Bear Grease - Ep. 8: Fifty Years in the 'Baccer Field (Appalachian Culture, Part 1)

Episode Date: June 30, 2021

On this podcast, we’ll explore southern Appalachian culture through the life of a family of farmers, musicians, and bear hunters. The Clark family in East Tennessee are relics of the region’s past. Clay also interviews national expert, Dr. Daniel Pierce of the University of North Carolina Asheville, who will take us a on a guided tour of the regions storied past, helping us understand both fact and fiction. You’ll hear some bluegrass music, and we’ll even talk about Dolly Parton. This is part one of a two part series on Appalachian Mountain culture. You’re going to enjoy meeting the Clarks! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. How many years do you think you grew up to back? My time I was big enough to work in a backer patch, and that was real little until 2004 was the last year I growled. So I probably was 50 years in the backer field.

Really? Yeah. On this episode of the Bear Greas podcast, I want to take you on a journey into the mountains of Southern Appalachia. It'll be my pleasure to introduce. you to the Clarks, a family of farmers, musicians, and bear hunters who are relics of the region's culture. Dr. Daniel Pierce is a professor and author and national authority on Appalachian culture, who will give us a guided tour through its fascinating history. We'll listen to the life story

of this family, hear some bluegrass picking, and wade through the fact and fiction of the region's stereotypes. might even talk about Dolly Parton. The people that lived, they lived, like I said, with the earth. They had to make their living. That's why I'm saying you cannot separate your music from your lifestyle. You cannot separate your lifestyle, your religion, your politics, from your music. It's a part of life.

And that was what our music was in the mountains. It was a part of our life. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll a call. Explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. This podcast, 50 years in the backer field,

is part one of a two-part series on Appalachian Mountain Culture. Check back for part two called Moonshine, NASCAR, and Bear Hunting. Also, I want to tell you again that we're going weekly with this podcast. We'll continue to do our documentary-style podcasts like this one every other week, but on the off-weeks, we'll release what we call the Bear Grease Render, where we'll discuss, dissect, and distill the documentary-style episodes with a band of merry guests. It's going to be a guaranteed blast.

It's like the Bear Grease podcast, unplugged. You're going to love it. And this little cabbage right here, You see that right there? Mm-hmm. Forty-five days. Mm-hmm. When I'm going to see a cabbage head, a dew and slaw, one of these heads would.

When you cut them up, they make a right smart, so I know I've had them for people, didn't eat all of them. Did you ever grow tobacco? Yeah. Now, what did you do with it? Well, tobacco I growed was burly, and I growed it in all these fields. Really? You grew it commercially. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I've done of farming besides tomatoes. Really?

Really? That's the voice of Mr. Roy Clark, not to be confused with the Roy Clark from the show, He-Ha. This Roy Clark lives in Cock County in eastern Tennessee in the heart of the Smoky Mountains, which is a range inside the Appalachian Range. East of his front porch, you can see the high, ridge-line border of the river. North Carolina and to the north you'll hear the intermittent sound and muffled barks of his hounds I've never seen Mr. Roy not wear overalls it seems he has an everyday pair and it's going out pair the latter looking sharp and new mr. Roy looks

like he could be from Ireland in his younger years his hair was red but now it's a faded shade of gray and white he's 72 years old and he's a living relative of times past. And you'll have to take my word for this. He's a bear hunter amongst bear hunters. He's dedicated his life to raising, training, and

hunting bear hounds. He has a rich history with the American plot hound, a breed of big game dog endemic to the Appalachians. How many dogs have you got out here, Mr. Roy? 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 18, 19, 12.

20, 21, 22, 23, 24. 24 out here and I've got some in the barn and stuff. That's a bear dog pack. That's two or three packs, ain't you? Two of three packs. But yon is a young dog that's doing pretty good. Did I hunt a little bit? Yeah. Do you ever have a dog that didn't start out very good

that maybe was slow to start, that ends up being a top hound? Yeah, but I'm going to tell you something most of the time. Because they're the natural. It's the ones that you're best. Just most time. Southern Appalachia is a storied region of the United States. It includes the entire state of West Virginia, the western side of Virginia,

western North Carolina, northwestern, South Carolina, eastern Kentucky, east Tennessee, northern Georgia, and northeast Alabama. Basically, the region is defined by mountains, and it's roughly the southern one-third of the Appalachian mountain range, which runs from Newfoundland, Canada, all the way down to Alabama. This range includes at least 30 mountains higher than 5,000 feet

and the highest peak east of the Mississippi River, Mount Mitchell, and North Carolina, which is 6,684 feet above sea level. The range is an alternating series of ridges running north and south, which acted as a natural barrier to the western expansion of the early colonies that would become the United States. This topographic layout is important because the culture, like everywhere else, has been shaped by the land from which it was hewn.

In this case, the mountains proved to be by, both in Eden, but also a cussed land, ridden with all varieties of scarcity. I began exploring the Appalachian region some years ago in search of the region's legendary bear hunters and houndsmen, of which there are many. But what I found was more robust. I found a cultural treasure rivaling any place I've ever visited. Before we officially meet Mr. Roy, I want to be clear about something. Appalachia is a very diverse and modern region of the country.

They have swanky coffee shops, distinguished universities, and target superstores. I've chosen to highlight rural Appalachia to get a glimpse into what it once was, and the way that it still is to some. And frankly, I'm fascinated with rural culture and have the higher, respect for people like the Clark family. Meet Mr. Roy. Mr. Roy, what are your, what are some of your earliest memories living back here in East Tennessee?

I can remember when I said little I couldn't even hold a plow up. I had plow them bottoms right down over them for the table of horses. Is that right? And what were you all planting back then? Corn and tobacco. Hmm. Corn and tobacco. Yeah, and hit a rock and he'd make blue places on your side and stuff because I'd have to walk up in that plow.

And it would hit you on the side and felt like it broke your river something. What year were you born? 1948. So you're 73. Three. I'll be 73 in November. So what did your family do back in? We're in Cock County, Tennessee.

Actually, Daddy drove a school bus when I was real live. And then, well, before that, he drove a log truck. When my grandpa broke his leg twice, I believe he drove a log trip from a 10-year-old up till he... So your grandfather was a logger? Yeah. They logged up in the gut up there. And they'd haul them over there under the derrio, put them off over there, and then they'd load them on a box car next to railroad track. Mm-hmm.

Or they'd roll them off, and then they'd load them on that railroad car and hollow out of here. And then he drove a school bus And while I was in school And then I guess before I was out of school He went to work for the county Driving a bulldozer and stuff There wasn't a lot of money to be made in this country A long time ago

Yeah Okay, what were some of the first things that you did To make money? Y'all were going and getting coal out of Yeah, in Kentucky with my grandpa That's after I got like 15 year old I'd drive him to Kentucky and we'd hauling coal and stuff out of Kentucky.

Yeah. And go around and peddle it around. And then in the summertime, we'd go to Hendersonville to his daughters and had peach orchards and apple orchards and growled watermelon and cantalope. And we'd take that log truck and haul them in here and haul peaches and petal am out and haul watermelons and cantaloupes and petal am out. So what did you, what did you do for? for a living. What kind of work have you done? When I got out of high school, I worked a little bit as a

mason helper, building some buildings on the Stokely Van Camp down there. And then I went to Merkin, Inca, which was a fabric place. Okay, in a factory. Yeah. And then I went in service for two years. And then after I got out of service, I come back to Inka. Okay. And then it came up, I run for sessions court clerk and got elected for hit, and I farmed all the time that I worked at ink. I formed. Tell me about your farming. Well, it was hard work and not much money is mostly what it was. I grew tobacco and I grew tomatoes and me and my brother-in-law, and the whole family's worked into tomatoes, and we grew a couple acres of tomatoes.

Where were you selling the tomatoes? We had taken them to the packing house in North Carolina. Oh, really? We actually sold some in Tennessee, too, but mostly in North Carolina where we took them to to sell them. And we done decent with that for a while, and then the tomatoes got sold. They figured out wanted to drop a price, and you not make nothing out of them. And we grow down for, I don't know, 10 or 15 years, I guess. And then one year it come up that we took a load up there, and when it comes time to get the check, we didn't get no money.

We got a bill. We owe them 50 cents a box for packing. So we... Are you being serious? I'm dead serious, yeah. I said they went in a hole on them. I said we owe them, we never paid it. So I went to Atlanta, Georgia, on the farmer's market down there.

And we was going in a hole. We wasn't even going to come out that year. And my brother-in-law, which was Edward, and my wife, Brendan, and the youngans, and my sister, Diane. and her youngings, and they'd pick the tomatoes here. Edward would truck them to me down there, and I stayed three weeks down there on the farmer's market

and didn't even come home, and we come out making some money off of them. Sold them at the farmer's market. But we didn't go in the hole, but we quit raising them after that. But you still raised tomatoes today, though. I still raise them to eat and tell you the truth. I raised some late crops of tomatoes here after that, and I ain't talking about a big amount.

I'm talking about that field right down there, so three or four tenths. Yeah, three or four, tenths of an acre. Tenths of an acre. And I actually made more money, and her peddling them to these restaurants and stuff, and taking them and selling them, I made more money off of them. Like if I had 1,500 plants out and I could make $4.5 a plant, that was like, what, $4,500? Yeah. There's some money in them to make us, but the middleman got in the middle of it, took all the money away from him.

and then the backer it was you made a little bit on here but it wasn't old so you grew you grew tobacco for how many years you think you grew tobacco actually my time I was big enough to work in a backer patch and that was real little until 2004 was the last year I growled it so I probably was 50 years in the backer field really growing about 20 acres or so well no Not to start with. Yeah. But on the last I might have had close to that. But now we just mostly growed what we had when I was growing up.

What he means when he says that he grew someone else's tobacco is that he's referring to a government tobacco allotment, meaning a person with the allotment is able to sell a certain amount of tobacco. The person can also lease out their allotment to another farmer to grow. That's like daddies and papies and my grandpa up here. I grew up here at the time I was in high school, my grandpa's here. And he had about a half acre. Yeah.

That what he had. Tell me how does your bear hunting fit in with your work? I mean, like it's clear that you have dedicated a big part of your life to bear hunting with hounds. I had to work backer off in the fall of the year, and some of them would be a hunting, and I'd keep the radio on and listen, and couldn't work back for listening to them, and stuff for grading it off, and they'd get one of going, and I've left the backer barn, and load me up six or eight dogs, and hit the mountain up yonder. I remember one time as a running one, and I went up there and packed it,

and they're still on the other side of the mountain, and I packed the barn and treated it and killed the buyer and had it kill when they got to him instead. I thought that was first. You were working tobacco. Yeah. A couple of things. When he said he packed a bear,

what he meant is that the other guy's dogs were chasing the bear. Mr. Roy heard their dogs running the bear, and he sent his dogs in his reinforcement. He packed them. Secondly, we just grazed the surface of Mr. Roy's bear hunting in this section. In episode two, we're going to dive much deeper. I was born into fire hunting. My grandpa bar hunted and my daddy bar hunted.

My other grandpa here bar hunted a little bit. My great uncle bar hunted. It's been some bear hunting here ever since I was born. I think I was with Papi and I was three-year-old, and we was on the log truck and the gutt the first bar. Daddy ever killed because I remember sitting on top of it on that log tree. But if it's something else, I probably wouldn't remember it. What are your first memories of bear hunting back in there with your dad and grandpa?

Well, I can remember when I was, say, six-year-old. If I could wake up a morning when they'd get, they wouldn't, Daddy wouldn't get me up. But if I could wake up, a lot of times she'd let me go, you know, Miss school and go. But then we would go by her hunting and we would have to lead dogs through the woods. It got so that I'd have to leave the trail dog out in front of the other dogs. I wasn't big enough to hold him. Well, when I'd go with Daddy out in the woods and he'd be of hunting a track, and if he'd put Rambler and tie him up around a tree,

and then it'd make me stay with him, then he'd be trying to see which ways are going, and then he'd holler for me to bring that dog. Well, I noticed when I untied that dog, he was going to drag me down so i'd i noticed i turned him loose i'd be in trouble too so i'd just take and get two handholds on that ledge drop and here we'd go and i'd fall down and daddy 'd catch me when i got to him and i know one time daddy said you're going to have to lead the rambler we ain't got enough to lead the dogs and i told pappy i said my grandpa i said i ain't want to lead

no dog and he said you'll have to go with him soon and i said well i'll tell you one thing i may go this time but the next time I go bar hunting I'll be big enough to tell him so I ain't leading their dog because son hit's care of me to death they had to get that dog and they had this fire over here that they had bought and uncle burner bought it in Florida I guess and they brought it back here and they had hit over well I was I don't know about three year old then three four and they had food with that bar and food with it with dogs and stuff where I was afraid of it so I didn't want near it and daddy'd get me and set me up on top of it and You talk about wanting off or something.

They had a bear. Yeah, a live bear. A live bear. And I wanted off that sucker, buddy. I didn't want it. I was about like grandpa was. He'd tree him in the barn. There's an old barn down here.

Every time he'd get loose, it's about him up in the tear poles down. How common was it for bear hunters back then to have a live bear? Well, I never did hear of another buyer except after I got acquainted with Hort Dillenham up, yonder. And he said that he said that he, His daddy had one at a store up ire, and that was, you know, years ago, too. What about camping and hunting back in the Gulf with them, with your dad and grandpa? Yeah, we'd actually load everything we had on a log truck, and you put your dogs and your food and you tarpauling and everything on it and go to the

guff, and then we'd sleep in the back of that truck and put some hay down and stuff to sleep on, and take a tarpaulian and cover over the back of it and let it come over the side and cook beside it and hunt like that. And when we had them old jeeps and we'd hunt out lamb jeeps and stuff. Roy, how would you describe Appalachian mountain culture? I describe it in a way that there's no better way to grow up

or have your youngans or your grand youngings to grow up in the Appalachian culture, then I believe that's the best they are. Now, making money, that ain't the best they are. But having your family and being close to your family and having good values to come to them, I think you can't beat it. And actually the disaster stuff, like tornadoes

and, well, even flooding and stuff like that. And the tornadoes and stuff, I've never seen one here in my whole life. Yeah. And I just think that's good, because down to $2,000 and something at a flat country. They have to worry about it every time it comes storm. Yeah, I wouldn't like to live like that.

Like I say, if you want to make money, you'd better go somewhere else besides here. But I don't think it's making money, and if you can make it, is all they are to lie. I want to step back a generation and introduce you to Mr. Britt Davis, who is Mr. Roy's father-in-law. It was a great pleasure to briefly speak with him. I was taken aback by his story, but mainly how it seemed to him to be so common. Mr. Britt, how old are you? If I lived on the second day of June, I'll be 90. 90. What year were you born?

31. 1931. So you grew up, were you born in this holla? Yeah, right up the road there about two miles. And what kind of work did you do your whole life? Well, I farmed some. I logged soon, and I worked about a year on this interstate down here, and then I went to work for the county road department, and stayed there at a retard. Have you traveled much out of Appalachia?

No. You've stayed right here. I went to Texas one time whenever Roy was an army out there, and that's the only trip I ever made. Really? I lived on up in the Gulf up there. Well, I'd say we was up there about four or five years to my daddy got killed up there and I enjoyed that up there a lot.

How did your father get killed? With a log, the log rolled over you. Really? How old were you? I was about 12 year old. Wow. How did that impact your life? Well, it made it rough on me for a while. Yeah. Yeah, we was up there whenever the, about the time

I started logging it, but he got killed. We left out a long time before they got down. So did you have to kind of, were you the oldest son? I was the only son. So you kind of had to take care of your family? Yeah. Really? So was that a lot of responsibility for you then?

Yeah, we moved back home here, up here. And my grandparents hit me with it. And I raised the crop of the bagger and bought the place where I was. live. Mm. How old were you to? I'd say I was about 13. Really?

So you raised a crop of tobacco when you were 13. Yeah. And bought a piece of property. Yeah. Wow. And that's the property that we went to earlier today up at the head of this holler. Just go pull out of you? Yeah.

Yeah. So you bought that place when you were 13? Yeah. I'll be darned. And so you've lived there your whole life then? Yeah. whole life what are your earliest memories mr brett oh law i can i can remember things back then better than again now really i can remember um a carrying me and uh us stopping and talking to our neighbors

that was before we moved to the good so that way in the 1930s did your family have a car had an automobile no no no what how did you get around But it's walked. Walked. You didn't, everything you needed you could walk to get. Yeah, there's little stores all around here. Mm. Three or four.

I'd say it was in the late 30s or the early 40s before that there was ever a car in this country. Is that right? Yeah. A doctor lived right up the road there. He had the first. Tell me about how the doctor, worked in this community. He'd go around with his horse, and people wanted to be doctored.

They'd tie red or a white flag on their mailbox, and he'd stop. He'd ride his horse up to your house and knocked on the door and say, what's wrong? And then he finally got a car, and they'd do the same thing. Do you ever remember being sick and him having to come to your house to doctor on you? Yeah. Really? What would you have been sick from? Maybe the strip of the odor or something like that. And he'd come give you some penicillin maybe or something?

And that's what he doctored with was penicillin. Penicillin. Wow. When did electricity come back in here? I'd say it was about 52 or 53 before I got it. So you were in your 20s before you had electricity? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Do you remember those days? Oh, yeah. What would you do once it got dark?

Would you light the house with... Well, he'd light up a lamp or two. What kind of lamp? Was it a coal-burning? Yeah. And you would, what would you do? You would sit around with the family. We'd just sit around and go to bed.

I guess that's... They finally got a radio. Mr. Britt, do you remember when John F. Kennedy died, the president? Yeah. Do you remember where you were? Was that a significant? I remember exactly where I was at. Where were you at?

I was over yonder. I was running the road guard. over on Tom's Creek and I just barely got a past at home man's house and he come out and run up the road behind me and hollered at me and told me about. Hmm. Do you hear what they're saying, Mr. Britt? I didn't hear brief. They're saying because you, because you were the only child you've been spoiled your whole life.

Do you agree with that? I wouldn't hardly say that. Wow. What a story. Back to Mr. Roy. I asked Mr. Roy what he thought about moonshine in the mountains. This is what he said. And remember, in part two, we're going to explore this much more.

My daddy and grandpa and uncle and some of their close friends and stuff probably turned me against drinking and stuff because they stay drunk all the time. So you don't drink? No, I ain't never drunk. I know we'd go get them peaches, and we went and got a load one time, and the peaches was overripe, and they was too soft. We couldn't, didn't get to sell many of them, but we had probably 125 or 30 bushel on the truck. So they made us help seed the peaches, and they put them in barrels, and they made liquor out of them peaches.

And I don't know how many years they drank on it, but I don't know how many years they drank on it, but I don't think they sold any. And I always thought to myself, I ain't going to never drink, because I put up with it my whole life, and I ain't going to be like that. For somebody had to put up with me like that. Yeah. Talk to me about music and your family. What does, how do y'all play music? Well, actually, it's been in my family. It goes way back. My grandmother was a picker, and my daddy was a picker and a singer and stuff. And I guess it just come right on down until we've... So what kind of music did they play?

Mostly blue grass and mostly ballets and stuff like that. They've sung and stuff. Now, you sing and dance a little bit. A little bit, yeah. I don't know. Maybe if we can get them all lined up here after a while, we'll jar the side of this hill a little bit. Sounds good to me.

While visiting the Clarks, I wasn't shy about asking them if they'd play some music for me. They obliged. I hope you'll join me in recognizing the uniqueness of a legendary bear hunter, Mr. Roy, singing a song about bear hunting. This is old slewfoot. What song is this, Mr. Roy? Birdtrak. What's this song about? It's about a buyer, and me after it.

Mountain boys tell me what you see. Fire tracks, bar tracks, looking back at me. He better get you rifle, boy, for it's too late. The bar's got a little pig and headed toward the game. Oh, he's big around the middle And he's brought across a run Running 90 miles an hour Taking 30 feet of just

Ain't never been caught He ain't never been tree Some folks say Looks a lot like me I saved up my money And I bought me some bees They started making honey way up in the tree

Cut down the tree But my honey's all gone Oh slow foot's done Made himself at home Oh he's big around the middle And he's brought across a run Running 90 miles an hour Taking 30 feet a chum

Ain't never been caught He ain't never been tree Some folks say it's a lot like me Well winter's coming on and it's 20 be low The river froze over so where can he go We chase him up the gullies and we run him in the well We shoot him in the bottom just to listen to him yell Oh, he's big around the middle and he brought across a run running 90 miles and I are taking 30 feet a jump.

Ain't never been caught, he ain't never been tree. Ain't never had nobody after him like me. That's right. That's right. All right. Thank you, Mr. Roy. That was good. on blood trails the stories don't end when the hunt is over they just get darker

i've seen something in the road i instantly thought it was a sleeping bed and there was a full of blood oh my god he doesn't have a hit blood trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors where the terrain is unforgiving the evidence is scarce and the truth gets buried under brush and silence Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness.

Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

While we're talking about music, I want you to give ear to Olabelle Reed. She was born in 1916 and passed away in 2002. She's Appalachian to the core, a folk singer, a songwriter, a banjo player, and a philosopher. If you listen to her talk and sing, you'll get a window into Appalachia that cannot be replicated. In 2019, the Library of Congress

inducted her 1973 album titled Ola Bell Reed into the National Recording Registry. This is a clip of that recording. Meet Ola Bell Reed. Boy, seen the lightning flashing, I've heard thunder. I've been asked many times to describe my life in the mountains.

There's one point that I specifically like to make and want to make is that I don't believe there would be any way in the world that you could possibly describe it. There could be no fun made of it because it was a life with the earth your elements as the old people called it the birds the animals the bees you knew every you knew every season you could tell

you were raised to you kind of tell when a storm was going to come I always tell this because you could see the leaves turning in the summertime particularly in the winter you could tell if it was going to snow because of the base of the color of the base of the trees so many things you just grew up with

that you get away from as you go through life if you're not careful. Now, I'm not saying that you go strictly back to the past, but I'm saying there's no way in the world that anybody could ever make fun or poke fun at the way people were raised in the mountains because as far as the music is concerned, we did gospel, we did blues, we did everything.

I did not play what you would call, I guess, professionally. I don't know. The word never just quite soothing me, but anyway, there had to be ever nationality in the mountains at one time for them to know each other's ways of life. There was communication because I think people needed one another and they realized it, you see, they realized it so much. And I believe one of the reasons was because they were so close,

really and truly because we were so close to the earth and the elements and to God's creation. I think that's the one thing made them know. I think that all and your music and everything comes through communication with people. And the people that lived, they lived, like I said, with the earth, they had to make their living. That's why I'm saying, you cannot separate your music from your lifestyle. You cannot separate your lifestyle, your religion, your politics, from your music.

It's a part of life. And that was what our music was in the mountains. It was a part of our life. Dr. Dan Pierce of the University of North Carolina, Asheville, is my new friend. He's a national expert on the Appalachian region, and his love of mountain culture has fueled his writing. He's the author of numerous books that help interpret the region's story in a significant way. He's also known as UNC Asheville's professional hillbilly. Meet Dr. Dan Pierce.

Well, I can't introduce him without leaving a job. trail of fodder to part two of this podcast. Here are a few of the titles of his books. Tar Hill, Lightning, corn from a jar, and real NASCAR. But we'll get to all that later. So Dr. Pierce, all the regions of America have been influenced by immigration for the most part. Where did the people from the Southern Appalachians come from? Well, there are a lot of streams of immigration that come into the region. And so, you know, there is a, there, there is kind of a stereotype that the Appalachians are the Scots-Irish culture plop down and being unchanged for hundreds of years.

The Scots-Irish were for sure in terms of the, the dominant ethnic group that came to this region, but there are lots of other groups. They're Germans. Their English, Daniel Boone was an English Quaker, you know. You can't think of a more Appalachian person than Daniel Boone, you know. And so that was not unusual. And so, and other, you know, Moravians. And, of course, this is something that in recent years that scholars have looked at a lot more is that even though you can go to lots of parts of Appalachia today, you can go to joining counties here and you'll find only a handful of African Americans.

But there were significant numbers of African Americans in every county in Appalachian. So that's a part of that stream as well. But again, the dominant group were the Scots-Irish. Now, would we be in the Southern Appalachians here in North Carolina? Yeah. That's the way you would describe. Yeah, from really, you know, northeast Alabama, North Georgia, through East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, Western tip of Virginia,

West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Be the Southern Appalachians. That's the Southern Appalachian. So the Scots-Irish people would, they would be a dominant feature of this region or at one time would have been. Was this the only thing? only place they came or were there other parts of the country? You look at the whole what people refer to as the Upland South. This is like the non-cotton-Belt, the North Georgia, North Alabama,

North Mississippi, much of Tennessee, you know, Western North Carolina, all the way through to Texas, Arkansas. The Scots, one, people kind of look at this as like, you know, how can you be Scots and Irish? Right. Explain that. Yeah, what happens is in the Elizabethan period, the late 1500s. The English conquered much of Ireland during that period. And so Elizabeth and then her successors gave what they called plantations or big tracts of land to people who had helped, you know, nobility who had helped them out. And they didn't trust the Irish. They were Catholic. They saw them as barbarians and savages. A lot of the same imagery you're going to see when English people come to America and characterize Native Americans in the same way. It's really

kind of very interesting to look at. So to work their plantations, they imported people across the Irish C from the lowlands of Scotland. So these are not, there's a lot of misconception in parts of the Southern Appalachian region that they think of their, you know, the bagpipes and the plaids and so these were not those Scots. Those are Highlanders. These are Lowland Scots. And so they come over to Northern Ireland and they work these plantations and they're pretty successful. They're raising sheep. They're raising linen. They're there for, you know, a hundred years or a little more. But then think the economy changes, things get pretty bad.

You know, rents go up dramatically. Wool market declines. And America is opening up at that point. And so you see it really hundreds of thousands of people in Ulster, Northern Ireland, Protestants, for the most part, the Scots-Irish, begin to make the trip across the Atlantic Ocean. and they come in through Philadelphia, then they start moving into western Pennsylvania. That land is taken up by Germans and others who've been there before the Germans and the English. And so then they head down what's called the Great Wagon Road,

which is now I-81, down through the Shenandoah Valley. Now it's a real wagon road. Yeah, yeah. And so they head down through the Shenandoah Valley, and then they end up in western Virginia and North Carolina, and then as the Cherokee are driven out of the region in the late 1700s, they moved into the, and my Ken lived in, it was part of North Carolina then, but it became Tennessee, the northeastern part of Tennessee.

And then moved down the Holston and Tennessee River valleys, and my folks settled in just south of Knoxville between Knoxville and Chattanooga, and then moved west from there into West Tennessee and Arkansas and Texas. And so that whole area really probably the dominant group and nominate ethnic group, you know, probably, you know, half or so or close to it. Okay, that's a good, that's a, I was going to ask you that. Like, how, so if it wasn't all Scots-Irish, how much of it was? So maybe 50% of the population here.

Yeah, but they had a, you know, a huge cultural impact and they brought a lot of things with them. Can you describe kind of the dominant features of the Scots-Irish and what they did bring over here? And my end question, I don't want to stack them too deep here, but is, you know, where do we see that culture still displayed today? You know, and a lot of things. Again, you can get a little carried away and stereotype these things. For one, you've got to understand the way culture works is that it's not, and later on, particularly in the early 20th century, people from the outside who come to the region want to characterize this region as being like preserved in amber or something. You know, they're just locked in the past, you know, which is not a. it all true because culture is always evolving. And when they come here, of course, they don't

survive in this area unless they learn from the Cherokee. Because you, you know, again, okay, you know, for one thing, these are not hunting people when they come. I mean, everything in the British house, you know, the only people that are hunting are people in the no-bit, well, unless you're a poacher. Yeah, yeah. You're not hunting over there. So when they come here, of course, that's going to be part of their subsistence. Yeah. Okay. Who teaches them to hunt?

You know, Daniel Boone doesn't come at this as a, he has to learn. Who's he learned from? He learned from the Cherokee, from the Native Americans in this area. There's a lot of that kind of interchange. For a time, there would have been some, a positive, a friendly relationship between some of these people and some of the Native Americans. Yeah, I mean, you actually see early on with people like Boone, there's a period in Boone's life where, you know, and there were a lot of concerns.

in communities and with people about people going native, you know, because there were things that were very appealing. And there were some questions. Boone was actually captured by the Shawnee and taken into what's now Ohio. There are some questions about, did he have a Shawnee wife? Did he have a Shawnee family? Was Boone tempted to stay with the Shawnee? But these people bring a lot of things with them. And the things that they brought, one, of course, are the biggest things that they bring into music.

And so, you know, a lot of the music that we think about as Appalachian, as traditional and stuff like that is music that has made the trip across the ocean, the old ballads and the fiddle tunes and things like that. And you can trace a lot of the music that's even, you know, some of it's, you know, a lot of it still being performed today. There may be in a very, very American take on it. It may be a ballad about Tom Doole, you know, who conspires. with one of his lovers to kill another lover, you know, that becomes a popular song very later on, or about Frankie Silver, who's a woman who kills her husband and gets executed, you know. Rough country over here. Yeah, well, you know, the ballads were a big part of that, and those are always tragic.

You know, there's always that theme in these things. But, of course, you know, those things get combined with other influences, for instance, like we think of the banjo as being characteristically Appalachian, but it's an African instrument. So that's where that comes from. So again, it gets combined with all these other things. But their culture of music, just families that played music, and the social aspects of gathering everybody up and playing music, that's legit.

I mean, that is a real part of Appalachian culture. Yeah, you get these influences that are coming over, and then, again, you throw other influences in, but it really, you know, is shaped in the 1800s in particular about what I call front porch culture. And so you get, you know, you get music that's suitable for front porch or folk tales or dancing. That type of thing, you know, is largely influenced by what the Scots-Irish bring. And this is reinforced by the area, but, you know, they're bringing with him.

And again, you can get real carried away with stereotypes. Jim Webb, who was a senator from what I think, Virginia, you know, I wrote a book on Scott Sires called Born Fighting, you know. And so you can get carried away, but there is that independent streak of you're not going to tell me what to do. And that's really reinforced because people are living, you know, the way that the region is settled is very different than, say, like, eastern Pennsylvania, where people tend to live in communities, you know, but people are living and kind of scattered. I mean, and it's partly geography, you know, that people are living and scattered. So they're not a lot of bottom land. So what I'm hearing you say is the geographic features of it.

Like we're in some pretty rough country here. A lot of topography, a lot of elevation change and just steep mountains and stuff. So there just wasn't a big flat spot for a big city to be having. It was like some family was down in this hollow and another family was over here. I mean, you had communities, but that reinforced kind of isolation, independence. Yeah, it works together. The culture they're bringing with them with the topography really. kind of does reinforce that that sense of rugged or some people would call it cussed independence

that, you know, I think is still much there. And I think, again, it's kind of that combination of culture and geography. And another thing that, you know, is very much part of that is making liquor. Liquor. There, we've said it. To understand the impacts in the real story of how moonshine has attached itself to this region. You'll have to listen to part two of this series. We're saving it. I mean, a lot of these people, when they came,

I mean, one, they brought in their head the knowledge of how to make whiskey. And in many cases, they, you know, they brought a still with them. Really? And so this is an important part. You know, you look at how people lived in this region for a long time, and there's still a few. You know, it's primarily subsistence, you know, there. And again, you know, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, You throw in other influence because they're not bringing their culture and plopping it down.

But, you know, for instance, you know, the grain that they're going to grow is not barley or wheat or it's going to be corn, you know, which is not, which they learned when they got here, you know, from the Native Americans. And so, but they, you know, they're raising most of their food. And then they're also one of the things they bring with them, although there are a number of them already here that the Spanish brought are hogs. and hogs are incredibly important. And some people refer to this as a hog in harmony economy because it's corn. You know, the staples are corn and pork. Dr. Pierce, how has this culture been stigmatized in the negative way nationally? That's my number one question.

Number two question is how have we glorified it in maybe ways that it didn't deserve. Yeah, and actually those stereotypes cut both ways. It's really interesting. But you see in the late 18, one, Appalachia enters a period. You know, prior to the Civil War, the Southern Appalachian Reading was a pretty good poor man's country. I mean, you could subsist pretty well. But in the aftermath of war, a lot of things changed.

I mean, one of the devastation of war itself, and people don't think about Appalachian the war, but there was really an internal war going on here. And then, you know, so much, you know, so many men were lost because so many men were either, volunteered or were conscripted into both armies. You know, there are significant numbers of people in the Southern Appalachian reasons that were fighting for the union.

And there's community warfare, you know, between, you know, kind of armed militias during this time. And so there's that, and then what they called impressment, where the particularly Confederate Army come in and say, okay, I need your hawks, you know. And they would write you out a receipt and say, okay, go to the county seat and you can get compensated in Confederate money, you know, for this, you know. Turned out so good. You can't replace your hogs or your horses or your mule or anything like that that they're taking in that.

So the war itself, but then after the war, you get a number of things that happen. One is that population grows. And, you know, so many, and people had, you know, pretty sizable 150, 200-acre farms before the war. You know, they have families of like 10 kids or more. And so when you die, you divide that up. It doesn't take many generations to where you've got a farm that's really not able to support. a family. And so, and, and what do you do?

Well, increasingly, there's a lot of land around here. There's not a whole lot of good flat riverine farmland, you know. So you start farming on land you shouldn't farm. And of course, it just, it, it, it exhausts very quickly. It erodes. It's, you know, and so it's just increasingly hard. And then other things, you get the changing of the fence laws for a variety of reasons where now you have to keep your animals pinned up.

You can't free range anymore. And so, that really cuts into the whole livestock thing. And it becomes cheaper because of the railroads to bring pork in from Cincinnati or somewhere like then than to produce it yourself. And so your market's gone, you know, for another cash crop. You get the excise tax on liquor, you know, and so all these ways, it's just kind of a huge, it's almost a conspiracy, you know, you look at it and say, you know, everything bad that could happen could happen.

And so it's harder and hard to make a living on the farm. you know and so you know poverty and of course education becomes less of a priority in an environment like that and and this is a time when you get people coming into the region and quote discovering appalachia and kind of defining appalachia is this kind of different unique kind of place and so you get a lot of these what are called local color writers who come in and they write these stories you know and a lot of the stereotypes. Well, and at the same time, you're also having a, in the 1870s, 1880s, you have what's called the Moonshine War in the region where the federal government really starts cracking down. And so the national press comes in and they're covering it and sensationalizing it and then

characterizing these people as these brutish, ignorant, you know, type people. And so you're getting these images nationally, you know, and everything, you know, again, it's poverty, it's ignorance. It's And the media back then was probably much like it is today. Oh, yeah. They're trying to sensationalize anything they can probably. Right. And so they love these stories of these shootouts between revenue agents. So that's what you hear, you know, that was an exception probably.

Right. And the Hatfields and McCoys, you know, and fudes. And they love fuge, you know. And so it just all plays into this image. Well, you know, and that image is perpetuated over the years in just an incredible way. You know, because then, you know, so you get books, you get the media, you get, and then you get movies. You know, a lot of the early silent movies were these, you know, what one historian called the moonshine and feud movies, you know. And then you get into music and those stereotypes in many ways, and they're just perpetuated about the region.

You know, you see the bumper stickers around here that people think are funny, you know. You know, it's just paddle faster. I hear banjos, you know. So, you know, you get that kind of thing. Still, I mean, it's amazing because we have so many people coming to this part of Western North Carolina from Florida or from New York or New Jersey or something. And they come here, and it's amazing, these could be highly educated people. But they, you know, they're fearful, you know, of going outside the actual city limits

because of, you know, those people, you know, and they really, really do fear them, you know. Yeah. And so, but again, it's just magnified. And it seems like, you know, in an era where, you know, people are very, like, well, you don't stereotype people. You know, we don't do that, you know, and we look at people as individuals. But the one group that seems to be fair game, I mean, all you have to do is turn on the cable TV, you know. Yeah.

It seems like it's people, well, people from Arkansas and people. We're right in. People from the Ozarks, people from the Southern Appalachian region. And so that's fair game still. And so, again, you get into all these bizarre stereotypes. You know, it seems like what I'm hearing you say is that poverty was the driver for most of this. Yeah. Yeah.

That's interesting. Yeah. And of capturing the region at a certain moment, you know, when they were in abject poverty, you know, and then extending that, you know, for time immemorial, you know. If we're talking about poverty, if you think about like kind of the legs were taken out economically of this group of people. And if they had been in a place that had massive river systems for transport or had incredible crop land or had some incredible natural resource that could have stimulated their economy, the whole culture would have been different. But like these mountains are so rough and rugged and hard to live in that when the way they originally, originally started living, was taken out, poverty came in. Like, again, I'm just thinking about how the natural landscape affects different places,

because if this had been a port, you know, if there had been an ocean here, like they would have, you know, but this is inland. This is kind of an isolated, again, thinking about how the landscape affects these cultures. Well, it does. And you can get carried away on exaggerating isolation, you know. Right. Because there were a lot. There were people coming out of that.

particularly by the late 19th century, people are generally not too far from a railhead. Yeah. And the thing that amazes people is that people, because you look at it now and you see all these forests and everything. But again, I mean, this whole region was clear cut. Right. So this wasn't. And there were railroads up into every cove and holler in the region.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, but then a lot of it, you know, the federal government came in. The Forest Service bought it up. And then you got national parks and stuff like that. And so, you know, a lot of it's now reforested. Different than it was. As well. So, but, you know, isolation is there.

Again, it limits your opportunity. So again, you face that, you know, how do I live, you know? And so you're either pretty crafty or you live at a very low level or you leave. I tell you what, Dolly Parton is, like, fascinating to me. I mean, we grew up, you know, listening to some of her stuff. But when you come here into Appalachia, especially pretty close to Pigeon Forge and Severeval, there's just something that the world just loves about this lady that was really a true Appalachian had a very maybe common Appalachian upbringing, just, you know, one room log cabin, poor and coming

out of that. Her influence in this region is notable. Yeah. What I mean by Dolly's influence is notable is the show. She are a number of billboards and images of Dolly that you see here. Much of it is fueled by the Dolly Parton theme park called Dolly Wood. I wish they would sponsor this podcast so all the meat eater folks could get tickets. Hmm.

I digress. And I think, I mean, Dolly's obviously exceptional, but I think she illustrates a lot of things that are important to the region. One, I think, you know, because of that whole stereotype about ignorant. hill bellies that i think dolly illustrates there you know the and the deeper you look you see i mean you know poverty has a huge impact on this but you have so many people who have come out of this this region who are you know just incredibly creative uh intelligence entrepreneurs entrepreneurs i mean just creators you know and uh you know that are shaped by their experience in this region you know And Dolly is obviously, you know, to, you underestimate Dolly Parton at your peril.

But at the same time, Dolly has very effectively done something that a lot of Appalachian people have done. And so stereotypes can be damaging, but in some ways they can be beneficial. And if you're smart and you know how to use it, you make a lot of money off the Appalachian. that's in stereotypes. And Dolly has made a lot of... You know, she plays the innocent, hillbilly, naive, country girl card. But, yeah, you don't have to look very deep to see that she is a genius in a lot of ways. Oh, yeah.

There's a friend of mine, and Wayne Caldwell's novelist, and he wrote a book called Requiem by Fire, which is about a community in the Smokies. When they created the National Park, you know, they remove people. Right. And these people go to a neighboring community and they got a bunch of stuff from their barn. And so they buy an old gas station, you know, and they kind of put the stuff out, you know, and make some souvenirs and stuff like that for the tourists. And so, you know, one day they're sitting in their store.

You know, the business hadn't been too good since they first started out, you know, and somebody comes in. And one of the women's kind of playing around. She finds an old bonnet, you know, which was her grandmother. She puts that on, you know. And then somebody comes in the store and it's like, oh, man, these are real, you know. know, hillbillies or whatever, you know, and then the guys start, well, we're going to play into that. So they start wearing overalls, you know, and carving, you know, little g-haul whimmy-dittles or whatever,

you know, that you're kind of playing into the stereo. So, you know, it's basically the idea that, okay, you're going to have this stereotype of me. And so I'm going to play into that stereotype and sell it back to you. Yeah. And so that's what Dolly is doing. She's selling that stereotype in many ways. And it's very effective. but I have to admit that I, you know, being in academia, you know,

and I kind of play to the stereotype. Sometimes I'll never forget the look on the face of a chancellor and most of the administrators when I was on this committee. And we were talking about something. I don't remember what it was, but, you know, a very serious kind of thing. And so I go, I kind of had a different view than they did. And I said, well, let me throw this skunk into the middle of the table.

They kind of looked at me like, who are you? Well, they got their attention. I don't really know what to say to conclude in a statement stating what I've learned. I think I can trace my deep respect for rural people back to my dad. He was a banker in a rural town in the mountains. And when he came home from his white-collar job, he didn't tell me about the people that lived within the boundaries of the city. He told me stories about the loggers, the moss gatherers, the cattle farmers, and the hunters.

was the people that mainstream society didn't celebrate. It taught me not to take society's word for who has value and who doesn't. I don't know if he did that on purpose, but he marketed these people to me as if they were legends. People like James Lawrence, Bori Province, and who you've met today, Roy Clark and Mr. Britt Davis, are hero-type figures to me. None of these men ever asked for attention. I'm certain many of you can identify people like this in your life. Aside from being notable woodsmen, their trend is consistent. They proved a high level of character through the use of negative things in their life to build something positive.

They didn't let scarcity, difficulty, or hard times define their life. And they're all humble. None of these men are perfect. but they have a unique brand of character. I believe their stories are worthy to be told. There are no answers in life found by moving backwards, and I hope the frequency of these stories doesn't cast too much of a lustful eye on the past.

But my hope is that by looking back will become appropriately relevant for a successful future. I'm glad to be alive in 2021. We were put here for such a time as this. Appalachian mountain culture is fascinating, and I continue to stand on the idea that a person who can appreciate their own culture is more apt to appreciate the culture of another.

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