F 
 
pTLr-; 
 
THE ANGLO-SAXONS OF THE KENTUCKY 
 MOUNTAINS:* 
 
 A STUDY IN ANTHROPOGEOGRAPHY 
 
 ELLEN CHURCHILL SEMPLE 
 
 In one of the most progressive and productive countries of the 
 world, and in that section of the country which has had its civihzation 
 and its wealth longest, we find a large area where the people are still 
 living the frontier life of the backwoods, where the civilization is that 
 of the eighteenth century, where the people speak the English of 
 Shakespeare's time, where the large majority of the inhabitants have 
 never seen a steamboat or a railroad, where money is as scarce as in 
 colonial days, and all trade is barter. It is the great upheaved mass 
 of the Southern Appalachians which, with the conserving power of 
 the mountains, has caused these conditions to survive, carrying a bit 
 of the eighteenth century intact over into this strongly contrasted 
 twentieth century, and presenting an anachronism all the more 
 marked because found in the heart of the bustling, money-making, 
 novelty-loving United States. These conditions are to be found 
 throughout the broad belt of the Southern Appalachians, but nowhere 
 in such purity or 'covering so large an area as in the mountain region 
 of Kentucky. 
 
 A mountain system is usually marked by a central crest, but the 
 
 * The above article appeared in The Geographical Journal for June, 1901, and now is repub- 
 lished in America, by the kind permission of the Royal Geographical Society, in response to a repeated 
 demand from students of geography and sociology for copies which could no longer be furnished. — 
 E.C.S. 
 
2 The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky I\Iou}itains 
 
 Appalachians arc distinguished by a central zone of depression, 
 flanked on the east by the Appalachian Mountains jiroper, and on tiie 
 west by the Allegheny and the Cumberland JMatcaus. This central 
 trough is generally designated as the Great Ap[)alachian \ alley. It 
 is depressed several hundred feet below the highlands on either side, 
 but its surface is relieved by intermittent series of even-crested ridges 
 which rise looo feet or juore above the general level, running parallel 
 to each other, and conforming at the same time to the structural axis 
 of the whole system. The valleys between them owe neither width 
 nor form to the streams which drain them. The Cumberland I'lateau 
 forms the western highland of the Great Valley in Eastern Kentucky, 
 'J'ennessee, and Northern Alabama. This plateau belt reaches its 
 greatest height in Kentucky, and slopes gradually from this section 
 to the south and west. Its eastern escarpment rises abruptly (Soo to 
 1500 feet from the Great Valley, and shows everywhere an almost 
 perfectly straight skyline. The western escarpment is very irregular, 
 for the streams, flowing westward from the plateau, have carved 
 out their valleys far back into the elevated district, leaving narrow 
 spurs running out into the low plains beyond. The surface is highly 
 dissected, presenting a maze of gorge-like valleys separating the 
 steep, regular slopes of the sharp or rounded hills. The level of the 
 originally upheaved mass of the plateau is now represented by the 
 altitude of the existing summits, which show a remarkable uniformity 
 in the northeast-southwest line, and a slight rise in elevation from 
 the western margin towards the interior. 
 
 About 10,000 square miles of the Cumberland Plateau fall within 
 the confines of the State of Kentucky, and form the eastern section of 
 the State. A glance at the topographical map of the region shows the 
 country to be devoted by nature to isolation and poverty. The east- 
 ern rim of the plateau is formed by Pine Mountain, which raises its 
 solid wall with level top in silhouette against the sky, and shows only 
 one water-gap in a distance of 150 miles. And just beyond is the 
 twin range of the Cumberland. Hence no railroads have attempted 
 to cross this double border-barrier, except at the northeast and 
 southeast corners of the State, where the Big Sandy and Cumber- 
 land Rivers have carved their way through mountains to the west. 
 Railroads, therefore, skirt this upland region, but nowhere penetrate 
 it. The whole area is a coalfield, the mineral being chiefiy bitumin- 
 ous, with several thousand square miles of superior canne! coal. The 
 obstructions growing out of the topography of the country, and the 
 cheaj) river transportations afforded by the Ohio for the Kanawha 
 
 Gift 
 American HJfiliprJpal Review 
 
 FEB 2 6 
 
 1925 
 
TJic Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains 
 
 EASTERN PART OF KENTUCKY. 
 Note the very small development of railroads. 
 
 and Monongahela River coal have tended to retard the construction 
 of railroads within the mountains, and even those on the margin of 
 this upland region have been built since 1880. 
 
 Man has done so little to render this district accessible because 
 nature has done so little. There are here no large streams penetrat- 
 ing the heart of the mountains, as in Tennessee, where the Tennessee 
 River, drawing its tributaries from the easternmost ranges of the 
 
4 The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky MoiDUains 
 
 Appalachians, cuts westward by flaring water-gaps through chain 
 after chain and opens a highway from the interior of the system to 
 the plains of the Mississippi. The Kentucky streams are navigable 
 only to the margin of the i)lateau, and therefore leave this great area 
 without natural means of communication \\ith the outside world to 
 the west, while to the east the mountain wall has acted as an effective 
 barrier to communication with the Atlantic seaboard. Consequently, 
 all commerce has been kept at arms' length, and the lack of a market 
 has occasioned the poverty of the people, which, in turn, has pro- 
 hibited the construction of highroads over the mountains of the 
 Cumberland Plateau. 
 
 It is what the mountaineers themselves call a rough country. The 
 steep hills rise from 700 to 1200 feet above their valleys. The valleys 
 are nothing more than gorges. Level land there is none, and roads 
 there are almost none. Valley and road and mountain stream coin- 
 cide. In the summer the dry or half-dry beds of the streams serve 
 as highways ; and in the winter, when the torrents are pouring a full 
 tide down the hollows, foot trails cut through the dense forest that 
 mantles the slopes are the only means of communication. Then inter- 
 covirse is practically cut off. Even in the best season trans])ortation 
 is in the main limited to what a horse can carry on its back beside its 
 rider. In a trip of 350 miles through the mountains, we met only 
 one wheel vehicle and a few trucks for hauling railroad ties, which 
 were being gotten out of the forests. Our own camp waggons, 
 though carrying only light loads, had to double their teams in climb- 
 ing the ridges. All that had been done in most cases to make a road 
 over a mountain was to clear an avenue through the dense growth of 
 timber, so that it proved, as a rule, to be just short of impassable. 
 For this reason tiie public of the mountains prefer to keep to the 
 valleys with their streams, to which they have given many expressive 
 and picturesque names, while the knobs and mountains are rarely 
 honored with a name. We have Cutshin Creek, Hell-fer-Sartain, 
 Bullskin Creek, Poor Fork, Stinking, Greasy, and Quicksand Creek. 
 One trail leads from the waters of Kingdom-Come down Lost Creek 
 and Troublesome, across the Upper Devil and Lower Devil to Hell 
 Creek. Facilis descensus Averno, only no progress is easy in these 
 mountains. The creek, therefore, points the highway, and is used 
 to designate geographical locations. When we would intjuire our 
 way to a certain point, the answer was, "Go ahead to the fork of the 
 creek, and turn up the left branch," not the fork of the road and the 
 path to the left. A woman at whose cabin we lunclicd one day said, 
 
Tlic Anglo-Saxons of the Kciifiicky Mountains 5 
 
 "My man and nie has been living here on Quicksand only ten years. 
 I was born up on Troublesome." 
 
 All passenger travel is on horseback. The important part which 
 the horse plays, therefore, in the economy of the mountain family re- 
 calls pioneer days. Almost every cabin has its blacksmith's forge 
 under an open shed or in a low outhouse. The country stores at the 
 forks or fords of the creek keep bellows in stock. Every mountaineer 
 is his own blacksmith, and though he works with very simple imple- 
 ments, he knows a few fundamental principles of the art, and does 
 the work well. Men and women are quite at home in the saddle. 
 The men are superb horsemen, sit their animals firm and erect, even 
 when mounted on top of the meal-bag, which is the regular accom- 
 paniment of the horseman. We saw one day a family on their way 
 to the country store to exchange their produce. The father, a girl, 
 and a large bag of Indian corn were mounted on one mule, and the 
 mother, a younger girl, and a black lamb suspended in a sack from 
 the saddle-bow on the other. It is no unusual thing to see a w^oman 
 on horseback, with a child behind her and a baby in her am^s, while 
 she holds an umbrella above them. 
 
 But such travel is not easy, and hence we find that these Kentucky 
 mountaineers are not only cut off from the outside world, but they 
 are separated from each other. Each is confined to his own locality, 
 and finds his little world within a radius of a few miles from his 
 cabin. There are many men in these mountains who have never seen 
 a town, or even the poor village that constitutes their county-seat. 
 Those who have obtained a glimpse of civilization have gone down 
 the head-waters of the streams on lumber rafts, or have been sent to 
 the State penitentiary at Frankfort for illicit distilling or feud 
 murder. The women, however, cannot enjoy either of these privi- 
 leges; they are almost as rooted as the trees. We met one woman 
 who, during the twelve years of her married life, had lived only lo 
 miles across the mountain from her old home, but had never in this 
 time been back home to visit her mother and father. Another back 
 in Perry county told us she had never been farther from home than 
 Hazard, the county-seat, which was only 6 miles distant. Another 
 had never been to the post-office, 4 miles away; and another had 
 never seen the ford of the Rockcastle River, only 2 miles from her 
 home, and marked, moreover, by the country store of the district. 
 
 A result of this confinement to one locality is the absence of any- 
 thing like social life, and the close intermarriage of families inhabit- 
 ing one district. These two phenomena appear side by side here as 
 
6 The Anglo-Saxons of tJic Kentucky Mountains 
 
 in the upland valleys of Switzerland and other mountain countries 
 where comnnmication is difficult. One can travel for 40 miles along 
 one of the head streams of the Kentucky River and find the same 
 names recurring in all the cabins along l)oth its shores. One woman 
 in Perry County told us she was related to everybody up and down 
 the North Fork of the Kentucky and along its tributary creeks. In 
 Breathitt County, an old judge, whose family had been among the 
 early settlers on Troublesome, stated that in the district school near 
 by there were ninety-six children, of whom all but five w-ere related 
 to himself or his wife. This extensive intermarriage stimulates the 
 clan instinct and contributes to the strength of the feuds which rage 
 here from time to time. 
 
 It is a law of biology that an isolating environment operates for 
 the preservation of a type by excluding all intermixture which would 
 obliterate distinguishing characteristics. In these isolated communi- 
 ties, therefore, we find the purest Anglo-Saxon stock in all the United 
 States. They are the direct descendants of the early Virginia and 
 North Carolina immigrants, and bear about them in their speech and 
 ideas the marks of their ancestry as plainly as if they had disem- 
 barked from their eighteenth-century vessel but yesterday. The 
 stock is chiefly English and Scotch-Irish, which is largely Teutonic 
 in origin. There is scarcely a trace of foreign admixture. Occa- 
 sionally one comes across a French name, which points to a strain 
 of Huguenot blood from over the mountains in North Carolina ; or 
 names of the Germans who came down the pioneer thoroughfare of 
 the Great Appalachian Valley from the Pennsylvania Dutch settle- 
 ments generations ago. But the stock has been kept free from the 
 tide of foreign immigrants which has been pouring in recent years 
 into the States. In the border counties of the district wdiere the 
 railroads run, and wdiere English capital has bought up the mines 
 in the vicinity, the last census shows a few foreign-born, but these 
 are chiefly Italian laborers working on the road-bed, or British 
 capitalists and employees. Four of the interior counties have not a 
 single foreign-born, and eight others have only two or three. 
 
 Though these mountain people are the exponents of a retarded 
 civilization, and show the degenerate symptoms of an arrested de- 
 velopment, their stock is as good as any in the country. They formed 
 a part of the same tide of pioneers which crossed the mountains to 
 people the young States to the southwest, but they chanced to turn 
 aside from the main stream, and ever since have stagnated in these 
 nioimtain hollows. For example, over a hundred years ago eleven 
 
TJic Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains 7 
 
 C^jinhs brothers, related to General Combs of the Revolutionary 
 army, came over the mountains from North Carolina. Nine of them 
 settled along the North Fork of the Kentucky River in the mountains 
 of Perry County, one went further down the stream into the rough 
 hill country of Breathitt County, and the eleventh continued on his 
 way till he came into the smiling regions of the Bluegrass, and. there 
 became the progenitor of a family which represents the blue blood of 
 the state, with all the aristocratic instincts of the old South ; while 
 their cousins in the mountain go barefoot, herd in one-room cabins, 
 and are ignorant of many of the fundamental decencies of life. 
 
 If the mountains have kept out foreign elements, still more effec- 
 tually have they excluded the negroes. This region is as free from 
 them as northern \"ermont. There is no place for the negro in the 
 mountain economy, and never has been. In the days of slavery this 
 fact had momentous results. The mountains did not offer conditions 
 for plantation cultivation, the only system of agriculture in which 
 slaves could be profitably employed. The absence of these condi- 
 tions and of the capital wherewith to purchase negroes made the 
 whole Appalachian region a non-slave-holding section. Hence, 
 when the rupture came between the North and South, this mountain 
 region declared for the Union, and thus raised a barrier of dis- 
 aft'ection through the center of the Southern States. It had no 
 sympathy with the industrial system of the South ; it shared the 
 democratic spirit characteristic of all mountain people, and likewise 
 their conservatism, which holds to the established order. Having, 
 therefore, no intimate knowledge of the negro, our Kentucky 
 mountaineers do not show the deep-seated prejudice to the social 
 equality of blacks and whites which characterizes all other Ken- 
 tuckians. Till abolished by law four years ago, there existed on the 
 western margin of the Cumberland Plateau, a flourishing college for 
 the co-education of the Bluegrass blacks and mountain whites ; and 
 this is probably the only geographical location south of the Mason 
 and Dixon line where such an institution could exist. 
 
 Though the mountaineer comes of such vigorous stock as the 
 Anglo-Saxons, he has retained little of the ruddy, vigorous appear- 
 ance of his forebears. The men are tall and lank, though sinewy, 
 with thin bony faces, sallow skins, and dull hair. They hold them- 
 selves in a loose-jointed way; their shoulders droop in walking and 
 sitting. Their faces are immobile, often inscrutable, but never 
 stupid ; for one is sure that under this calm exterior the mountaineer 
 is doing a deal of thinking, which he does not see fit to share with 
 
8 The .liK/lo-Sa.voiis of tJic Kentucky Mouiitniiis 
 
 the "furrincr," as he calls every one coming from the outside world. 
 Hie faces of the women are always delicately moulded and refined, 
 with an expression of dumh patience telling of the heavy burden 
 which life has laid upon them. They are absolutely simple, natural, 
 and their child-like unconsciousness of self points to their long 
 residence away from the gaze of the world. Their manners are 
 gentle, gracious, and unembarrassed, so that in talking with them 
 one forgets their bare feet, ragged clothes, and crass ignorance, and 
 in his heart bows anew to the inextinguishable excellence of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race. 
 
 The lot of a mountain woman is a hard one. Only the lowest 
 peasantry of Europe can show^ anything to parallel it. She marries 
 between twelve and fifteen years a husband who is between seventeen 
 and twenty. The motive in marriage is very elemental, betrays 
 little of the romantic spirit. Husband and wife speak of each other 
 as "my man", and "my woman." A girl when she is twenty is put 
 on the "cull list," that is, she is no longer marriageable. A man is 
 included in this undesirable category at twenty-eight ; after that he 
 can get no one to take him "except some poor wider-woman," as 
 one mountain matron expressed it, adding, "gals on the cull-list 
 spend their time jes' bummin' around among their folks." During 
 a ride of 350 miles, with visits at a great many cabins, we met only 
 one old maid ; her lot was a sorry one, living now with a relative, 
 now with a friend, earning her board by helping to nurse the sick 
 or making herself useful in what way she could. The mountain 
 system of economy does not take into account the immarried woman, 
 so she plunges into matrimony with the instinct of self-preservation. 
 Then come children ; and the mountain families conform to the 
 standard of the patriarchs. A family of from ten to fifteen off- 
 spring is no rarity, and this characterizes not only the mountains 
 of Kentucky, but the whole area of the Appalachian system. Tn 
 addition to much child-bearing, all the work of the pioneer home, 
 the spinning and weaving, knitting of stockings, sometimes even 
 the making of shoes and moccasins, falls on the woman. More 
 than this, she feeds and milks the cow, searches for it when it has 
 wandered away "in the range" or forest, hoes weeds in the corn, 
 helps in the ploughing, carries water from the spring, saws wood 
 and lays "stake and ridered" fences. A mountain woman who had 
 a husband and two sons, and who had been employed all day in 
 making a fence, lifting the heavy rails above the height of her own 
 head, replied in a listless way to the question as to what the men 
 
TJic Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Moitutains 9 
 
 did, witli, "the men folks they mostly sets on a fence and chaw 
 tobacco and talk politics." 
 
 The mountain woman, therefore, at twenty-five looks forty, and 
 at forty looks twenty years older than her husband. But none of 
 the race are stalwart and healthy. The lack of vigour in the men 
 is due chiefly to the inordinate use of moonshine whiskey, which 
 contains 20 per cent, more alcohol than the standard liquor. They 
 begin drinking as mere boys. We saw several youths of seventeen 
 intoxicated, and some women told us boys of fourteen or fifteen 
 drank. Men, women, and children looked underfed, ill nourished. 
 This is due in part to their scanty, unvaried diet, but more perhaps 
 to the vile cooking. The bread is either half-baked soda biscuits 
 eaten hot, or corn-pone with lumps of saleratus through it. The 
 meat is always swimming in grease, and the eggs are always fried. 
 The effect of this shows, in the adults, in their sallow complexions 
 and spare forms ; in the children, in pimples, boils, and sores on their 
 hands and faces. This western side of the mountains, moreover, 
 has not an abundant water-supply, the horizontal strata of the rocks 
 reducing the number of springs. Hence all the mountain region of 
 Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee shows a high percentage 
 of diarrhoeal diseases, typhoid, and malarial fever. 
 
 The home of the mountaineer is primitive in the extreme, a 
 survival of pioneer architecture, and the only type distinctly Ameri- 
 can. It is the blind or windowless one-room log cabin, with the 
 rough stone chimney on the outside. The logs are sometimes 
 squared with the hatchet, sometimes left in their original form with 
 the bark on; the interstices are chinked in with clay. The roofs 
 are covered with boards nearly an inch thick and 3 feet long, split 
 from the wood by a wedge, and laid on, one lapping over the other 
 like shingles. The chimneys, which are built on the outside of the 
 houses, and project a few feet above the roof, lend a picturesque 
 effect to the whole. They are made of native rock, roughly hewn 
 and cemented with clay; but the very poorest cabins have the low 
 "stick chimney," made of laths daubed with clay. In the broader 
 valleys, where the conditions of life are somewhat better, the double 
 cabin prevails — two cabins side by side, with a roofed space be- 
 tween, which serves as a dining-room during the warmer months of 
 the year. Sometimes, though rarely, there is a porch in front, 
 covered by an extension of the sloping roof. In some of the 
 marginal counties of the mountain region and in the sawmill dis- 
 tricts, one sees a few two-story frame dwellings. These are deco= 
 
10 The Atujlo-Saxons of iJic Kentucky Mountains 
 
 I'alcil with ornainciital trimming of scroll-saw work in wood, 
 oftentimes colored a light blue, along the edges of the gables, and 
 defining the line between the two stories. The regulation balcony 
 over the front door and extending to the roof has a balustrade of 
 the same woodwork in excellent, chaste design, sometimes painted 
 and sometimes in the natural color. These houses, both in their 
 architecture and style of ornamentation, recall the village dwellings 
 in Norway, though not so beautiful or so richly decorated. But 
 the usual home of the mountaineer is the one-room cabin. Near by 
 is the barn, a small square log structure, with the roof projecting 
 from 8 to lo feet, to afiford shelter for the young cattle or serve as 
 a milking-shed. These vividly recall the mountain architecture of 
 some of the Alpine dwellings of Switzerland and Bavaria, especially 
 when, as in a few instances, the roofs are held down by weight- 
 rocks to economize hardware or protect them against the high winds. 
 Very few of them have hay-lofts above, for the reason that only a 
 few favored districts in these mountains produce hay. 
 
 The furnishings of the cabins arc reduced to the merest neces- 
 saries of life, though in the vicinity of the railroads or along the 
 main streams where the valley roads make transportation a simpler 
 problem, a few luxuries like an occasional piece of shop-made fur- 
 niture and lamp-chimneys have crept in. One cabin which we 
 visited near the foot of Pine Mountain, though of the better sort, 
 may be taken as typical. Almost everything it contained was home- 
 made, and only one iron-bound bucket showed the use of hardware. 
 Both rooms contained two double beds. These were made of plain 
 white wood, and were roped across from side through auger-holes 
 to support the mattresses. The lower one of these was stuffed 
 with corn-shucks, the upper one with feathers from the geese raised 
 by the housewife. The sheets, blankets, and counterpanes had all 
 been woven by her, as also the linsey-woolsey from which her own 
 and her children's clothes were made. Gourds, hung on the walls, 
 served as receptacles for salt, soda and other kitchen supplies. The 
 meal-barrel was a section of log, hollowed out with great nicety till 
 the wood was not more than an inch thick. The flour-barrel was a 
 large firkin, the parts held in place by hoops, fastened by an arrow- 
 head at one end of the withe slipped into a slit in the other ; the 
 churn was made in the same way, and in neither was there nail or 
 screw. The washtub was a trough hollowed out of a log. A large 
 basket was woven of hickory slips by the mountaineer himself, and 
 two smaller ones made of the cane of the broom corn and bound at 
 
The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains 11 
 
 the edges with coloured caHco, were the handiwork of his wife. 
 Only the iron stove with its few utensils, and some table knives, 
 testified to any connection with the outside world. The old flint- 
 lock gun and powder-horn hanging from a rafter gave the finishing 
 touch of local colour to this typical pioneer home. Daniel Boone's 
 first cabin in the Kentucky wilderness could not have been more 
 primitive. 
 
 Some or most of these features can be found in all mountain 
 homes. Some cabins are still provided with hand-mills for grinding 
 their corn when the water-mills cease to run in a dry summer. Clay 
 lamps of classic design, in which grease is burned with a floating 
 wick, are still to be met with ; and the manufactured product from 
 the country store is guiltless of chimney. Every cabin has its spin- 
 ning-wheel, and the end of the "shed-room" is usually occupied by 
 a hand-loom. Only in rare cases is there any effort to beautify these 
 mountain homes. Paper flowers, made from old newspaper, a wood- 
 cut from some periodical, and a gaudy advertisement distributed by 
 an itinerant vendor of patent medicines, make up the interior deco- 
 ration of a cabin. Sometimes the walls are entirely papered with 
 newspapers, which are more eagerly sought for this purpose than 
 for their literary contents. Material for exterior decoration is more 
 accessible to the mountain housewife, and hence we find, where her 
 work-burdened life will permit, that she has done all she can for her 
 front yard. Poppies, phlox, hollyhock, altheas, and dahlias lift their 
 many-coloured blooms above the rail fence. Over the porch, where 
 there is one, climb morning-glory, swxet potato vines, and wild 
 mountain ivy; and from the edge of the roof are suspended home- 
 made hanging baskets, contrived from old tin cans, buckets, or any- 
 thing that will hold soil, and filled with the various ferns and creepers 
 which the forests furnish in great beauty and abundance. 
 
 A vegetable garden is always to be found at the side or rear of the 
 cabin. This is never large, even for a big family. It is ploughed in 
 the spring by the man of the household, and enriched by manure 
 from the barn, being the only part of the whole farm to receive any 
 fertilizer. Any subsequent ploughing and all weeding and cultiva- 
 tion of the vegetables is done by the women. The average mountain 
 garden will yield potatoes, beets, cabbages, onions, pumpkins, and 
 tomatoes of dwarf size. Beans are raised in considerable quantities 
 and dried for winter use. The provisions for the luxuries of life 
 are few. Adjoining every garden is a small patch of tobacco, which 
 is raised only for home consumption. It is consumed, moreover, by 
 
12 TJic Amjlo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains 
 
 both sexes, old and young, and particularly by the woman, who both 
 smoke and "dip" snuff, making the brush for the dipping from the 
 twig of the althea. In a large gathering like a funeral, one can often 
 see girls from twelve to fourteen years old smoking their clay or 
 corn-cob pipes. A young woman who went through the mountains 
 last summer to study the conditions for a social settlement there, 
 found the children at a district school amusing themselves by trying 
 to see who could spit tobacco- j nice nearest a certain mark on the 
 school-house wall, the teacher standing by and watching the pro- 
 ceeding with interest. 
 
 Sugar is never seen in this district, but backwoods substitutes for 
 it abound. Almost every cabin has its beehives, and anywhere from 
 ten to twenty. The hives are made from hollowed-out sections of 
 the bee-gum tree, covered with a square board, which is kept in 
 place by a large stone. The 1>ees feed in the early spring on the 
 blossoms of the yellow poplar, but in the western counties, where 
 this tree is rapidly being cut out of the forest for lumber, honey is 
 no longer so abundant. But the mountain region, as a whole 
 produces large amounts of honey and wax. Pike County, on the 
 Virginia border, produced over 60,000 lbs. of honey in 1890. A'laple 
 sugar is gotten in considerable quantities from the sugar maple, 
 which abounds. As one rides through the forests, he sees here and 
 there the rough little log troughs at the base of these trees, the bit 
 of cane run into the hole bored through the bark for the sap, and at 
 long intervals a log sugar-house with its huge cauldron for reducing 
 the syrup. Maple sugar is used only as a sweetmeat. The moun- 
 taineer put his main reliance for sweetening on sorghum molasses, 
 which he makes from the sorghum cane. Two acres of this will 
 provide an average mountain household with sorghum molasses, or 
 "long sweetening," for a year. They eat it with their "pone" bread 
 and beans ; coffee thus sweetened they drink with relish, though to 
 the palate of the uninitiated it is a dose. Sugar, or"short sweeten- 
 ing," is a rarity. 
 
 Conditions point to agriculture as the only means for the Kentucky 
 mountaineer to gain a livelihood. Mineral wealth exists in abund- 
 ance in this section, but the lack of transportation facilities prevents 
 its exploitation ; so the rough hillsides must be converted into field 
 and pasture. The mountaineer holds his land in fee simple, or by 
 squatter claim. This is based, not upon title, but merely on the right 
 of possession, which is regarded, moreover, as a thoroughly valid 
 tenure in a country which still preserves its frontier ch?racter. Large 
 
The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains 13 
 
 tracts of Kentucky mountain lands are owned by persons outside the 
 state, by purchase or inheritance of original pioneer patents, and these 
 are waiting for the railroads to come into the country, when they 
 hope to realize on the timber and mines. In the mean time the moun- 
 taineers have been squatting on the territory for years, clearing the 
 forests, selling the timber, and this with conscious impunity, for 
 interference with them is dangerous in the extreme. Every lawyer 
 from the outside world who comes up here to a county courthouse 
 to examine titles to the land about, keeps his mission as secret as 
 possible, and having accomplished it, leaves the town immediately. 
 If further investigation is necessary, he does not find it safe to return 
 himself, but sends a substitute who will not be recognized. 
 
 The pioneer character of the region is still evident in the size of 
 the land-holdings. In the most mountainous parts near the eastern 
 border-line the farms average from i6o to 320 acres; in the western 
 part of the plateau, from 100 to 160 acres. Of the whole state, the 
 mountain counties show by far the largest proportion of farms of 
 1000 acres and over. Pike County has sixty-six such. Moun- 
 taineers in two different sections told us that the land on the small 
 side creeks was better, and there farms averaged about 200 acres ; 
 but that on main streams, like tlie North Fork of the Kentucky River 
 and Poor Fork of the Cumberland, the farms were usually 600 
 acres, because the soil was poorer. The cause for this was not 
 apparent, unless it was due to exhaustion of soil from long tilling, 
 as the valleys of the main streams, being more accessible, were prob- 
 ably the earliest settled. 
 
 Only from thirteen to thirty per cent, of the acreage of the farms 
 is improved; the rest is in forest or pasture. Land is cleared for 
 cultivation in the old Indian method by "girdling" or "deadening" 
 the trees, and the first crop is planted amidst the still standing skele- 
 tons of ancient giants of the forests. Indian corn is the chief crop 
 raised, and furnished the main food-supply for man and beast. 
 Great fields of it cover the steep mountain sides to the very top, 
 except where a farmer, less energetic or more intelligent than his 
 fellows, has left a crown of timber on the summit to diminish the 
 evil of washing. The soil on the slopes is thin, and in the narrow 
 V-shaped valleys there is almost no opportunity for the accumula- 
 tion of alluvial soil. Hence the yield of corn is only from ten to 
 twelve bushels to an acre, only one-third that in the rich Bluegrass 
 lands of Central Kentucky. Pnit population is so sparse that the 
 harvest generally averages forty bushels /Jfr capita. In the "up- 
 
14 The .liKjIo-Sa.voiis of the Kciiliichy Moiniiaiiis 
 
 riglu" farms all ploughing is done horizonlally around the face of 
 the nioiintain, but even then the damage from washing is very great, 
 especially as the staple crop forms no network of roots to hold the 
 soil and requires repeated ploughing. In consequence, after two 
 successive crops of corn the hillside is often quite denuded, the soil 
 liaving been washed away from the underlying rocks. The field 
 then reverts to a state of nature, growing up in weeds and briars, 
 and furnishing a scanty pasturage for cattle. Level land is very 
 scarce, and is to be found only in the long serpenlines of tlie main 
 streams; but even here, from long cultivation and lack of fertilizers, 
 a field is exhausted by two cro])s, and has to "rest" every third yeai 
 Ck)ver is almost never seen. The mountaineers maintain it will not 
 grow here, although on our circuit we did see two fields. 
 
 Of other cereals beside corn the yield is very small. Scjuie oats 
 are raised ; but r}e, wheat, barley, and buckwheat are only occasion- 
 ally found. (Jric or two rows of broom-corn ])rovide each cabin 
 with its material for brooms. Sometimes a small quantity of hay. 
 poor in (juality, is cut from a fallow-field for winter use. The yield 
 in all the crops is small, because the method of agriculture employe'' 
 is essentially extensive. The labour appalled is small, limited to whv 
 is possible for a man and his family, generally, too, the feminine par* 
 of it, because his sons found their own families at an early age. It 
 is almost impossible to hire extra labourers, because this element of 
 the population, small at best, finds more profitable and steadier em- 
 ployment in various forms of lumber industry. The agricultural 
 implements used are few, and in general very simple, except in the 
 vicinity of the railroad. In remote districts the "bull-tongue" plough 
 is in vogue. This primitive implement is hardly more than a 
 sharpened stick with a metal rim ; but as the foot is very narrow, it 
 slips between the numerous rocks in the soil, and is therefore 
 adapted to the conditions. Natives in two different sections told us 
 that "folks fur back in the mountains" resort to something still 
 simpler — a plough which is nothing but a fork of a tree, the long 
 arm forming the beam, and the shorter one the foot. 
 
 The mountains of Kentucky, like .other upland regions, are better 
 adapted to stock farming; but, as the native has not yet learned the 
 wisdom of putting his hillside in grass to prevent washing, and at 
 the same time to provide pasturage, the stock wanders at will in the 
 "range" or forest. There sheep thrive best. They feed on the pea- 
 vine, which grows wild in the dense woods, but will not grow on 
 cultivated laud. ( )ne native explained that the sheep liked the 
 
The Anglo-Saxons of the Kenfneky Mountains 15 
 
 "range," because they could take refuge from winter storms and the 
 intense noonday heat of summer in "the stone houses." In answer 
 to the inquiry whether he constructed sucli houses, he answered 
 with the characteristic reverence of the mountaineer, "No; God 
 made 'em. They're God's houses — just caves or shelter places under 
 ledges of rock." About half of the mountain sheep are Merino and 
 English breeds, but they have deteriorated under the rough condi- 
 tions obtaining there. While the average yield per fleece for the 
 whole state of Kentucky is over 4 lbs. of wool, for the mountain 
 counties it is only 2 lbs., and in some localities drops to ij/? lb. 
 These sheep are naturally a hardy stock, and are often bought up by 
 farmers from the lowlands, taken down to the Bluegrass and fattened 
 for a few months, and sold at a profit. 
 
 Sheep are the only product of the mountain farm that can find 
 their way to an outside market and do not suffer from the prevailing 
 lack of means of transportation. In regard to everything else, the 
 eft'ort of the native farmer is paralyzed by the want of a market. If 
 he fattens his hogs with his superfluous corn, they are unfit to carry 
 their own weight over the 40 or 50 miles of rough roads to the near- 
 est railroad, or they arrive in an emaciated condition. So he con- 
 tents himself with his "razor-back" pigs, which climb the hills with 
 the activity of goats and feed with the turkeys on the abundant mast 
 in the forests. Cattle also are raised only for home use. Steers are 
 used pretty generally for ploughing, and especially for hauling logs. 
 Every cabin has one cow, occasionally more. These can be seen 
 anywhere browsing along the edge of the road, where the clearing 
 has encouraged the grass. In the late summer they feed greedily on 
 "crap grass," or Japan clover {Lespcdesa striata), which springs up 
 wherever there is a patch of sunlight in the forest. Knowing that 
 dairy products are natural staples in almost all mountain countries 
 of the world, as we penetrated into this district we made constant 
 inquiries in regard to cheese, but everywhere found it conspicuous 
 by its absence. However, on our returning to civilization, the census 
 reports on mountain industries revealed the surprising fact that just 
 one county, in the southwestern part of the district and on the rail- 
 road, was cheese-producing, and that it made 6374 lbs. in 1889. The 
 mystery was explained on referring to the statistics of population, 
 which showed that this county harboured a Swiss colony of 600 
 souls. In the state of West Virginia, also, where the topography of 
 the country is a repetition of that of eastern Kentucky, no cheese is 
 produced; but, on the other hand, considerable quantities arc made 
 
16 Tlic Anglo-Saxons of ilic Kentucky Mountains 
 
 in all the mountain counties of Tennessee and Virginia. These 
 states, again, are alike in having, as their geographical structure, the 
 broader inter-montane valleys between the chain-like linear ranges 
 of the Great Appalachian depression. In 1889, Lee County, Virginia, 
 produced 8595 lbs. of cheese; while just over Cumberland Mountain, 
 which forms its western border. Bell County, Kentucky, produced 
 not an ounce. 
 
 In spite of the hard conditions of life, the Kentucky mountaineer 
 is attached to this rough country of his. Comparatively few emi- 
 grate, and many of them come back, either from love of the moun- 
 tains or because the seclusion of their previous environment has 
 unfitted them to cope with the rush and enterprise of life in the 
 lowlands. One mountaineer told us that, though it was a poor 
 country, "the men mostly stays here." Another who had travelled 
 much through the district in his occupation of selecting white oak 
 timber for a lumber company, estimated that about one man in five 
 emigrated; such generally go to Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas. 
 We met several who had been out West, but the mountains had 
 drawn them back home again. Tlie large majority of the population, 
 therefore, stay in their own valley, or "cove," as they call it, divide 
 up the farm, and live on smaller and smaller estates, while the corn- 
 fields creep steadily up the mountains. The population of these 
 twenty-eight counties with their 10,000 square miles area was about 
 220,000 in 1880, or over twenty to the scjuare mile; that in 1890 was 
 270,000, showing an increase of 25 per cent. As tlie ratio in the 
 past decade has risen, there is now a population of 340,000, or thirty- 
 four to the square mile, while for the state at large the ratio is fifty- 
 four. This growth of population is to be attributed almost entirely 
 to natural increase ; and as the accessions from the outside are prac- 
 tically limited to the foreign element, only two or three thousand all 
 told, employed in the coal-mines and on the railroads, so large a per- 
 centage of increase precludes the possibility of much emigration. 
 Cities there are none, and the villages are few, small, and wretched. 
 This is true also of the county-seats, which in the interior counties 
 average only from 300 to 400 souls; while those of the marginal 
 counties and located on railroads encircling the mountain districts 
 sometimes rise to 1500, but this is rare. 
 
 In consequence of his remoteness from a market, the industries of 
 the mountaineer are limited. Nature holds him in a vise here. As 
 we have seen, a few of his sheep may find their way to the railroad, 
 but liis hugs are debarred by the mountains from becoming articles 
 
The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains 17 
 
 of commerce. The same is true of his corn, which is his only super- 
 abundant crop; and this, therefore, by a natural economic law, the 
 mountaineer is led to convert into a form having less bulk and 
 greater value. He makes moonshine whisky, and not all the revenue 
 officers of the country have succeeded in suppressing this industry. 
 At our first camping-place, only 15 miles from the railroad, we were 
 told there were twenty illicit stills within a radius of 5 miles. Two 
 women, moreover, were pointed out to us who carried on the for- 
 bidden industry; their husbands had been killed in feuds, so they 
 continued to operate the stills to support their families. Living so 
 far from the arm of the law, the mountaineer assumes with charac- 
 teristic independence that he has a right to utilize his raw material 
 as he finds expedient. He thinks it laudable to evade the law — an 
 opinion which is shared by his fellows, who are ready to aid and abet 
 him. He therefore sets up his still in some remote gorge, overhung 
 by trees and thickly grown with underbrush, or in some cave whose 
 entrance is efi:ectually screened by boulders or the dense growth of 
 the forest, and makes his moonshine whisky, while he leaves a 
 brother or partner on guard outside to give warning if revenue 
 officers attempt a raid. It is a brave man who will serve as 
 deputy marshal in one of these mountain counties, for raiding a 
 still means a battle, and the mountaineers, like all backwoodsmen, 
 are fine marksmen. In Breathitt County, called "Bloody Breathitt," 
 four deputy marshals have been killed in the past six months. The 
 moonshiner fully understands the penalty for illicit distilling, and if 
 he is caught, he takes his punishment like a philosopher — all the 
 more as there is no opprobrium attached in his community to a term 
 in the penitentiary for this crime. The disgrace falls upon the one 
 who gave testimony against the illicit distiller; and often a moun- 
 taineer, if summoned as a witness in such a case, leaves his county 
 till the trial is over, rather than appear for the prosecution. Most 
 of the moonshine is sold within the mountains. The natives, physic- 
 ally depressed by lack of nourishment and by the prevalent diseases 
 of the district, crave stimulants ; so the demand for spirits is steady. 
 Not content with the already excessive strength of moonshine whisky, 
 they often add pepper or wood-ashes to make it more fiery. The 
 result is maddened brains when under its influence, and eventually 
 ruined constitutions. 
 
 Forests of magnificent timber cover the Kentucky mountains, and 
 supply the only industry which brings any considerable money from 
 the outside world, because the only one which can utilize the small, 
 
18 The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains 
 
 rapid streams for transportation. The steep-sided valleys are pro- 
 dnctive of valuable hardwood timber. Many varieties of oak, wal- 
 nut, ])oplar, chestnut, maple, ash, and tulij) trees grow to magnificent 
 size. Log-rolling begins in the fall after the Indian corn harvest, 
 and continues through the winter till ]\Iarch. The logs are depo§ite(l 
 along the banks of the streams to wait till a "tide" or sudden rise 
 supplies enough water to move them. Sometimes, where a creek or 
 "branch" is too small to carry its prospective burden, the loggers 
 build across it a "splash dam," behind which logs and water accumu- 
 late to the requisite point, and then the barrier is knocked loose, 
 when tide and timber go rushing down the channel. On the main 
 streams of the Kentucky, ]5ig Sandy, Licking, and Cumberland, the 
 logs are rafted and floated down to the saw-mills in the lowlands. 
 All the headwaters of these rivers are marked out to the traveller 
 through the mountains by the lumber stranded from the last "tide" 
 and strewn along their banks. 
 
 Some of the wood within a day's hauling of the railway is worked 
 up in a form ready for commerce, but generally with great waste of 
 good material. The fine chestnut oaks are cut down in large quanti- 
 ties simply to peel ofif tan-bark, while the lumber is left to rot. Rail- 
 road ties are cut and shaped in the mountains from the oak and 
 hauled to the railroad. The making of staves of white oak for 
 whisky-barrels is also a considerable industry. The trees are sawed 
 across the length of the stave, and split by wedges into billets, which 
 are then hollowed out and trimmed into shape. This last process 
 is performed by an implement run sometimes by steam, generally by 
 horse-power, for in the latter form it is more readily transported 
 over the rough mountain roads from place to place, as the supply 
 of white oak is exhausted. These staves bring $32.00 a thousand 
 delivered at the railroad. The mountain labourer working at stave- 
 making or at the portable saw-mills earns 75 cents a day, while the 
 usual wages for farm hands in this district are only 50 cents. 
 
 The trades in the mountains are the primitive ones of a pioneer 
 community — cobbler, blacksmith, and miller ; but even these elemental 
 industries have not been everywhere differentiated. Many a cabin 
 has its own hand-mill for grinding corn when the water-mill is too 
 remote. Many a native still makes moccasins of calf or raccoon 
 skin for himself and his family to spare the more expensive shoes; 
 and it is a poor sort of mountaineer who cannot and does not shoe 
 his own horses and steers. Here is reproduced the independence 
 of the pioneer home. Si)inning and weaving survive as an industry 
 
The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains 19 
 
 of the women. In some few localities one can still see the flax in 
 every stage, from the green growth in the field to the finished home- 
 spun in lOO-yard pieces; or, again, one sees a cotton patch in the 
 garden, a simple primitive gin of home invention for separating the 
 fibre, and understands the origin of the cotton thread in the linsey- 
 woolsey cloth of domestic manufacture which furnishes the dresses 
 for women and children. Cotton and flax spinning, however, have 
 died out greatly during the past few years, since the introduction of 
 cheap cotton goods into the mountain districts. Spinning of woollen 
 yarn for stockings is still universal, with the concomitant arts of 
 carding and dyeing; while the weaving of linsey-woolsey for clothes 
 or blankets is an accomplishment of almost every mountain woman. 
 One native housewife showed us her store of blankets, woven by 
 her mother and herself. They were made in intricate plaids- of 
 original design and combination of colour, and the owner told us 
 she worked without a pattern and without counting the threads, 
 trusting to her eye for accuracy. Many of the dyes, too, she made 
 herself from certain trees, though a few she bought at the country 
 store. The home-woven counterpanes are very interesting, because 
 the designs for these have been handed down from generation to 
 generation, and are the same that the Pilgrim Fathers brought over 
 to New England. But the mountain woman puts forth her best 
 taste and greatest energy in making quilts. In travelling through 
 this section one looks out for some expression of the aesthetic feel- 
 ing as one finds it in the wood-carving of the Alps and Scandinavian 
 mountains, the metal-work of the Caucasus, the Cashmere shawls 
 of the Himalayas, and the beautiful blankets of the Chilcat Indians. 
 Gradually it is borne in upon him that quilt-making amounts to a 
 passion among the women of the Kentucky mountains ; that it does 
 not merely answer a physical need, but is a mode of expression for 
 their artistic sense; and there is something pathetic in the thought. 
 They buy the calico for the purpose, and make their patchwork in 
 very intricate designs, apparently getting their hints from their own 
 flower-gardens; at any rate, the colours in certain common garden 
 flowers were reproduced in some quilts we saw, and the effect was 
 daring but artistic. Quilt-making fills the long leisure hours of the 
 winter, and the result shows on the open shelves or cupboard which 
 occupies a corner in every house. Passing a one-room cabin on 
 the headwaters of the Kentucky River, we counted seventeen quilts 
 sunning out on the fence. 
 
 The only work of the women which brings money into the 
 
20 The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains 
 
 family treasury is searching for ginseng, or "sang-pickin'," as the 
 mountaineer calls it. This root is found now only in the wildest, 
 most inaccessible ravines; but the women go out on their search 
 barefoot amid the thick brush and briars, taking their dogs along 
 to keep off the rattlesnakes. They also gather "yellow root" 
 (Hydrastis canadensis), which with the ginseng (Panax quinqne- 
 jolium) they dry and then barter for produce at the nearest store, the 
 former at the rate of 40 cents per pound, the latter at three dollars. 
 Most of the trade in the mountains is barter, for money is as scarce 
 as in genuine pioneer countries, and the people are accordingly un- 
 familiar with it. A native who came over the mountains from some 
 remote cove to sell eggs to a camping party this past summer, was 
 offered a dollar bill for his produce, but refused to accept it, as he 
 had never seen one before, his experience having been limited to 
 silver dollars and small change. At another place we found that 
 the people were reluctant to take the paper currency of the issue of 
 1892, anything so recent having not yet penetrated into their fast- 
 nesses. But the lack of money does not prevent them from being 
 eager traders, especially in horseflesh. One of the attractions of 
 Sunday church-going to the men is the opportunity it offers for this 
 purpose. A glance at one of these little mountain churches when 
 meeting is going on reveals the fitness of the occasion. The people 
 have gathered from every direction for miles around ; they have 
 come on their best horses and now every tree on the edge of the 
 clearing has become a hitching-post. Groups form outside before 
 and after the service, satisfying their social craving, and, with tlie 
 few topics of conversation at their command, talk naturally drifts 
 upon the subject of their "beasties," with the inevitable result of 
 some trading. Their trading propensity carries them so far that 
 they often trade farms as they would horses, no deeds being exe- 
 cuted. 
 
 As the isolation of his environment has left its stamp upon every 
 phase of the outer life of the mountaineer, so it has laid its impress 
 deep upon his inner nature. The remoteness of their scattered 
 dwellings from each other and from the big world beyond the 
 natural barriers, and the necessary self-reliance of their pioneer-like 
 existence, has bred in them an intense spirit of independence which 
 shows itself in many ways. It shows itself in their calm ignoring 
 of the revenue laws, and in their adherence to the principle of the 
 blood-feud which inculcates the duty of personal vengeance for a 
 wrong. In consequence of this spirit of independence, and of its 
 
TJic Anglo-Saxons of the Kcnfiicky Mountains 21 
 
 antecedent cause in their slight deahngs with men, our Kentucky 
 mountaineers have only a semi-developed commercial conscience. 
 They do not appreciate the full moral force of a contract; on this 
 point they have the same vague ideas that many women have, and 
 from the same cause. At all times very restive under orders, when 
 they have taken employment under a superior, their service must be 
 politely requested, not demanded. If offended, they throw up their 
 job in a moment, and go off regardless of their contract and of the 
 inconvenience they may occasion their employer. Every man is 
 accustomed to be his own master, to do his own work in his own 
 way and his own time. And this brings us to another curious 
 characteristic of the mountaineer, also an effect of his isolation. He 
 has little sense of the value of time. If he promises to do a certain 
 thing on a certain date, his conscience is quite satisfied if he does it 
 within three or four days after the appointed time. For instance, 
 some mountaineers had promised to furnish horses for our camping 
 party, which was to start from a certain village on July 15 ; when 
 that day came half a dozen horses had failed to appear, but their 
 places were supplied and the party moved off. During the suc- 
 ceeding week, delinquent mountaineers dribbled into town with 
 their horses, and were surprised to find they were too late, explain- 
 ing that they did not think a few days would make any difference. 
 Living so far from the rush of the world, these highlanders have 
 in their manner the repose of the eternal hills. In the presence of 
 strangers they are quite free from self-consciousness, and never 
 lose their simplicity or directness. There is no veneer about these 
 men; they say exactly what they think, and they think vigorously 
 and shrewdly. Endowed with the keen powers of observation of 
 the woodsman, and cut off from books, they are led to search them- 
 selves for the explanation of phenomena or the solution of problems. 
 Though hampered by ignorance, their intellects are natively strong 
 and acute. Conscious of their natural ability, conscious too that 
 they are behind the times, these people are painfully sensitive to 
 criticism. Cut off so long and so completely, they have never been 
 able to compare themselves with others, and now they find com- 
 parison odious. They resent the coming of "furriners" among 
 them, on the ground that outsiders come to spy upon them and 
 criticize, and "tell-tale," as they put it. unless they are convinced 
 that it is some commercial mission or a political campaign that 
 brings the stranger. His suspicions allayed, the mountaineer is the 
 most generous host in the world. "Strangers, won't you light and 
 
22 The Anglo-Sa.ro)is of the Keiitiieky Mountains 
 
 set? Hitch your bcasties. This is a rmigh ccMintry. atul I'm a 
 poor man. but you can have all I've got." This is the usual greet- 
 hig. If it is a question of spending the night, the host and his wife 
 sleep on the fioor and give the guests the bed. In a one-room cabin, 
 the entertainment of strangers involves inconvenience, but this dis- 
 comfort is never considered by the Kentucky highlander. When he 
 says, "You can have everything I've got," this is no lip-service. At 
 one cabin w'here we spent the night, when we were making our 
 toilettes in the morning, the daughter of the house, with infinite 
 grace and simplicity, ofifered us the family comb and her own tooth- 
 brush. Hospitality can go no further. This quality the Kentucky 
 mountaineer has in common with the inhabitants of all remote, un- 
 trodden regions where inns are rare. But if he refuses to be re- 
 imbursed for his outlay and trouble, he is repaid in part by the news 
 which the stranger brings, and the guest is expected to be very 
 communicative. He nmst tell everything he has seen or heard on 
 his journey through the mountains, and must meet a whole volley 
 of questions of a strictly personal nature. Inquiries come as to his 
 age, married or unmarried condition and the wdierefore, his health, 
 ailments, symptoms, and remedies. 
 
 The mountaineer has a circumscribed horizon of interests ; he is 
 little stirred by the great issues of the day, except those of a political 
 nature, and for politics he has a passion. A discussion of party 
 platforms or rival candidates for office will at any time enthrall him, 
 keep him away for a whole day from the spring ploughing or sow- 
 ing. As we have explained, the mountains presented conditions 
 for agriculture as little adapted for a slave industrial system as did 
 those of New England. Hence, when the conflict of the systems of 
 the North and of the South came to an issue in the Civil War, the 
 mountain sections of the Southern States took the side of New Eng- 
 land, and went over almost bodily into the Republican party. Such 
 was their zeal for the Union, that some of the mountain counties of 
 Kentucky contributed a larger quota of troops, in proportion to 
 their population, for the Federal army than any other counties in 
 the Union. The enthusiasm of those days survives in that section 
 to-day in their staunch adherence to the Republican party. The 
 spirit has been encouraged also by the fact that topography has de- 
 fined the mountain section as one of the political divisions of the 
 State by a kind of common law of both political parties in their con- 
 ventions and in common parlance. Although more sparsely popu- 
 lated than any of the others, the mountain division, from its greater 
 
The AiigloSa.voiis of the Kentucky Moitntaiiis 23 
 
 local unity, is relatively much stronger in party conventions, since 
 its delegate vote is more likely to be a unit. In consequence of 
 this fact, it is sure to get a fair proportion of its men as candidates 
 upon the State ticket, and its party vote can be counted upon with 
 considerable accuracy. Knowing, therefore, that they are a strong 
 factor in the politics of the State, it is not surprising that the Ken- 
 tucky mountaineers should find therein a great interest. 
 
 IVIen who, from the isolation of their environment, receive few 
 impressions, are likely to retain these impressions in indelible out- 
 line; time neither modifies nor obliterates them. Thus it is with 
 the Kentucky mountaineer. He never forgets either a slight or a 
 kindness. He is a good lover and a good hater; his emotions are 
 strong, his passions few but irresistible; because his feelings lack a 
 variety of objects on wdiich to expend themselves, they pour their 
 full tide into one or two channels and cut these channels deep. 
 Like all mountain-dwellers, they love their home. They love the 
 established order of things. Their remoteness from the world's 
 great current of new ideas has bred in them an intense conserva- 
 tism, often amounting to bitter intolerance. For instance, they 
 were so outraged by the divided skirts and cross-saddle riding of 
 some of the women of our party, that in one county they were on 
 the point of blocking our way ; in another, they were only dissuaded 
 from a raid on the camp by a plea from a leading man of the town 
 for the two Kentucky women of the party who used side-saddles, 
 and everywhere they gave scowling evidence of disapproval. There 
 were no jeers; the matter was to them too serious for banter or 
 ridicule. Nor was their feeling, as w^e shall see later, an outgrowth 
 of a particularly high and delicate standard of womanhood ; it was 
 more a deep-seated dislike of the unusual. Painfully lax in many 
 questions of morals, they hold tenaciously to matters of form. The 
 women who came into our camp at dififerent times to visit us, in 
 spite of a temperature of 90° Fahr., wore red woollen mitts, their 
 tribute to the conventions. 
 
 The upland regions of all countries are the stronghold of religious 
 faiths, because the conservatism there bred holds to the orthodox, 
 while the impressive beauty and grandeur of the natural surround- 
 ings appeals to the spiritual in man. Such a religion, however, is 
 likely to be elemental in character — intense as to feeling, tenacious 
 of dogma, but exercising little or no influence on the morals of 
 everyday life. This is the religion of the Kentucky mountaineer. 
 By nature he is reverential. Caves are "God's houses," sun time is 
 
24 The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains 
 
 "God's time," indicated by the noon-mark traced with charcoal on 
 the cabin door. A God-fearing man has the iinHmited respect of 
 every one in the mountains. A preacher is a privileged person. 
 Wherever he goes he finds free board and lodging for himself and 
 his horse, and his horse is always shod free. In that lawless coun- 
 try, a man who shoots a preacher is ever after an object of aversion, 
 and there is a general assumption that the murderer will not live 
 long — either a superstition or a generalization from the experience 
 that often some individual constitutes himself an arm of the 
 Almighty to punish the offender. One who is a preacher must be 
 "called" to the work, and must serve without pay. The "call" does 
 not presuppose any previous preparation for the profession, and 
 naturally involves some modern substitute for Paul's tent-making 
 to earn a livelihood. The result in the Kentucky mountains is 
 sometimes amazing. Preachers there have been known to be whisky 
 distillers. Some have been seen to take one or two drinks of liquor 
 while delivering a sermon. We attended an outdoor "meetin' " 
 conducted by one whose widowed sister ran a moonshine still. The 
 best are farmers or country storekeepers. All are more or less 
 ignorant, some densely so. We heard one man preach who could 
 neither read nor write. At a meeting of some sectarian association 
 in the fall of 1898, a mountain preacher advanced the opinion that 
 the old blueback spelling-book gave all the education that a preacher 
 needed. The style of preaching that appeals to the mountaineer is 
 purely hortatory. It begins in a natural tone of voice, but, like all 
 highly emotional speech, soon rises to rhythmical cadences, and 
 then settles to a sustained chant for an hour or more. Any ex- 
 planatory remarks are inserted parenthetically in a natural voice. 
 This, and only this, stirs the religious fervour of the mountaineer. 
 A clerg}mian from one of our cities who was doing missionary work 
 among these people was met with the criticism after his service, 
 "Stranger, I 'lowed to hear ye preach, and ye jest talked." 
 
 Though his religion is emotional and little suggestive of a basis 
 in rationalism, yet the mountaineer takes his mental gymnastics in 
 vigorous discussion of dogma. This seems to be the one form of 
 abstract reasoning open to him — an exercise natural to the Teutonic 
 mind. He is ignorant, remember, therefore positive and prone to 
 distinguish many shades of belief. Sects are numerous. There 
 are four recognized kinds of Baptists in the mountains. Denomi- 
 national prejudice is so strong that each denomination refuses to 
 have anything to do with another. A Methodist refuses to send 
 
The Anglo-Saxons of tlic Kentucky Mountains 25 
 
 his children to the Presbyterian mission school in his neighborhood, 
 though it is far superior to anything else at his command, and costs 
 him nothing. For this reason the work of the various Home Mis- 
 sion boards in the mountains has achieved only limited results as 
 to number. Only undenominational work, like that of a social 
 settlement, can reach all the people of one locality; and in view of 
 the sparsity of tlie population, this is a vital matter. 
 
 In spite of the intensity of religious feeling, the number of com- 
 municants of all denominations forms only from five to fifteen per 
 cent, of the total population. The mountains of Eastern Kentucky 
 show the largest area of this low percentage in the United States, 
 east of the Missouri River and the Indian Territory. It may be due 
 to the lack of churches and of any church organization where the 
 preachers are "called" and do not form a distinct profession. Bap- 
 tists, Disciples of Christ, and Methodists are most profusely repre- 
 sented. The sparsity of population with the diversity of sects 
 permits religious service only once a month, when the circuit rider 
 comes. This devoted man leaves his farm or store on Friday, and 
 goes "creeter-back" over the mountains to each of his distant charges 
 in turn. The district school building, in lieu of a church, answers 
 for the meeting. Service is held on Saturday morning, and again 
 on Sunday, for many of the congregation have come such a dis- 
 tance they feel entitled to a double feast of religion. They stay at 
 the nearest cabin, which takes them in with their horses. After the 
 Saturday sermon, the secular aflfairs of the church are attended to, 
 as the mountaineer considers it unseemly to transact any business, 
 even the disciplining of a delinquent member, on Sunday, although 
 outside the sacred precincts he trades horses and indulges his taste 
 for conviviality. Religion is something to be kept assiduously apart 
 from common everyday living. 
 
 The fact that the profession of a mountain preacher is only an 
 avocation with its consequent secondary claim upon his time, the 
 fact of the severity of winter weather for horseback travel, and of 
 the impassability of the roads at this season both for pastor and 
 people, render church worship intermittent in this upland region, 
 and at the same time explain the curious custom of the mountain 
 funeral. This never takes place at the time of interment, but is 
 postponed for months or years. It is desirable to have the cere- 
 mony at a time when the roads are passable, when the preacher will 
 not be detained by the harvesting of his corn crop, and when there 
 can be a great gathering of kinfolk, for the clan instinct is strong 
 
21 TJic Anglo-Saxons of tJic Kentucky Monniains • 
 
 amono^ these people, and a funeral has its cheerful side in the op- 
 portunity of social intercourse it affords. Sometimes a long arrcar 
 of funerals has to be observed, if adverse circumstances for several 
 years have prevented a family gathering. At one cabin we visited, 
 the woman of the house told us she was getting ready for a big 
 gathering at her place on the first of October, when the funerals of 
 five of her relatives were to be preached. A university man, travel- 
 ling through the mountains to make some scientific research, told us 
 he had recently heard a sermon preached in honor of an old man 
 who had died a year before and of a baby girl who had departed 
 this life in 1868. The prominence given to funeral sermons in the 
 season of good roads lends a sombre cast to the religion of the 
 mountaineer, and strengthens in him a fatalistic tendency which is 
 already one of his prominent characteristics, born doubtless of the 
 hopelessness of his struggle with natural conditions. This feeling 
 is so strong that it goes to astonishing lengths. It frankly condemns 
 missions and Sunday schools as gratuitous meddling with the affairs 
 of Providence. An Episcopal bishop recently, on arriving in a 
 mountain village, heard that one of the families there was in great 
 distress, and went immediately to make a visit of condolence. When 
 he inquired as to the cause of their grief, he learned that a ten-year- 
 old son had disappeared the evening before, and they had reason to 
 suppose he had been lost in a large limestone cave which ran back two 
 miles under the mountain not far away. In answer to his ques- 
 tion if their search had been fruitless, he learned they had made no 
 attempt at search, but "if he's to die, he's to die" came the wail, 
 with pious ejaculations as to the will of God. In a few moments 
 the man of God was striding along the trail to the cave, a posse of 
 men and boys armed with candles and lanterns pressing close upon 
 his heels, and in two hours the lost child was restored to the bosom 
 of its family. 
 
 The morals of the mountain people lend strong evidence for the 
 development theory of ethics. Their moral principles are a direct 
 product of their environment, and are quite divorced from their 
 religion, which is an imported product. The same conditions that 
 have kept the ethnic type pure have kept the social phenomena 
 primitive, with their natural concomitants of primitive ethics and 
 primitive methods of social control. Such conditions have fostered 
 the survival of the blood-feud among the Kentucky mountaineers. 
 As an institution, it can be traced back to the idea of clan responsi- 
 bility which held among their Anglo-Saxon forefathers ; and it is 
 
The Anglo-Saxons of the Kcniiicky Mo iiii fains 27 
 
 this Old World spirit wliich animates them when the eldest man 
 of a family considers it a point of honor to avenge a wrong done to 
 one of his kindred, or when a woman lays upon her sons the sacred 
 obligation of killing the murderer of their father. In a community that 
 grows from within by natural increase,' hereditary instincts are strong, 
 and clan traditions hold sway. But if the blood-feud was decadent 
 among the colonial ancestors of our Kentucky mountainers, the 
 isolation of this wild upland region was all-sufficient to effect its 
 renascence, and to-day in some counties it is a more powerful factor 
 of social control than the courts of law. The mountains, by reason 
 of their inaccessibility and the sparsity of their populations, saw a 
 great prolongation of pioneer days and pioneer organization of 
 society, where every man depended on his own strong arm or rifle 
 to guard his interests and right his wrongs. When the law invaded 
 this remote region, it found the feud established and the individual 
 loath to subordinate himself to the body politic. This individual 
 .was justified to himself by the almost universal miscarriage of 
 justice. For the administration of the law is almost impossible in 
 a feud case. It is next to impossible to convict a murderer in his 
 own county, because the jury, and often the witnesses, are intimi- 
 dated by the party of the defendant, and will fail to render a verdict 
 of guilty; or, if the murder was committed to avenge some real 
 wrong, the mountain jury, trained by tradition in their peculiar 
 ideas of family honor, feels itself in sympathy with the criminal 
 and acquits him. This they do without compunction, for they have 
 as yet only a rudimentary conception of the sacredness of the law. 
 The court often tries a change of venue, but the cost of this is par- 
 ticularly burdensome in a poor community, and the change is made 
 to an adjoining county, where sympathy with mountain methods 
 still holds. As a last resort, a rescue party of the defendant's rela- 
 tives will make its attempt to defeat justice. An episode of the 
 Howard and Baker feud, which raged during the summer of 1899 
 in Clay County, was the trial in Knox County of a Baker lad who 
 had killed one of the opposing faction. Forty-two Bakers, armed 
 with rifles and smokeless powder, came over the mountains to at- 
 tend the trial, and openly established their "fort," or headquarters, 
 in the county-seat. The boy, though clearly guilty, was acquitted, 
 received his gun from the sheriff, and started off that night to the 
 scene of hostilities, attended by his kindred as a guard of honor, not 
 as a rescue party. The consequence is, if a man is killed in a quar- 
 rel, his relatives, knowing from long experience the helplessness of 
 
28 The AiujJo-Saxoiis of tlic Kentucky Moimtaiiis * 
 
 the law. take the matter of |)unishmcnt into their own hands, and at 
 their first chance shoot the murderer. But the desire for personal 
 vengence is always present. In this same Howard and Baker 
 feud, Tom Baker shot to death William White, an ally of the How- 
 ards and brother of the sheriff, as likewise kinsman of the county 
 clerk, jailer, and judge. Naturally reluctant to give himself up to 
 officials who were his personal enemies. Baker took to the hills until 
 State troops were sent to the county, when he gave himself up to 
 them. They pitched tent in the court-house yard, with a Catling gun 
 in position for action, and Tom Baker was placed in a tent in the 
 centre, while no one was allowed to enter the military Hues. But 
 one day his guards brought Tom Baker for a moment to the door 
 of his tent for a breath of air, and in that instant a shot, fired from 
 the house of the sheriff, found its way to his heart. And the moun- 
 taineers openly exulted that a hundred trained soldiers could not 
 protect a man who had been marked out as a victim. 
 
 The exciting causes of these feuds are manifold and often of a 
 trifling nature. A misunderstanding in a horse trade, a gate left 
 open and trespassing cattle, the shooting of a dog, political rivalry, 
 or a difficulty over a boundary fence may start the trouble. The 
 first shooting is sometimes done in the madness of moonshine intoxi- 
 cation. These mountaineers are men who hold life as light as a 
 latigh, and to such anything is sufficient provocation to shoot ; so the 
 first blood is easily shed. The feud once started, a long and bloody 
 war ensues, often for several years, in which waylaying, shooting 
 from ambush, and arson are regular features. Sometimes pitched 
 battles, engaging a hundred men or more, or a protracted siege of a 
 factionist stronghold varies the programme. In the recent Howard 
 and Baker feud, the principals were men of prominence, influence, 
 and means, so they were able to command a number of followers. 
 The main allies of the Howards were the White family, who have 
 furnished members of the United States Congress, State Senate, 
 and House of Representatives, and have controlled the offices of the 
 county for fifty years. In the French and Eversole feud, which 
 raged at intervals for many years in Perry County, the best people 
 of the county were drawn into one or the other faction. And yet 
 throughout this section there are those who deplore the reigning 
 lawlessness. 
 
 In all mountain regions of the world crimes against persons are 
 far more frequent than crimes against property. So in the Ken- 
 tucky uplands the former are frequent, the latter rare. There is no 
 
The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains 29 
 
 real disgrace attached to killing an enemy or a government officer 
 who attempts to raid a moonshine still. There is little regard for 
 the law as such, little regard for human life ; but property is sacred. 
 If a mountaineer is asked what, in the eyes of the mountain people, 
 is the worst crime a man can commit, the answer comes, "Horse- 
 stealing. If a man up here steals a horse, his best friend would not 
 trust him again with fifty cents." Here speaks the utilitarian basis 
 of his ethics in the almost impassable roads and trails of a pioneer 
 country. To further inquiry he replies, "And the next worst thing 
 is to steal logs out of a stream — indeed, to steal anything." The 
 mountaineer is honest, scrupulously so. If a log from a lumber- 
 camp is stranded on his field from a subsiding flood in the river, he 
 rolls it into the water at the next rise; or if this is impossible on 
 account of its weight, he lets it lie and rot as a matter of course, for 
 it never occurs to him to cut it up for his own use. He never locks 
 his door. If a robbery occurs, the punishment is swift and sure, 
 for the hue-and-cry is raised up and down the valley or cove, and 
 the escape of the culprit is almost impossible. Primitive in their 
 shortcomings, these mountain people are primitive also in their 
 virtues. The survival of the clan instinct has bred in them a high 
 degree of loyalty ; and their free, wild life, together with the remote- 
 ness of the law, has made them personally brave. They carry 
 themselves with a certain conscious dignity which peremptorily 
 forbids all condescension. Every man recognizes man's equality ; 
 there are no different classes. The consequence is the prevalence 
 of that democratic spirit which characterizes the mountains of 
 Switzerland and Norway. 
 
 In only one respect do the mountain people show marked moral 
 degradation. There seems to be no higher standard of morality 
 for the women than for the men, and for both it is low. This is 
 true throughout the Southern Appalachians. The women are 
 modest, gentle, and refined in their manners, but their virtue is frail. 
 The ideaHsm of youth generally keeps the girls pure, but when they 
 marry and take up the heavy burdens that mountain life imposes upon 
 them, their existence is sunk in a gross materialism, to which their 
 environment offers no counteracting influence. Furthermore, the 
 one-room cabin harbours old and young, married and single, of both 
 sexes. 
 
 The Kentucky mountaineers are shut off from the inspiration to 
 higher living that is found in the world of books. Isolation, poverty, 
 sparsity of population, and impassability of roads make an education 
 
 -YVO 
 
30 TJic Anglo-Saxons of the Kcnlucky Mountains 
 
 difficult, if not impossible ; the effect of these conditions is to be seen 
 in the large percentage of illiterates in this section. Of the women 
 over twenty-five years old and men over forty, 80 per cent, can 
 neither read nor write. It is quite the usual thing to meet men of 
 clear, vigorous intellects and marked capacity in practical affairs 
 who cannot sign their own names. One mountaineer gave it as his 
 observation that only one-half of the men over twenty years in his 
 county could read. With the children it is somewhat better, be- 
 cause with the natural increase of population more district, schools 
 are established, and distances are therefore shortened for the tramp 
 from cabin to school-house. To children who must go barefoot, or 
 wear home-made moccasins, or who can afford not more than one 
 I)air of store shoes a year, the question of distances is a vital one, 
 especially in the winter. The district schools are in session for five 
 months, from August first till Christmas. The number of pupils at a 
 school ranges from fifty to a hundred of all ages from six years to 
 twenty, and all are in charge of one ignorant, often inexperienced 
 teacher. They start in at their work in August, but it is soon inter- 
 rupted for a week, because the instructor has to leave to attend the 
 Teachers' Institute at the county-seat. On October first the older 
 boys and girls are withdrawn from school for two weeks to help 
 get in the harvest. Then November comes, and with it in alter- 
 native years certain important state and county elections. If the 
 teacher is a man, being one of the few educated men of the section, 
 he is probably a candidate for one of the county offices, or a mem- 
 ber of his always numerous family connection aspires to the State 
 legislature. In either event the teacher, with a mountaineer's sense 
 of the importance of politics, closes school for ten days before the 
 election in order to take part in the campaign. The middle of 
 November the little flock reassembles, and the work of education 
 goes on. But soon the fall rains come, and then the cold and snows 
 of December. First the youngest and frailest are kept at home, 
 but the older and sturdier ones continue, all the more eagerly now 
 because they have the undivided attention of their instructor. The 
 day comes, however, when the intense cold, combined with their 
 own sad want of stout shoes and warm clothes, keeps even the most 
 ambitious at home, and the teacher, with a sigh of relief or regret, 
 locks the school-house door two weeks before the term is over. 
 And the children, with no books at home on which to exercise their 
 attainments, lose almost all that they have gained. And that all is 
 httle at best. 
 
The Anglo-Saxons of the Kenfneky Monntains 31 
 
 The district school of the Kentucky mountains is, in general, a 
 rough log-cabin more or less crudely equipped according to the 
 sparsity or density of the surrounding population. Some are entirely 
 without desks, rude, uncomfortable benches of rough mountain 
 manufacture taking their places. We saw no maps, and instead of 
 blackboards, the unplaned planks of the inside of the walls had 
 been stained a dark color for a space of 12 feet. In some of the 
 back districts, where hardware is at a premium, the children arc 
 summoned from recess by a big wooden rattle. If the physical 
 equipment of the school is primitive, the mental is almost as crude. 
 The standard of education for the teachers is not high. Some of 
 them have not progressed farther than the multiplication table in 
 arithmetic, and all use ungrammatical English. Their preparation 
 for teaching in general consists of the course of instruction at the 
 district school and a few months' training at the so-called normal 
 school of the county-seat. At a recent meeting of the Teachers' 
 Institute in one of the mountain counties, when the subject up for 
 discussion was "Devotional exercises in schools," it transpired that, 
 of the fifty-six public school teachers present, only one in eight 
 knew the Lord's prayer, a majority did not know what it was or 
 where it came from, a majority did not own a Testament, and only 
 two or three were the proud possessors of a Bible. Such ignorance 
 is pitiable, but pitiable chiefly because it means lack of opportunity. 
 Many of such teachers are half-grown boys and girls, who are in 
 this way trying to earn the money, always so scarce in the moun- 
 tains, "to go down to the settlements" and get an education. When 
 their desire for knowledge is once aroused, they are strong, per- 
 sistent, and ready to face any obstacle to get an education. Their 
 vigorous minds, un jaded nerves, and hardened bodies combine to 
 make them victors in the struggle. One boy of fourteen started 
 out from his hillside home with his little bundle of clothes slung 
 over his shoulder and 75 cents in his pocket, and tramped 25 miles 
 over rough mountain trails to Berea, where the nearest school and 
 college were. While taking the course there, he supported himself 
 by regular jobs of various kinds, and maintained an excellent stand- 
 ing in his classes. When a mountain lad comes down to the State 
 University at Lexington, it is a foregone conclusion that he is going 
 to carry off the honors. We find at work in him the same forces 
 that give success to the youth from the Swiss Alps and the glens of 
 the Scotch Highlands, when these too come down into the plains to 
 enter the fierce struggle for existence there. For the Kentucky 
 
32 Tlic Aiujlo-Saxoiis of tlic Kentucky Mountains 
 
 lad, the change has meant a stride over an intervening hundred and 
 fifty years. 
 
 The hfe of the Kentucky mountaineer bears the stamp of the 
 eighteenth century. His cabin home is rich in the local color of an 
 age long past. The si)inning-wheels for flax and wool, the bulky 
 loom in the shed-room outside, the quaint coverlet on the beds 
 within, the noon-mark on the door, and, more than all, the speech of 
 the people, show how the current of time has swei)t by and left 
 them in an eddy. The English they speak is that of the Elizabethan 
 age. They say "buss" for kiss, "gorm" for muss, "pack" for carry, 
 and "poke" for a small bag. Strong past tenses and perfect par- 
 ticiples, like "holp" and "holpen," and the syllabic plural of words 
 ending in sf, like "beasties," are constantly heard. The Saxon pro- 
 noun "hit" survives not only in the upland regions of Kentucky, 
 but also of the Virginias, Carolinas, and Tennessee. With the 
 conserving power of the mountains has come into operation also 
 their differentiating influence within their b(9undaries. Every val- 
 ley has some peculiarity of vocabulary or speech which distinguishes 
 it from the comnmnity across the adjoining range. The moun- 
 taineers have, therefore, criticized the dialect in John Fox's stories 
 of this region, because they are not judges of the dialect of any 
 locality but their own. A similar region of retarding isolation and 
 of Elizabethan English is found on Hatteras Island, which lies a 
 hundred miles ofl: the North Carolina coast, remote from the usual 
 line of travel. It has preserved a vernacular speech which to-day 
 needs a glossary to be intelligible, but which is fast conforming to 
 the modern standard, since the recent introduction of daily mail 
 boats. 
 
 Survivals of speech are accompanied also by survivals of cus- 
 toms. In the mountains, the "rule of the road" when two horse- 
 men or wagons meet is to turn to the left, as in England. An- 
 other relic of old Scotch or English custom we find in the "infare" 
 or "infair," after a mountain wedding. This is the dinner given at 
 the home of the groom's parents the day after the ceremony. It 
 was observed in the rural districts of all Kentucky and Indiana up 
 till fifty years ago, but now is adhered to only in the mountains. A 
 more remarkable case of survival was discovered in 1878 by Prof. 
 Nathaniel S. Shaler, of Harvard, on the borders of Virginia and 
 Kentucky. There in a secluded valley he found men hunting squir- 
 rels and rabbits wdth old English short-bows. "These were not the 
 contrivance of boys or of to-day, but were made and strung, and 
 
The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains 33 
 
 the arrows hefted in the ancient manner. The men, some of them 
 old, were admirably skilled in their use; they assured me that, like 
 their fathers before them, they had ever used the bow and arrow for 
 small game, reserving the costly ammunition of the rifle for deer 
 and bear." 
 
 Though these people came into the mountains with eighteenth- 
 century civilization, their isolation and poverty not only prevented 
 them from progressing, but also forced them to revert to earlier 
 usages which at the time of their coming were obsolescent. This 
 is the explanation of the feud, as has been shown above, of the use 
 of the hand-mill and short-bow, and especially of the old English 
 ballad poetry which constitutes the literature of these mountain 
 folk to-day. This has survived, or, more properly, flourished in its 
 mediaeval vigor because it has not felt the competition of books. 
 The scant baggage of the pioneer immigrants from colonial Virginia 
 and Carolina could not allow much space for books, and the few 
 that did make the trip across the Appalachian Mountains were used 
 up, from much reading and handling, by one generation. Poverty 
 and inaccessibility prevented an invasion of new books from without, 
 .lid from within there was no competition from newspapers. There 
 are to-day twenty contiguous mountain counties, covering altogether 
 2' ... .:. of 6,000 square miles, not one of which can boast a printing- 
 press. Under these circumstances, the Kentucky mountaineer re- 
 verted to his ancestral type of literature and revived ballad poetry. 
 This has now been handed down from lip to lip through generations, 
 the slightly variant form and phrase only testifying to its genuine- 
 ness. The ballad of "Barbara Allen," popular in Great Britain 
 three hundred years ago, and known now in America only to the 
 musical antiquarian, is a stand-by in several of the mountain coun- 
 ties. The tragic ballad of "Little Sir Hugh," or "The Jewish 
 Lady," as it is variously called, traces back to the Prior's Tale of 
 Chaucer. The lengthy ballad of "Lord Bateman," or "The Turkish 
 Lady," shows unmistakable identity with the poem of the same 
 name in Kurlock's "Ancient Scottish Ballads," though the Scotch 
 version is longer. 
 
 Animated by the spirit of minstrelsy, the mountaineers have com- 
 posed ballads on the analogy of the ancient. These are romantic or 
 heroic and of narrative length. ■ We heard a woman sing a native 
 ' allad of fifty-two stanzas, entitled "Beauregard and Zollicoffer," 
 ^<"ed the deeds of these two generals of the Civil War. 
 s^all these ballads is in a weird minor key, and is sung 
 
 \ 
 
3t The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains 
 
 in a nasal tone. So far as we were able to judge, the women are 
 the chief exponents of mountain minstrelsy, and the accuracy of 
 their memories for these long poems is suggestive of Homeric days. 
 Spain and Sicily are perhaps the only other parts of the civilized 
 world, at least in Europe and America, where modern folk-songs 
 are still composed in the form of ballad poetry. 
 
 The whole civilization of the Kentucky mountains is eloquent to 
 the anthropogeographer of the influence of physical environment, 
 for nowhere else in modern times has that progressive Anglo-Saxon 
 race been so long and so completely subjected to retarding con- 
 ditions; and at no other time could the ensuing result present so 
 startling a contrast to the achievement of the same race elsewhere 
 as in this progressive twentieth century. 
 
 y 
 
 
 / 
 
 
:^ 
 
«^ 
 
\ 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 !^ II 111! 
 
 1 ;i i:iii|i 
 
 014 570 690 7