High Mountains Rising (29 page)

Log construction was not solely a product of necessity. Some families quickly replaced pioneer log structures with homes of frame construction as the means became available. However, log construction persisted in many parts of the Southern mountains, even after milled timber became readily available. It was supported, in part, by a strong community work ethic that one owed his or her neighbor “a day's work.” As long as one did not want a house that was significantly different from one's neighbors, the community would help build one's home. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, as more and more Appalachians were pulled into “public work,” that is, work away from the farm, fewer people had as much time to help their neighbors. Community building did persist, but more often they built less labor-intensive structures, such as the single-wall, vertical board “boxed” house. Log construction continued to be used through the first half of the twentieth century (and experienced a small revival during the Great Depression), but it was more typically used for barns and agricultural outbuildings.

Another form of material culture in southern Appalachia that shows cultural intermixing, as well as the impact of social change, is basketry. Quite probably the oldest continuous craft tradition in the Southern mountains, basketry has been found in some form in the region for approximately 9,000 years. Twilled rivercane basketry was introduced as early as five hundred years ago and is still used by some Cherokee basketmakers, although the raw materials are becoming more difficult to obtain. In the nineteenth century, white oak became the most common material used by both Cherokee and Anglo-American makers of baskets.

For two centuries, Cherokee and Anglo-American basket traditions have influenced each other. Settlers of European descent had to adapt to the native materials and were undoubtedly influenced by Cherokee practices. Possibly the most radical early change in Cherokee basketry was the inclusion of handles on many baskets, a change inspired by a desire to market baskets to a non-Indian clientele.

Through the early twentieth century, both Cherokee and non-Indian craftspeople made baskets for home use, but baskets have also long been traded or sold commercially. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century, peddlers often bought wagonloads of baskets in the mountains and took them out of the immediate region to sell them. Baskets were once used for functional purposes, for holding and processing food and, among the Cherokee, for catching fish and as backpacks. However, in the twentieth century the lower cost of factory-produced items has generally reduced this functional use. Instead baskets, along with many other handicrafts, have become works of art rather than functional crafts.

Although for some in rural southern Appalachia basketmaking supplemented subsistence living, it was also an art form. Individual basketmakers, as well as basketmaking families, demonstrate aesthetic preferences for particular forms and widths of splits, and basketmakers often have an uncanny ability to recognize the work of a specific person. Among the Cherokee, where dyes have been used more often in baskets, color preferences also reflect individual artistic choice. Basketmaking can also be a part of cultural identity. As Cherokee basketmaker Louise Goings said, “In my own self, when I make baskets, I get this feeling, you know, this being Indian. And it gives me a good feeling about myself that I can, you know, show a part of culture that's been for years.”
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The transformation of Appalachian crafts, such as basketry, into tourist commodities was aided by both the growth of tourism that followed the coming of the railroad in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the work of various charitable and educational organizations. Berea College and various settlement schools began “fireside industry” programs that marketed Appalachian crafts, and these efforts were aided by the establishment of organizations such as the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild in 1928 and the Cherokee Indian Crafts Co-op in 1946. These institutions both preserved (in some cases revived) and changed local craft traditions.
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Weaving is one tradition that was significantly altered by the crafts revival. In the nineteenth century, weaving, especially of coverlets, was a fairly specialized craft in the rural community. By the early twentieth century, the railroad made commercially produced fabric inexpensive and readily available, and hand weaving declined dramatically. By the time of the “fireside industries,” schools were often teaching local people to weave who had no experience with it at home. In 1911, Berea College in eastern Kentucky hired Swedish weaver Anna Ernberg to direct their weaving program, and she introduced lightweight looms and new fabrics. Swedish designs quickly became a part of the “traditional” Appalachian weaving promoted by Berea and some of the settlement schools.

Folk art is the art of everyday life; although it is connected to tradition, it is also always changing. Most folk art combines practical and creative
needs. A quilt serves the purposes of keeping people warm and of artistic pleasure. Like many forms of folk art, quilting is commonly a product of “aesthetic recycling” in which the reuse of otherwise discarded materials serves both creative and financial needs. Many older quilters remember the days when flour and feed sacks were used to piece quilts, and old socks and other worn-out clothing were unraveled for batting to make the quilts thicker. Ruby Haynes Caudill of Carcassonne, Kentucky, remembers from her childhood in the 1920s and 1930s, “We bought feed, some what we didn't raise for the stock, and it came in bags made of fabric and [Mom] used those to make quilts out of. I have one of them yet that she made from feed sacks that she quilted in fans. When clothing would wear out, if there were good pieces in the back or shirt tails, or whatever, she would save that and tear it into squares and set it into quilt tops and make quilts out of them.”
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Of course, those who could afford it also made quilts from new materials. In the Blue Ridge Mountains, quilters distinguish between “plain” and “fancy” quilting.
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The plain quilts often were a product of necessity and more often used recycled materials. Although quilts often seem timeless, preferences for colors and designs change from decade to decade, and fancy quilting in Appalachia, as elsewhere, has been influenced by periodic national revivals. For example, in the 1920s a huge nationwide revival of interest in quilting popularized pastel colors and patterns such as Grandmother's Flower Garden, Dresden Plate, and the Double Wedding Ring. Although many Appalachian quilters still learned from tradition, quilt patterns became available from mail-order catalogs and magazines.

Highly individualistic artistic expressions are often displayed as Appalachian folk art. In some cases, these are variations of traditional crafts, such as carving, but in others they are art forms, such as representational painting, which is not traditional. For some art collectors, the more bizarre the art, the more likely it is to be labeled as “folk” even though it does not necessarily express the shared traditions of the community. Sometimes the line between “folk” and “outsider” art is hard to define. One artist, Chester Cornett (1913–81) of Perry County, Kentucky, took the traditional craft of chairmaking into a highly creative and eccentric direction. Cornett learned the art in a traditional manner but resisted the urge followed by other chairmakers in eastern Kentucky to mechanize the process and make chairs quickly and cheaply. Instead he lavished care on the traditional process but broke from tradition in creating chairs with extra legs, exaggerated proportions, and other odd characteristics. Today, the chairs made by this troubled and often reclusive man are considered museum pieces.
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An artist who managed to make highly individualistic art into a community tradition is Minnie Adkins of Elliot County, Kentucky. Although it
is typically thought of as a male diversion, Adkins took up whittling as a child. As an adult, to supplement her family's income she began to sell her whimsical painted carvings of chickens, possums, and other animals. Discovered by collectors, Minnie Adkins eventually became promoted to an internationally renowned folk artist. Rather than seeing herself as a uniquely talented individual, however, Adkins convinced family members and neighbors that they too could produce marketable folk art, and Adkins's home in Pleasant Valley has become the center of a grassroots tradition of carving and painting.

Everyday creative expression is found in many other activities that may not be labeled as “art” or “craft.” Rural people often find artistic outlet in gardening, canning, or other forms of food preparation. Food traditions, similar to other forms of folklife, are constantly changing, but the Appalachian diet (and Southern food preferences in general) is noted for its conservatism. Throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, pork and corn were central to the Southern diet. These two items are emblematic of the marriage of European and Native food traditions that took place in the early days of European American settlement.

In the nineteenth century in the Southern mountains, the traditional cornand pork-based diet was supplemented by wild game and the gathering of wild plants such as ramps, sochan, poke, creases, and wild berries. Some wild greens offered a much-needed change in the spring from the monotony of the winter diet. However, as necessity and the availability of lands on which to gather have declined, so has the consumption of wild plants, although some still hold an allure. Of these perhaps the most notable, or notorious, are ramps, a form of wild leek. Although they are increasingly difficult to obtain, some towns still hold festivals that celebrate the consumption of ramps (and attract tourists). Nevertheless, much of the local lore about the plants consists of how unappealing a person will be to the opposite sex after consuming the plant because of its strong onion-garlic smell.

The gathering of wild plants reflects a strong influence of Cherokee cultural knowledge on non-Cherokees in southern Appalachia. For the past century and a half, Cherokee and non-Indian diets in the region have been quite similar. However, there are certain items that still signal Cherokee identity. Perhaps the most important is traditional bread made from a mixture of cornmeal and hot water that is wrapped in green corn blades and then boiled or baked. Often cooked beans, or less often chestnuts or pumpkin, are mixed with the cornmeal. Fry bread has also become popular, particularly as a form of Cherokee fair food. Not originally native to the Cherokee, fry bread was invented by Native American groups as a response to the
provision of government rations of white flour and lard. Today it is popular among many Native American groups and is a shared symbol of native identity.

Cherokee traditional knowledge of indigenous plants also shaped the rich store of herbal lore in the region. Appalachians used wild plants and a number of nonherbal substances such as onions, kerosene, tobacco juice, and whiskey to treat illnesses. These practices also have diminished over time, although the gathering of some wild plants, such as ginseng, still survives. Even in the nineteenth century, the hunting of ginseng was carried out as much for economic as medicinal reasons. By the late nineteenth century, much of the ginseng dug in Appalachia ended up in Asian markets, and the plant has since become increasingly scarce. Although many Appalachians are familiar with its tonic effect, the high price ginseng brings is a strong inducement to sell for those who still have the traditional knowledge to locate ginseng in the mountains. Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee lead the country in the export of wild ginseng, and some have speculated that per pound, ginseng is the most valuable renewable resource in central Appalachia. However, the loss of land used as a “commons” for hunting, gathering, and pasturing has sharply limited the areas where “sang” can be hunted. In some parts of the Southern mountains, such as the Smokies, where the government owns much of the wild land, such activity is illegal, whereas in West Virginia, mountaintop removal has destroyed ginseng's habitat.
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As with foodways, Cherokee and non-Cherokee have shared many of the same folk medicinal beliefs. A notable difference is that Cherokee folk healing practices tend to be grounded in a traditional belief system. Although many Cherokees converted to Christianity in the early nineteenth century, traditional healers found ways to reconcile Christianity and traditional beliefs. Today, many older people are still familiar with the specific healing properties of certain plants, but it is difficult to know how widespread the use of traditional healing rituals continues to be. Both because they often were condemned by Christian missionaries and because of their inherently private nature, traditional healing practices generally are not made public.
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Another aspect of traditional Cherokee ceremony that was often condemned by the early missionaries (particularly the Baptists) was dance. Still, Cherokee dance has remained remarkably resilient and has undergone periodic revivals in the twentieth century. The person most responsible for the continuation of the dance tradition was Will West Long, the son of a Cherokee minister. In the 1930s and 1940s, West Long provided leadership for the continuation of the tradition and worked with anthropologists to study and document Cherokee dance. More recently, his
nephew Walker Calhoun has emerged as an important Cherokee dance leader, and in 1992 the National Endowment for the Arts designated Calhoun a National Heritage Fellow.
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The singing of chants and the use of a few percussive instruments, such as the gourd rattle, a wooden water drum, and turtle shell leg rattles, accompany traditional Cherokee dance. Generally it is a low-key form of dancing consisting of a low shuffling gait, although the Booger dancer in particular was noted for its use of lewd humor and clownlike behavior. In more recent decades, some Cherokee dancers have been attracted by the flashier “fancy dance” styles of the Plains Indians. Although the adoption of fancy dance has been motivated in part by its audience appeal, it is also a reflection of the growing importance of pan-Indian pow-wows and dance festivals.