot like frightened deer down the poles
to the next turn, where the maneuver would be re-
peated until the log yard by the railway was reached.
A lank individual with squinting eyes, 'Josh' Rea-
gan, was watching at the last turn high above the
yard to warn those below of the dangerous descent
of log trains. As Goggle's logs shot by with tons of
gathering momentum, Reagan shouted: 'See them
logs high-ballin'? That hain't nowhars to what they
do in winter when the ground's slick! Ruined two
fine bosses a snow come last Jinnawary! Ice on th'
ground makes 'em slide like all JeehossyphatP
Just then there was a sudden, ominous rumble
behind us. My lank friend had just time enough to
seize my arm and thrust me to the inner side of the
trail out of harm's way. He had scarcely done so
when he sprang quickly to the trail and shouted a
warning to the workmen below. Down came the
linked logs into the trail, bumping and jostling one
another in frightful velocity. A huge, heavy one
ca
o
D
i
CD
O
o
2
ABE GOGGLE'S TARIFF 243
the leader leaped high into the air, rode the poles
sustaining the trail, tore them from their moorings
and, with a resounding crash of dusty timbers and
crackling underbrush, vaulted high into the air and
came down into the ravine below at the edge of the
log landing, carrying its companions with it. The
log seemed a rebellious leader revolting at the pro-
spective fate of the mangles.
My lank friend's eyes gleamed with satisfaction
at the exhibition. His only comment was: 'Hit's
mighty dangerous hyar!'
But in a few moments the 'skidder' had seized
the recalcitrant in its fateful tentacle and he was
jerked willy-nilly across the chasm filled with the
corpses of his noble race. This little steam octopus
on wheels with its long tentacle also had the duty of
yanking other unwilling victims across the churn-
ing waters of the larger mountain stream.
Then a diminutive, ant-like contraption, with a
tenacious little derrick, picked up the fallen giant
where he had been so basely wallowed at the side of
the railroad by the great skidder, and, with little
velvety puffs of steam, dropped him gently beside
other victims on a battered flat car. This little
steam ant loaded enough logs to keep the big saws
at the mills supplied at the rate of eight hundred
logs, or from sixty to four hundred thousand feet of
sawed lumber daily! And this was considered only a
fair meal for the maw of one machine! Millions of
trees, swept from the mountains, where they had
stood since the creation of man himself, whisked
away into a cyclone of dry sawdust in a twink-
ling!
Descending to the railroad which furnished the
244 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
outlet for all of this activity, I recognized a certain
slab of 'curly,' or bird's eye, ash reposing in more
select company the upper social set than the
millions of common logs that were bleaching in the
sun. Beside it lay also slabs of curly cherry, black
walnut, bird's-eye maple, gum, curly birch, curly
poplar, holly, and white walnut. All of these finer
woods had been cut into ten-foot slabs and dragged
by oxen over trails back from the most primitive
growth. These finer woods were brought out by a
specialist in wood who bought only 'curly' or ' bird's
eye' stock. He was called 'the curly man' by the
mountaineers, and he bought trees on the stump
offering prices fabulous to the backwoodsman, but
many times only a fraction of their real value.
As a background to this more select social group of
timber, as far as the eye could reach, were rows of
log yards where the common fry were piled like
immense toothpicks. When the smallest sprout left
will have grown into a tree equal in size to many of
the deposed giants, the present generation will have
been under six feet of earth for nine hundred years !
This magnificent forest, before the advent of the
Great Smoky Mountain National Park idea, was be-
ing devoured without one particle of regard for the
pleasure or needs of future generations.
Valuable watersheds that protect lower streams
from excessive floods and successive drouths had be-
come the victims of a dollar-mad pursuit, and if the
hand of our Government does not stay such sense-
less operations at opportune times there will be no
water power anywhere worth even an idle considera-
tion. With the ground exposed to the elements,
erosion in its worst form will begin to work havoc in
ABE GOGGLE'S TARIFF 245
loosening exposed humus which should retard
moisture for an economical dispensing. In a great
many instances, the stumps of trees were sold and
dug, or blasted, leaving nothing behind except a
yawning hole for weather wear. Where such inane
timber-cutting has occurred, mountain-sides, once
beautiful for bountiful verdure, have already fallen
into an unbelievable desolation. American scenery
of the rarest sort contrary to Mr. Cannon's de-
rision literally is sold at so much per square and
lineal foot!
With but twenty-seven per cent of the total area
of the United States, our Southern States hold
forty-two per cent of the total forest area. This
forestation is now being used by our forest reserve
gradually, however, so that the most can be made of
the annual cut in order to save timber for the future ;
but up to only a few years ago, the half of it was most
emphatically not so cut! The National Forest Con-
servation idea is proving the salvation of the woods.
The hookworm of indifference to forest conservation
heretofore has not applied to the South alone, but to
the whole Nation. The National Parks Commission
has undoubtedly aroused the national conscience to
the threatened loss of all forests, due to reckless and
ungoverned methods of waste.
Where Preacher John Stinnett encountered his
big bear in the solitude of the forest were hundreds
of acres of curly birch, poplar, cherry, ash, and maple,
purchased by lumber interests for five dollars to
seven dollars an acre, besides many ordinary trees at
as little as seventy-five cents an acre, although each
tree in itself was worth from eighty to two hundred
times that amount. Indeed, one ' curly ' ash of excep-
246 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
tionally fine grain was sold as it stood for twelve hun-
dred and eighty dollars to ' the curly man ' ! In many
instances timbered land brought as little as seventy-
five cents an acre only a few years ago. And it is for
much of this same acreage that the people of North
Carolina and Tennessee are now compelled to pay
twenty times that amount for sufficient estate to
establish their national park control area as a gift
to their well-disposed government.
According to the present methods of cutting
timber in uncontrolled areas contiguous to, and
within, the Smoky Mountain region, it will require
from three to four hundred years for trees to attain
any appreciable mature growth. This interval will
be much longer, in many instances where disastrous
fire-scalds have already occurred that have killed
prospective tree growth in root, sprout, and seed.
As the author writes this, about sixty thousand
acres of timber land in the Unakas, to the eastward
of the Smokies near Grandfather Mountain, worth
in the neighborhood of two millions of dollars, be-
sides much private property, are being destroyed by
fire and unless there is rain the losses may exceed a
more extravagant estimate.
Only a short time ago, just under the peerless Le
Conte, on Brushy Mountain near Grassy Gap, tim-
ber fires blazed for many days fanned by the high
winds that usually career over the tops of the Great
Smokies. The light from these fires, burning like a
furnace deep into the peaty turf, and fanned by high
winds, cast a volcanic glow over the whole rugged
landscape and could be seen for miles disturbing
the sleep of many anxious mountaineers. This dis-
astrous fire flared from the usual brush litter. As a
'FIRE ON BRESHY!'
A 'FIRE SCALD/ THE GRAVEYARD OF THE TREES
ABE GOGGLE'S TARIFF 247
result, Brushy Mountain is * brushy' no longer, but
is a razor-backed scar of rock ribs and arid grass
where erosion is already ploughing gullies into what
was once a tract of magnificent pines. '
CHAPTER XV
A RAID IN THE SMOKIES
TREASXJRY DEPARTMENT
INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE
OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY COLLECTOR
DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE
KNOXVILLE, TENN.
Editor
DEAR SIR:
I have just been shown your letter of the i6th
instant addressed to Mr. Robert Lindsay Mason,
of this city, relative to his story, and will state that
it is based on actual facts. Mr. Mason accompanied
Deputy United States Marshal John H. Blanken-
ship, Deputy Collector R. P. Eaton, and myself on
the raid described in this story and all of the essen-
tial features are made up from actual happenings of
this raid. Mr. Mason has accompanied the officers
on a number of other raids upon the 'moonshiners'
of this section and is well fitted to deal with the real
side of this work as he has done in the story men-
tioned.
Respectfully
GEORGE E. FELKNOR
Deputy Collector, 5th Div. Tenn.
1 HAVE you paid your life insurance and made nec-
essary arrangements for your burial in case of such
a contingency?' The kindly gray eyes of United
States Marshal Dunlap grew suddenly grave. ' Do
you fully realize the seriousness of the trip which
you are about to make?' he asked.
I managed to croak out something as a depressed
A RAID IN THE SMOKIES 249
feeling magnified itself in the pit of my stomach and
my legs seemed to lose their usual elasticity. No-
ticing the paleness that must have passed over my
features, he added sympathetically:
' It is true that you men are going into one of the
worst sections of the Smokies for ambuscades, and
forewarned is forearmed. I didn't want you to go
into it without full appreciation of its possibilities.
Several men have been wounded and killed over in
there. I do not want to frighten you, but I warn all
of you to be very careful.' Turning to Blankenship,
our chief raiding deputy, Mr. Dunlap concluded, as
he placed a hand upon my shoulder, ' Run no risks,
John, for I don't want any of these men hurt!'
Blankenship merely laughed as he went on fussing
with his equipment of guns and lunch. ' No danger! *
he cheerfully retorted.
Over in a dark corner of the marshal's office sat
a stoop-shouldered man with ferret-like eyes and a
hook nose which somehow reminded one of an owl's
or a hawk's beak. This man was to pilot us forty
miles that night to two 'moonshiner stills' in the
'old tenth 1 district, one of the most notorious lo-
calities for illicit distilling in the foothills of the
Great Smokies. He sat in the daylight blinking at us
intently.
Raiding was not a new experience to me. Several
times before, I had gone with Uncle Sam's men on
perilous expeditions to raid moonshine stills in the
Tennessee side of the Smokies, though with no un-
pleasant results aside from heel blisters, fagged
muscles, and loss of sleep. One time, three of us
traveled thirty miles to see at three in the morn-
ing, by chill October moonlight, the unsymmetrical
250 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
sides of a stone heap on the craggy slopes of the
Cherokee's Enemy Mountains: our informer had
mistaken a rock pile for a moonshiner's furnace!
Deputies Hill and Brewer had on this occasion com-
bined their deep and profound swearing abilities in
a growling duet which would have done credit to any
two sailors before or aft the mast.
On another occasion the raid was more successful.
Profiting by our recent experience, we took our in-
former with us. But he proceeded to lose us in the
devious and stony crags of the big hills, dotted with
abandoned cabins and flourishing 'wild-cat* dis-
tilleries. After two hours of recasting, wading in
utter darkness across streams and through ooze-
filled ravines, we finally reached our destination an
hour before daylight, greatly fatigued, having in
all covered about forty miles by foot and horse.
As we stood shivering in the cold March starlight
behind a dilapidated mountain cabin, our 'Judas,'
as he is called by mountain men, grew suddenly
querulous with fear.
'Swear to God!' he shiveringly complained, 'this
hain't the place !'
But Deputy Lon Hill poked him commiseratingly
in the ribs with the muzzle of his Krag. * Cheer up,
old boy I' he said. 'We won't let 'em get you!'
We carefully inspected the empty cabin before we
entered, and, building a fire out of an abandoned
bedstead and straw from its ragged mattress, we
dried out our steaming clothing and boots, ate pie,
joked softly, and awaited daylight.
Frost lay over the flakestands, furnace, and mash-
sticks as we found our still by starlight just before
dawn. Surrounding it completely, with instructions
REVENUERS WATCHING A MOONSHINERS TRAIL IN THE
1 ENEMY MOUNTAINS 7 OF THE CHEROKEES
Just after an all-night vigil
'MASH-RAKES/ RETORT, WORM, ETC., EXHIBITED BY
'CEPH' REMINE
The hat with bullet-hole belonged to Bill Heddan, a famous
moonshiner who was killed by an officer
A RAID IN THE SMOKIES 251
from the chief raiding deputy to fire only when
necessary, we captured two young and ambitious
moonshiners, one of whom, when commanded to
throw up his hands, made a threatening gesture and
almost got a bullet from Deputy Wynn's gun for his
trouble* When we returned to our rendezvous, our
informant had taken refuge in the cabin loft and
would not come down until we had sent the pris-
oners on ahead. He was trembling from head to foot.
The present prospective raid in dangerous 'old
tenth/ where several revenue men and moonshiners
together had got their fatal dose of lead, promised
to be a tonic for jaded nerves. We were all well
armed. There were three rifles of -3O-.3O caliber in
the party one of which, an automatic, was carried by
the author; the others were Krag carbines. Deputy
Marshal Blankenship, General Collector Roland P.
Eaton, Deputy Collectors George Felknor, Ben
Bolton, the informant or 'Judas' and the
writer constituted the party.
It was two hours before daylight when we tied
our horses under the concealing brush against the
rugged sides of Bluff Mountain; we had ridden
thirty miles since starting an hour before midnight.
A light frost was crisp under foot. We skulked
through ravines and skirted silent cabins to avoid
barking dogs, halting cautiously at every unusual
noise. Our informant, who was familiar with every
stock path and trail, led the way, frowning at every
snap of a twig and holding whispered conferences at
every decided turn of the path.
As day broke, we stood in a high mountain trace
watching the fog-sea spilling over the indented
ridges. Up from the depths below us came the bark-
252 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
ing of a hound, and then the rattle of a dinner pail
carried by some one climbing the trail. Hastily con-
cealing ourselves in the brush, we watched our un-
suspecting moonshiner, axe over shoulder, go swing-
ing by in the direction of his stilL We waited until
the cheerful staccato of his axe rang out in the
ravine, then Deputy Blankenship divided his party,
sending Eaton, Felknor, and the writer down a steep
hill filled with growing corn to cut off the retreat be-
low, while he and Bolton went to the head of * Zoller
Holler* to 'flush' the victim. With some difficulty
and fear of discovery the three of us labored down
the steep and sliding slopes of the scant corn, far too
scant to conceal anything but a rabbit.
Til give you plenty of time to get to the trail at
the bottom ' was our leader's parting injunction. But
he didn't, or the General Collector couldn't see his
way dear to plunge immediately through a dense
patch of briars; for while we hesitated, we heard
two shots in rapid succession our signal and
Blankenship shouting: 'There he comes! Head
him!'
A confused vision resembling an animated flying
scarecrow our moonshiner, head back and hair
streaming swept by us through the corn patch on
the opposite side of the briar-filled ditch, with feet
striking the hard earth like flails. We opened our bat-
teries, but our intended victim vanished unscathed
in the waving blades of corn. Blankenship came up
excited and justly indignant.
'Boys, why in hell did you let him get away?' he
fumed. 'What are you doin' on this side of the
ditch?'
It had all happened so quickly that we had no
A RAID IN THE SMOKIES 253
plausible excuse to offer for not getting squarely in
the trail; the writer had thought of this expedient
before the incident, but then he was not general
revenue collector. We repaired to the still so pre-
cipitately vacated by its owner. Its furnace was
tossing out ruddy gleams against the delicate
tracery of the surrounding bushes and trees; it all
seemed as unreal as a scene arranged upon a stage
and even the still itself might have been made of
papier-mache. But it very soon became a stage full
of strenuous action.
Quickly placing Eaton and Felknor as guards on
the chance of trapping another unwary operator at
the still, Blankenship, Bolton, and the writer met
the guide by appointment in the ravine above and
started on another hunt for 'wild-cat' paraphernalia
to be found two miles away by a short cut over the
ridges. We made haste to arrive before the news of
the first raid had been spread abroad by our escaping
moonshiner. Walking for half an hour we stood a
short distance above the eventful spot where our
guide pointed out the precise place from a mountain
gap. 'Right at the foot of that dead chestnut/ said
he, indicating the place with his forefinger.
Down we swept anxiously hurrying until we came
to a ravine filled with a heavy growth of trees ; on
one side was a mountain trail through some low bush.
Blankenship stationed me under the cover of the
bushes on the hillside and in immediate proximity to
the trail. 'Now/ said he, 'we are going to run him
right out at you and you must stop him if you have
to shoot. I ain't goin' to have no more moonshiners
gettin' away this time. But be careful and don't
shoot us!' he warned.
254 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
'The same to you!' I rejoined as I crawled up
under the laurel.
The suspense of waiting for that unsuspecting
moonshiner was almost unbearable. All revenue
men, whether experienced or not, hate this unbear-
able waiting. They all agree that it plays more
havoc with nerves than any real danger of the serv-
ice. Soldiers before a battle fear it; trenchmen in
our recent World War shunned it, and many even
committed suicide rather than endure this zero hour
before the conflict. At least for me it had its possi-
bility and even probability of personal encounter.
I stood first upon one foot, then upon the other.
For the thousandth time I examined the sights of
my Krag and cocked my revolver. At inadvertent
noises I started. A cricket tried to reassure me with
his ill-timed chirping, but I refused to be reassured
and wished myself well out of the mess.
But, suddenly, like a thunderbolt leaping out of
the sky there trembled upon the air a deep explosion
which echoed and reechoed among the gorges of the
mountains; the moonshiner's warning. Dynamite!
I heard our chief swear audibly across the ravine and
presently there came the sound of frantic footsteps
scrambling down the rocky trail in Blankenship's
direction and then the hurried pouring of the sour
beer from the retort. Our suspect, unaware of the
presence of the 'revenuers/ was endeavoring to
'pull' his outfit and get away before their arrival.
In this he had miscalculated. He was swearing to
himself in the agitation of the moment.
Suddenly I heard Blankenship tersely cry : * Hands
up!' There were three quick sharp reports, and
then, 'Look out! Stop him!' It was my signal.
A RAID IN THE SMOKIES 255
Springing into the trail I was almost immediately
run into by a wild-eyed young mountaineer scram-
bling out of the bushes on his hands and knees. He
had fallen and the raiders had mistakenly thought
him hit. His countenance was panic-stricken. He
stopped abruptly at the muzzle of my revolver and
threw up his hands. Over his shoulder I could see
Bolton grinning mischievously at the scene we made.
Our chief rushed out and quickly searched our man
for weapons. Finding none, the victim was ordered
to lower his arms. He was deeply panting from ex-
citement, incoherent and acquiescent to our every
suggestion.
The splendid fifty-gallon distilling outfit of this
young 'blockader/ as he called himself, costing days
of painstaking labor and representing an outlay of
over a hundred dollars in cash, was soon rolling up-
ward in smoke. The writer also took a hand at still-
smashing while the young mountaineer sat de-
jectedly upon a rock. The sour mash and beer were
poured upon the ground, about eight hundred
gallons of it, running like so much buttermilk into
the mountain stream among the rocks.
Our captive, Jack Pruett, a young mountaineer
of twenty years, begged the privilege of passing by
his home to divest himself of his ' over-halls' so that
he might go to jail in respectability. At first our
chief demurred, saying that the request often proved
an excuse for strategic delay so that a captive might
escape, but was assured by Pruett that he 'done
give himself up and wa'n't goin' to cause no trouble/
The note of sincerity in the boy's assertion caused
the officer to relent, but he warned Pruett of the con-
sequences.
256 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
' I'm not goin' to put up with any foolishness with
you fellers!' Blankenship warned. 'You have shot
at our men enough 'round here!'
But the young captive gave repeated assurance
that he also wanted to see his mother, who was alone.
'Ain't no gal mixed up in this, is there?' the chief
queried.
'Wai,' said Pruett, ' I ain't turnin' nobody up, but
her gang's done me dirt, I reckon, and I'm goin' to
tell ye somethin' afore I leave hyar!'
Blankenship smiled. His ruse was working. Raid-
ers invariably play upon prejudices and jealousies
to ferret out other information. He let it bide, and
by the time our trio reached Pruett's cabin, the
chief had the desired facts. As a result, on the way,
we stopped at the cabin of a cousin of Pruett's and
arrested Elder and Luther Bales upon the victim's
information, who supposed these kinsmen had
' turned him up.'
It was while at the mountain home of Pruett that
the writer saw first any evidence of affection shown
between mountaineers. The young man, in bidding
an affectionate good-bye, put his arm about the
shoulders of his mother whose face was grim but
whose eyes remained dry of a single tear. Such is the
hardihood of the primitive Anglo-Saxon, who has
the stoicism of the Indian. Pruett later became the
ward of the Judge of the United States District
Court in which he was tried, drove a United States
mail truck, and later became a ' holy roller ' preacher*
It was the only instance under the writer's observa-
tion where a moonshiner was ordained into the ranks
of parsons under a revolver muzzle. He is now one
of the writer's best friends.
THE * SQUIRREL-HUNTERS ' PUT TO WORK BY
BLANKENSHIP
A STILL WITH A 'THUMP-KEG/ A MODERN CONTRAPTION
THAT DOUBLE-DISTILLS AT ONE OPERATION
Fred McGill and John Llewellyn, famous moonshiners, posing
for their pictures
A RAID IN THE SMOKIES 257
'If I had knowed, Bob, thet yore gun wouldn't
shoot I'd 'a' run over ye thet time in the woods!' he
laughingly told the author some few months ago. I,
however, did not know at the time that the gun was
defective either. Glad I didn't!
Returning to our first still, we found Felknor and
Eaton highly nervous and in possession of one pris-
oner, John Llewellyn, a middle-aged mountaineer,
with many other mountain men swarming in as a re-
sult of the dynamite signal; all of them carried guns
of various sorts, ostensibly ' squirrel huntinV Blank-
enship realized the danger of the situation at a
glance. Finding Collector Eaton's prisoner arrested
only on conjectural evidence and as hostage princi-
pally, he released the man. This action was not with-
out its palliating effect upon the 'squirrel hunters'
whom we all watched for any slight hostile move-
ment.
As another diversion the chief deputy proposed
that a photograph of the still be made while under
full operation. He put all the squirrel hunters to
work; at the same time warning us to keep our fire-
arms within instant reach. These photographs were
certainly made under unique circumstances, to say
the least. Some of the mountaineers cut wood,
others stirred mash, while one well-known and des-
perate character who had done several jail sen-
tences, Fred McGill, plastered the 'thumper' and
the retort ready for business. They were no doubt
watching for chances to release the three prisoners as
well as we were to prevent them. We remembered
our chief's admonition to keep rifles well within
reach and did so. The picture-making over, we de-
stroyed every vestige of the still, a hundred-gallon,
258 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
efficient affair with double distillation via the 'thum-
per/ burning everything that could be transformed
into smoke and chopping up a ninety-gallon retort.
The two boldest of the squirrel hunters, Llewellyn
and McGill, dissented with expressive oaths of re-
gret, but we kept steadily to our work, with a keen
eye out for any furtive movements on the part of the
potential moonshiners hovering threateningly about*
Before our departure, Blankenship and Eaton
pumped Pruett dry of all desirable information they
could solicit, including the identity of the escaped
man for fear that he might later become intimidated
by his clansmen. Then we started at a lively gait out
of that vicinity taking the shortest trail to our
horses, not unaccompanied by the mountain clans-
men of our prisoners, however, who clung to our
footsteps. One of them sounded out the writer with
the question: 'You hain't a reg'lar raider. Would
you shoot ef they's anything doin'?'
I professed ignorance as to his meaning, thereby
perhaps saving friction which might have led to a
serious assault upon the officers in which I should
no doubt have found myself heavily involved. The
moonshiner was drunk enough to have caused
trouble; therefore an evasion was the better reply.
Reaching our horses, we started on a brisk jog out of
that stewing locality where all the Nimrods of the
mountains seemed to be congregating from every
point. At every cross-road and trail they swarmed
like angry hornets, and it needed only a sting to
start a tragedy. The air was as tense as a bow-string.
These wayside groups seemed to vanish like a will-
o'-the-wisp only to reappear at a distant cross-path
to intercept us.
A RAID IN THE SMOKIES 259
'The weather's too danged good for squirrel him-
tin' to suit me! 5 Blankenship dryly remarked as he
watched them. Bolton smiled grimly in anticipation
of a shooting party. Felknor had trudged ahead on
foot with Pruett to meet us at a distant point.
Pruett's presence might have caused the gathering
storm to break.
The chief deputy had a warrant for a man whom
he recognized in one of the threatening groups of
mountaineers that was dogging our footsteps, and,
in spite of the possible danger of facing them alone,
he went boldly back among them, put Jake Wells un-
der arrest, and placed him on the rear seat between
himself and me.
Instantly, two men, one of whom carried a sawed-
off , small-bore shotgun, began to cling more closely
to us, and I caught a signal from one of them to our
prisoner indicating that the latter was to 'jump and
run for it.' With the gun, they evidently intended to
cover his flight. I nudged my friend, the chief dep-
uty, who took out his revolver, meantime keeping
up a running fire of pleasant conversation with
the would-be rescuers in the roadway. Under his
breath the officer muttered to the prisoner: 'I may
have to kill a man here directly, egad, and, pardner,
it will be you first if anything starts!'
Wells turned white as chalk. 'Don't reckon
they'll be anything out o' the way!' he quavered.
The lank mountaineer in the roadway, watched by
his half-drunk companion, continued his signals,
while Blankenship smilingly fingered the trigger of
his .38 special under cover of the back seat. The
tension was almost at the breaking point when our
lean friends, reaching their mountain cabin by the
26o LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
wayside, ceased their efforts, and dropped away
with a final oath of defeat and a glare of hate.
Such are the daily incidents of the 'revenuerV life
as he plays tag with death. In Tennessee, not long
since, an informer, or 'Judas, 1 was shot while hold-
ing his baby in his arms; another, a storekeeper in a
mountain community, while innocently carrying a
lantern to guide revenue men to a mountain trail,
had his neck broken by a bullet; still another, a
United States deputy, while leading a handcuffed
moonshiner down a mountain trail at night went to
examine a package surreptitiously thrown over the
fence by his prisoner, and had his brains spattered
against a rail fence by a bullet from ambush. The
officer's body lay in the roadway for hours before
any one had the courage to remove it previous to the
arrival of fellow officers.
The aim of the moonshiner is traditionally unerr-
ing, as was demonstrated in the Virginia troubles in
the same mountain range, and if filled with liquor
or galled under an ancient wrong, he does not hes-
itate to attack from ambush. But the reverse is often
true also, and Uncle Sam's men take no chances at
the least suspicious show of resistance, with the re-
sult that the straight-shooting ambuscader finds
himself tripped with a bullet before he can even
reach for his gun. One of the chief raiding deputies
mentioned in a previous paragraph holds it as the
code of his department that any of his men may be
1 fired f as quickly for shooting too late as for shooting
too soon. In other words, a momentary lapse of time
may prove fatal either way. No experienced *rev-
enuer' fires too late, or too soon, and as his marks-
manship is not to be sneezed at, the moonshiner is
ANOTHER VIEW OF THE ' SQUIRREL-HUNTERS" STILL
John Llewellyn stirring hot mash in the retort
THE 'SQUIRREL-HUNTERS' LOOK ON HELPLESSLY WHILE
THEIR STILL GOES UP IN SMOKE
A RAID IN THE SMOKIES 261
not so ready to shoot as he formerly was. He has
learned the bitter lesson that usually right is on the
side of law, even in the prohibition question as
written into the Constitution of the United States
funny papers, 'booze heads/ and wise vaudeville
cracks to the contrary* The revenue man has be-
come the skirmish line scout of our time and gives
his life as readily as any soldier in battle without the
blare of trumpets or the beat of drums^
Such tragedies are common in the life of the *rev-
enuer,' who takes them all as a matter of course
and who performs acts of bravery daily which would
put the dime-novel hero to blush. But it is only in
the event of a tragedy that to the outside world is re-
vealed how sturdily he stands in the face of danger
and also how truly bad the moonshiner bad man is,
particularly when he is full of his own deadly brew.
CHAPTER XVI
OLD CHEROKEE TALES AND LEGENDS
Tsi'stu wvliga'natutun'une'gut satu' gese'i
The Rabbit was the leader of them all in mischief.
Old, Cherokee translation from Suyeta the Chosen One
FOR picturesque imagination and wealth of detail,
Cherokee myths rank very high ; some of their won-
der stories rival even those of the Arabian Nights.
But the Cherokee Indian, because of his forward-
looking characteristic, lost many of his historical
traditions; his eyes were always toward the future,
never the past. He was progressive and his sacred
records suffered because of it. Sections of well-
marked cycles, however, indicate undeniably that he
possessed tribal antiquities, but owing to lack of in-
terest among his priests these were never perfectly
preserved. In that respect he was very like his
Southern white neighbors who considered that fam-
ily records, however notable, were unimportant. It
is because of this indifference that many family
trees, not only among the Indians, but among the
fine cavalier families of the southern mountain and
coast districts, have been lost.
The Cherokee Indian's stories of the Rabbit and
the Tar Baby were never taken as is erroneously
supposed from the Uncle Remus tales of the
negro. The Cherokee had this and other stories
while he was the original Smoky Mountaineer a
couple of centuries before the black man ever set
foot upon our southern shores by way of the Salem
ship, The Desire, built and equipped at Marble-
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 263
head in 1636, the prototype of a long line of slavers.
If anything, the reverse is true; the negro, in all
probability, got the Tar Baby story from the Cher-
okees or other North American Indians and the tar
was the pitch from the eastern pine or the pinon of
the West. The Tar Baby story has generally existed
among all North American Indians for centuries
before the advent of the negro.
The Cherokee, often forced to work as a slave
alongside the negro, never looked upon him as an
equal and therefore never absorbed anything from
him in the way of racial characteristics or of tradi-
tion. From the Iroquois of the North to the Sem-
inoles of the South; from the Delawares of the East
to the Chickasaws of the West, Indian lore had at
one time a traditional fountain-head which is re-
vealed in their cycles. The stories vary in the tell-
ing only owing to local influence, environment, and
faulty oral transmission from generation to genera-
tion by their priests.
As proof of this, he has his own story of the Crea-
tion; his Wasi, or Moses who received the tablets of
the law; the striking of the rock in the wilderness
when they had dug with staves and could find no
water for their tribes who wandered for many years
in a desert. They have their crossing of a sea by
means of grapevines to escape from their enemies;
their terrible visitation of serpents from which many
of the ancient tribes died ; and the pillar of cloud by
day and of fire by night for guidance, in which dwelt
the Great Spirit. If these cycles had remained in-
tact, they would have more completely paralleled
the Biblical story in every detail of the wandering
of the ancient Israelites in the deserts of Mesopo-
264 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
tamia and would have preserved the traditions of
one of the oldest races of the globe, the Cherokee.
They also had their ark of the Covenant behind
which the priests of their tribes marched, and pos-
sessed traditional records of the Deluge which de-
stroyed every living thing except a chosen few.
In addition to possessing sacred traditions which
were transmitted to succeeding generations with a
great deal of serious ceremony, he was such a keen
observer of Nature and her creatures that he had a
name for every living thing from the small water
spider, Kanane'ski Amai'yehi, to the greatest of
birds on the wing, the Awa'hili, or Eagle; from the
mastodon Kama'ma U'tanu the Big Butterfly
to the little yellow moth that flits in and out of
the fire at eventide, the Tun'tawu; from the cow-
ant, Dasun'tali Atatasun'ski, to Yanu or Yona
the Bear. With this intense love of Nature as he
knew her 'from the beginning' in his own jealously
cherished wilderness, it is not to be wondered at
that he viewed with increasing alarm the steady
encroachment of the Anglo-Saxon stranger who
always considered him beneath notice, and who
brusquely brushed him aside, and took what he
wanted when he wanted it, not only violating the
red man's home and family, but also destroying
his game and his solitude.
Thus, the Cherokee, highly intelligent, at first
rather inclined toward social reciprocity, was stung
into one of the most vindictive hatreds of back-
woods history. It is difficult to believe that such a
race, endowed with a love of the beautiful in earth,
water, clouds, trees, and in the Great Chief of the
Forest, could have been wholly degenerate and in-.
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 265
describably bad. Without doubt the white man
taught him first how to hate, bringing violence with
him. The Anglo-Saxon had been drilled in a hard
school, and the simple children of the wilderness,
having never before seen a white man and thinking
him an angel, soon found that he was a devil who
scourged him with the flinty hand of intolerance.
It is not surprising therefore, that the Indian began
to fling back upon this new visitor the treatment
that he accorded only to his worst foes of his own
red race.
With two races in such intimate contact through-
out the earlier history of the Colonial Smoky Moun-
tains, it is impossible to treat of the traditions of one
without also considering the records of the other in
no small measure, although it is true that the past
took care of itself with the Cherokee. He harbored
nothing, not even hate, from one generation to the
other. What redress he was compelled to make, he
made at once with the horrible atrocity of the toma-
hawk and the scalping knife; but there was no hate
left over for another generation to remedy or to hug
to the bosom. So his stories and legends bear an
especial significance as valuable records fading with
others into the past.
Among the first great story-tellers of the old
Cherokee lore we find old Swimmer (Ayun'ini), who
was the Uncle Remus of his race. He was not only
fond of relating these stories, but could sing, dance,
and act, besides being an exceptional mimic. He was
very popular and functioned at every Green Corn
Dance, ball-play, or war pow-wow, always with the
official turban of the tribe and a rattle fashioned of
a hollow gourd filled with shot or round gravel. He
266 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
obtained his stories and traditions from the sacred
priests of the asi, or town house, who scratched him
with the bone comb upon his nude skin after which,
facing the sunrise, he plunged seven times into the
waters of a crystal mountain stream for purification
while the priest prayed upon the bank.
John Ax, another noted story-teller, secured his
valuable knowledge more easily and never had to
endure the early plunge and the bone comb be-
cause he was 'fire-boy* at the asi, or town house,
where the coals burned all night while the solemn
priests recounted their sacred traditions and myths
seated under the low roof which did not permit a
man to stand upright. The Tsaragi boy thus eaves-
dropped as he attended the fire and learned much
with little trouble except in keeping the room
smoky and warm with the pine knot blaze on a flat
rock in the center of the earthen floor,
To these two inimitable raconteurs, Ax and Swim-
mer, together with Suyeta, the Chosen One a
Cherokee Baptist minister are due what records
have been left to the Tsaragi of the nature, animal,
and sacred mythical stories of their tribes. Little
Tsaragi children shivered with delight at the story
of the Un'tiguhi, or Haunted Whirlpool; or Tsul'-
kalu', the Slant-eyed Giant; or shrieked with laugh-
ter at old Swimmer's antics imitating the Rabbit and
the Tar Wolf, or, How the Terrapin Beat the Rab-
bit in a race. The more mature warriors heard with
stoical interest the history of long ago in How the
World Was Made, and The First Fire, or, Agan-
uni'sti's Search for the Uktena (the Great Horned
Serpent). Young maidens thrilled with such stories
as The Huhu (Screech Owl) Gets Married, and, The
00
00
00
I
XI
I-H
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 267
Daughter of the Sun; while very old men and
women, too, for many of them indulged as do a
few to-day smoked and blinked over How They
Brought Back the Tobacco (Tso-lungh), and, The
Journey to the Sunrise, which all of the very old
must take sooner or later.
Every river bend, striped cliff, deep pool, peak,
and trail had its romance. There was a legend for
every ridge, cave, waterfall, giant mountain, or im-
penetrable fastness. In fact the old wilderness of the
Cherokee was a veritable wonderland of romance,
deeply loved and jealously cherished as only primi-
tives can love or cherish their very own. There were
tales of The Little People (The Nunnehi), who lived
in the bald mountains and who fought the battles of
the Cherokee when hard pressed as at Nikwasi, the
oldest Cherokee settlement, now the present site of
Franklin, North Carolina. There were tales of the
Uktena (The Great Horned Serpent), Saligu'gi
the Great Terrapin; the Ata-gahi, or Enchanted
Lake under Clingman Dome which no Uving person
has ever seen but which will heal all the hurts of the
four-footed tribe who keep its location secret, and
cause it to disappear periodically so that it may
not be discovered. One of the most pathetic and
beautiful is 'The Daughter of the Sun which is The
Origin of Death. There are many, many others
which if written would fill a book, perhaps as large
and as thick as this and perhaps vastly more inter-
esting.
The following tales have been selected because of
their unique interest and interpretative values. The
first one has something to do with the Creation.
Old Swimmer tells it, between puffs on his pipe, the
268 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
tusti bowl full of fragrant Cherokee tso-lungh
tobacco which is very important because, with-
out it Old Swimmer could not light his pipe and
therefore could not tell his tale. It is about '
THE FIRST FIRE
In the Beginning, there was no fire, and the world
was cold, very, very cold until the Thunders (Ani'-
Hyun'tikwala'ski), who lived up in Galun'lati sent
their lightnings and put fire into the bottom of a
hollow sycamore tree which grew on an island. The
animals knew it was there for they could see the
smoke coming out at the top, but they couldn't get
to it on account of the water that was everywhere
when the world was made. So they held a council to
decide what to do. This was a long, long time ago
when the animals, birds, insects and snakes were all
the same as men.
Every animal that could fly or swim was anxious to
go after the fire. Ka'lanu, the Raven, offered, and
because he was so large and strong every one thought
he could surely do the work; so he was sent first. He
flew high and far across the water and alighted on the
sycamore tree ; but while he was wondering what to do
next, the heat scorched all his feathers black. He was
badly frightened and came back without the fire.
Little Wa'huhu', the Screech Owl, volunteered to go
and reached the place safely but while he was looking
down into the tree with his big eyes a blast of hot air
came up and nearly burned them out. He managed
to fly home as best he could, but it was a long time
before he could see well, and his eyes are red to this
day. Then the Hoot Owl (U'guku') and the Great
Horned Owl (Tskili'gwa) went, but by the time they
got to the hollow tree, the fire was burning so fiercely
that the smoke nearly blinded them and the hot
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 269
ashes carried up by the wind made white rings about
their eyes. They had to come home without the fire
and with all their rubbing they were never able to get
rid of the white rings.
Now, no more of the birds would venture, and so
the little Uksu'hi snake, the black racer, said he
would go through the water and bring back some fire.
He swam across to the island and crawled through
the grass to the tree and went in by a small hole
at the bottom. The heat and smoke were too much
for him too; after dodging blindly about over the
hot ashes until he was almost on fire himself, he
managed by good luck to get out again at the same
hole, but his body was scorched black, and he has
ever since had the habit of darting and doubling on
his track as if trying to escape from close quarters.
He came back and the great blacksnake, Gule'gi,
*The Climber, ' offered to go for fire. He swam over
to the island and climbed up the tree from the out-
side, as the blacksnake always does, but, when he put
his head down into the hole, the smoke choked him
so that he fell into the burning sycamore stump, and
before he could climb out again, he was as black as
little Uksu'hL
Now they held another council for there was still
no fire and the world was cold, very cold ; but birds,
snakes, and fourfooted animals all had some excuse
for not going because they were all afraid to venture
near the burning sycamore. At last, Kanane'ski
Amai'yehi, the Water Spider, said she would go.
This is not the water spider that skips about over the
water and looks like a mosquito, but the other one
with black, downy hair and red stripes upon her body.
She can run on top of the water or dive to the bottom
with her tiny balloon of silk which brings her back up
again. So there would be no trouble to get over to the
island, but the question was, How could she bring
back the fire?
270 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
Til manage that/ said the Water Spider; so she
spun a thread from her body and wove it into a tusti
bowl which she fastened on her back. Then she
crossed over to the island and through the grass to
where the fire was still burning. She put one coal of
fire into her tusti bowl and came back safely with it.
So, ever since, we have had fire and the Water Spider
still keeps her tusti bowl.
Old Swimmer knocks the ashes from his pipe and
feels in his deerskin pouch for more tso-lungh (to-
bacco) but there is none* 'Umph!' said he, 'the
Dagul'ku geese have stolen my tobacco ! ' But one of
the old Cherokee women watching, hands him some
more from within her doeskin blouse. Smiling, he
fills his pipe generously and, taking a coal up from
the ashes in his palm, he skilfully juggles it and
rolls it into the pipe-clay bowl, puffing hard. Clouds
of aromatic smoke arise from the tso-lungh and then
he tells the story of
HOW THEY BROUGHT BACK THE TOBACCO
In the Beginning of the World when people and
animals were all the same, there was only one tobacco
plant. All came to it for their tobacco until the
Dagul'ku geese stole it and carried it far away to the
south in the fall of the year when the red sumach
berries are sour, and when the nights are chill and
frosty under the moon and when the geese go fly-
ing over in a wedge crying 'Sa! Sa! sa-sa!' The
people were suffering without their tobacco and there
was one poor old woman who smoked by her lonely
fire and she grew so weak and thin that every one
thought she would die unless she could get it to keep
her alive. They had brought her some of the rabbit's
tobacco (tsist'tsaluri) but she would have none of that.
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 271
Different animals offered to go for tso-lungh, one
after the other, the larger ones first and then the
smaller ones, but the Dagul'ku the white throated
goose (Ansa albifrons), saw and killed every one be-
fore he could even get near the plant. After the
others, the little Mole tried to reach it by going under
the ground but the sharp-eyed Dagul'ku saw his
track and killed him as he came out.
At last, the Hummingbird offered, but the others
said he was entirely too small and might as well stay
at home. But he begged them so hard to let him try
they showed him a plant in a field and asked him to
let them see just how he would go about it. The next
moment he was gone, and then they saw him sitting on
the plant, and in a moment or two he was back again,
going so swiftly that no one saw him going or coming,
'That's the way I'll do!' said the little Humming-
bird. So they let him try.
He flew off to the east ; then to the south, and when
he came in sight of the tobacco the Dagul'ku were
watching all about it, chattering 'Tugalti'! Sa! Sa!
sa-sal' but they could not see him because he was so
small and flew so swiftly like an arrow of light. He
darted down on the plant tsa! and snatched off
the top of the leaves and the seeds and was off again
before the Dagul'ku knew what had happened. Be-
fore he got home with the tobacco the old woman had
fainted and they thought she was dead, but they
blew smoke into her nostrils. With a cry of 'Tsa'lu!
Tsa'lu! (Tobacco!)' she opened her eyes and was
alive again.
'Ha! A'siyu'! A'siyu'P cry the children. 'Astu
tsiki'!' ('best of all!') they say in chorus.
'Nu tsune'guhi'yu!' ('And you are very mischie-
vous!') exclaims the old story-teller. But he holds
up his hand for silence. They are quiet. He clears
272 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
his throat, lays aside his pipe. 'Ku!' he exclaims
('Now!')- This promises to be very interesting so
they all lean forward, even the older men smiling
indulgently. 'This/ says old Swimmer, 'is our fa-
vorite':
THE RACE BETWEEN THE CRANE AND THE
HUMMINGBIRD
The Hummingbird and the Crane were both in
love with a very pretty woman. She preferred the
Hummingbird who was as handsome as the Crane
was awkward, but the Crane was so persistent that, in
order to get rid of him, she finally told him he must
challenge the other to a race and she would marry the
winner. Now the Hummingbird was so swift al-
most like a flash of lightning and the Crane so
slow and heavy, that she felt sure that the Humming-
bird would win. But she did not know that the Crane
could fly all night.
They both agreed to start from her house and fly
around the circle of the world to the beginning, and
the one who came in first would marry the woman.
At the word the Hummingbird darted off like an ar-
row and was out of sight in a moment, leaving his
rival to follow heavily behind. The little Humming-
bird flew all day and when evening came and he
stopped to roost for the night he was far ahead. But
the Crane flew steadily all night long, passing the
Hummingbird soon after midnight and going on until
he came to a creek and stopped to rest about day-
light. The Hummingbird woke up early in the morn-
* ing and flew on again, thinking how easily he could
win the race, until he reached the creek and there he
found the Crane spearing tadpoles with his long bill,
for breakfast. He was very much surprised at this
and wondered how it could have happened, but he
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 273
flew swiftly by and soon left the Crane out of sight
again.
The Crane finished his breaMast of tadpoles and
started on, and when evening came he did not stop
but kept on flying as before. This time it was hardly
midnight when he passed the hummingbird asleep on
a limb, and in the morning he had finished his break-
fast before the other came up. The next day he
gained a little more, and on the fourth day he was
spearing tadpoles for dinner when the Hummingbird
passed him. On the fifth and sixth days it was late in
the afternoon before the Hummingbird came up, and
on the morning of the seventh day the Crane was a
whole night's travel ahead. He took his time at his
breakfast and then fixed himself as nicely as he could
at the creek and came in at the starting place where
the woman lived, early in the morning. When the
Hummingbird arrived in the afternoon he found that
he had lost the race, but the pretty woman declared
she would never have such an ugly fellow as the
Crane for a husband, so she stayed single!
<Hu! Hu! Ani'Gila'! Ani'Gila'P cry the children.
('Pretty Woman! Pretty Woman!') 'Now tell us
about Yanu! Yanu!' they cry.
Old Swimmer's eyes sparkle, for he loves to tell
bear stories, and bellow and roar and growl, and paw
the earth with his feet. He also loves to sing so he
rubs his hand across his beard for a moment, clears
his throat and, lifting his voice, plaintively sings the
old Smoky Mountain bear hunter's song. At each
1 Yu ! ' and ' He-e ! ' he growls like a bear much to the
delight of the little copper colored children in their
deerskin shifts some of them without anything on
at all ! The songs and the story are about
274 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
THE ORIGIN OF THE BEAR
First Bear Song
The bear hunter starts out each morning fasting
and does not eat until near evening. He sings this
song as he leaves camp, and again the next morning,
but never twice the same day:
He-el Ani f -T$a!guU? Ani'-Tsafguhi, akwandu'li e'lanti'
ginuriti,
Ani'-Tsa'gu-hii Ani'-Tsa'guki, akwandu'H e'lanti'
ginun'ti Yii!
Translation
He-e! The Ani'-Tsa'guhi, the AniTsa'guhi, I want to lay
them low on the ground,
The Ani'-Tsa'guhi, the Ani'Tsa'guhi, I want to lay them
low on the ground Yu!
Second Bear Song
(Also sung by old Swimmer)
This song of the old Smokies is chanted by the bear
hunter in order to attract the bears, while on his way
from his camp to the place where he expects to hunt
during the day. This melody is also simple and plain-
tive. The names Tsistuyi', Kuwahi / , Uyahye', and
Gategwa' are regions in the Smokies which are sup-
posed to be very favorable for hunting and are lo-
cated as follows:
Tsistuyi' Gregory Bald at the lower end of the Smoky
Mountains overlooking Cade's Cove and Little Tennessee
River where were the ancient Cherokee villages visited by
Timberlake and Michaux. This is where lives the Great
Rabbit, the chief of the rabbit tribe.
Kuwahi' Clingman Dome, the highest peak of the
Smokies, elevation 6680 feet, under which is supposed to be
* An actual tribe of the Cherokee which was supposed to have been
transformed into bears. The singer's daughter was named Tsaguhi,
which name belongs to neither sex.
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 275
the location of the Cherokee Enchanted Lake or Ata-ga'hi
which is a favorite resort for bears, geese, and ducks and has
curative properties for wounded game. The bears also have
a town house under it where they hold their councils.
Uyahye' Mount Guyot, discovered and measured by
Professor Guyot of Princeton College in 1852 and named
for him by S. B, Buckley. Elevation, 6636 feet.
Gategwa' 'Great Swamp or thicket' is southeast of
Franklin, North Carolina, and is indentical with Fodder-
stack Mountain.
First line:
He-el Hayuya'haniwa' j hayuya'haniwa', hayuya'haniwa' 9
hayuya'haniwa'
Tsistuyi' nehandu'yanu' ', Tsistuyi' nehandu' yanu'
Yoho-ol
(First line repeated here.)
For Tsistuyi' in second line is substituted successively,
Kuwahi', Uyahye', Gategwa', with first line repeated each
time after it.
Last line (recited) :
Ule-nu' asehi' tadeyaf statakuhi' gun'nage astu' tsiki'.
Translation'*'
He-e! Hayuya'haniwa 7 (four times),
In Tsistuyi 7 you were conceived (twice) Yoho-o!
Hayuya'haniwa'' (four times),
In Kuwahi' you were conceived (twice) Yoho-o!
Hayuya'haniwa' (four times),
In Uyahye' you were conceived (twice) Yoho-o! \
Hayuya'haniwa' (four times),
In Gategwa' you were conceived (twice) Yoho-o!
Last line (recited) :
And now surely we and the good black things, the best of
all, shall see each other.
Long ago there was a Cherokee clan called the
Ani'Tsa'guhi, and in one family of this clan was a boy
who used to leave home and be gone all day in the
mountains. After a while he went of tener and stayed
longer, until at last he would not eat in the house at
276 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
all, but started off at daybreak and did not come
back until night. His parents, much worried,
scolded him but that did no good, and the boy still
went every day until they noticed that long brown
hair (wadige'i gitsu') was beginning to grow out all
over his body. Then they wondered and asked him
why it was that he wanted to be so much in the woods
that he would not even eat at home.
Said the boy : * I find plenty to eat there, and it is
better than the corn and beans we have in the settle-
ments, and, pretty soon I am going into the woods
to stay all the time.' His parents were worried and
begged him not to leave them, but he said, * It is bet-
ter there than here, and you see I am beginning to be
different already, so that I cannot live here any
longer. If you will come with me, there is plenty for
all of us and you will never have to work for it; but if
you want to come, you must first fast for seven days.'
His father and mother talked it over and then told
the head men of the clan. They held a council about
the matter and after everything had been said they
decided: 'Here we must work hard and have not al-
ways enough. There he says is plenty without work.
We will go with him.' So they fasted seven days.
On the seventh morning all the Ani'Tsa'guhi left the
settlement and started for the mountains as the boy
led the way.
When the people of the other towns heard of it they
were very sorry and sent their head men to persuade
the Ani'Tsa'guhi to stay at home and not go into the
woods to live. The messengers found them already
on the way and were surprised to notice that their
bodies were beginning to be covered with hair like
that of animals, because for seven days they had not
taken human food and their nature was changing.
The messengers tried to turn them back but the
Ani'Tsa'guhi would not return, but said, 'We are
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 277
going where there is always plenty to eat. Hereafter
we shall be called ydnu (bears) and when you your-
selves are hungry, come into the woods and call us
and we shall come to give you our flesh. You need
not be afraid to kill us, for we shall live always/
Then they taught the messengers, the head men,
the songs with which to call them, and the bear hunt-
ers have these songs still. (The songs printed above,
which old Swimmer sang). When they finished the
songs, the Ani'Tsa'guhi started on again and the
messengers turned back toward the settlements.
After going a little way, they looked back and saw a
drove of bears going into the woods*
Old Swimmer sang the songs again with such
plaintive sadness that even the children were quiet
and the older men looked grave and forgot their
pipes of tsolungh. There was a stir in the circle as
he ended and a voice cleared its throat; it was of John
Ax, second only to the great Swimmer. Said he: ' I,
Itagu 7 nahi, tell you of
YANU ASGA'YA THE BEAR MAN
A man went hunting in the mountains and came
across a black bear (gun'nage'i yanu), which he
wounded with an arrow. The bear turned and started
to run the other way and the hunter followed, shoot-
ing one arrow af ter the other into it without bring-
ing it down. Now, this was a medicine bear x that
could talk or read the thoughts of people without
their saying a word. At last he stopped and pulled
the arrows out of his side and gave them to the man
saying, ' It is of no use for you to shoot me, for you
cannot kill me. Come to my house and let us live to-
gether.'
The hunter thought to himself: 'He may kill me';
* Supernatural.
278 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
but the bear read his thoughts and replied, 'No. I
won't hurt you.'
The man thought again, 'But how can I get any-
thing v to eat?'
But the bear knew his thoughts and said, ' Don't
worry. There shall be plenty.' So the hunter went
with the bear.
They went on together until they came to a hole in
the side of the mountain and the bear said, ' This is not
where I live, but there is going to be a council here and
we shall see what they do.' They went in and the hole
widened as they went in until they came to a large
cave like town house. It was full of bears, and cubs,
white bears, black bears, and brown bears and a
large white bear (Unega yanu'gwa) was the chief.
They both sat down in a corner but very soon the
bears scented the hunter and began to ask, 'What is
it that smells so bad?'(!)
Unega Yanu'gwa, the Great White Bear, who was
the chief said, 'Don't talk so. It is only a stranger
come to see us. Let him alone ! * Food was getting so
scarce in the mountains that the council was held to
decide what to do about it. They had sent out mes-
sengers everywhere, and while they were talking, two
bears came in and reported that they had found a
country in the low grounds where there were so many
chestnuts and acorns that the mast was knee deep.
Then they were all well pleased and got ready for a
dance and the dance leader was the one the Indians
call Kalas'-gunahi'ta (Long Hams), a great black
bear that is always lean.
After the dance was over, the bears noticed the
hunter's bows and arrows. One of them said, 'This is
what men use to kill us. Let us see if we can manage
them, and maybe we can fight man with his own
weapons.' So they took the bows and arrows from the
hunter to try them. They fitted the arrow and drew
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 279
back the string but when they let it go, it caught in
their long claws and the arrows dropped harmlessly
to the ground. Then they saw that they could not
use the bows and arrows and gave them back to the
man. When the dance and the council were over,
they all went home except the White Bear chief,
who lived there. 1 At last the hunter and the bear
Went out together.
They went on and on until they came to another
hole in the side of the mountain when the bear said,
'This is where I live/ and they went in. By this time
the hunter was very hungry for they had given him
no food at the council and he was wondering how he
would get something to eat. The medicine bear knew
his thoughts, and, sitting up on his hind legs he
rubbed his stomach with his forepaws so and
at once he had both paws full of chestnuts and he
gave them to the man. He rubbed his stomach again
so and had his paws full of huckleberries and
gave them to the man. He rubbed again so and
gave the man both paws full of blackberries. He
rubbed again so and gave the man both paws
full of beech nuts. He rubbed again so and
gave the man his forepaws full of chinquepins. He
rubbed again so and had his paws full of
acorns, but the man said he could not eat acorns
and that he had enough already.
The hunter lived with the bear in the cave all win-
ter, until long hair, like that of a bear, began to grow
all over his body and he began to act like a bear; but
he still walked like a man. *
One day in early spring the bear said to him, 'Your
people down in the settlement are getting ready for a
grand hunt in these mountains. They will come to
this cave and kill me and take these clothes from me'
meaning his skin 'but they will not hurt you
1 Kuwahi under Clingman Dome.
28o LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
and will take you home with them.' The bear be-
ing medicine knew what the people were doing
down in the settlement just as he always knew what
the man was thinking about. Some days passed and
the bear said again, 'This is the day when the Top-
knots (hunters) will come to kill me, but the Split-
noses (dogs) will come first and find us. When they
have killed me they will drag me outside the cave and
take off my clothes and cut me in pieces. You must
cover the blood with leaves, and when they are tak-
ing you away, look back after you have gone a piece
and you will see something.'
Soon they heard the hunters coming up the moun-
tain and then the dogs found the cave and began to
bark. The hunters came and looked inside and saw
the bear and killed him with their arrows. Then they
dragged him outside the cave and skinned the body
and cut it into quarters to carry home. The dogs
kept on barking until the hunters thought there must
be another bear in the cave. They looked in again
and saw the man at the farther end. At first they
thought that it was another bear on account of his
long hair, but soon saw it was the hunter who was lost
the year before ; so they went in and brought him out.
Then each hunter took a load of the bear meat and
they started home again, bringing the man and the
skin with them. Before they left, the man piled
leaves over the spot where they had cut up the bear,
and when they had gone a little way he looked be-
hind and saw the bear rise up out of the leaves, shake
himself so and go back into the woods.
When they came near the settlement the man told
the hunters that he must be shut up where no one
could see him and he was to have nothing to eat or
drink for seven days and nights until the bear nature
had left him and he became a man again. So they
shut him up alone in a house and tried to keep very
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 281
still about it, but the news got out and his wife heard
of it. She came for her husband, but the people would
not let her near him; but she came every day and
begged so hard that at last, after four or five days of
begging, they let her have him. She took him home
with her but in a short time he died because he still
had a bear's nature and could not live like a man. If
they had left him shut up and fasting until the end of
the seven days he would have become a man again
and would have lived.
If any one imagines that the Cherokee Indian has
no humor let him hear this one about
DANDA ANI ASGA'YA WELA THE TWO OLD MEN
Two old men went hunting together. One had an
eye drawn down and was called Uk-kwunagi'ta, * Eye-
drawn-down.' The other had an arm which was
twisted out of shape and was called Uk-ku'suntsuti,
* Bent-bow-shape.' They killed a deer and cooked the
meat in a pot. The second old man dipped a piece of
bread in the soup and smacked his lips as he ate it.
'Is it good? 1 asked the first old man.
Said the other, 'Hayu'! uk-kwundagi'sti' Yes
sir! It will draw down one's eye.'
Thought the first old man, f He means me.' So
he dipped a piece of bread into the pot and smacked
his lips as he tasted it.
' Do you find it good ? ' asked his companion of
the bent arm.
'Hayu'! uk-ku'suntsuteti' Yes sir! It will
twist up one's arm.'
Thought the second old man, 'He means me'; so
he got very angry and struck the man of the crooked
eye, and they fought until they killed each other!
282 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
A WITCH TALE
KA'LANU AHYELI'SKI THE RAVEN MOCKER
The grewsome belief in the ' Raven Mocker' by the
Cherokees has its parallels in other Indian tribes.
The Iroquois, an associate tribe of the Cherokee,
have their belief in a vampire, or cannibal ghost,
about which cluster some blood-curdling stories.
Very frequently a sick Indian is left to die alone
because the watchers, claiming they feel the pre-
sence of the invisible ' Mocker, ' will not stay with
him. The appearance of the flying terror is similar in
their minds to that of a fiery meteor. Recognition or
discovery of the witch while disguised brings disas-
ter to the evil visitor.
Of all the Cherokee wizards or witches the most
dreaded is the Raven Mocker (Ka'lanu Ahyeli'ski),
the one that robs the dying man of life. They are of
either sex and there is no sure way to know one,
though they usually look old and withered because
they have added so many lives to their own.
At night when some one is sick or dying in the set-
tlement, the Raven Mocker goes to the place to take
the life. He flies through the air in fiery shape with
arms outstretched like wings, with sparks trailing be-
hind , and a rushing sound like the noise of a high wind.
Every little while, as he flies, he makes a cry like the
cry of a raven when it 'dives' in the air not like
the common raven cry which mocks the dogs in the
chase and those who hear are afraid because they
know that some man's life will soon go out. When
the Raven Mocker comes to the house, he finds others
of his kind waiting there, and unless there is a doctor,
or Medicine Man, on guard who knows how to drive
them away, they go inside all invisible and
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 283
frighten and torment the sick man until they kill him.
Sometimes, to do this, they even lift him from the bed
and throw him violently to the floor. But his friends
who are with him think he is only struggling for
breath.
After the witches kill him they take out his heart
(unahwi') and eat it; so doing they add to their
own lives as many days or years as they have taken
from his. No one in the room can see them. There is
no scar where they take out the heart, but yet there
is no heart left in the body. Only one who has the
right medicine can recognize a Raven Mocker; if such
a man stays in the room with the sick person, these
witches are afraid to come in and retreat as soon as
they see him because when one of them is recognized
in his right shape he must die within seven days; that
is the fate of the Raven Mockers.
There was once a man named Gunskali'ski who
had this medicine and used to hunt for Raven Mock-
ers, and killed several. When the friends of a dying
person know there is no more hope, they always try
to have one of these Medicine Men stay in the house
and watch the body until it is buried, because, after
burial the witches do not steal the heart.
The other witches are jealous of the Raven Mock-
ers and are afraid to come into the same house with
one. Once, a man who had the Witch Medicine was
watching by a sick man and saw these other witches
outside, trying to get in. All at once they heard a
Raven Mocker cry overhead and the others scattered
'like a flock of pigeons when the hawk swoops/
When at last a Raven Mocker dies, these other
witches sometimes take revenge by digging up the
body and abusing it.
Once a young man who had been out on a hunting
trip came upon the Raven Mocker's home. He had
been out hunting all day and when night came on he
284 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
found he was still a long distance from the settlement
(Indian village). He had remembered a house not far
off the trail where an old man and his wife lived so he
turned in that direction to look for a place to sleep
until the following morning. When he got to the
house there was nobody in it. He looked into the asi, 1
but found no one there either. He thought maybe the
old couple had gone after water so he stretched him-
self out in the farther corner of the asi to sleep. Very
soon he heard a raven cry outside and in a very little
while the old man came into the asi and sat down by
the fire without noticing the young man who kept
very still in the dark corner. Soon there was another
raven cry outside and the old man muttered to him-
self, 'Now my wife is coming/ Sure enough, in a
little while, the old woman came in and sat down by
her husband. Now the young man knew they were
Raven Mockers and was very much frightened; and
he lay very quietly thinking what he would do. He
scarcely breathed. His unahwi' (heart) beat so
loudly that he was afraid the two might hear it.
Presently, said the old man to his wife : ' Well, what
luck did you have to-night?'
'None/ she answered, 'there were too many medi-
cines watching. What did you get?'
1 1 got what I went after,' said the old man. 'There
is no reason to fail but one does not have luck always.
Take this and cook it and let us have something to
eat. I am as hungry as the yanu after he comes out of
his cave. I could eat soup made out of Tawi'skala
(flint)!'
So she fixed the fire and then the young man
smelled meat roasting and it smelled sweeter than the
smell of any meat broiled by the hunter. He peeped
out very carefully with one eye. It looked like a
man's heart roasting on a stick.
1 Sweat lodge, or winter sleeping quarters.
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 285
Suddenly the old woman said to her husband,
'Who is over in the corner?'
'Nobody/ he said.
'But there is,' said she, 'I heard him snoring.' So
she stirred the fire and it blazed and lighted up the
whole inside of the asi. And there was the young man
lying in the corner. He kept very quiet and pre-
tended to be asleep. Then the old man made a big
noise at the fire to wake him but still he pretended
to be asleep. The old man then came over to
where he was and shook him. He sat up suddenly
and rubbed his eyes as if he had been asleep all the
time.
It was daylight by this time and the old woman
was out in the other house getting breakfast ready,
but the hunter heard her crying softly. 'Why is your
wife crying?' he asked the old man.
'Oh, she has lost some of her friends lately and she
feels lonesome,' he answered; but the young man
knew she was crying because he overheard them talk-
ing the night before.
When they came out to breakfast the old man put
a bowl of corn mush before the hunter and said 'This
is all we have we have had no meat for a long, long
time.' After breakfast the young man started on
again but when he had gone a little way the old man
ran at ter him with a fine piece of beadwork and gave
it to him.
'Take this/ he said, 'and don't tell anybody what
you heard last night because my wife and I are always
quarreling that way and it means nothing.'
The young man took the piece but when he came
to the first creek he threw it into the water and went
on to the settlement. There he told the whole story.
A party of warriors went back with him to kill the
Raven Mockers. When they reached the place it was
the seventh day after the first night. They found the
286 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
old man and his wife lying dead in the house, so they
set fire to it and burned the house and the witches
together.
THE UKTENA AND THE ULUNSU'TI
The belief in the great Uktena and the magic
power of the Ulunsu'ti is firmly implanted in the
Cherokee breast. The Uktena has its parallel in the
Gitchi-Kenebig or Great Horned Serpent of the
northern Algonquian tribes and is somewhat analo-
gous to the Zemogu'ani or the Great Horned Alliga-
tor of the Kiowa. Myths of a jewel in the head of a
serpent or of a toad are so common in all Aryan
nations as to have become proverbial. 1
Long ago hilahi'yu when the Sun became
angry at the people on earth and sent a sickness to
destroy them, the Little Men changed a man into a
monster snake which they called Uktena, 'The
Keen-eyed ' and sent him to kill her. But he failed to
do the work and the Rattlesnake (Utsa'nati') had to
be sent instead which made the Uktena so jealous
and angry that the people were afraid of him and had
him" taken up to Galunlati a to stay with the other
dangerous things. He left others behind him though,
nearly as large and as dangerous as himself, and they
hide now in the deep pools in the river and about the
fonely passes of the Great Smokies, the places which
the Cherokee call 'Where the Uktena stays/
Those who know say that the Uktena is a great
snake as large around as a tree trank with horns on
its head and a bright, blazing crest like a diamond on
its forehead, and scales glittering and flashing like
sparks of fire. It has rings or spots of color along its
* American Anthropologist, April, 1889.
9 Above, on high.
O
!
Q
O
C/}
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 287
whole length and cannot be wounded except by
shooting in the seventh spot from the head because
under this spot are its heart and its life. The blaz-
ing diamond upon its forehead is called Ulunsu'ti,
* Transparent,' and he who can win it may become the
greatest wonder-worker of his tribe. But it is worth
a man's life to attempt the feat for, whoever is seen
by the Uktena is so dazed by the bright light from
the diamond that he runs toward the snake instead of
from it in trying to escape. Even to see the Uktena
asleep is death, not only to the hunter himself but to
his family.
Of all the daring warriors who have started out in
search of the Ulunsu'ti only Agan-uni'tsi ever came
back successful. The East Cherokee still keep the
one he brought. It is a large, transparent crystal,
nearly the size of a bullet with a blood-red streak
running through the center from top to bottom.
The owner keeps it wrapped in a whole deerskin in-
side an earthen jar hidden away in a secret cave in
the high mountains.
Every seven days he feeds it with the blood of
small game rubbing the blood over the crystal as
soon as the animal has been killed. Twice a year it
must have the blood of the deer or some other large
animal. Should he forget to feed it at the proper time
it would come out of its cave at night in the shape of
fire and fly through the air to slake its thirst with the
life-blood of the conjurer or some of his people. He
may save himself from this danger by telling it when he
puts it away that he will not need it again for a long
time. It will go quietly to sleep and feel no hunger
until it is again brought out to be consulted. Then
it must be fed again with the blood before it is used.
No white man must ever see it and no person but
the owner must venture near it for fear of sudden
death. Even the conjurer who keeps it is afraid of it
288 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
and changes its hiding place every once in a while so
that it cannot learn the way out; when he dies it will
be buried with him, otherwise it will come out of its
cave like a blazing star to search for his grave, night
after night for seven years, when, if still unable to
find him, it will go back to sleep forever where he has
placed it.
Whoever owns the Ulunsu'ti is sure of success in
hunting, love, rainmaking and every other business,
but its great use is in life prophecy. When it is con-
sulted for this purpose the future is seen mirrored in
the clear crystal as a tree reflected in a quiet stream
below it and the conjurer knows whether the sick
man will recover, whether the warrior will return from
battle, or whether a youth will live to be old.
The next legend is one of the principal myths of
the Cherokee and naturally follows in sequence, ex-
plaining the origin of the great talisman. It is told
by the inimitable Swimmer. All of the Shawano
were considered magicians and wizards by all other
Indian tribes, and, too, it is probable that the
Shawano made the most of this belief. This legend
is called
AGAN-UNI'TSU'S SEARCH FOR THE UKTENA
In one of their battles with the Shawano, who are
all magicians, the Cherokee captured a great medi-
cine man whose name was Agan-uni'tsi, 'The
Groundhog's Mother/ They had tied him ready for
the torture when he begged for his life and engaged,
if spared, to find for them the great wonder worker,
The Ulunsu'ti. Now, the Ulunsu'ti is like a blazing
star set in the forehead of the great Uktena serpent,
and the medicine man who could possess it might do
marvelous things. But every one knew this could not
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 289
be because it was certain death to meet the Uktena,
They warned the Shawano medicine man of this but
he said that his medicine was strong and he was not
afraid. So they gave him his life on that condition
and he began his search.
The Uktena used to lie in wait in lonely places in
order to surprise its victims and especially haunted
the dark passes of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Knowing this, the Shawano magician went first to a
gap in the range on the far northern border of the
Cherokee country. He searched and there found a
monster blacksnake larger than had ever been known
before. But that was not what he was looking for and
he laughed at it as something too small to notice.
Coming southward to the next gap he found there a
great moccasin snake, the largest ever seen, and
when the people wondered at it, he said it was no-
thing. In the next gap he found a green snake and
called all the people to see the 'pretty salikwa'yl'
but when they found an immense greensnake coiled
up in the path they ran away in fear.
Coming on to U'tawagun'ta, the Bald Mountain, 1
he found there a great diya'hali (lizard) basking,
but, although it was large and terrible to look at, it
was not what he wanted and he paid no attention to
it. Going still south to Walasi'yi, 3 the Frog Place,
he found a great frog squatting in the gap, and when
the people who came to see it were frightened and ran
away from the monster he mocked at them for be-
ing afraid of a frog and went on to the next gap. He
went on to Duniskwa'lgun'yi, the Gap of the Forked
Antler,* and to the Enchanted Lake of Atagalii, 4
and at each he found monstrous reptiles, but said
1 Probably what is now known as ' Siler's Bald.'
3 Probably Buckeye Gap, south of Siler's Bald,
a Chimneys, head of Deep Creek, North Carolina.
Under Clingman Dome.
290 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
they were nothing. He thought the Uktena might be
hiding in the deep water at Tlanusi'yi the Leech
Place, on Hiwassee where other strange things had
been seen before. Going there he dived down under
the surface. He saw turtles and water snakes and two
immense sun perches rushed at him and turned away;
but that was all. Other places he tried, always going
southward. At last on Gahu'ti J mountain he found
the great Uktena asleep.
Turning without noise he ran swiftly down the
mountain side as far as he could go with one long
breath, nearly to the bottom of the slope. There he
stopped and piled up a great circle of pine cones in-
side of which he dug a deep trench. He then set fire
to the cones and came back again up the mountain.
The Uktena was still asleep. Putting an arrow to
his bow, Agan-uni'tsi sent the arrow through its heart
which was under the seventh spot from the serpent's
head. The great snake raised its head, the diamond
in front of it flashing fire, and came straight at his
enemy, but the magician turned quickly and, running
swiftly down the mountain, cleared the circle of fire
and the trench at one bound, and lay down on the
ground inside.
The Uktena tried to follow but the arrow was
through his heart. In another moment he rolled over
in his death agony spitting poison all over the moun-
tain side. The poison could not reach the magician
who was inside the circle of fire and only sputtered
and hissed in the blaze; but one small drop of it did
strike upon his head as he lay close to the ground but
he did not know this. The blood of the Uktena, as
poisonous as the froth, poured from the great snake's
wound down the mountain slope in a dark stream but
it ran into the trench and left the magician unharmed.
The dying monster rolled over and over down the
x Cohutta Mountain.
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 291
slopes of the mountain, breaking down large trees in
its path, until it reached the bottom. Then Agan-uni'
tsi called every bird in all the woods to come to the
feast and so many came and ate that not even the
bones were left.
After seven days he went by night to the spot. The
body and the bones of the snake were all gone, eaten
by the birds, but he saw a bright light shining in the
darkness. Going over to it he found, resting on a
low-hanging branch where a raven had dropped it,
the great diamond from the head of the Uktena. He
wrapped it up very carefully and took it with him.
From that time on he became the greatest medicine
man in the whole tribe.
When Agan-uni'tsi came down again to the settle-
ment, the people noticed a small snake hanging from
his head where the single drop of poison from the
Uktena had struck him; but so long as he lived, he
himself never knew it was there. Where the blood
of the Uktena had filled the trench a lake formed, the
waters of which were black. The women used it to
dye the cane splits for their baskets.
The following is also one of the principal myths of
the Cherokee. (The sequel has an obvious resem-
blance to the myth of Pandora. It has several vari-
ants, but this one by Swimmer seems to be the most
acceptable). It is called -
THE DAUGHTER OF THE SUN
OR, THE ORIGIN OF DEATH
The Sun lived on the other side of the Sky Vault
but her daughter lived in the Middle of the Sky,
directly above the earth; every day as the Sun was
climbing along the sky arch to the west, she used to
, stop at her daughter's house for dinner.
292 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
Now, the Sun hated the people on the earth be-
cause they could never look straight at her without
screwing up their faces. She said to her brother, the
Moon, My grandchildren are ugly; they grin all over
their faces when they look at me. But the Moon
said, 'I like those children; I think they are very-
handsome ' the reason of it was, they always
smiled pleasantly when they saw him in the sky at
night for his rays were softer.
So the Sun was very jealous and planned to kill all
the people; so every day when she got near her
daughter's house she sent down such sultry rays that
there was a great fever and the people died by the
hundreds. There was a great pestilence in the land
until everyone had lost some friend and there was fear
that no one would be left. They went for help to the
Little Men who said the only way to save themselves
was to kill the Sun.
So the Little Men made strong medicine and
changed two men to snakes, the Spreading Adder
(Daliksta' the 'Vomiter'), and the Copperhead
(Wa'dige-aska'li Brown Head), and sent them to
watch near the door of the Daughter of the Sun to
bite the old Sun when she came next day. They
went together and hid near the house until the Sun
came, but when the Spreading Adder was about to
spring, the bright light so blinded him that he could
only spit out yellow slime as he does to this day when
he tries to bite. She called him a nasty thing and
went by into the house and the Copperhead crawled
off without trying to attack her.
So the people still died from the heat and they
went to the Little Men a second time for help. The
Little Men made medicine again and changed one
man into the great Uktena and another into the
Rattlesnake (Utsa'nati' 'he has a bell') and sent
them to watch near the house and kill the old Sun
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 293
when she came for dinner. They made the Uktena
very large, with horns on his head, and everyone
thought he would be sure to do the work. But the
Rattlesnake was so quick and eager that he got ahead
and coiled up just outside the house. When the Sun's
daughter opened the door to look out for her mother,
he sprang up and bit her and she fell dead in the door-
way.
He forgot to wait for the old Sun and went back to
the people and the Uktena was so angry that he went
back too. Since then we pray to the Rattlesnake
and do not kill him for he is kind and never tries to
bite if we do not disturb him. The Uktena grew
angrier all the time and very dangerous so that if he
even looked at a man his family would die. After a
long time the people held a council and decided that
he was too dangerous to be with them, so they sent
him up to Galun'lati 1 and he is there now. The
Spreading Adder, the Copperhead, the Rattlesnake
and the Uktena were all men.
When the Sun found her daughter dead she went
into the house and grieved and the people did not die
any more. But now the world was dark all the
time because the Sun was gone in the house and
would not come out. They went again to the Little
Men who told them that if they wanted the Sun to
come out again they must bring back her daughter
from Tsusgina'i, the Ghost Country, in Usunhi'yi, the
Darkening Land in the West. So seven men were
chosen to go and each one was given a sourwood rod
a hand's breadth in length.
The Little Men also told them that they must take
a box with them and when they got to Tsusgina'i
they would find all the ghosts at a dance. They must
stand outside the circle and when the young woman
passed in the dance they must strike her with the
1 Above.
294 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
sourwood rods and she would fall to the ground.
Then they were to seize her and put her in the box
and bring her back to her mother. But they were
warned then under no conditions to open the box,
not even a little way, until they came home again.
They took the rods and the box and traveled seven
days to the west until they came to Usunhi'y* the
Darkening Land. There were a great many people
there and they were having a dance just as the people
do at home in the settlements. The young woman
was in the outside circle and as she swung around to
where the seven men were standing, one struck her
with his rod and she turned her head and saw him.
As she came around the second time, another touched
her with his rod and then another, and another, until
at the seventh round she fell out of the ring and they
put her in the box and dosed the lid fast. The other
ghosts did not seem to notice what had happened.
The seven took up the box and started home to-
ward the east. In a little while the girl came to life
again inside the box and begged to be let out, but the
men made no answer and went on. Soon she called
again and said she was hungry but still they made no
answer. After another while she spoke again and
called for a drink and pleaded so that it was hard to
listen to her but the men who carried the box said
nothing and still went on. When at last they were
very near home she called again and begged them to
raise the lid just a little for she was smothering. They
were afraid she was really dying now so they lifted
the lid just a little to give her air; but as they did so
there was a fluttering sound inside and something
flew past them into the thicket and they heard a red-
bird cry 'kwish! kwishl kwish!' in the bushes. They
shut down the lid again and went on to the settle-
ments, but when they got there and opened the box,
it was empty!
OLD CHEROKEE TALES 295
So we know that the redbird is the daughter of the
Sun "and if the men had kept the box dosed as the
Little Men told them to do, they would have brought
her home safely and we could safely bring back our
friends also from Tsusgina'i, The Ghost Country,
but now, when they die, we can never bring them
back.
The Sun seemed glad when the men started to the
Ghost Country but when they came back without her
daughter she grieved and cried, 'My daughter! Oh,
my daughter ! T and wept until her tears made such a
flood upon the earth that the people were afraid that
the whole world would be drowned. Another council
was held and their handsomest young men and women
were sent to amuse her so that she would stop crying.
Thus they danced before the Sun and sang their best
songs but for a long time the Sun kept her face hid
and paid no attention until at last the drummer
suddenly changed the song whereupon she lifted up
her face and smiled. She was so pleased at the sight
that she forgot her grief.
'And now/ said Old Swimmer, 'she is going on
toward the Usunhi'yi the Darkening Land again,
and her smile is dying and it is nearly time for her
brother the Moon to arise out of his bed in the high
mountains. And it is time for old men and children
to be in bed/
4 Wait ! f said Suyeta, the Chosen One, with a smile.
'Let us not go without one story to leave a good
taste in the mouth. Let us have one about
HOW THE RABBIT ESCAPED FROM THE WOLVES
* For Tsi'stu wuliga'natutun'une'gut satu gese'i
the Rabbit was the leader of them all in mischief/
'Hayu! hayu! Wadan'! wadan'! Yes! yes!
296 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
Thank you!' cry the children; for it is their last,
Says Suyeta, the Chosen One:
Some wolves once caught the Rabbit and were
going to eat him when he asked permission to show
them a new dance he was practicing. They knew
that the Rabbit was a great song leader; they also
wanted to learn the latest dance, so they made a ring
around him while he got ready. He patted his feet
and began to dance around in a cfrcle, singing:
Tlage'situn' gali f sgi' sidafha,
Ha'nia lill HI! Ha'nia Ull HI!
Translation
On the edge of the field I dance about
Ha'nialil! lil! Ha'nia HI! ffl!
'Now,' said the Rabbit, 'Let me show you. When
I sing 'on the edge of the field* I dance that way*
and he danced over in that direction. 'And when I
say, 'lil! lil!' you must all stamp your feet hard.*
The wolves thought that was fine. So he began
another round singing the same song, and danced a
little nearer the field, while the Wolves all stamped
their feet. He sang louder and danced nearer and
nearer to the field until, at the fourth song, when the
Wolves were stamping as hard as they could and
thinking only of the song, he made one jump and was
off through the long grass in the field.
They were after him at once. But he ran for a
hollow stump and dimbed up on the inside. When
the Wolves got there, one of them put his head in-
side to look up, but the Rabbit spit in his eye so that
he had to pull his head out again quick. The others
were afraid to try ; so they all went away and left the
Rabbit safe in the stump.
CHAPTER XVII
THE VISITOR
A CHAPTER FOR THE GAS TREKKER, HIKER, CAMPER,
HUNTER, AND FISHERMAN
WHEN the attention of the nation was attracted to
the proposed Smoky Mountain National Park re-
gion, it became painfully evident that, for the as-
tounding distance of over one hundred and twenty-
five miles, there existed no highway communication
between the two neighboring States of Tennessee
and North Carolina down the whole watershed of
the Great Smoky Mountains, together with a sec-
tion of the Unakas. Not one single road existed for
the whole 428,000 acres desired by the Park author-
ities.
By the time this book is off the press, it is very
probable that an excellent highway will cross this
exceptional mountain mass at Newfound Gap, at an
altitude of 5096 feet. .Newfound Gap is just a few
miles east of Indian Gap, where Colonel Thomas
surveyed and built his rule-of -thumb military road
with the aid of about six hundred Cherokee warriors
of the Thomas Legion during the Civil War, a road
which rapidly fell into disuse in the years following
this conflict between the States. The new road at
Newfound Gap will begin at 'The Bridge/ near
Gatlinburg, squirming its way like an asphalt snake,
at a six per cent grade, through the Grass Patch to
the old 'Wagon Road/ strike the trail on its down-
ward trend toward Smokemont, the Cherokee In-
298 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
dian Reservation, and continue to Bryson City,
North Carolina, the eastern gateway of the Great
Smokies. It will be approximately three hundred
feet lower than the old Thomas road, and will serve
to reduce the old roundabout one hundred and sixty
miles route from Gatlinburg and Sevierville to New-
port, Tennessee, and from thence to Asheville,
North Carolina, and ultimately to Bryson City, to
about one fourth the total distance, or to forty miles
over the top.
This direct route between the network of excellent
roads of the two neighboring States promises to be
instantly popular. Either way, from Bryson City to
Sevierville or Knoxville, the gas trekker will be one
hundred and twenty miles nearer his goal across the
high peaks of the Smokies and may coast with loafing
engine from an altitude of nearly one mile. Another
road is proposed along the top of the Smokies from
Indian Gap westward almost to Cade's Cove, which,
if built, will rival any scenic road of America.
With three fifths of the total population in the
eastern half of the United States, and with one third of
the entire number of automobiles around the Great
Lakes region alone to draw upon, the proposed
National Park region will in all probability fulfill the
prediction of Major Welch, of the National Forestry
Commission, that two million visitors will enter the
Smoky Mountains two years after the opening of
the National Park. This number includes those mo-
torists who will come down the eastern seaboard.
This large number of motorists can make no mis-
take in their routings if they keep in mind the two
great' gateways of the Smokies, Knoxville, Tennessee,
on the western slope, and Bryson City, North Can>
THE VISITOR 299
lina, on the eastern. These two cities may easily be
reached on the excellent highways of the two States.
Bryson City is at the end of the great lateral trunk
line number 10, running from Beaufort-on-the-Sea
to the Smokies, while Knoxville is the terminus of
three great trunk lines. In addition to these there is
the great Dixie Highway to the south. The tourist's
destination toward either gateway may be reversed
at Asheville, North Carolina, on the northeast bor-
der of the Smokies or at Chattanooga, Tennessee,
at the southwestern extremity near the Georgia
State line. If the traveler wishes, he may go direct
to Gatlinburg from Asheville and Newport by way
of Sevierville and from thence to Knoxville. Gat-
linburg is made possible by the famous mountain
Le Conte, which is the grandstand of the Smokies
and is removed from the watershed about four miles,
giving a splendid view of the whole range from an
altitude of 6636 feet. Near Le Conte are the famous
Alum Cave, Rainbow Falls, Sawtooth Mountains,
and Newfound Gap.
Gatlinburg, the little mushroom city of the
Smokies, is within easy reach of Elkmont, Siler's
Bald, Clingman Dome, Mount Collins, Andrew's
Bald, Hall's Cabin, Indian Gap, the Chimneys,
and the Sugarlands. Cade's Cove must be reached
from Knoxville through Maryville over an excellent
highway which climbs the Rich Mountain. Green-
briar, one of the most primitive sections, is reached
by way of Sevierville or Gatlinburg over roads which
are by no means excellent. Guyot, the Pinnacle,
Porter's Flats, Le Conte, and the Sawtooth Moun-
tains are accessible from this point.
From Bryson City, North Carolina, one has good
300 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
motor roads to Sylva, Whittier, the Cherokee In-
dian Reservation at Cherokee, North Carolina, and
Waynesville, with new roads constantly being de-
veloped to add to the comfort and convenience of
tourists. Roads to Smokemont, right under the top,
are only partially negotiable with improvement im-
minent. Smokemont will be on the Newfound Gap
road joining the Tennessee highway number 71 with
number 10 of North Carolina. From Cade's Cove,
with its seven-mile belt road, Thunderhead, Greg-
ory, and Parson Balds, and the old Equanulty and
Tellassee Traces are accessible.
HOTELS
Hotel rates in the Smoky Mountain region are not
exorbitant; in fact, they are far below the average.
Although the hotels do not afford luxuries such as
the tourist has left behind, yet their environs guar-
antee a keen appetite. The scale runs from $1.50 to
$3.50 per day with weekly ratings; sometimes more,
usually less. As a preface it is fitting here to quote
Mn John Willy in his 'Hotel Monthly.' He has
written about practically every National Park in the
West, and here in the September issue he writes about
Smoky Mountain inns:
We registered at the Mountain View Hotel in Gat-
linburg, kept by Andrew Jackson Huff [a moun-
taineer], which house he built and opened eight
years ago, has enlarged to fifty rooms, served with
private bath, and with thirteen cottages. His rates
are from $2.00 to $3.00 a day, American plan; a
weekly rate of $20.00 with room and bath, including
meals. The accommodations are what might be
termed a bit crude, yet dean, and comfortable, and
THE VISITOR 301
the new section quite comfortable with the modern
conveniences of hot and cold water and electric light.
The clerk's desk is on the porch, or reception
lounge; there being another large room, also called
the porch, which is enclosed and used as a parlor
lounge. The dining-room is operated family style.
The food is, as Mr. Huff expressed it, 'as good as I
can buy ' ; and during the ten days we were there we
heard not a single complaint of the table. The service
was by mountain girls, clean, quiet, and always with
the soft- voiced question, 'Would you like another
helping?' On every table there was a glass stand of
mountain honey in the comb, dishes of applesauce,
blackberry jam, one or two kinds of jelly, and some
relishes. The menu is almost entirely of home-grown
products. There is not much choice ; as, for instance,
if it is bacon and eggs, that is the breakfast, with the
other trimmings. If it is dinner, it may be chicken,
ham, or beef, or what the family meal may comprise.
There is an abundance of sweet milk and buttermilk.
What Mr. Willy says of Huff's Hotel may be ap-
plied to every other hostelry of the Smokies. The
visitor from the North and East will also have to ad-
just himself to hot biscuit three times a day, with
no cold 'lightbread.' After all, what is better than
hot biscuit with good fresh butter? A great many of
other so-called 'hotels' are merely semi-public; that
is, the family of the host sits at the same table. This
is true of Walter Whitehead's in Cade's Cove; the
inn at Smokemont, North Carolina, and Whaley's
Hotel Le Conte in Big Greenbriar at the upper end
of the Smokies. Even Mrs. Davis's dining-room in
Sevierville is served 'family plan' at the rate of
fifty cents a meal and is a favorite haunt for tourists.
Hotel Le Conte in Big Greenbriar is well screened,
302 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
has running water fed by a cool mountain spring,
baths and lavatory, at the rate of $1.50 a day with
no weekly rates. A taxi, maintained by the proprie-
tor, J. W. Whaley, makes regular trips to Sevierville
and the guest pays $1.00 each way for this service.
Bryson City, North Carolina, is blessed with five
hotels. The old Freeman House, well known to
travelers, the Tri-Montaine Hotel, West Dell, and
the Entella. Here also is Will Cooper, an old pioneer
figure, of the Cooper House. Quite a well-known
figure, well acquainted with every trail and peak of
the Smokies is 'Doc* Bryson, who can give the
tourist information concerning guides, routes, and
sights of interest generally. Many bits of interesting
history are at his command.
The Indian Gap Hotel, R.F.D. Sevierville, and
the Wonderland Park Hotel at Elkmont have rates
of $2.50 a day, with lower rates by the week. The
latter hostelry has cottages convenient for rental
to guests or their friends ; only a mile below Elkmont,
its location is convenient to points of interest in this
part of the Smoky range. Horses and donkeys are
available here also for trail travel.
GUIDES
A good guide is a necessary personage in the end-
less hills of the Smokies. In order that the visitor
may have at his command all the information con-
cerning the points of interest and the trails in his
locality, the names are given herein of guides who
have been tried and who have had years of experi-
ence in their business. These men are known to be
dependable and resourceful, with a fair knowledge
of woodcraft and of camping as well as of fishing and
THE VISITOR 303
shooting. The names have been selected from men
especially competent in their districts, though many
of them are familiar with both slopes of the Smokies,
having originally lived as many mountaineers
have in North Carolina.
Big Greeribriar Section
The Pinnacle, Guyot, Le Conte, Brushy Mountain,
Porter's Flats.
Mack Whaley, care of Hotel Le Conte, R.F.D. 15,
Sevierville, Tennessee.
J. W. Whaley, care of Hotel Le Conte, R.F.D. 15,
Sevierville, Tennessee.
Gatliriburg Section
Le Conte, Alum Cave, Rainbow Falls, Sawtooth
Mountains
Andy Huff, Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
Will Ramsay, Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
Wiley Oakley, Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
Indian Gap Section
Indian Gap, Newfound Gap, Chimneys, Sugarlands,
Cherokee Reservation, Alum Cave, Rainbow
Falls, Le Conte.
Steve Cole, R.F.D. 15, Sevierville, Tennessee.
Wiley Oakley, Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
Lee Higdon, Elkmont, Tennessee.
Ike Laney, Proctor, North Carolina.
George Higdon, Proctor, North Carolina.
C. W. Standing Deer, Cherokee, North Carolina.
William Young Wolf, Cherokee, North Carolina.
Ike or Bob Bradley, Raven's Ford, North Carolina.
Elkmont Section
Long Arm, Cold Spring, Buckeye Gap, Siler's Bald,
304 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
Double Spring, Clingman Dome, Mount Collins,
Sugarland, Chimneys, Indian Gap, Andrew's Bald.
Sam Cook, Elkmont, Tennessee.
Lee Higdon, Elkmont, Tennessee.
Robert Trentham, Elkmont, Tennessee.
Ike Laney, Elkmont, Tennessee.
Middle Prong of Little River Section
Starkey Gap, Cold Spring, Hall's Cabin, Spence
Cabin, Thunder Head, Sam's Creek
Jim Moore, Townsend, Tennessee.
Harrison Moore, Townsend, Tennessee.
Newt McCarter, Townsend, Tennessee.
Cade's Cove Section
Thunderhead, Gregory Bald, Parson's Bald, Tel-
lassee, Calderwood Dam, Abram's Falls, Gregory's
Cave
John Oliver, Cade's Cove, Tennessee. (Rural Mail
Postman.)
Fondes Cable, Cade's Cove, Tennessee.
Jack Moody, Cade's Cove, Tennessee.
Walter Whitehead, Cade's Cove, Tennessee.
Some of these guides are known for their endur-
ance and outstanding knowledge of woodcraft. One
of them, Mack Whaley, of the Greenbriar Section,
is a typical specimen, as tough as rawhide, with keen
eye and sure step, intelligent, Mack sometimes lapses
into the picturesque vernacular of the Smoky Moun-
tains. In company with Williams and Crockett from
Le Conte Hotel one warm day in July, the author
saw a party of engineers led to Guyot and back in
one day by Mack, who was fresh when he came in
two hours after dusk; the other men were the worse
Cbpynqht 6v Thompson Company
ALUM CAVE CLIFF
Elevation, 4971 feet
THE VISITOR 305
for wear. Mack led the way unerringly, although
the trail was fifteen years old to him.
Lee Higdon is another outstanding guide who has
probably served in every square mile of the whole
Smoky range. 'Bill' Ramsay also has an excellent
reputation for his knowledge of the big hills. These
men are good fishermen, and if instructed to bring
fish to the camp-fire will invariably do so and that
within a remarkably short period. Wiley Oakley,
' part Indian ' as he proudly proclaims, is one of the
most picturesque figures among guides. Simple and
of childlike faith, Oakley is exceedingly popular;
this also might be said of Sam Cook, of Elkmont,
whose knowledge of woodcraft and bear hunting is
extensive. J. W. Whaley is also a bear hunter of re-
putation in the Big Greenbriar Section. Jack Huff,
a familiar figure of Gatlinburg, has spent many
bleak hours in all weathers on lonely Le Conte in
'The House that Jack Built' i.e., Jack Huff.
C. W. Standing Bear of the Cherokee Reservation
is an intelligent, educated Cherokee, who writes and
speaks both English and Cherokee, and has traveled
a good deal. He is fond of using the bow and arrow
at which he is very skillful. His greatest ambition is
to possess, for his headdress, the feathers of a Smoky
Mountain golden eagle slain with his locust bow and
sourwood arrows. He may succeed, for he is a sure
shot.
HIKERS
The hiker skims the cream of mountain enjoyment.
Equipped with light field accouterment and food,
he may spend the night wherever sundown finds
him. With an interest in natural phenomena; a fair
306 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
knowledge of tree, plant, or shrub; a practical under-
standing of geology; and a sense of the beauty of
scenery he is never lonely or at a loss for occupation.
In fact, he will discover that there is more activity
in the bush than at the corner of the busiest street.
He may carry alight rod and reel with some tempt-
ing flies, and delectable trout may grace his outdoor
table. No good outfit is complete without a light
camera and a pair of powerful binoculars with large
field so that he may readily keep in focus wild crea-
tures busy about their various affairs. If he happens
to be a radio fiend, he may even pack a light portable
set, and, hitching his aerial to a handy tree and
grounding in a wet spot, listen to the chatter of the
world.
If he has that rare power of registration, he may
put down on canvas beautiful things so that less
fortunate men in cities may pause before them in
quiet and removed galleries. In case he is a limner
he should attain first of all that primitive shock of
the origin of things. If a writer, his notebook should
also be filled with items which will paint in few words
the scene or thing depicted.
Most hikers of inexperience are not properly
equipped. The old-timer invariably seeks to have
himself comfortable at all hazards, realizing that a
good night's rest is worth a day's work at least in
preparing his bed* Such organizations as the Smoky
Mountain Hiking Qub, affiliated with the National
Mountaineering Associations, have effected quite a
working knowledge of hiking and camping among
their ambitious members, both veterans and ama-
teurs.
For Smoky Mountain climbing, a good stout boot,
THE VISITOR 307
laced well but not tightly to the calf, padded with
heavy woolen or cotton socks turned down over the
top of the boot, or high strong shoes with leggings,
should be worn. To prevent slipping, as on pine
needles or slimy rocks, footwear should be shod with
short caulks or substituted with heavy canvas 'gym*
shoes with rough fibered soles. The picturesque or
' cute' idea should always be sacrificed for hard serv-
ice. Short surveyor's caulks placed around the outer
part of the sole, with two at the inset, like cat's
claws, answer admirably when 'hopping' treacher-
ous rocks, which the hiker is sure to encounter,
where he might lurch unexpectedly into a rapid to
be dashed in pieces against projecting boulders.
Tight lacing of boots should be avoided, or the re-
verse ; if shoes are too loose, they will cause calluses
or blisters. Surgeon's adhesive tape is excellent to
substitute for abraded skin after washing the place
thoroughly in clean water and applying mercuro-
chrome, an excellent substitute for iodine which may
poison if it is not fresh. The boot should be dried
thoroughly if wet and well waterproofed with a
home-made mixture of beeswax, mutton suet, and
neat's-foot oil in the proportions of I, 2, and 3 as
named. This simple formula is better than whale-
or bear-oil and will not chill the feet as oil has a tend-
ency to do. Heavy canvas shoes are so nearly water-
proof that they will need no dressing.
A light Baker tent about 4' X 6' X 8', of oiled silk
or long-fibered cotton, saturated with a preparation
of a pound of melted paraffine to a gallon of gasoline
sprinkled on with a watering-pot, provides an ex-
cellent roofing that can be carried folded in a pocket
ready for instant use at any camping spot selected
3 o8 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
for the night. Knapsacks or blanket rolls may be
secured at any army salvage store at moderate price.
The camper will rarely need a canteen in the Smokies
owing to the innumerable springs; however, if in
camp, a canvas waterbag swung from a convenient
tree limb will keep water cool. A member of the Na-
tional Park Commission was lost in the Guyot Sec-
tion for three days mostly without water, but this
experience is exceptional. A light, strong belt axe is
worth its weight in gold to the camper and hiker.
The writer has only two big DON'TS. The first is,
Do NOT wear cotton underwear on cold hikes or
where cold winds strike the hiker at the top of the
trail after perspiration. If he does, his shroud will
be wrapped about him like an icy sheet on a living
body; congestion may result, perhaps pneumonia.
More premature graves have been filled from this
cause than from any other. If the wearer finds him-
self with cotton underwear saturated with moisture,
he should change at once to dry, warm clothing, an
extra set of which should always be carried. If no
change is handy, he should build a warm camp-fire
and dry out with a blanket wrapped about him for
protection. Woolen clothing conducts moisture
harmlessly to the surface, where it quickly disap-
pears.
The other DON'T is: NEVER go into an unknown
trail without a competent guide or without lightly
blazing trees on both sides, scanning both entrance
and exit carefully. To do so may mean a lost hiker
whose bleaching bones may adorn some fog-filled
ravine of the impenetrable brush. If a reader of
this chapter finds himself wholly and irrevocably
lost, let him as a last resort which is not without
THE VISITOR 309
its perils take a downstream course and endure
until civilization is reached, building a fire at night
and waiting sunrise which invariably occurs in the
WEST instead of the east! The writer has known of
several such parties starting out with high hopes of
finding themselves, only to wander aimlessly back
to the starting-point, hours afterward, exhausted
and undone. If there happens to be ice, stay awake
at all hazards. If a fog shuts down, stay where you
are and make the best of it, until it lifts; build a fire
after carefully raking away inflammable stuff, and
PUT OUT THE FIRE before leaving.
On account of panic, a compass very often is of
little use unless the lost man has kept his common
sense. A lost soul doubts even a compass. The best
thing to do is to secure a guide, of whom there is a
sufficient number in each section of the Smokies,
both sides, who offer their services at a reasonable
price. The writer also advises that the lost one do
not eat his shoestrings or horse-chestnuts unless he
wishes to be 'locoed/ A few berries, chestnuts,
beech mast, ripe mandrake apples, the cambium
layer of a tree, or some wealthy store of the tree
mouse high up in a dead snag may keep him alive for
a short time ; but the main idea is Do NOT WANDER
AWAY ALONE unless you know your trail absolutely
and can distinguish between man-made trails and
those of stock or wild animals. There is also the
added danger of tripping into the pan of an im-
mense bear trap set off-trail, though such engines
of death are usually marked by the mountaineers
with a skinned switch bridging the bushes directly
over it.
On the trail, if there fortunately happens to be in
3 io LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
one's party an eminent scientist, such as Orpheus
M. Schantz, naturalist, who has conducted many
collegiate tours into the Smokies for years; or Dr.
Liberty Hyde Bailey, world-renowned botanist and
editor of ' Bailey's Encyclopedia' the last word in
botanical information; or Dr. E. Laurence Palmer,
Professor of Botany at Cornell University; or Dr.
Hight C. Moore, eminent editor of religious pe-
riodicals; or a distinguished member of the National
Parks or Forestry Commission, such as Robert
Sterling Yard, Arno B. Cammerer, or Major Welch
hang on their words, for fifteen minutes in the
open with these experts is equal to a dozen classroom
lectures*
In his search for natural beauty, the hiker should
not neglect the study of the Anglo-Saxon in his na-
tive haunts ; the f old-timer ' whom he is sure to meet
at a wayside cabin as he 'rests a spell' to chat.
*Aunt' Clarindy may smoke a pipe in the chimney
corner and 'Uncle' Jesse may 'bottom cheers' from
white-oak ' splits, ' but the two are always ready to
relate ' whut used ter be in my time/ and right inter-
estingly also. Each of his hosts will surely want to
know where the visitor comes from, what is his busi-
ness, and whither he is bound; so this important in-
formation should be volunteered at the beginning
with due respect for the social amenities. It is an ex-
cellent method of introduction and harks back to
the period of history when visitors were few and your
host never forgot your name or occupation as long
as he lived. With a few adroit questions on the visi-
tor's part, without impertinence or undue inquisi-
tiveness, he will be repaid with extraordinary tales of
home customs, game and hunting, and legends, He
GOING TO THE STORE IN THE 'COVE*
THE VISITOR 311
will also invariably find that his hosts can trace their
ancestry more directly than he to the bonny clans of
Scotland, sturdy English or 'Black' Dutch stock,
or to the French Huguenots even to the Prussian
in some cases. These stories usually are immediate
and convincing with some such prefatory remark as
' 1 heerd grandfather say/ The old-timer is usually
fond of a genuinely interested audience and the hiker
must not relapse into the pert or 'smart Aleck f atti-
tude or he may start some wildly extravagant tales,
with no foundation in fact, at his own expense. He
may soon discover this when he catches sight of a sly
and knowing wink exchanged with one of the circle
who had seen through the veiled and humorous per-
siflage. The old-timer is no fool, though he may seem
innocent enough at times.
Some such contingency brought about the hu-
morous query on the part of 'Uncle* Bill Cole, vet-
eran bear hunter who was a little annoyed by a
smart tormentor. 'Young feller,' he said, squinting
his eyes, 'jest whut'd you do ef a b'ar met ye in the
path an* ye couldn't turn neither way nor go back
an 1 had no gun nor knife?' It was a poser, but the
'smart Aleck' essayed an alternative.
'I'd just choke him to death, Uncle Bill!'
'Would ye? No, you wouldn't nuther!'
'Why? What would you do, Uncle Bill?'
'Me? Humph! I'd jest take a long breath; and
when he rushed me with his mouth wide open I'd
jest ram my arm down his throat, take a good hand
holt on his tail and jerk him wrong side out'ards
and start him 'tother way!'
The resulting mirth was hard on the 'smart
Aleck,' as it need be.
312 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
If the hiker is a bird-lover as he generally is
he will be amply repaid by quick eyes and his broad-
field binoculars, for there never was a more com-
plete field of research for feathered friends than in
the lower coves of the Smokies near human habita-
tions. Here he will discover and record something
over a hundred and twenty-five species including
many rare and quiet ones that scarcely utter more
than a timid 'cheep/
On the higher uplands near the tops of the Smokies
these smaller feathered citizens are exceedingly
quiet and rather scarce. Owing to the predatory
habits of hawks, eagles, owls, cats, coons, minks, and
foxes they have learned from sad experience that
little birds should be seen and not heard. On top of
the big silence the author has never recorded more
than thirty-three species, as follows:
Junco hyemalis carolinensis Carolina Junco
Ceryle alcyon Belted Kingfisher
Sphyrapicus varius Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Phlceotomus pileatus Pileated Woodpecker
Melanerpes erythrocephalus Red-headed Woodpecker
Chaetura pelagica Chimney Swift
Empidonax minimus Least Flycatcher
Corvus corax principalis Northern Raven
Spinus pinus Pine Finch
Peucsea sestivalis Pine Woods Sparrow
Pipilo erythrophthalmus Towhee
Passerina cyanea Indigo Bunting
Helinaia swainsoni Swainson Warbler
Nannus hiemalis Winter Wren
Penthestes atricapillus Black-capped Chickadee
Hylocichla guttata pallasi Hermit Thrush
Planesticus migratorius Robin
Archilochus colubris Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Bonasa u. umbellus Ruffed Grouse
Meleagris gallopavo silvestris Wild Turkey
THE VISITOR 313
Aquila chrysaetos Golden Eagle
Cathartes aura septentrionalis Turkey Vulture
Bubo v. virginianus Great Horned Owl
Progne subis Purple Martin
Lanivireo solitarius alticola Mountain Solitary Vireo
Falco c. columbarius Pigeon Hawk
Buteo 1. lineatus Red-tailed Hawk
Nyctea nyctea Snowy Owl r
Pandion haliaetus cariolinensis Fish Hawk
Ardea h. herodias Blue Heron
Bartramia longicauda Upland Plover
Gallinago delicata Snipe
Thryothorus ludovicianus Carolina Wren
In the lower coves near human habitations the
observer will hear the bird orchestra in full swing,
and, if he awakens at daylight and waits for the first
notes of the wood thrush, which seems to predom-
inate in the open mountain spaces, he will hear it
best.
If the hiker be a photographer who wishes to carry
his attainments beyond mere snapshots, he will find
most satisfactory the orthochromatic or panchro-
matic film with a Wratten K 2 filter, to counteract
the prevailing blue of the Smokies. Or, to a still
greater degree, a red filter dispels that disconcerting
haze which baffles the amateur.
One hears the magic name 'Le Conte* on every
hand. There is a convenient provision on this peak
1 The author has only one record of this Arctic bird in the Great
Smokies. It was on October 26, 1909. He was on a bear 'stand,' and
the lower 'roughs' around Blanket Mountain were being driven by
hunters and dogs. The noise of the search doubtless disturbed the
owl, which, not seeing the hunter hidden deep in the azalea watching
for the bear, flew only a few feet above his head with only a slight
whisking sound from his great wings. It was just before noon of a
cold, bright day. Nyctea went off toward Siler's Bald and the upper
altitudes.
314 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
for the transient visitor in 'The House that Jack
Built,' a cabin well equipped with blankets for com-
fort, and, in addition, a big open fireplace in a room
large enough to accommodate sixty visitors at one
time in comfortable bunks. Its promoter, Andy
Huff, welcomes all hikers with a cup of hot coffee
upon rising and furnishes plenty of blankets for the
reasonable fee of one dollar. Food must be supplied
by the visitors themselves, as supplies are very diffi-
cult to pack to this point, which is 6636 feet above
sea-level.
Many enticing hikes lure the climber. One of the
most inviting of these, with the possibility of a night
or two in the open, is the one out the Long Arm to
Buckeye Gap and Siler's Bald, where an excellent
spring bubbles on the North Carolina side of the di-
vide. With tent spread here under stunted beeches,
the hiker is wooed with a spell of contentment that
is hard to shatter. If he cares, he may change his
route here through the sag eastward to Andrew's
Bald from Mount Collins Gap and return to Elk-
mont by way of the Sugarlands, making a complete
circle. Another route similar to this may be taken
from Gatlinburg to the Grass Patch, Alum Cave,
Rainbow Falls, Le Conte, and return by the easier
trail, spending a night upon Le Conte. At the Grass
Patch he may take the Alum Cave Prong of the
west fork of Little Pigeon and go to Indian Gap and
the Chimneys and from thence to Elkmont and Gat-
linburg by way of Reagan's Store. The bolder hikers
sometimes strike for Big Greenbriar and from thence
to the top of Guyot and return, or even follow the
State line along the top of the Sawtooth Mountains
through Dry Sluice Gap to Guyot; but this is con-
THE VISITOR 315
sidered a perilous trip even for experienced hikers,
who must fear fog and the ultimate question, 'Where
ami?'
FISHING
Most of the desirable pools for rainbow, bass, and
the largest speckled trout are in sequestered loca-
tions which require much hiking or horseback riding.
A night or two in the woods is the most desirable
method of reaching the biggest fellows with rod and
line. In the springtime it is not unusual to see moun-
taineers actually loaded down with strings of speck-
led trout. Meeting such a caravan near Reagan's
store, the author, in response to a query as to fishing
luck, was informed by three mountaineers in blue
overalls that they 'had ketched about a thousand*
in the three days they had been on Alum Cave
Prong!
Big Cataloochee 'Creek/ in North Carolina,
twelve miles from Mount Sterling, possibly offers
the best chance for rainbow varying from one foot
in length to as much as thirty inches! The three
branches or ' Prongs ' of Little Pigeon River also offer
'splendid sport for the wielder of rod and fly. These
are the Right Prong, Left Prong, and West Prong,
Right Prong heading toward Guyot; Left Prong
toward Bull Head, and the West Prong toward In-
dian Gap. The fish here perhaps are not so large and
plentiful as in Big Cataloochee, or even in Deep
Creek, North Carolina, and Raven Fork, and they
are mostly black and striped, or 'rock' bass, as
termed by mountain fishermen. Speckled trout,'
however, are generally plentiful everywhere, and
the connoisseur, who knows, likes to have a plate
' 3 i6 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
of them near his camp-fire. These little fellows are
best caught Avith bait of some sort.
As to flies, the consensus of opinion seems in favor
of the brown hackle, though with many adepts in
the art it is still a moot question. Professor Karl
Steinmetz has made a study of flies and he recom-
mends, the following schedule from April to Septem-
ber:
First preference:
Brown Hackle
Royal Coachman, or Coachman, and the Royal
Coachman Jungle-Cock, a 'hybrid' fly made
only by Beatty, of Butte, Montana
Cahiel
Cowdung
Black Gnat
Queen of the Waters
Then, in the order named:
March Brown
Montreal
Grizzly King
For all-round fishing he recommends the brown
hackle. The Greenbriar Section of the Smokies on
the West Prong of the East Fork of Little Pigeon,
east of Le Conte, is also highly praised by Professor
Steinmetz.
'The fly varies according to the light/ says Charlie
Gill, who has angled in practically every stream in
the Smokies. 'A light one in the early morning; a
slightly darker for noon; and a gray or black for
evening. But I could always do best with a minnow
tail hooked screw fashion to produce the effect of
movement/
'Makes no difference about the kind of fly/ states
THE VISITOR 317
Matt Whittle, an Izaak Walton of Smoky Mountain
fishermen. 'I've seen these mountain boys catch
big ones with a bare hook practically, with every
vestige of the fly gone apparently: the more ragged
the better. An appearance of age always helps a fly.
The manipulation has much to do with success.
However, when a fellow is hungry and wants real
fish with the science left out, point your flyhook with
a stick-bait or wasp-nest grub and watch 'em bite!'
J. F. Long, who has won many flycasting con-
tests and is considered an expert, says: ' I like a white
miller. Sometimes I use a Professor to wake 'em up
when they're dead. After that, if they show inter-
est, I run the gamut until I find one they're real
hungry after. Pork rind is good for bass, especially
if it has a red string in it. One must make a study of
their feeding. Some scientist up here said fish were
colorblind. My eye! They're artists when it comes
to color!'
'Billy' Mclntyre declares: 'Brown hackle is very
good, or bucktail. The Royal Coachman is excel-
lent, too, and the Queen of the Waters. When they
are hungry you don't have to go far from these. I
like a black gnat, too.'
Ed Akers and Henry Brandau vote for 'brown
hackle, Royal Coachman, and Queen of the Waters.
Don't care for a Professor especially. Too gaudy.
A white miller works very well. 1
A. S. Birdsong, a well-known sportsman who in-
troduced the first game-warden law in Tennessee,
says: 'I have fished every nook of the Smokies, I
suppose. When I want fish I use stick-bait or wasp-
nest grubs. However, when they are hungry they
will rise to chips you throw in the water. Then most
3 i8 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
any fly is good, even artificial grasshoppers. After
all, a fellow must study the locality he is in. Trout
are protected in spawning season. I like a fiery whip-
stitch of a black bass. He's interesting and some-
times will jump clear of the water after your fly.'
Reuben Stinnett, mountaineer, likes a white
miller, while Reuben's father, 'Uncle* Tip prefers
'black snake-feeder 1 (dragon-fly). 'They'll git 'em
nearly every time ! * This is a common fly seen about
mountain streams. 'I don't like these si-godlin
things they call artificial minners. They plum' scare
the fish!'
C. W. Standing Deer, of the Cherokee Reserva-
tion, says : * I like horsehair lines better than the com-
mercial kinds. They don't get wet and sink. I can
make a fifty-foot line in twenty minutes. It's all in
knowing how to knot them so they will reel. I al-
ways bait with wasp-nest grubs I find in the bushes
in the woods or stick-bait along the edges of streams.
Good fishing on Deep Creek.'
Standing Deer pronounces the name Smoky
Mountains with something which is spelled phonet-
ically like Guke-Tsun'ts Ga-Too'chee, the Chero-
kee dialect differing from ethnological bureau re-
cords of Atali'gwa Gisku Yu'sti. He claims also to be
a grandson of the great Cherokee story-teller, Suye'-
ta, the Chosen One, and is a great champion with
the bow.
The unanimous preference for the brown hackle,
expressed by all of the fishermen, and the statement
of one of them that the line should float and not
sink, suggests that the so-called bi-visible dry fly
will bring the expert dry-fly fisherman a rich reward*
This fly, which is now supplied in most of the best
THE VISITOR 319
tackle shops in the North, is in essence nothing but a
brown hackle dressed to float, with plenty of tackle
and with a bit of white feather added to aid the eye
of the fisherman,
HUNTING
Deer are banned in both States of North Carolina
and Tennessee except for a two-spike buck in the
latter State at a season when the meat is not fit to
eat. Turkey is entering its third year of prohibition.
Says the experienced Mr. Birdsong: 'You can per-
suade these people to do anything, but you can't
make 'em do anything. The mountaineers will al-
ways kill deer and turkey as long as they live in the
woods.. I even had 'em raising turkey from eggs up
here.'
Bears seem to be fairly plentiful, three having
been slain recently right under the very shadow of
Mount Mitchell and the meat packed in flivvers
that stood near by. Large bears that turn 'stock
killers' when mast fails in the mountains are hunted
with relentless vengeance on the part of mountain-
eers. J. W. Whaley, standing on the summit of
Brushy Mountain, pointed to the fantastic 'hog-
backs' of laurel above Porter's Flats and said : * I got
nineteen bear in there last winter 1 ' Bears shift much,
owing to the supply of mast and because of ' public
works' or logging operations. For this reason it is
difficult to establish any rules about bear hunting.
The delicacy of bear meat, furthermore, is over-
rated. After all, they axe a cross between a dog and a
pig, smelling very much like the former. They
should be killed only in ' Indian time ' as moun-
tain hunters term it which is after emergence from
hibernation in spring, for their fur only.
320 LURE OF THE GREAT SMOKIES
There is also no guarantee for -the permanence of
their abode in the Great Smokies unless the Park
authorities take the matter into their future calcu-
lations; if it is not done, Bruin may soon be gone for-
evermore. Bruin is a harmless, fleeting sort of fellow
fighting a losing battle.
As to snakes, the rattler, or old Utsanati he
' has a bell ' and sounds his warning when encroached
upon. A pillbox full of permanganate of potash is a
much more excellent antidote than the so-called
4 snake medicine' found in some parts of the
Smokies, unless it is first given to the snake, where-
upon he will instantly die without biting any one.
THE END
