Corpus of Early Smoky Mountain English (CESME)
Transcription of Joseph Hall Recordings of Great Smoky Mountain Speech
Michael Montgomery, December 2016
The following account details how the early recordings of Joseph Sargent Hall (1906-92) and their transcription presented here came to be. Beginning in June of 1939 Hall spent seven months visiting and recording people in and around the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. He had already spent the summer of 1937 in the area under the auspices of the National Park Service, which hired him to begin compiling a record of the traditional culture of residents who had recently been relocated from, or in some cases given leases to live out their lives on, lands which they and their families had occupied sometimes for three or more generations.1 As a graduate student at Columbia University studying linguistics at the time, the young Californian energetically met the challenge. That first summer of 1937 he used to become acquainted with mountain people, filling several 5"x7" notebooks with notes and transcriptions, but only when he returned in 1939 did he start recording them. Along with speech in the form of interviews, anecdotes, and stories, he recorded two other types of material, one he anticipated (renditions of the standard reading passage “Arthur the Rat”2) and one he did not (music3). Further information on Hall’s work and career can be found in the introduction to Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English, ed. by Michael B. Montgomery and Joseph S. Hall (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004), in Dictionary of Smoky Mountain and Southern Appalachian English (Michael Montgomery and Jennifer N. Heinmiller, forthcoming), and in Joseph Sargent Hall: The Man and His Work,” elsewhere at this site.
With recording equipment, transportation, and an assistant furnished by the National Park Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps, Hall was able to locate speakers throughout the Smokies. He used one CCC camp after another as a base from which to visit and record speakers. Local men at these camps identified and often introduced him to “good talkers.” In 1939 he used two recording machines, a Garwick operated by cables hooked to the battery of a pick-up truck, on which he made about 90 aluminum disks, and an Allied that running on a battery pack, on which he made about 70 acetate disks (these numbers are imprecise because of discrepancies in Hall’s records).
With the disks having a maximum play time of only about five or six minutes and made fragile by replaying, Hall eventually decided to have them converted to magnetic tape to facilitate his research and writing. At some point in the 1950s he arranged to have this done at the Library of Congress, where he deposited the original disks in exchange for compilations onto twenty reels.4 From the latter he extracted passages that appeared in slightly edited form in two books, Smoky Mountain Folks and Their Lore (1960) and Yarns and Tales from Old Smoky (1978), which appeared from the Cataloochee Press, an imprint Hall established through a printshop in Asheville, North Carolina. He donated a second copy of the reels to the archives of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, so that interpretive staff, researchers, and others could consult them. These reels were copied onto cassette and then kept in a climate-controlled environment. There is no evidence in his extensive personal papers that he systematically transcribed any of his recordings.5
What truly made Hall’s 1939 recordings accessible was the tireless labor of Mary Ruth Chiles, a retired GSMNP employee who around 1980 took it upon herself (reportedly accepting a fee of one dollar an hour) to transcribe Hall’s recordings (both the passages of speech and the lyrics to music) and a host of others in the archives of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Chiles undertook this work of preservation and access for the benefit of future researchers, particularly staff and interns at the national park, who were frequently called on for programs. The largest segment of this collection comprised miscellaneous oral history interviews recorded by volunteers and spark researchers between 1954 and 1984 with dozens of local residents who had grown up on lands ceded to the park. Chiles transcribed not only these, but also more focused series such as recollections of logging operations in pre-Park and the fiftieth reunion of the CCC held in 1983.6 She devised her own orthography to approximate pronunciation, relying heavily on apostrophes and employing some conventional dialect spellings (e.g. goin’, git) and unconventional ones. For the latter, the phonological quality is sometimes certain (e.g. a’right ‘all right’), but not always so (e.g. th’ ‘the’). She made the recordings more searchable by keying her transcripts to tape counter numbers every page or two and for most of them by preparing subject indexes. She prefaced the transcription of each of the twenty tapes of Hall’s material with a table of contents, keyed to the tape counter number, making the interspersed musical selections, segments of speech, and reading passages easy to isolate. Chiles saw her work
Any orthographic transcript represents a finding aid for most linguistic issues, always needing to be compared to the corresponding soundtrack and representing a bridge rather than an end in itself. Production of the one presented here took place as follows. It took Chiles’ version as its starting point, but represents a considerable refinement arrived at over nearly thirty years of re-auditing. With Hall’s blessing, Michael Montgomery copied the cassette tapes and Chiles’ transcripts housed at the GSMNP Archives in 1988, in which year Montgomery conceived the idea of compiling them into a searchable corpus. Over the next twenty years he audited the tapes many times to improve the accuracy of transcription. Early in this process he decided to use a system of orthography he had devised and used (presented elsewhere at this site) employing standard spellings wherever possible, except in a small number of cases accompanied by the notation “PRON” to signify noteworthy items of phonological interest (e.g. “once PRON oncet,” to indicate the presence of a final voiceless consonant, or “recollect PRON reecollect,” to indicate a raised vowel in the initial syllable. In contrast, items primarily of grammatical interest are normally represented in non-standard spelling (e.g. borned ‘born’, nestes ‘nests’) rather than by an explicit tag. To improve the transcription further, Elizabeth Layman (Montgomery’s assistant, who grew up in Asheville, North Carolina) audited Montgomery’s cassette copies of the recordings in November 2008 using a repeating mechanical transcriber and made additional corrections.7 Then, between 2010 and 2012, Christina Tortora and Frances Blanchette of the City University of New York reviewed Layman’s improved version using the acoustic signals from copies duplicated from Montgomery’s cassettes for their Audio-Aligned and Parsed Corpus of Appalachian English project. In 2013 Tortora provided Montgomery a copy of the AAPCAppE revision, which Montgomery then compared to the previous version. In the meantime, Montgomery had in 2012 obtained digitized copies of Hall’s original disks from the Library of Congress and through his institution (the University of South Carolina) had them filtered and cleaned. Then in 2015 Montgomery began a full-scale re-auditing with Paul Reed, a native of Hancock County in Upper East Tennessee and a doctoral student in Linguistics at the University of South Carolina. A specialist in acoustic phonetics, Reed used the acoustic signal and gave the recordings a completely fresh review, reconciling any discrepancies between pre-existing versions and producing the version presented here. This process introduced a substantial number of further refinements and has resulted the most advanced and arguably most accurate transcription to date. In early 2017 Montgomery shared it with the AAPCAppE project.
The of Hall’s originals, though often recorded outdoors, usually have fairly good sound quality. Relatively few words of the speech of interviewees cannot be ascertained, and whatever is not audible or intelligible rarely detracts from comprehension. Beyond problematic individual words, two larger issues confront any transcription effort. First, the recordings are occasionally marred by interruptions, voices being repeated, or similar mechanical flaws. It is impossible to ascertain whether these resulted from equipment malfunction, from his recorder being turned off, from a disk running out of space, or from the later conversion of disk recordings to reels. The frequent breaks and pauses in the recordings are usually indicated by double-line break.
The second problem involves transcription of the interviewer’s speech. A soft-spoken man, Hall took a restrained role in interviews (in contrast to several conducted by an assistant, Bill Moore). Only sometimes can Hall’s voice be heard in recordings he made (his turns are indicated by “H:”). As stated earlier, CCC workers directed him to people from whom he often sought what material they could contribute before he activated his machinery, no doubt because of the brevity of disks. Thus, Hall often prepped speakers beforehand and, after having the speaker introduce him/herself, would withdraw to varying degrees. Sometimes he engaged fully, asking many questions (e.g. of Mrs. Zilphie Sutton), but in many other cases one hears only the speaker. The latter recordings are thus not interviews, but performances, as in accounts of hunting told by D. F. Conner, Mark Cathey, and Frank Lambert. Hall used very few standard questions. He asked several speakers what they thought of the government’s compulsion to leave their homesteads, a subject perhaps more sensitive than Hall realized, coming as it did from an outsider affiliated with a government body. Interestingly, responses to uncomfortable questions have linguistic value in suggesting something of the politeness codes of respondents.
This transcription makes no attempt to represent laughter and little to represent the relatively infrequent occurrences of overlaps between speakers. Fleeting dysfluencies like false starts (especially when repeated) are frequently ignored, on the view that the cost of capturing them outweighs the gain in doing so, with the exception of the audible pause uh. Sometimes Hall (on occasion in tandem with a second speaker) seems to be very quietly steering the conversation in a manner that cannot quite be followed. The notation “xx” is used to indicate one or more unintelligible words, but no attempt has been made to represent the number of syllables scrupulously. Hall’s assistant Bill Moore, a native of Saunook in Haywood County, North Carolina, led four or five interviews, while other speakers (e.g. Manuel Moore, Herbert Stephenson) apparently took the microphone only to introduce themselves or tell a brief anecdote. Such local men were CCC (or possibly National Park Service) personnel on whom Hall relied to identify appropriate speakers or to arrange or even conduct interviews. Hall’s speakers were primarily, but by no means exclusively, older residents. Some of the best “talkers” were middle-aged (e.g. Eugene Sutton). The breakdown of the forty-seven speakers recorded in 1939 whose age Hall noted is as follows:
85-95 (3) 77-84 (7) 65-74 (14)
55-64 (5) 45-53 (7) 38-43 (3)
15-25 (17)
It is important not to judge Hall’s interviewing methodology, research design, or his selection of speakers on the basis of more recent thinking and to realize that there were many issues over which he, a Californian with limited resources and time, had no control. By comparison to any other student of American English of his day, he collected and put into forms now usable by researchers a body of audio material rarely if ever rivaled for any variety of American English before his time. His primary interest was the phonetics of his speakers, in the course of which he captured innumerable passages of connected discourse, speech eminently suitable for all kinds of acoustic analysis as well as discourse studies. He aimed to record voices speaking conversational English, as an anthropologist would do, not the de-contextualized short responses to a standard survey questionnaire being collected at the same period in field notebooks by the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States. The two efforts were complementary in nearly every way. His early collections, which include notebooks as well as recordings, formed the input to his Columbia University doctoral dissertation, The Phonetics of Great Smoky Mountain Speech, published in 1942 by King’s Crown Press in New York. Hall did not record and study the speech of the Smokies merely as a way to gain a higher degree. In 1937 his intention had been to conduct a study of Oklahoma speech for his doctoral dissertation. Instead, he found himself developing an affinity for the people and culture that he made contact with almost by accident in taking a summer job in 1937 to help pay university expenses at that time. After World War II he returned to the Smokies periodically for nearly thirty years and kept in touch with some he had befriended until his own passing in 1992. In our day his recordings and the transcripts derived from them offer opportunities to historians, genealogists, and other researchers in addition to linguists. Moreover, his work preserved ancestral voices for generations far beyond his time and ours.
Notes
1. This effort was belated. Great Smoky Mountains National Park formally opened in 1934, and by 1937 residents had been leaving for a decade, usually to relocate to farms and communities on the periphery of the park, and only a small minority remained. However, from the beginning Hall drew no distinction based on park boundaries.
2. This passage, originally titled “Grip the Rat,” had been devised by the British phonetician Daniel Jones and was used extensively by researchers at Columbia University and elsewhere at the time. When this writer visited Hall in Oceanside, California, in 1990, Hall told him that he had retitled it to have a more familiar-sounding name to speakers he would planned to record.
3. Thirty-four of the more than eighty musical selections he recorded were produced as the CD Old-Time Smoky Mountain Music and issued by the Great Smoky Mountains Association in 2010. This CD was one of six nominees for a Grammy award in the best Historical Documentary category in 2013. How Hall came to record music is a fascinating story, as the musicians (presumably CCC buddies) were almost entirely young men and a completely different set of people from his speakers. This story is told in the booklet accompanying the CD.
4. In 2002 Professor Melinda Richards of Middle Tennessee State University secured funding from her institution to visit the Library of Congress and have all of Hall’s original disks digitized for preservation, creating a permanent record of them for researchers to come. It is those versions, made possible by Richards' fore-sightedness, that the staff of this website obtained through the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in 2012 and have incorporated.
5. Hall’s personal papers, notes, copies of recordings (many from the 1950s or 1960s), and other materials were donated to the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University, where they form the Joseph Sargent Hall Collection and can be used for research. A detailed finding aid is located at http://archives.etsu.edu/?p=collections/findingaid&id=461&q=&rootcontentid=52684.
6. Montgomery systematically read and audited the transcriptions for the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English that he edited with Joseph S. Hall and that was published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2004.
7. This work was supported by National Science Foundation SGER grant (12530-FA08) “Transcription of Traditional Appalachian Speech.”
Alphabetical listing of speakers recorded in 1939 by Joseph Hall.
The following list identifies the age, community of each speaker, and identifies the Library of Congress disc number(s) at which this can be ascertained from the LOC inventory (some speakers cannot be identified from the inventory). Immediately following is a compilation of the each speaker’s transcribed portion(s) of their recording, keyed to the tape onto which the disc was copied in the 1950s, as available at the archives identified above. Disc numbers are also specified below, so in order to find the transcript for, e.g. J. T. Buckner, one need search only for “120b.”
Bill BARNES, 95, Hartford, Cocke County, Tennessee / Disc 050a, 050b, 051a, 051b
George Thomas BAXTER, 20s, Cosby, Cocke County, Tennessee / Disc 067a
Clara BECK, 29 / Disc 40a
Nancy BENSON, Cosby Creek, Cocke County, Tennessee / Disc 086a, 086b
William BOULDER, 20s, CCC Company 1458 / Disc ??
Mrs. Bill BROWN, 71, Towstring Creek, North Carolina / Disc 033b
J. T. BUCKNER, 20s, Enrollee at CCC Camp, Round Bottom, North Carolina / Disc 120b
John BURCHFIELD, 58, Cades Cove, Blount County, Tennessee / Disc 076a, 076b
Dan CABLE, 73, Cable Branch, Proctor, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 078b, 079a, 079b
Fonze CABLE, 59, Nine Mile, near Maryville, Blount County, Tennessee / Disc 077a, 077b, 078a
Mack CALDWELL, 53, Mt. Sterling, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 102b
Columbus CARDWELL, 20, Emerts Cove, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 081b
Aden CARVER, 93, Bradley Fork, Smokemont, N. C. / Disc 032a, 032b, 033a, 034a, 034b, 035b
CATALOOCHEE TRIO, Haywood County, North Carolina
Mark CATHEY, 54, Deep Creek, Swain Co, North Carolina / Disc 044a, 044b, 045a, 045b, 046a, 046b
Part I / Part II
Steve COLE, 70, Sugarlands, Gatlinburg, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 064b, 065b
Jerry COLLINS, 20s, Morristown, Hamblen County, Tennessee / Disc 109a
D. F. CONNER, 84, Oconaluftee, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 001a, 001b, 002a
Ralph CORBIN, 20s, Jellico, Campbell County, Tennessee / Disc 067b
Bert CRISP, 47, Towstring Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 037b
Clara (Mrs. Zeb) CRISP, 55, Hazel Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 060a
Zeb CRISP, 70, Hazel Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 059a, -59b
Wendell GATES, 20s, Robbinsville, Graham County, North Carolina / 112a
Grover GILLEY, 20s, Bryson City, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 039a
Mack HANNAH, 81, Little Cataloochee, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 003a, 003b
Mrs. Mack HANNAH, 73, Little Cataloochee, Haywood County, N. Carolina / Disc 003b, 004a, 004b
Gladys HOYLE, Indian Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 108b
Frank LAMBERT, 39, Smokemont, Swain County, N. C. / Disc 041a, 041b, 042a, 042b, 043a, 043b
Part I / Part II
Arlie LOVEDAY, 20s, Copeland Creek, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 069a
Frank MEHAFFEY, 45, Maggie, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 103a
Grady MATHIS, 50, Smokemont, North Carolina / Disc 036a
Rhoda MCMILLON, 70, Catons Grove, Cocke County, Tennessee / Disc 066a, 066b
Wilford METCALF, 20s, Del Rio, Cocke County, Tennessee / Disc 039a
Bill MOORE, 20s, Saunook, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 039a
Howard MOORE, 20s, Saunook, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 161b
Manuel MOORE, 20s, Saunook, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 039b
Al MORRIS, 67, Kirklands Creek, near Bryson City, North Carolina / Disc 047a, 047b
Wiley OAKLEY, 53, Gatlinburg, Tennessee / Disc 104a, 128b
Noah OGLE, 80, Emerts Cove, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 070a, 070b
Newton OWNBY, 77, Wears Valley, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 071a, 071b, 072a
Margaret PACKETT, 78, Bend of the River, Haywood County, North Carolina
Mrs. George PALMER, 79, Cataloochee, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 049a
Mary Alice PALMER, 18, Hartford, Cocke County, Tennessee / Disc 049b
Will PALMER, 69, Cataloochee, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 048a, 048b
Mrs. Will PALMER, 66, Cataloochee, North Carolina / Disc 011a
Margaret PARTON, 77, Copeland Creek, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 068a, 068b
Rebecca QUEEN, 70, Cherokee Indian / Disc 108a
Robert W. RAY, 22, Jefferson County, Tennessee / Disc 110a
Amos REAGAN, 45, Gatlinburg, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 073a
Eunice SMELCER, 20s, Emerts Cove, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 084a
Herman SMITH, 22, Hot Springs, Madison County, North Carolina./ Disc 021a
Herbert STEPHENSON, 25, Saunook, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 039b
Leona (Mrs. Will) STINNETT, 65, Emerts Cove, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 075a, 075b
W. M. (Willie) STINNETT, 70, Emerts Cove, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 074a, 074b
Docia STYLES, 66, Indian Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 037a
Eugene SUTTON, 43, Cataloochee Creek, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 057a, 057b
Jake SUTTON, 53, Cataloochee, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 056a, 056b
Jim SUTTON, 60, Cataloochee, Haywood County, North Carolina./ Disc 103b
Zilphie SUTTON, 70, Chestnut Branch, North Carolina / Disc 011b, 012a
Aaron SWANNINGER, Cades Cove, Blount County, Tennessee / Disc 062b, 063a, 063b
Unidentified, Emerts Cove, Tennessee / Disc 028b
WAYNEWOOD BAND, Haywood County, North Carolina
Jake WELCH, 79, Rowan Branch, Hazel Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 058a, 058b
Fate WIGGINS, c75, Deep Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 038b, 101b
Mary WIGGINS, 79, Deep Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 038a
Steve WOODY, 86, Cataloochee, North Carolina / Disc 012b
D. F. Conner, Oconaluftee, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 001a, 001b, 002a
C: Well, I was uh borned in uh Jackson County, eighteen fifty-five, and uh was uh, oh about eight years old I guess, or nine, moved from that county to uh, my father did, to uh, to Macon County, and uh we were there for about six years, I think, and then we, my father moved to, to, into this county known as uh, as Jackson at that time again, but was finally made to, so called to be Swain County, a new county struck off, and uh that was uh here on the waters of Luftee River, stayed there from the time I were about fourteen years old I think, on up till today on this river known as the Oconaluftee River, and uh I’ve been here in these mountains ever since, rared up, just, just come up, and uh now I’m a-gitting up in years, eighty-four I think, been here in the Smoky Mountains ever since, since I was about uh maybe fourteen years old, of course, we are here in the park now, the park area, our lands is turned over to the, to the, the Smoky Mountain National Park.
Well back when I were just a young man a-growing up, why, we didn’t have any advantage much of schools, we would probably have a term of about three months in the fall season, teacher would commence maybe sometime up in August and for three or four weeks then and probably stop then about two weeks to, for the people to take fodder and so on, and, and we would be out for a while, and about three months would be the, the extent of the school possibly, we wouldn’t get to go near all of that, course the, they were poor chances then for us, young fellows a-growing up to get any chance much of, of schooling, and it remained thataway for a good long while before we had any better advantages, probably the most of us was, was about grown without any education much, and so it, it’s been thataway till, till it didn’t give us people at that ti-, edge of the world, didn’t give us much chance of learning, we had to learn to help our parents, they was scatterly, scattered and not thick settled, and we had to help them at home, and we didn’t look out to ever need any much education.
Well back uh some years ago we had a good chance of fine mountain range, had our cattle out in the, in the Smoky Mountains, and me and uh one of my boys had some cattle killed by the bear, it was uh one big steer that we put a, I had some bear traps we put around the, around the steer where the bear were coming, and we finally had got him by the foot, you know, he went back into the laurel hung with this trap, and finally we traced him up till we got in hearing of him, he were, he were cutting a big figure and, and a-growling and so on, but we slipped round him with our guns and got close to him, and, and my boy shot him in the head, and we killed him and, and rolled him down the mountain to where we could, could uh kindly dress him, you know, well I had my horses hitched up pretty close PRON clost, but when we got back with some of our bear to them horses, you know, we couldn’t get up close to them, but we finally got our horses and taken part of it on one of them that we could get the closest to, and, and packed him in home, we had a fine time that day, I tell you what, but the, it was uh, it was more fun to us than anybody would think for, because we was so interested in getting that, that brute that was a-killing our cattle up, and so we had a good time though a-getting in home, with one horse scared till we couldn’t get him close to the bear, we got some of it on, packed on one of them, and got him in home at last.
And he was scared of a bear, and uh uh he was fond of bees, and he, he uh got this, he got Robert to talking with him, and, and Robert talked awhile and found out that uh John was scared of his bees, uh was good to bees, but he was scared of the bear, and he went out to uh, he said he wo- would go out there and look, he went out to our back farm, and he, he found a, a place out there, bee gum around, it was behind the other Hick?? boys, and he took a bear skin with him, and when he got down there with the bear skin, why he, he found out that uh Johnny was a-coming, and he got hisself in good shape to where he wanted to get and stay at, and, and he scared the boy, he put that bear skin on, and he got so he could get, could uh hiding and get out of the way till the boy passed, the boy passed, and he made a fuss and uh and Johnny, when he made a, when he, Robert made the fuss, Johnny looked back and saw Robert with the bear skin over him, wrapped up in the bear skin, and he thought that he would uh, it would, it was a bear coming, and so he broke to run, he run a little piece, and he, he hollered like a dog, barked like a dog, tried to scare the bear away, and he only made it a little worse, he hollered, and the bear sort of made us a ugly fuss, and finally he hollered pretty loud to try to scare the bear away, and Johnny and uh the bear, it made another little pass toward him, m- moved out six or eight feet towards him, made a ugly fuss, and he started down the hill and was xx down there, it was right steep, but was uh steep enough to run good, and so Johnny run to the fence and jumped the fence and never, n- never knocked a rail off and about a eight rail of fence, and he run on down the hill, they said he’s running as fast as a feist could run or a good dog would run, and he got down there and looked back, and uh he saw the bear passing through a little higher up, and he, and Johnny ...
Mrs. Mack Hannah, Little Cataloochee, Haywood County, North Carolina. / Disc 004a, 004b, 005a
and Johnny run down the hill a-aiming to go to his uncle’s, and he raised that alarm so a- a-running, and he made so much fuss that it scared the people, they run out of their house and looked, and they saw that Johnny was scared, and he was, he wasn’t just a-running a little, they said he was trying to fly, and they said he was a-stepping on the ground so hard that he went in shoe-mouth deep in the ground, and he, and he got on down there and tried to get his uncle to go with him back, and he wouldn’t go back, and they, he lay down there and rested till he got a little better, and he got up and walked off, and Robert was uh so well tickled, he was lying up there laughing in a sink hole, that’s about all.
-----
Johnny, after he come down, he laid down his bee bonnet and his uh things, he was a little xx and he thought he’d go to spring and get him a drink, and he got his water and set and come back out and thought he’d take him a smoke, and a little branch backed above him, and he looked around and he saw the bear and said he barked and barked and it wouldn’t move and took to a-rearing up, like it was coming towards him, and he said he hit down the road, down the hill, and jumped the fence and lost his shoe heel and run on to the house, and he wanted the folks to go on back and help him, and they told him it was nothing but the boys with a bear skin, but he said no, he said that it wasn’t that, he said he saw its feet, he knowed it was a bear, and so he rested a little and come on back home and found out it was the boys just a-scaring him.
[VERY SCRATCHY, BREAK, THEN STARTED OVER, HIGH PITCH, SAME VOICE AS PRECEDING]
H: The Big Bend is noted for its crime and whiskey, the people there was kind hearted, was no Christian mothers and fathers to raise the children, they grew up in ignorance, my stepson taught the first school that was ever taught down there in a little log house, and he was so scared that he slept with his gun under his head at night, and the children he said was very anxious to learn, he says they was almost grown, some that didn’t know their letters when he started in, and uh later on, hit was several years before they had another school, and for the last while, why, they was a woman went in there, and she taught two schools and said the men, women, and children packed the lumber out to build a house, and she had a Sunday School and said they was very anxious to go, said there’s grown children there that never has been in a churchhouse till they come up here, and some of them, some of the Hicks family, and there’s been from twenty to twenty-five murdered people there, just they was ignorant, raised up in ignorance, no Sunday School, no church nor nothing, nor no one to lead them on right, in the right way, but the old folks, they have nearly all dead, and what ain’t, most of them has left there, and the young folks has left that place, it’s a terrible place, bad place.
H: Brown, he lived, used to live on down in the Big Bend, he married Ona PRON Oney Hicks, and they separated, and he’d been off at work, him and Mims White, they came back through there, and the Brown boys and uh, and that Ona Hicks, Ona Brown, she was, they was at a still a-making whiskey just then, and the boys started on through up this way, and I suppose they was nearly drunk, they came on up to where they call the resting log, and the boys laid down there, and I don’t know whether they were asleep or not, anyways they was lying and resting, and Oney/Ona found out they was there, and she went back and told the boys that Scott and Mims was up there, they’d better go and see about them, and they went on back up there, and one of the McGaha boys shot Mims White and killed him, and the other one took the gun and killed Scott with his barrel, gun barrel, and then they pulled his shoes off and robbed him, they suppose, his shoes was gone, and the boy was found with them, a-wearing them, and they come along, some of them, on up there, and the boys lay there that was shot and knocked in the head till next morning, and they passed by again and said Scott was still a-breathing, and they shot his teeth out, shot him right in the mouth, then they
[SLOWER SPEED]
boys passed back by where the dead boys was lying, and they drug them out just a, a few steps from the trail and throwed them in a sink hole and covered them up with a leaves and stuff, and they killed the dog and throwed it out there to keep the people from finding them, smelling them, said they wasn’t covered good, and later on they missed the boys and they couldn’t hear of them and got to hunting for them, and they was uh, they think they was at Waynesville, Waynesville, they got him to go down and try to find out from them folks about hit, and he, he picked it out of them, and he took those off and he took them to jail, and they went and found the boys and took them off, what they could find of them, and took them to Waynesville and uh buried them, and they put the boys in the pen a lifetime for the murder, they owned up to it, didn’t they, just picked it out of them.
H: I moved our family, moved to Forneys Creek when I was about five years old, I remember, well, my grandfather, he was tending a little mill down about a quarter from home, and my grandmother and, and one of my little cousins and I were at home, and they come, we h- heard some dogs a-coming, and we looked out and we saw a deer, it was a five-slag buck, he’s coming down that mountain and they’s five little hounds after him, and he got to, it was a-making for the creek, and he got out to the fence, he had to jump over the fence before he could get to the creek, and my dogs jerked him back, and my grandmother, she grabbed the ax, the pole ax, and she went and hit it one lick, and hit tore loose from her, from the dogs, and run her right in the yard around the smoke house twicet, and we run in the house, it scared us, and we run in the house and shut the door, and it took back for the creek, made for the creek again, and it couldn’t make it over the fence, they jerked him down again, and she grabbed the ax or had the ax, and she took it and went and hit it that time with the edge of the ax, and she killed it, and grandfather, he, he heared the racket and he come, but the deer was so, so near dead it couldn’t get up, and so she, she finished it up.
I: xx.
H: Oh, yes, I don’t xx, I just know the tune to that and a few words [SINGS], she called herself Dee Monroe, and she, the fifes begin to beat, and the drum begin to beat and the fifes begin to blow, and Pretty Polly marched away, and after the battle was over, why she searched around, you know, and she found Jack, and she picked him up and carried him into the inn, and I don’t know, I just know a little of it about, I, something though that, that officer said to her, said her cheeks was too red and rosy, her fingers was too neat and slim and her cheeks was too red and rosy for to face a cannon ball, but she marched away anyway, she went on, she called herself Dee Monroe.
Mrs. Will Palmer, Cataloochee, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 011a
When I was a girl, we didn’t have any stove to cook on, we had to cook on the fire, we had uh what we called ovens, we’d put them on and heat them, put them, put some coals on the hearth and put the oven on it, put the bread, the dough in it, and put the lid on it, put some coals on top of that and bake our bread, had a, if we wanted to make coffee we had a tea kettle we put on and boiled our water and coffee pot and put it on some coals in front of the fire, and to fry our meat we had a skillet, we’d heat it and set it on top of the br-, bread, the oven that the bread was in, on the coals on the lid, and fry our meat, if we wanted to boil anything for dinner we had a, what we called a pot, we set it on the fire and put our meat in it or beans or anything we wanted boiled and boiled it for dinner, supper, whatever we, meal we wanted to have, I was grown before we ever had any stove, I can remember the first stove we ever, was in our house, we didn’t, we didn’t know hardly what to think when we got it, we didn’t know how to cook on it, but it didn’t take us long to learn, it was so much easier than the old-fashioned cooking, but I don’t know if the cooking was any better than the old-fashioned cooking, but it was much easier.
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Hmm, we used to dry our fruit, we’d gather our apples in of a day and peel our apples of a night and put them out on a scaffold, had a plank scaffold to put them on and dry them, go to it occasionally and stir it, and we’d fill our scaf-, the scaffold about every three days, and when it got pretty dry, we’d take it off on the cloth and lay it around the sun and fill our scaffolds again, we used to dry beans, string them up and dry them, do yet sometimes, and sweet potatoes, we’d dry them and dry blackberries and all such as that, such stuff as we can now we used to dry, we didn’t have cans, I can remember the first cans that we ever had, we brought a dozen and filled them with peaches, we used to have all together all of our fruit, but now we have to buy our peaches and stuff that way while we make our garden stuff, we have it each year.
Zilphie Sutton, Chestnut Branch, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 011b, 012a
S: Well we’d just treat it the best we can, we could use teas of all kinds and make tea for them and sweat them.
H: Uh what, what kinds of teas would you use?
S: Boneset tea and feverweed tea and this here beadwood bark, make hit for tea, oak bark, they make hit for tea, for a bowel complaint.
H: Uh what ki- what, what would you use to feed a rising?
S: Well they’s, you can put fat meat on a rising, or you can get uh fernan?? bark, fernan bark, nan bark, and make a poultice, put it on it, and they was a weed that they call wild indigo, you can take hit, and hit’ll stop blood poisoning, take the roots and beat it up, put sweet milk in it, and put it on it and it’ll draw it white and cure it up.
H: Uh, what would you use to treat the worms?
S: Well they was a kind of weed that they call gurglymock seed.
H: What kind of a seed or weed was that?
S: Gurglymock seed, gurglymock seed, it’s, some of it grows here.
H: About here or in the mountains?
S: Here.
H; Yeah?
S: Yeah, yes.
H: And what is the good stomach medicine?
S: Well that’s, I couldn’t hardly tell you how that would be, it, they’s a whole lot of stuff that I ain't used to for stomach troubles.
H: How would you feed your stomach off?
S: Well you’d take some kind of pills [H: Are you ...], well take this here uh, aw I forget the name of it, I’ll think uh, I don’t, I’ve forgot the name of it.
H: Indian physic tea?
S: Yes, Indian physic tea, it’s good.
H: Uh what was a good way to feed a toothache that you use?
S: Pull it out.
H: What’s another way?
S: Well sometimes a body puts burnt alum in it, sometimes you put uh, soda in it, the best toothache medicine I ever had was to pull it out.
H: Uh did you ever hear of a method of curing a toothache in which you put a hole in a tree?
S: Yeah.
H: What uh, how would you do that?
S: Well they bore a hole in a tree and uh stop it up with a plug, make a, like a bottle stopper or something or other, and drive it in there.
H: Uh wou- would you have to say anything in front of that hole?
S: No, I never did.
H: Uh what was a good cure for the croup and the tizzy?
S: Well sometimes it’s uh, you can drink a little xx.
S: Well, I don’t know hardly how, just all sorts of little things that a body gives to them that helps them, I don’t know whether it can be cured or not.
H: So it can’t be cured sometimes, can it?
S: Sometimes it can’t be cured.
H: Uh there’s one way uh of curing the croup or the tizik one, by taking a sourwood switch, how would they do that?
S: Well, I, I sort of hate to tell you, but I can, it’s foolishness, I have cured it, get you a sourwood switch and then have it a-standing up at the door and measure your stick, and if the young one grows, why, hit’ll cure it.
H: Uh you lay the sourwood switch above the door?
S: Yes sir.
H: Talk just a little louder.
S: Yes sir.
H: Could you talk a little louder, Missus Sutton? Uh how would you cure uh pneumony fever?
S: Well, you asked that question, I don’t know, I can’t tell ye.
H: Did you make any poultices with fried onions?
S: Yeah, we’d make poultices with fried onions and grease with pneumonia salve and loosen it [=the congestion] up thataway.
H: Well, where would you get this pneumonia salve?
S: Out of the store, a bottle.
H: Missus Sutton, you used to uh be a granny woman, didn’t you?
S: Yes sir.
H: About how many babies did you catch?
S: Well, the best that I remember, the last that I had any count of, it was a hundred and sixty.
H: A hundred and sixty?
S: Yes sir.
H: And where did you, where did you uh practice uh your work?
S: I just practiced myself.
H: Uh whereabouts, what town, what county ...
S: I, well I catched them in Middlesboro, and I catched them Cumberland Gap, and I catched them at uh this place out here, Sunburst, Tennessee, I had a hundred and sixty marked down before I quit, I marked that many down, but I catched more after that, I don’t remember it.
H: How long has it been since you’ve caught babies?
S: Well, it’s been something like about three year, I guess, I quit.
H: Could you tell us a little bit about uh when you were a girl, Missus Sutton, like what you had to do for a living and how you helped your family?
S: Yes sir, I washed it out, worked it out by hard day’s work, twenty-five cents a day, work all day for twenty-five cents, raise my family, raised seven children.
S: My family and about being, just stories or anything like that?
H: No, uh you were telling me how you split rails.
S: Oh yes, yes, I’ve split rails a many a day and carried them on my hip, and my hip would be so sore I couldn’t hardly get my dress on, had stakes, built fence, stocked hog corn, pulled fodder, and I’ve cut tops, and I’ve uh picked up chestnuts and sold them, dried fruit, sold them to get stuff with.
H: Where were you born, Missus Sutton?
S: i was borned up here at the foot of the Chestnut Mountain, in Tennessee.
H: Uh could you just tell us a little bit about weaving?
S: Yes sir, I’ve wove many a day, made cloth.
H: Uh what kind of cloth is uh li- linsey cloth?
S: Well hit’s wool, card it and spin it and weave it, that’s linsey cloth.
H: Uh when you’re dyeing cloth, how do you do it?
S: Well, you go to the store and buy what they called indigo and put it in a pot and boil it and color your thread, and then you weave it.
H: Did you ever use uh any kind of bark for dyeing?
S: Yes sir, we uh we’d ge- get uh walnut bark and sometimes beadwood bark and dye it, copperas, we’d get copperas and dye it, any kind of color we wanted, why that’s the kind of color we’d get, dye it, boil it up, make a ooze out of it, and color your thread, and then we’d weave it.
H: Have you uh batted much cotton in your time?
S: Yes sir, I bat all my cotton and quilt my quilts, I’ve card, you have to card it.
H: How much of uh cotton could you bat in a day?
S: Enough to stuff a quilt.
H: Enough to stuff a quilt?
S: Yes sir.
H: Uh could you tell us a little, a bit about that dynamite explosion up there in Big Creek?
S: No sir, I can’t do nothing like that, my boy could, but I can’t.
H: I think your uh son was there at the time, wasn’t he?
S: I don’t know whether he was right there or not, but he was pretty close PRON clost.
H: Hmm.
S: We lived out there, no, I can’t tell you nothing about that, I don’t know.
H: Umm, how did you uh keep insects out of the country when you were, when you were younger?
S: Used to be we didn’t have nothing like that, no beetles, beetles nor nothing to eat the beans up, we never, we didn’t never have nothing like that, we could plant a patch of beans and they’d just grow up and be green, plenty of them.
H: Why is that, why is that do you suppose that they have so many insects now?
S: Well, I couldn’t tell you that.
H: Uh did the people in times back have a practice of burning off the ground?
S: Yes sir, we never had no stuff to destroy our stuff till we got, till they wouldn’t burn the woods off, after they let the woods grow up, why these here bugs, one thing another come in and destroyed all of our beans, we can’t raise no beans here.
H: Why is it the people burned off the uh, the ground in the, in the woods, was that to keep the ins-, to keep the insects away?
S: Yes sir, to keep the woods open till you could get about through them, in my growing up.
H: Were there many uh wild animals in that country up there around Chestnut Branch?
S: ... any, yes sir, plenty.
H: What were the, what were the different animals that you saw up there?
S: Well, I never saw none but the bear, but I hear ...
Steve Woody, Cataloochee, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 012b
Want me to commence now? well, they was some fell-, is that loud enough to talk? they was some fellows come here and was a-coming through from Swain, in here what they call on the Trail Ridge they’d been five bear had passed a-going on to Shanty Mountain, well and they, they was a little skift of snow and that was how come to see their sign, and uh we started, I got up some fellows, and we started out the next morning, and uh some of them didn’t have no gun, and we got to the top of Shanty Mountain and we wanted to send some fellows to the uh stand and me and the fell-, me and another fellow by, Jack Williamson, was a-going in there to, going to scare them out, didn’t think they’d gone to den, and uh we I, I had a Winchester, a thirty-eight Winchester, and I let a fellow have hit and that thowed me without any gun, a-sending him to the stand, and uh we went, we uh had some uh dogs, some bear dogs, and we went on and we’re trailed them, cold trailed them right on to the side of Shanty Mountain, and they’d gone to den, they’d dug them out a den right in under where an old big balsam tree had turned up and just made one little place a-going in, well the dogs broke from uh, broke, when we got up pretty close, why that we couldn’t do nothing with our dogs, they just broke, well when me and Jack, we was off uh twenty steps I guess from them or maybe more, and Jack, he uh, they uh, the bear then, the old ones, they was an old uh two old shes and three uh yearlings, and then the bear, they commenced snapping at the, at the dogs, and the dog was just a-grabbing at them, well after while a, an old one run out, she just run off, well, the next’un come out was an old uh, was one of the yearlings, and we was in the laurel thicket and, and Jack, he uh, he had a gun, he had one of these here hog rifles, hit was a good’un too, and if he’d have shot, uh shot the old’un as she come out, why she’d just have blockaded the hole, and we’d a got all of them, but he never done it, and here come that little’un out, uh yearling out to him where we was a-standing in the laurel, and he just a-laid his gun down, just lay uh laid it, the gun down, a little skiff of snow in there, and it went off scooting down the hill about thirty steps and uh he, h-, he just, he reached down and took it right by the side of the head, had xx, took it by each ear, and uh he says uh, I’s up above the den, and uh he says “come here, Steve,” says, “come here and let’s cut its damned heart out of it,” well, I started to him, and as I went why there’s the green brier caught me around the uh foot right in the instep and throwed me right into the mouth of the den, and I thinks to myself “I’m gone this time sure,” and uh here, here then they just kept a-coming out, here come the next old one, and they just kept a-coming out till out come five, well Jack, when he got to where I could get to him, well, I, I’s just as scared so bad I couldn’t hardly do anything, and before I could get to him, why Jack, he had to turn that’un loose and he didn’t have a thing on, only, on his shirt, only just his shirt collar, hit had tore everything off of him and the blood just flying out of him, and he had to turn hit loose, well, by the time that come on hand, why before I could get to him, why he had to turn it loose and away went the bear and they just kept a-coming out till they come out five, well then, then it took us about thirty minutes to hunt up his gun, where it’d run, scooted down in the leaves in under the ...
and away back there, way back there all the bear, and uh after we had nothing to do, we just put our dogs there after one of the yearlings, and they run hit and, and treed it, run it off for I guess a, a half a mile down and, before they got up with it and they treed hit, well when we got there, why Jack, we’d got Jack’s gun, and uh when we got there, why he just went right in with the dogs, he just laid his gun down again, never offered to give it to me, he just laid his gun down, went right in with the dogs, and here come the bear down the tree just jumping down thataway, and uh he just went right in with them, yes sir, he, him and them dogs, and I just stood back and watched them, and him and them dogs killed that bear, and they got hit right there at the tree and, and we had nothing to do, only just uh pick it up and start for home, and Jack naked, all but his britches on, that’s the last.
Herman Smith, Hot Springs, Madison County, North Carolina / Disc 021a
S: My name’s Herman Smith, I was borned in Hot Springs, North Carolina, in Madison County, went to school at Hot Springs, went to the fourth grade, now I’m going to tell you a little story.
S: I joined the CCs at Asheville, North Carolina, in nineteen thirty-five, this is thirty-nine, and I’ve been in, been a-cooking for three years.
H: Is that all?
S: I guess that’s about all.
Unidentified, Emerts Cove, Sevier County, Tennessee
H: I’d like to know just who you are first, Martin, and where you live, it’s a good way to start off.
U1: Hmm, well, I don’t know, I don’t want to tell you all about that or not, I’d rather they wouldn’t know who it was.
H: Never be used for evidence or anything like that.
U1: I know it.
H: You don’t have to be scared of that, I would never put it out.
U1: I’d rather they wouldn’t know who it was.
H: That’s all right, I guess, just uh tell how the old-timers used to make their whiskey.
U1: Well, they’s, they’s about three, three different ways of making it, and they make, the old timers made it with, with corn, what they made straight corn, they didn’t make no sugar liquor, they put, they’d take a bushel, about a bushel of corn to the sixty-gallon barrel, and a half a bushel of malt corn, and they run it then in a, in what they call single and doubling, they run a, the beer, they’d run hit off in the, put it in a still, run it out without any, they didn’t have any worm or, or any thump keg at that time, and they run it up just through the worm and then after the, they run out the singlings, and then they’d put it all back in the still and run ba- up what they call double, and now the way, way they make it now here, they put in, take maybe half a bushel of meal, fifty pound of sugar to a bar-, to a s- sixty-gallon barrel and let it, let it work, it works in wintertime, it takes it about seven to ten days in the wintertime, it takes from about from three to five days with fifty pound of sugar, that way you get about well an average of five gallon whiskey to that if it turns out right.
H: Now how did the thump keg work?
U1: Then that, that thump keg, it takes the place of the s- doubles, s- single and doubling, they, the old timers didn’t have that, you know, and they used uh, they run it twice, made the single and double in this thump keg, it goes between the, the still and the condenser or worm, which would, whichever you use, it goes, goes between, the steam comes from the cap of the still to the thump keg and then down, goes to the bottom of the thump keg, comes, goes in, in at the top of the thump keg into the bottom and then maybe your beer or water, whatever you put in the thump keg, it goes, comes out under this water, and then the steam comes up and then goes out through the worm or condenser, whichever you’re using to condense, you aww, and it takes the place of that singling and doubling, makes it so much faster.
H: Did the law ever raid you while you were making liquor?
U1: Never did to me.
H: Uh where are the best places to make liquor around here? where do they do it, back in the mountains or ... ?
U1: Mountains, well, they did, when they made it here, they’s not very, very little ever made here anymore, close to the Cosby.
H: They make it back in the mountains this way.
U1: Back in the hills and anyplace to get hid.
H: Yeah, yeah, I agree, would you hide your equipment?
U2: All right, in a few minutes then I’ll tell ye.
Aden Carver, Bradley For, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 032a, 032b, 033a, 034a, 034b, 035b, 036a, 036b
C: Are you ready to begin? I was a boy about ten to twelve year old, and my father sent me out in the evening to hunt the sheep, and as I come in walking along a ridge, the first thing I knowed a panther jumped right out in front of me, he wasn’t over ten foot from me, he’d place his feet and slap his tail just like he was a-going to jump on me, I backed off, I guess twenty foot, maybe further, and got me a rock, standing there with a rock in my hand looking right at him, expecting him to get me at any time, and I made a kind of a move, and he started just as straight to me as he could, I throwed up my rock, and he turned just like he was a-going to cut me off betwixt me and the house, I went down that mountain, a steam car couldn’t have caught me, and I never looked back, the fencing wasn’t in my way nor nothing, and I jumped out into the field, run out half-way of the field, and I looked back, and I seed no panther, I don’t know where he went, but he was a main big’un.
C: I was borned in a half a mile of where I’m a-talking this morning, it was Haywood County, and now it’s Swain County, and just after the war a few year I was married, I was married at the age of twenty-two year, and I went to the state of Tennessee, and I was there a, quite a while, something like twenty-six or seven year, and I went in that area to trade, and I went into the milling business, mill company, and I learned my trade, and I, they moved me to a mill on the waters of Flat Creek, Tennessee, Sevier County, and there I stayed a year, and I never was in such a law-breaking country in life, it was no count, and I decided to leave, and another thought struck my mind and I still stayed, and I went to work to put up a church there.
And in seven years' time, I had a church. I saw as high as twenty drunk women the same day there and all the men that broke the law you wanted, and I left that country, when I left and went back to my old home, and a man of that country tried to persuade me back, that they’d buy me a farm and give it to me if I’d go back, but I never felt it was my duty to go back, I come back to North Carolina to take care of my father, the old fellow had got old, he couldn’t do nothing, and I stayed with him till he passed out, I still stayed in the state of North Carolina, worked, and finally I lost the old lady seven year ago last January, and I’m just alone, I’ve reached the age of ninety-three, three months, a few day, and yet able to go on and get about, getting along a- reasonable, you might say, while I was in the last year of our war, and I never called out no pension, I w- went through by my work, and a man will try, they can all get through by being honest and telling the truth and doing their work right, I’ve never been out of a job till I’ve got so up in age that I can’t keep up a job, and I’ve quit and come in, that’s all I’ll tell of that.
H: Tell us about uh your drawing CCC pay working on the Mingus Mill.
C: What?
H: Tell about drawing CCC pay and working on the Mingus Mill.
C: I went down to a mill down here, the Mingus Mill, the CC, they got me to sign up, the, it was a mill that I helped build, Benjamin built it, and the boss man couldn’t get it into his head right, and they got me to go there, and I went there and worked a month or maybe a little more, and the government paid me for that, that was more money than I ever made in life on any job, and I’m proud that I helped set up the job again, to work, for a man to understand that we have to live by our work.
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C: I uh first located on the Little East Fork, in Sevier County, five mile above Sevierville, I was there a few years, and we undertook to build a mill eleven mile above on the head of Flat Creek, in Bird Settlement, I went there, I went to work, and they were terrible work about, and they deviled me to death there, and I worked on there till we got the mill up, started, and I decided I’d leave that place, wasn’t a suitable place to raise a family, I’ve saw as high as ten to twenty drunk women the same day, and men in proportion, and I studied over one night, got up next morning, I says “Martha, I’m going to stay here till I have to go out,” and I went to work right after that I beginned with the association, and in seven year I had a Baptist church built there, and that country was all sobered down and seemed like a different country, and I left, come to my n- native land, and when I went back over to visit, they offered to buy me a place and give it to me if I’d come back, I axed them “what have I done for this country?” and they said, “you’ve done more than ever man that ever lived here, we’ve got a good civilized country and a good church.”
Mrs. Bill Brown, Towstring Creek, North Carolina, Interviewed BY Bill Moore / Disc 033b
B: Now just go ahead know to say I’ve knowed Mister Connor so long.
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B: I've been acquainted Mister Connor for thirty-nine years, thirty-nine years the tenth of last April, and he planted a walnut tree, must I plant it thataway and it grew, and he made his casket out of it, he made it hisself.
M: xx.
B: Oh he, and uh he, after he had the casket made, why he got in it and set in there and had his picture made in the casket right where he professed religion when he was a young man.
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M: Missus Brown, were you born and raised in Swain County?
B: No sir, I wasn’t born in, I wasn’t about to tell you, I’ll just tell you where I was born and ...
M: How long have you lived in this part of the country, Swain County?
B: Fifty, fifty-five years, fifty-three, fifty-four, I mean, guess it’s been fifty-four.
M: How many do you have in your family, Missus Brown?
B: Ten children.
M: Talk a little louder, ma’am.
B: Ten children.
M: Tell us about that big rain that come way back yonder.
B: No, it wasn’t.
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B: One day we uh, they was a, an awful rain come up, and the waters got up and my daughter got scared and, and, well what am I, must I tell? he asked me.
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B: Oh hush, Clara, I don’t know nothing about this.
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B: You can tell it, you can tell it good, come on, come on.
M: I’m going to cut it off, cut it off and get her to tell it?
B: Good, come on, Frank, get down here and tell it.
U: Lord, I can’t tell it.
B: Yes, you could, you can do better than me, I’m sure.
U: Well, I’ll tell you one.
Aden Carver, Bradley Fork, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 035b
[SINGING]
C: The first song I‘m a-going to sing to you is an old Primitive Baptist ...
[SINGING–UNINTELLIGIBLE]
C: Going to sing a song that I sung when the old lady was on her death bed, I wouldn’t do, a took a thousand and six worlds for her, ah but she’s gone, she called to me to sing her a song, and I moved up to her head and I sung her this song, and the song is this.
Grady Mathis, Smokemont, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 035a
M: So I set in up there one day to get all of them, they said uh, “how many ground hogs you get?”
H: A little louder.
M: Say, “how many ground hogs you get?” “Oh,” I says uh, “sometimes I get one and two and sometimes three,” I says, “the pretty part about it, Bishop told me to go ahead and kill the ground hog [that] was eating up the country up there, and I went ahead and killed it, Buddy, I had to get twelve before I got that’un,” and so he uh jumped on me and asked me about it and I said, “why, that was just a curve I was a-shooting at the boys around here,” and he said, “well, I actua- told Mister, Mister Needham,” “well,” I said, “I meant Mister Bishop, it wasn’t Mister Needham, it was Mister Bishop,” something like that’s what I told him.
H: Now tell about me coming up there.
M: About uh you?
H: Yeah.
M: And so one day Mister Allman and Mister Bishop, they come up there, and I was up and telling Mister Allman what kind of a curve I was a-shooting about the ground hog, you know, and Mister Bishop, he went ahead and said, “well, I’ll just have to get you and we’ll go over here and make a record of this,” and he told it over the radio, you know, and I went ahead and told him, and, and he promised then to come get me, but he never did, I told him I’d go but he never did come.
[BELOW SEEMS TO BE A DIFFERENT VOICE, BUT HE REFERS TO HIMSELF AS GRADY. IT’S ON THE SAME DISC, BUT THE TIMBRE/VOWELS/QUALITY IS DIFFERENT. NOT SURE WHO THE ABOVE VOICE IS.]
Along in nineteen and thirty-three I went into a, a Southern camp, and then I went from there to a company of fifteen, that’s Northern camp, and they had a fellow there, he was a rated man, and the Northern boys had done away with him, you know, and he said to me there one day, the superintendent did, he says “Grady, I’ve got a vacancy here for a leader, and I’ll let you have a bunch of those Northern boys, and if you can handle them, why I’ll give you the rating,” I said, “all right, I’ll try it, if I can’t get it out of them, why I can fetch them in or they can fetch me in,” and he said, “all right, that’s the kind of a man I was looking for, somebody can work them,” “well,” I says, “I know what the work is, and I know how to learn the boys to work, or I’ll try it as hard as anybody,” well, I went ahead down there and started out with the boys, and they went ahead there and went to running a-backwards and forwards to bum cigarettes from one company there to another, and I hopped up on a stump and told them cut that out, I happened to be the boss there, and I wanted work, I wasn’t wanting them a-running around there bumming cigarettes, so’s uh one said, “why, Christ Amighty,” he says, “what are you, a slave driver?” and I said, “don’t you open your mouth to me another time, boy, or I’ll show you whether I’m a slave driver or not,” and so a day or two later he said uh, “what did they do with you whenever you killed that man some two or three year ago?” and I says, “who want to know, you?” he said, “why, yes, I’d like to know,” “well, now” I says, “if you just name that to me again, you’ll know, you’ll go just the same route the other man went,” and so uh I went ahead there, and I went working and, and then they got to call me the Lieutenant, I told them that was my name, you know, Lieutenant, and I fell into work there and showing the boys how, and so’s the first thing I knowed I’d get started off, out away from them, why there they’d be a-whirling around looking at me, and I’d say “here, what are you doing there, boys? Do you think I’m Sandy Claus? I don’t want to see that happening no more,” and they got to talking back and forth to one another and say, “why Christ Almighty, he’s a slave driver,” and I said, just whirled around, I says uh, “I don’t want to hear that nary another time, boys, I’m a-showing you how to work, and I mean for you to know how to work,” and so’s he just tightened up.
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M: So a few days uh later, why, one of the Northern boys come out there to me and says uh, “hey, Lieutenant,” he says uh, “[if] a fire breaks out here, you take us out on these mountains?” and I said, “why, yes, what do you think I’m here for?” “well,” he says, “I didn’t know,” he says, “ain't you afraid you’ll get us lost out here?” and I said, “no sir, you can’t lose me in these mountains, I was born and raised here,” “well,” he said, “would you want us to fight fire like we work?” I said, “yes, but I still want you to fight it still harder, for a fire is hard to protect when it catches out, and I don’t want to see no standing whatever when fire is out, I want you to put it out,” “well,” he said, “what if the fire was to break over?” “well,” I says, “when fire breaks over, I usually break over, but I break over to get the boys straightened out at it,” “well, what if we wouldn’t do it?” “well, if you didn’t, I’ll break your back with something, I’m there to do the work, and I mean to have it done,” then the Northern boy says, “why, Christ Amighty, Lieutenant, we was liking you just fine, but we don’t think you’d do us thataway, we going to do the work for you just like you tell us,” “well if you do that, we going to get along,” “all right,” he says “Lieutenant,” he says, “now a fire breaks out, all you got to do is show us how, and we will sure enough put it out, cause we don’t like to get you bothered, Lieutenant, you’re a good man and want to help us boys out, but we understand your ill way of talking,” “well,” I said “that’s all right, I don’t only talk ill, if you boys wants to be ill with me, why, I’m small but I’m hard to handle,” “well, Christ Amighty,” he said, “we had a little boy up north about your size, and he got struck in there and he killed several men before he got stopped, that’s why we want to take care of you, we don’t want to get you mad,” “well, that’s all right” I said, “I ain't a-wanting to bother nobody,” but I says, “you boys here are going to do the work now, they got me here for a experienced local man, see, after this, and I told the man I thought I could, and that’s exactly what I mean to do is to see after it,” he said, “that’s okay,” well, that’s all I have to say this time, I reckon.
Docia Styles, Indian Creek, Swain County, North Carolina, Interviewed by Bill Moore / Disc 37a
M: Missus Styles, was you borned in, in Swain County?
S: No sir, I was borned in Jackson County.
M: How long did you live in Jackson County?
S: I was about seven years old.
M: How long you been at, have you been living on Indian Creek, Missus Styles?
S: Fifty-one year.
M: How many families lived on this creek at that time?
S: Thirty-two.
M: Missus Styles, was you borned and raised in Swain County?
S: No sir, I was borned in Jackson County, on Prichard Creek, lived there till I was about seven year old and moved to Swain County at, at Smokemont, and stayed till I was, till, eight year we stayed there and been on Indian Creek the rest of the time, fifty-one year.
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M: Just about how old are you, Missus Styles?
S: I’m sixty-six year old today.
M: How many families lived on this creek at one time ... ?
S: Thirty-two lived here at one time since I live here.
M: How many children do you have, Missus Styles?
S: Nine, eight a-living and one dead.
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M: Missus Wiggins left here one evening, she li-, her mother lived here where I live now, and she left here one evening starting for Deep Creek to Bryson Place and got lost on the mountain and, and lay out all night, and they was some mules come by with bells on, and she said they was company for her, thundered and lightninged all night, and when it begin to break daylight till she could see to walk, she took her two little kids and went on in home, and that’s all I know about that.
Bert Crisp, Towstring Creek, Swain County, North Carolina, interviewed by Bill Moore / Disc 037a, 037b
M: Mister Crisp, tell us about that there CC camp on Mingus’s Creek.
C: Well uh we went to work there about nineteen thirty-four I believe it was, worked there about two year.
M: What kind of work did you do up there?
C: They uh cut timber, chopped old dead timber and cleaned up, and fill up the old main public highway, and dressed off the banks on the new highway.
M: About how many boys was in that camp?
C: About two hundred.
M: Were they Northern boys?
C: Yes.
M: Where’d that camp go to from Mingus’s Creek?
C: Went from Mingus’s Creek to Deep Creek.
M: You know how long it stayed at Deep Creek?
C: About six months I believe it was.
M: Go ahead and tell us about your rating you got there at Deep Creek.
C: Well, I been there about a couple of months and got the rate thirty-six, the next month or so I got the rating ...
M: Mister Crisp, was you born and raised in Graham County?
C: No sir.
M: Let’s go ahead and tell us your full name and where you was borned and raised.
C: My name’s Bert Crisp, I was borned in Graham County, two year old when my father left there and come to Mingus.
M: Well, tell us about that old mill on Mingus Creek, Mister Crisp.
C: Well, that old mill was there far back as I can remember.
M: Who built that old mill, do you know?
C: Uh they told me it’s Don Early and uh Stephen Ijams is the one built it, Lon Floyd had it, had them to build it.
M: About how old are you now, Mister Crisp?
C: Forty-seven year old.
M: You have a pretty good-sized family?
C: Uh just four of us.
M: How long you been a-living on the Tow String, Mister Crisp?
C: I’ve been living on Tow String a couple of year, well, I’ve owned this place about ten year.
M: You have in a big crop around here, don’t you?
C: Yeah, pretty fair crop.
M: How did this creek get its name up here?
C: Well, this creek used to be uh called Davidson Branch, an old man moved in here back years ago, he put one year a tow factory, and uh from that on it went by the name of Tow String.
M: How many families live on this creek now, do you know?
C: There are about nineteen families there, ain't they?
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C: Twen-, twenty-three families?
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C: I don’t know.
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C: Why, Eddie Conner uh planted this walnut in the Big Cove, and it growed up to be a tree, and he cut it and had it sawed and made his coffin out of it, and he’d get in his coffin and had his picture made wh- whe- whe- when he’s in his coffin, and he was buried in that coffin.
Mary Wiggins, Deep Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 038a
[DOESN’T SOUND LIKE A WOMAN’S VOICE]
W: Just keep going the road in place of going home, I went just on up to the top of the mountain, till I seed the dark was on me, and then I set down and stayed there all night, next morning I got up and started back down the road, next morning I could find the trail very easy, I come back down and turned off home.
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W: Not loud enough?
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W: Doesn’t matter to hold that?
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W: And when I got to home, why Page was starting to hunt for me on the road, and so I as- got in all right next morning, wasn’t any trouble xx much as you want to know?
H: Well do you have any more that you want to tell?
W: Why, I don’t know as if I do.
H: Well, let’s try it out.
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[RECORDING HAS SHORT INTRUSION OF BILL MOORE HERE]
M: Name is Bill Moore, I’ve been in CCs going on six years, I come in the si- the CCs in July the fifteenth, can you hear it?
[MARY WIGGINS RESUMES]
W: Then I’ll just go on with the same story.
H: Yes.
W: Well, I guess [I] better just commence back again, huh? well, I was borned in Jackson County and then moved to Swain County when I was five years old, and we went to, all the schooling we got at them days was in, in a little old log cabin with a split log bench, just a tree split open and the legs bored in it and a fireplace, and we had just enough of us to go around three benches in the schoolhouse, and we’d sit across the bench, one down the side and one in the front, and we just had the old blue-back speller was all the study we had, just study, but we learnt to spell pretty well, but that’s all we knowed was just spelling, and finally we learnt to read and write.
H: xx.
W: Well, they was just set around the fireplace, down to each side and across the middle, and they was just enough of us to fill them three benches, we just had one teacher and well and the school just lasted from two to three months was all the school we had.
H: xx animals there in the park ... ?
W: Well, they was plenty of bear and deer and oh oh coon and all kinds of game when we first moved there then, wasn’t any troubles to get game then.
H: ... you eaten any bear meat?
W: Many a time, law yes, I’ve seed a many a bear and eat the meat of them, coon too.
H: How many bear ... ?
W: Well, I don’t know a-, can you tell, Fate? I can’t tell that, it was many, too many of them.
FW: Me too.
Fate Wiggins, Deep Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 038b
W: Way back I guess forty year ago, there’s a crowd of us going up Deep Creek a-deer driving, and me and Mark Cathey, we played off on them, we let them go and we took up Nettle Creek, and we went up Nettle Creek, we had a coon dog, he treed a coon in the clift, I had some red pepper parts before I left home and some rags to make a smoke, I said to Mark when he went in, Mark says, “now God, Wiggins, he’s at home,” “no,” I says, “that coon ain't at home, I’ve got some pepper here and you cut me that pole and I’ll run some of it in there and set it afire and that coon will have to die or come out of there,” Mark, he cut the pole, and I wired the rags on and the pepper and put them in and the coon went to coughing, Mark says, “aye, God, he’s a-giving trouble, ain't he? he’s into trouble,” so pretty soon I raked the leaves away from the hole, and the coon was smoked down a-lying there, and I jerked him out on the ground and we got him, we went across the mountain to where the other fellows was camped that night and they had a pot over there at the camp and we cooked that coon and we all lay down and went to sleep, and the coon cooked into crackling, we didn’t have anything but cracklings and a pot of grease next morning, next morning we went a-deer driving, they didn’t start ary deer, but they scared up some turkeys and one of them come out by me and I killed it, we come on back to the camp and John Parris and Henry Ellis had killed three squirrels, they put them up before the fire to barbecue them that night, and Billy Morris and West Cathey stole the squirrels in the night and eat them up, they got up a-cussing about their squirrels, but the squirrels was done eat, we all had a good time, we didn’t kill ary deer then, but I did kill a deer pretty soon after that, the last’un ever I saw in the woods, I killed it with a pocket knife, I was fishing and going up the creek and it had sunk itself, some dogs had run it in, and it had hid under a rock, and I happened to see it, and it jumped out into a deep hole, and I jumped right on it and cut his throat with a Barlow knife, and we took uh, we skinned the little deer and took him on to the camp and eat him, that’s all of that.
Bill Moore, Saunook, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 037a, 39a
M: Name is Bill Moore, I’ve been in CCs going on six years, I come the six, in the CCs July the fifteenth, in the year.
[PLAYING GUITAR]
[MOORE AND FAMILY SINGING]
Herbert Stephenson, Saunook, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 039b
S: All right, then, xx, I’ll tell you a story, it’s about hunting then.
H: Go to it.
S: I started to hunting one day, and I saw three turkeys sitting up on a limb, and I didn’t have but one bullet in my gun and I shot at them, I missed the turkeys, I hit the limb, I split it, and they, their toes stuck right down through the limb, and they r- riz and flew across the river there and I started across to get them, my boot got so full of fish, pulled a button off my britches and shot a rabbit over on the bank.
Manuel (“Rabbit Hunter”) Moore, Saunook, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 039b
M: What luck you had, ah that’s no fishing tale at all, I went a-fishing the other day, I tried every PRON ever kind of a bait in the world, I couldn’t get nothing that they’d strike, so I happened to think away back there in olden times when the Indians was here, they, I, he just took, and I drawed me a big frog on the side of a tree, and I had me three tow sacks, so I just put my hand over the s- t- uh frog till I got my sack up to the tree, and I went and opened my sack and took my hand off the frog and all three of my sacks filled up right there, so I took my knife and cut the frog off to keep them jumping, from killing theirselves against PRON agin the tree, always in the lake.
H: Well, why didn’t you just smear a little mud over that frog?
M: There wasn’t no mud handy where I was at.
B: One afternoon there came a hard rain, and the creek got up and came down and it sided us all, and we left the house and went over to the pastures on the hill where it was so high, we thought that it was going to wash, wash the house away, and the water came down so swift it went out into the barn and washed over the pa- uh the palings and washed down a lot of the corn and washed away the bridge and …
M: xx
B: My name’s uh Clara Beck, I’ve been living here eight year, and I’m twenty-nine year old.
M: Tell us where you were born.
B: I was borned at Clifton, South Carolina.
Frank Lambert, Smokemont, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 041a, 041b, 042a, 042b, 043a, 043b
L: My name’s Frank Lambert and uh borned in Swain County and lived, never have moved, lived here all of my life, well I went a- went a-hunting one night and I caught four, and uh when we shot our shells and a fellow come in and got some more and come back, and we, we killed two, and uh daylight when we got in, next night we started and we went about a mile and treed, and we looked all around the tree, and after a while we found him with a flashlight, and we laid him out, we went on up the hill about a half a mile or three quarters, and we treed again, there we got two more, well by then it was getting about daylight and we made another round for home, come in, skinned our coons, dressed them up, dressed their hide and went to bed and slept till the next night, got up just at dark and we made another round, we got three up one tree, we had just about give out, and we decided we’d make our way back to the house, and as we come on in, we met up with two more fellows, they had two, and they said they was going to hunt the next night and told us, going to hunt, White Pole Cove, well, we said we’d go the other way, and we took off, went up, up Upper Creek, well the uh, up the mouth of Upper Creek the dogs struck, took right out up the creek and run about a mile, a mile and a half, and treed, and, and we went to our dogs and, and th- they treed in the ground, and we dug in and got one, we went on up the creek, after a while we treed in the ground, we caught a skunk, they got him, we had him, we went then over on Bear Wallow, and we struck, down the creek they went about two mile and treed, and we cut the tree down and got two big coons, and we come back to the camp and got us dinners, and we s- laid down and slept that evening and next, next morning about three o’clock we started again and over and up the Cabin Branch and back across and head of Enloe, we caught three that morning.
We come back in home then and we started to, next, next night we started again, and w- we went over on Becks Branch.
Becks Branch, and we took right up the creek, and we, dogs struck right out Upper Branch over a ridge, treed, went over there, and they’s two coons up the tree, we shot them out, then we went on around on the Chestnut Springs Branch, dogs struck right over on the Chestnut Springs Branch and down hit about a mile, treed up a big hempine, we had stayed there till daylight, we got on the hill and we was a-looking round and about for them, and directly we found them right in the top, laying up on a limb, we took our Twenty-Two and off we rolled them, one, then we’d come on in home and dressed them up and laid down and took a nap, the next night at dark we started again, went over here and up Pigeon Creek, dogs struck, went up the creek a little piece and, and up, treed up a little hempine about twelve inches through I guess, and then they, I took a limb and clumb that tree and it jumped out, and dogs went up and down the creek after it, after a while they treed up a tree, and we stayed there till daylight, we shot him out next morning, come home, we decided we’d go back to Pigeon Creek next night, and, and we went back, dogs struck a-, about a mile up on the creek, they run about a mile and a half, two mile, and treed, we went to them, they was treed up a big chestnut, we shot them out, killed four, and we decided we had all we wanted then, towed?? in, and we started back,
got here just at daylight, and we skinned the, them up and dressed them, we laid down and slept, the next night we took, took for Pigeon Creek, we went up about two mile and a half over on Mingo, and the dogs struck way down on the mountain across, over a big ridge, we went over there and they treed up a oak stump about twenty foot high, we caught one, just had one toe on, on its foot, and we come in, dressed them, dressed him up, and we went, next night we started again and went over here on Becks Branch, we struck one, and we run him up the branch about a mile and hit was a possum, we thought it was a coon but it was a possum, we shot him out, we went on up the creek, we come to a, a forks, we took the left-hand forks, went up hit
about a quarter, we struck, we’d run about a quarter and treed, and we took our flashlight and we went around, looked about, after while found them, we shot two out of that tree, back down the Chestnut Spring Ridge to go home, we went down uh ...
Me and two fellows started up Couches Creek one night, we went about two miles, and the dogs struck, went on to the top of the ridge and treed, we went out, took our flashlight, and looked around, and after while found one pretty good size, we shot him out, then we turned, went on across the Big Ridge, and the dogs struck about a mile from there and treed, we went to him and treed up a chestnut, we found three, we shot every shell we had but one, and we got them and come in, got to the house four o’clock in the morning, next night we started, went up the river and to the Cabin Flats, the dogs struck, treed up a big hempine, I clumb it, carried the Twenty-Two on my back, got up there and I found him, and I shot him out, and the fellows got the coon and hit the dog and addled him, and he got the coon, held the dog a little while, and he got all right and come down and struck the Rye Field, and we went up the branch about half a mile and treed, we killed another’un, come in, my britches legs was froze, you could feel the ice, it rattled just like tin, we laid down and rest, daylight, and skinned the coons, dressed them up, then the next night us went to the Ace Cove?? and struck right on the head of the Galamore?? and??>00 went over in the Ace Cove the other way and treed, killed one, and uh went on, dogs struck, treed again up a big oak ?? In the Ace Cove we went up out on top Hughes Ridge, come back to the bald, the dogs struck, run about two mile and a half, treed uh on the head of Becks Branch, and we went to them, had a big’un treed up a chestnut tree, and there we killed him and come in home, dressed our meat up, we rested then two nights, then we made another trip, decided we’d go in the Sugar Orchard, we went over down the Chestnut Spring Branch, over around the Queen Field, got in the Queen Field, the dogs struck out over on the Charley Branch, treed them in a big birch, and uh there we killed it, went on in, treed up a birch, and we got two there and then we decided we’d go on down the Sugar Orchard, and we went down to, to the Deadening, dogs struck out up uh what they call Turkey Pen Branch, up hit about two mile and a half, we got out up there after them, there they treed up a tan oak, we went on up to them and was in a hole, there we had to cut the tree, time we got the tree cut down it was day, just breaking daylight, the tree sort of busted, and you could see two coons stick their nose out through the crack, there the dogs<??dog just a-biting them coons on the nose, and them a-squalling, and uh we cut a hole and got them, come in, dressed them up, and went back the next night, we hunted all night till ten o’clock the next morning, never struck nary a??>00 track, and we was rested that night and then the next night we went back to the Sugar Orchards, we went, got back to Deadening, dogs struck, up the creek they went about a mile, treed in the ground, we dug in and<??00 got one coon, we come out over to the Balsam Branch, dogs struck, down the creek they went about a mile and a half, treed in the cliffs, we went smoking, we smoked out two and uh killed them, come back to the camp and laid down and rested, dressed up our coon??>coons, went to sleep, next night we started up the Ace Cove, come in the Ace Cove, and the dogs struck, down the branch they went about half a mile, treed, and we went to them, had just a small one treed up a little tan oak, we shot him off, come on about a half a mile or three quarter and dogs struck, and down the mountain they went, we went to them and treed up a chestnut, there they had another’un treed, we shot him out, started to come home and, and there they struck about a quarter from there and we, down the branch after them, dogs treed up a birch, we went to the dogs and we had two, we shot him, them out and come in and dressed them up, the??>00 next night we went back, went to, to Mingo, there we started, got about a half a mile up above a house, dogs struck up the creek about a mile, dogs treed, and we went to them, shot two out of that tree, and then we went to the camp, laid down to daylight ?? we went up on the Gregory Ridge one morning to see if we could see a bear, and we went up there and we stayed to ten o’clock, didn’t see nary’un and been all under the tan oak trees a-feeding, there we stayed to ten o’clock and come back, the next morning we got up at daylight and we went back up there, and we got up on the Gregory Ridge, there they was found three up in a tree a-lapping, pulling the limbs over and eating the acorns off of them, I reared up with my Thirty-Two Winchester and struck him behind the shoulder with a bullet, out he come, down the hill he rolled, we shouldered him up, carrying him about a h- hundred yards and have to lay him down, rest, the other fellow, he’d take him down the mountain about a quarter, hundred yards, and he’d rest, we changed around that way till we got to the level, there we hung him up and dressed him up and put him in the sack to the house, then we decided we’d go a-bear hunting, we took our dogs, took out to the top of the old bald spring and down and on the bald we went, and allowing them dogs a-pulling us about, and around and about, after a while we hit a bear track, dogs went to yelling, we turned them loose, down through the Sugar Orchard they went and out up across over on Enloe, back around to the Big Branch, out across the head of hit over on Three Fork, over on back on Bull’s Eye they come around, about and out up Three Fo- Forks, dogs next morning, the dogs come in about ten o’clock, we was rested that night, next morning we come back over on the Upper Creek, we turned them loose, they went across out over there, there we caught one and started up the river, and hit got up on the hill a little piece and clumb a oak tree, fellow shot it off, he drifted down the creek about a t- hundred yards, and there they dressed hit up, I was up the creek about three mile, standing there watching for it, they shot their rifle three times, we heared them come in, there they had him dressed up when we got there, we all, nine of us, we just had a mess, a round of that bear, then the next day we decided we’d go back in the Sugar Orchard to see if ary’un had come in there, we drove all day, never hit nary no a track, and then we went up, back up on the cabin, and over on the Doc Connor’s farm and trailed one to an or-, some apple trees and back down to Dowdle place and all around through them old fields, we never did get to turn loose after that, we decided then we’d go along Pigeon Creek, we went over on Pigeon Creek, we got a track, turned loose, and there we never did see the bear, and we went out over the Black Camp Gap through there and up to Three Forks.
Ready? Mark’s daddy went, took the bear trap and went out to the mountain, and him and his grandfather, and set the trap, come back in and stayed two nights, and they went back the second morning and there they had a bear, he’d went down the mountain, bit off laurels, tore up by the roots, then tore everything out of the way as he went, then they got down to the creek, there they overhauled him, killed him, taked him, dressed him up, and took him up to the camp and stayed all night, come back in the next morning, they found one a-lapping on service, they went back, watched the service tree two days, the next, third morning they went back, they saw him in the tree, and the old man Tom Huskey rared up with his rifle and plugged him by the hind shoulder, off he come, down the hill about a quarter, and agin a big log he rolled, then they decided they’d build a bear pen, they went and cut them some logs, rolled it, built one log high, then they built a lid for it, took triggers, set that bear trap, baited it with a piece of beef, and a bear come, throwed the trap, never caught him, then he built him another’un, set hit, old man Tom went back and had about a two-year-old bear and said it’d had him mashed down flat till he couldn’t get up on his feet to raise the lid up, he shot him, dressed him up, and the old man said that uh no, he, he’d killed seventy-two bear, and a hundred and ten years old, and then they was around, he’d killed a hundred and four turkeys and uh, five hundred and sixty coons in this park and uh other game i- in accordance, he’d bear hunted, went up the river with his two dogs, and they struck, went across the river, and he treed against PRON agin a cliff, he went up above the cliff, he said the bear went down, the dogs whipped the bear back up, he shot the bear and uh said that the dogs made him climb back up, and he shot him, he went to the house and told his father it was about like his, the black steer they had, and ...
Mark Cathey, Deep Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 044a, 044b, 045a, 045b, 046a, 046b
C: Well, the fall of nineteen and twenty-one, me and a party went to Bryson Place on a bear hunt, they was twenty-nine in the party, natives from here and a bunch from Knoxville, Tennessee, and some from Oakdale, Tennessee, well the next morning, we’d turned out for the hunt, and the driver driv the west side of Deep Creek, the Easy Ridge and Pole Road with the bear hounds tied, and driv out to the Burnt Spruce Gap, that’s uh the dividing uh ridge between the Pole Road and Bear Creek, and they found no bear signs to turn the dogs on, and uh I placed the standers on the Bear Wallow Ridge beyond Bear Creek, and uh they turned the dogs loose to go back into camps, and we had some old trained bear hounds that turned off in the roughs, the laurel on the Bear Creek side, and picked up a cold trail and started out up to uh the Bear Creek a-trailing, opening along, and uh I g- hunted up some, some of the drivers and told them to let’s follow on, I asked them to let’s follow or go with me after the dogs and uh that they was after a bear, “well no,” they said, “that’s not a bear, hit’s a wildcat, a bobcat or coons or a deer,” so I pretty soon started on after the dogs, bu- but, but this time they was out of hearing a-going out just a-back of Round Top, I went on up Bear Creek and run into uh Waitsell Hunnicutt, one of our party, and uh asked him to go on with me, he’d heard the dogs go through, and he said it was a wildcat, and I prevailed with him to go on with me and he wouldn’t go, but I, anyway I got on up the mountain nearly out of hearing from him, and he hollered to me, he says, “you go on out to the Bear Pen Gap, and I’ll come on out or go that far with you,” well, I went on and topped out, and when I got out to the Bear Pen Gap, why the dogs was a-fighting the bear right in under the top of Smoky, pretty close up to the top, and I waited there on Hunnicutt, and after while he came on out and uh, he said to me “well” he said, “well,” he says, “let’s go to them,” “no,” I says, “we’ll stay right here, Waitsell, till,” I said, “they’re not a-going to let him cross the, the Smoky,” so they fought around there I guess thirty or forty minutes, and they turned right back down the big Wooly Head Ridge there, the fork ridge between the two forks of the left-hand fork of Deep Creek, and fought down into the flatwoods at the point of the ridge and stopped there, bayed, and commenced to barking the tree bark, I thought they was treed and so did Hunnicutt, so he said to me, he says “you go on, and you can go faster than I can and kill it, and I’ll come on in there to you,” well, I went on in and when I got down in there I heared no dogs, they’d gone, so I crossed the river and clim out on the opposite side a half a mile I guess and heared no dogs, and come back in to the forks of the river, and pretty soon Hunnicutt come, and then I told him, I said “the dogs has gone, Waitsell,” “well,” he said “they fought down the creek, the river here,” “no,” I said, “they haven’t done that, for,” I said, “those bear don’t fight down,” I said, “they’ve gone up the right-hand fork here,” and uh “well,” he said, “I’m a-going to camp.”
C: Well I, let’s see, I quit uh at the forks of the creek there, didn’t I?
I: Yes sir.
C: Yes, and Hunnicutt said they had fought down the creek, and I told him, no, that, those bear hardly ever fought down, but they always went up into the roughs, so uh he said he was a-going to camps, and I told him to go alone, that I was a-going to follow the dogs, and I clim out I guess between a quarter and a half a mile up on the opposite side and uh come back in and Hunnicutt wouldn’t go with me, so I went on, started on, and he hollered to me, he says, “I’ll come on, you can go on and see if you can, where they’re at,” so I went up and took around the mountainside and went across two or three spruce ridges and heard the dogs right in on the head of the right-hand fork a-barking, and uh hit got so rough that I fell back into the river and just took up, right up in the water, and was wet all over and got up anent them, they was about three hundred yards out on the left-hand side of the creek barking, and I’d turned out, I got up a little ways and I heard something a-coming down through the leaves, and uh when he come up to me, it was one of our bear hounds, a black and tan hound, and he was just eat up, bloody all over, well, I hissed him, and he went back up to the tree and commenced to barking, and I went on up and was a-aiming to get around above the tree and shoot the bear’s brains out as I usually do, but I got up I guess in about a hundred yards in below, and he commenced snapping his teeth and roaring and uh started down, and I fired on him, and he come out, hit, I heard him thump the ground, so I, when I got up where he fell, the dogs was all standing around there a-barking, and no bear there.
C: They hardly ever do that, so I made a circle around and uh found where he’d went out to the left of the tree acro-, around across this uh rough Wooly Head Ridge, so I called the dogs and got them in on his track, and I followed on after the sign, I went I guess two or three hundred yards, and I commenced finding plenty of blood, well uh the bear and dogs crossed to the other fork of the river, and when I topped out on this rough ridge, I heard them barking right down in the creek, and I went on down and the bear was under an old drift there, uh they’d been a water spout, a cloud bust up there in time, and run in just a lot of, awful lot of spruce and timber, and the bear was in under here and the dogs was, would venture under there, and he’d run at them, I could hear him a-slashing the water and popping his teeth, and I fooled yes fooled there and tried to see, uh get a shot at him and couldn’t see him, and so I uh got up on the drift, got me a pole and got up on the drift and laid down my gun and commenced jobbing down through the drift, and pretty soon I got some open spaces and I could job, I’d, I’d hit him with this pole, job him in the back, and he’d snort and bite the pole, well after a while, I heard a racket out to my left at the end of the drift, and I looked, and he was a-go-, climbing the bank just about out of my sight, I grabbed my gun and fired on him and he uh undoubtedly, he had his right hind leg just about straight in back, I took him away yes, away down the hock, and the ball lodged up in his hip.
C: So I got up in there very close in a few feet to where he’d under those old windfall logs and hissing the dogs, I could hear him back under there, was a-growling and snapping his teeth, and uh I kept a-working around, to try to get a shot at him, sight of him, to shoot him, and uh all at once PRON oncet he came out and the dogs run out of the way, and he took after me and uh he run me a, a hundred yard right after me, and the dogs come in behind him and commenced to catching him, and he whirled and went right back into the same place a second time, couldn’t get a shot at him for the dogs as he went back, so I went back in again right up uh as close PRON clost to level, and uh pretty soon I seen uh his uh nose, uh well, from about the fork of his mouth out and I l- let drive at him and broke both of his underjaws, cut them in two, well, he come out of there and started beyond, from me, and uh the dogs uh was after him, he was a-dragging them, and uh I couldn’t get nary another shot there, so he went on out two or three hundred yards, and they stopped him that time in the open laurel kindly nothing, it was under nothing, and I went on out and give him a couple of more shots, and that uh finished him, well uh it was uh night when I got Hunnicutt to me, uh after a while I heard him shoot.
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... it, we have signals that we go by in our hunting, three shots to come to you, that means kill him, two to go to town, so I finally got Hunnicutt to me, well, I asked him to come in, and I would stay with the bear and for him to come in and bring back help to pack it out, “no,” he said uh, “I’ll stay,” he said, “you can go faster than I can,” “well,” I lit out to uh, our camps was at Bryson Place, it uh, well, it’s nine mile from where I killed this bear to where we uh camped, so it was away in the night when I got in to camp, and uh the crowd was uneasy about me, I met a bunch of them up uh well nearly a mile above the cabin about the fork of Deep Creek, come a-going to see about me, and uh I didn’t tell them what had happened till we got in to camps, I told, they asked me what I’d been doing, and I told them that uh, well I was with the dogs and then after a while passed and I just fooled away all the evening after and then got into camp, well I had quite a bit of blood on me, my Duxbak clothes, and they noticed the blood, and uh John Edwards said to me, he says, “man,” he says, “you’ve killed a bear,” “yes,” I says, “I’ve killed the biggest bear that ever walked the Smoky, Johnny,” I said, “he’s laying right on the uh, right in under the Smoky, at the head of the left-hand fork of Deep Creek,” I said, “I left Hunnicutt with him, well,” I said, “now we’ve got to go back, a bunch of men, to pack this bear in.”
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C: And so they was fixed up to go back in to help pack out the bear, and uh they was eleven of them went back in, and uh they uh had had supper when I got in, but they fixed the uh grub for breakfast, took coffee and the lard bucket to make coffee for breakfast, and they was a doctor, Doc Carr from Oakdale, Tennessee, he was a weakly, a little delicate fellow, and uh he was in for going and I told him, I said, “Doc, you’d better stay out of there,” I said, “you uh, it’ll kill ye,” I said, “you can’t make it,” “oh,” he said, “what do you take me for, Cathey?” he says, “I’m up here to bear hunt, I guess,” “well,” I said, “go on, you’ll learn something, you’ll have some experience,” so he had on a big uh, uh a heavy sweater and a Mackinaw coat, uh well about the time they was getting ready uh he pulled off that Mackinaw and was a-leaving, and I told h-, and did leave, I told him, I said, “Doc, you’d better take that uh Mackinaw along with you, you’ll need it,” it was a fairly cold night in November, so he said, “no,” he said, “I don’t need that,” uh well they went on up the left-hand fork of the creek, and they was no, uh they had to hop the rocks at the fords, they’s twelve or fourteen fords to cross on to, and Doc fell into uh slipped on a rock uh up about the Deep Gap and got wet all over and liked to froze to death and, and they got him, finally got him in to where the bear was and they had to, they carried a ax with them, a small ax, they had to take it to cut wood, build a big fire for him and take off all their uh Mackinaws and duck-backs and wrop him up, keep him from freezing to death, and uh so they got in uh the next day about one o’clock, packing the bear meat in, and I was sitting on the porch of the Bryson cabin, could see out a-, you could see a, a half a mile there when the leaves was down, and I seen them coming down through the old field, this Doc Carr was behind, he was in the rear, uh had a big walking stick uh, just jogging it along, and he come on up and uh the first word he said to me was, “well,” he says, “Cathey,” he says, “if I’d have had any idea that, uh that this w- would have been the trip that it’s been on me, I wouldn’t never have undertook it,” “well,” I said, “I tried to tell you, Doc, last night, but,” I said, “you wouldn’t listen,” and I said, “you’ve had some experience now,” “well,” he says, “I’ll listen to you the next time,” and so uh that about winds up the bear hunt, that was a, said to be the biggest bear that had ever been killed on Smoky, old bear hunters there guessed him to stretch five hundred pound, and I believe he’d a done it.
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C: Well, back in uh nineteen and twenty-six, the spring of nineteen twenty six I think it was, they had been, the- they was an old gobbler on the right-hand fork of Deep Creek, and they’d been parties went after him and tried to call him up, some boys out of Bryson City down here, little Jack Franklin and the two Franklin boys, Ed and Thad, and a fellow the name of Sommers went up and tried to call him and couldn’t do it, and uh they came back out and told me about the gobbler, so I was down at Bryson uh one day a little later, Claude Williams, he was a brakesman on them Southern uh road here, on the Murphy branch, he had a Ford car, and I said to him, I said, “Claude,” I said, “let’s go up i-,” well he was on the sick list, kind of laying off, I said, “Claude, let’s drive up uh and camp at the Sherrill Wiggins place on the George Branch and kill that old gobbler in the morning,” “well,” he says uh, “I don’t care if I do,” so we got us a little grub together, enough to supper and breakfast. and got in the Ford and driv up in two miles of where we camped and walked up the George Branch to Wiggins’ house and spent the night and got up the next morning away before day and topped out at the head of the George Branch, well uh the birds begin to whistle, and we heard the gobbler gobble across on the far side of the, the right-hand fork of Indian Creek, well I told Claude, I said, “Claude, it’s impossible to call him out uh here,” I said “we’ll have to go around to the opposite side,
[SCRATCHY, INDISTINGUISHABLE]
C: They face the back ridge, where you can call him,” “well,” Claude said, “I can’t make that,” “well,” I said, “you stay right here,” I said, “I can make it,” so I left Williams there, and I went on around, and when I got around and down the crest of the ridge, I went down I’d guess about a half a mile down from the main ridge, he’d gobbled out on top, well I sit down, uh I only s-, I never hide in a bunch of logs, I, I get a tree at will hide my body and I set down right, facing him, so I got in my place, and I called a little and he answered me, gobbled three or four time.
I: Uh-huh.
C: Well I, he’d gobble and gobble, and I wouldn’t call no more, I called twice for him, and uh I seen that gobbler I guess two hours anyway before I shot him, he’d come up a ways uh toward me and then he’d turn back and turn under the, the top, on the side hill, and uh finally he got up in about a hundred yards of me and uh stretched up, stopped right above a big mountain oak tree, my ball went into this tree and I killed him, I shot him with a twenty two high power, so it was twenty minutes till eleven when I shot the turkey, so I went on back around to where Williams was, uh different ones had tried to call him, some of the Luftee fellows had told me about this gobbler a-being, a-gobbling there and uh couldn’t, they couldn’t call him up, and I hardly ever failed back then on calling up a turkey, it’s the way you call that uh, that brings them, if you call too much, you’ll never get one to ye.
[DEMONSTRATING TURKEY CALLING]
C: That is calling the way I call up a gobbler, turkey gobbler, a wild gobbler, call him with my mouth.
Al Morris, Kirklands Creek, near Bryson City, North Carolina / Disc 047a, 047b
[BUZZ IN THE RECORDING]
Well, we went on then, thir-, thirty, it’s been about thirty or thirty-five year ago, we was out there and the dogs treed a bunch of coons and lay by them [=the trees] at night, [we] clim the tree the next morning and set th- tree afire and got five coon, went on then the next, that evening back in the back of Round Top and catched three more and killed a big turkey gobbler, and it’s been a good long while, I forgot the most of it, we stayed out there about six weeks, me and a fellow Smith from Virginia, we caught about thirty-five coon and I don’t know uh how many polecats, and caught a otter while we was up there and killed one small deer and caught several fish, I don’t know exactly how many, that was in, that was in the wintertime, and then uh, while we was up in there our dogs got after a gang of coons and run them in on the head of Reagans Creek, Reagans Prong, we got four out of that bunch, oh I couldn’t tell the possums we did catch around that Bryson Place there while we was camped there, so that’s about all I know of that, caught a heap of fish in them mountain streams, always enjoyed fishing, didn’t use to think I’d done any good at all without catch as many as a hundred and fifty or two hundred a day, and I’ve been in several little bear fights, I don’t know as I ever killed one myself, but I’ve been along when they was several of them killed, and killed one or two deer was all the ever, all the deer I ever killed, so if, if it was so, so I could go hunting again I’d like to go, can’t.
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[FASTER SPEED, HIGHER PITCH THAN FOREGOING]
Well, it’s been about six year ago when they was opening up Forney Creek, building the road up there, the CCs, I was a-working for them with a team, might have fished a little, don’t know, we found a bee tree one evening, some boys wanted to cut it and did cut it, I reckon, and I told them all I wanted out of it was a little bucket of honey, they'd ch- slipped out a pitcher out of the superintendent’s office, and I went back down a Sunday, they took it up to where I was camped and cleaned their honey up, and they had about seventy pound, I guess, and probably a little more, and I slipped the pitcher back that they’d took from the superintendent and took him some honey, he looked at it awhile and took out his knife and eat a bite or two of it, a few days after that Mister John Sherrill come along and asked some of them who cut the tree and they didn’t tell him, and John said he guessed that’s been that old Al Morris that done that, so I don’t reckon he ever found out who cut the tree, and the, I found another’un or two while I was there and I cut one of them, and we eat the honey while we was at Sherrill’s, and that’s about all I know about bee hunting.
[SLOWER SPEED]
About thirty year ago there was me and four or five other fellows went to the head of Deep Creek, the left-hand prong, to camp, we was bear hunting, we got out that evening looking for bear sign, and me and one of my first cousins found a coon a-lapping a chestnut tree and we killed hit, some of the boys, the other boys that evening killed a- about a three-year-old deer, two-spiked buck, and we built up a big fire out of some green beech, hung that deer up and got him to barbecuing, and the boys among them all eat it up that night, eat the whole deer up, so we had the coons for breakfast the next morning and had a bear fight, but the dogs lit across the mountain and went into Tennessee, didn’t do no good a-bear hunting, that’s about all that.
Fate Wiggins, Deep Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 101a
Now I don’t know, I think this would [SCRATCH, UNINTELLIGIBLE] occurred in about nineteen and twenty-eight, let’s see.
Well now let me see, you want me to commence with the story then, to finish?
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Yes.
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Are we ready now? well, in the summer of nineteen and twenty-eight there came a fellow down here from New York City and wanted to go a-fishing, and uh he hunted me up or they came down to me and he was putting up at the Fryemont Inn, hunted me up in town here, and we went down, well uh first he uh rigged up to make the trip, he went to the hardware and bought him a duck’s back suit, Bowie knife, and a, a fly rod, and we went down to Forneys Creek and uh commenced fishing, well I give the fellow a chance ahead of me to catch some trout, and he fished, uh well it was in the evening, I got in ahead of him, and I wanted to bring out a few trout, and well so uh pretty soon he hollered at me, he’d hooked a little trout back behind and he had run, reeled him up, his nose right up into the tip guide of the rod, and hollered to me and asked me, he says “oh, Mister Cathey,” he says, “what shall I do with him now?” “well,” I said, “tie in the pole and stob him,” and about that time the fish dropped off into the water, so uh that’s about all of the story, anyway I caught a nice bunch of trout that evening to bring out with us.
Fate Wiggins, Deep Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 101b
W: Back when I was a boy, I can remember back when they was only three houses in Bryson City, old Johnny Shuler, Alf Stein, and Lucy Ann Stein, I’ve saw all this place in wheat and corn on both sides of the river, and Deep Creek was settled up with about six families on it, when I can reecollect, up here and, of white people, and above there they was Indians, several Indian family lived up Indian Creek and Deep Creek, Indians lived by hunting mostly, the white people farmed, steers mostly, just a few horses.
H: xx
W: Well, back in my time I stayed in the Smoky Mountains for five year and cattled for people, and in August I was going up to my cabin with a pack of rations on my back and the uh, I run on an old she bear and two cubs, I killed the old’un and one of the cubs, one of them got away, it was in August, they was about the size of a dog, the cubs was, I’ve killed several bear, seven or eight in time, I’ve killed lots of deer and lots of turkey and catched lots of fish, me and Mark Cathey used to dispute about which was the best fisher, and Mark’s the best’un, we went by ourselfs to the head of Forneys Creek and fished, and we, we fished about a day, and we brought three hundred and thirty out besides what we eat, Mark beat me thirty, Mark’s the best fisher in the county as far as that goes.
Back about forty-six year ago, I lived in the mountains, and D. K. Collins in Bryson had a Jersey bull, and he turned him out in the mountains, they all got afraid of him, I come to him and talked to him and tried to get him, to do something with him, and he wouldn’t do it, and the bull run on to me and I had a thirty-eight Winchester, I shot him nine shoots and killed him and skinned him and brought him the hide, he was dangerous, that’s about all, I reckon, of that.
H: Wiggins?
W: Yeah.
Well, I don’t know what, I could, if you’d like to have it I can tell you how I started out to live back nearly fifty-six year ago, I married a girl on Indian Creek, Mary Beard, and we went to housekeeping, we didn’t have anything, my brother moved us on a sled, to a cabin I put up, we lived there, I plowed a steer for several year till I got able to get a horse, we’ve raised eleven children, ten of our own and raised one grandchild, we’ve had a hard time, I started with nothing, I’ve not got very much yet, I have a pretty good home now, I worked at it, that’s about all there is to me, I guess.
Wiggins, yeah, Fate Wiggins.
Herbert (Hub) Stephenson and Millard Hill, Saunook, Haywood County, North Carolina, Disc 102a
H: Well, Hub, how you getting along now?
S: Oh pretty good, I guess, I’ve been a-farming a little along, I planted some turnip seed and planted them in a little old lot, you know, had a acre of ground fenced off, they’s one of them seed come up, growed, it, it, we‘d a rail fence around it, and that turnip, you know, it growed till it bursted that fence down.
H: Well, over in Kentucky, where I come from, we’ve been a-making a solid copper pot, and the pot’s so big around, the people on one side can’t even hear the other’un’s hammer.
S: Well, I’ll be dog gone, what are they making such a pot as that for?
H: Cook that turnip in, man.
S: Well, I’ll be dag gum.
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S: Red, I went a-bear hunting once PRON oncet on the Fourth of July, and I went down to the branch where one had a been a-using, I seen him a-coming down to the branch to get water, so I raised my gun and he didn’t stop, I raised my gun again and he didn’t stop, so I broke and run, the bear took after me, he run me over a ridge and down the holler and over a ridge and down in another holler to the river, I hit the ice on the river and scooted across the river, and the bear hit the ice and broke his neck.
H: You don’t mean to tell me the river’s froze over in July?
HS: The bear run me from the Fourth of July till December.
Mack Caldwell, Mt. Sterling, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 102b
C: Ready to go talking?
I: Yes.
C: Nineteen and seven, December the fifteenth, when all those boy, boys got blowed up up on Big Creek on this logging job making a railroad, I was a-working over at Laurel Fork and the superintendent said for me to come on over there and do the shooting, I come over there on Saturday and fore noon went up there and saw the superintendent, and I and him went out across the creek and got over to the shop over there, left the boys over there loading some holes, we left the shop and went off over to the old railroad, about the time we got over there we heared a dynamite blast go off, and just in about a second another’un went off, and we took behind some trees, rock flew all over us, and I told Mister Valentine, I said, “that’s, must be something went wrong,” I said, “that shot’s went off a- without any, giving any notice,” so I and him, we turned around and went back, got back over there and was found that shots had went off and killed six men, found two a-laying down the road, and the clothing of two of them was scattered all in the timber there and the foreman’s up the road something like a couple or three hundred yards blowed agin a big rock a-laying on the grade, the other boys crawling around there addled, so it took us something like two or three hours to, to get them all gathered up, or practically all evening, so we was still short three men, we came back in that night and got some chain blocks and went back up there and found one man fell down between the crevice of the rock and took a chain blocks and pulled, kept pulling him back loose, found one man laying down in there and picked up all the pieces and brought them all out, then the next day everybody begin to wondering where, what caused the blast to go off, so we asked questions trying to find out, so finally we run across a fellow said that Jimmy Sutton brought over two gallons of whiskey to his brother there and the boys had all got a few drinks of liquors, caused the blast to go off, kill everybody, so later we got the railroad built and we logged up and down through there, and we always called this curve the Dead Man Curve.
Frank Mehaffey, Maggie, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 103a
[INDISTINCT TALKING]
Back in nineteen and thirteen me and my brother coon hunted lots in Smokies, we had a dog named Track, he was a good’un, we went to Flat Creek one evening and built up a camp fire and stayed till two o’clock the next morning, we left and went in on Stillwell, and old Track, he struck, right up Stillwell he went and us right after him, about ten o’clock in the day it begin snowing, we followed old Track about a hour and the snow was about twenty-two inches deep, we turned back to the camp, about two o’clock in the evening old Track come back, and we had a big campfire, chunks had rolled down and old Track come in and set down by the fire, and directly he retched down and got a chunk of fire in his mouth and right out the door he went, we was right out after him, went back in on Stillwell and we was a-tracking him, he’d run off and left us, right up Stillwell he went and us right after him, and about a mile above where we’d turned back why, we found old Track at a big cliff, he took this chunk of fire and he treed the coons in the cliff and stuck the fire under it and set the leaves afire, smoked the coons out and had them, three big’uns a-lying there dead, I give them to my brother and told him to come back the nigh away and I’d go up to Balsam Corner to see if I could locate some bear sign, and I didn’t take anything to eat with me, went up there and the fog come down and I got lost and got in on Tennessee, getting about dark, and I traveled all night, the next day, and late next evening, hadn’t had a bite to eat, come to a little log cabin in on Cosby [Creek] somewhere, I called and a woman come to the door, and I asked her about staying all night, I told her I was starved and froze and give out, said she guessed she could keep me, so I went in and she said there wasn’t no man of the house, started to bed, she made four pallets, they was her and two daughters, made a pallet in each corner of the room, went to lay down, and she got a big pistol and laid it up on the fireboard, and she said, “you see this gun, if anything takes place here tonight,” says, “I’ll use that gun on ye,” so I just tumbled down on the pallet and was give out and just in a few minutes I was about asleep, the old lady, she begin to snore [SNORE], she said “the gun ain't loaded,” [SNORE] “the gun ain't loaded,” I took it for granted that she wanted me to crawl over to her pallet, and I crawled over and laid with her awhile, and I went back to my pallet, I just plunked down on it, just three days walk and no sleep and nothing to eat, directly the middle-aged girl said, “my time next, my time next, my time next,” I decided that one more p- piece wouldn’t kill me, and I, I crawled over with her pallet and lay a while, and I just barely could crawl when I left there, and, and just about half-way back to my pallet, this little girl over in the other corner with a little finer voice said, “don’t forget me, don’t forget me,” I thought there I was, that I knowed I’s a new duck and I crawled up there and tried petting, I got over and laid with her a while, and I just started back to my pallet and fell over, and just as I went out of my head the old woman said, “ready again, ready again,” and I said [SNORE] “the gun ain't loaded,” about, about three days my brother found me there unconscious.
Jim Sutton, Cataloochee, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 103b
One time way back when we, I was just a boy, me and my brother, we decided we’d make some liquor way back in Smoky Mountain in a place called Hell’s Half Acre, we went over and put us up a still and we was a-making some awful good, it was so good you could taste the gal’s feet in it that hoed the corn it was made out of, one day George got drunk, that was my brother, he was chunking the fire that day, blowed the cap off of it, I guess it went seventy-five or ninety feet in the air, an old friend of ours was away back on the Old Field Balsam, it was known at that time as Old Field Balsam, now it’s Mount Sterling Lookout Tower, and he seen it, and he come to brother George in about a week after that and asked him how he’s getting along making, George told him he hadn’t, wasn’t a-making any, he said, “well, there ain't no use to lie about it,” says, “I know right where your still’s a-setting,” “well,” George says, “if you can tell me where it’s at, why I’ll tell you how it’s getting along,” he said, “well, it’s right in the head of the Sal Hannah Branch, to the back of Ground Hog,” he’d told him twenty feet of where it was a-setting.
Yeah, my daddy one time, he was an awful horse trader, he had an old wind sucker, one morning he got on him, he said, “I’ll trade that thing if I don’t get nothing but a bull yearling for him,” that was about the cheapest thing on the market in this country at that time, so he lit out and he was gone about three days and nights, come back in, he had a big horse, and he said, “well,” he says, “I sure did fix up that old fellow that I traded with,” said, “I let the latch down in his barn,” so he took him and turned him in the stable, and he had a big sore on his back about as big as a big saucer, and just as soon as he turned him in the stable he nailed a, went to cough, sucking wind, he’d swapped a wind sucker for a wind sucker, well George was a right smart boy, he decided he’d slip down and feed him one morning, went down and had a big wild housecat stayed in the barn, he raised a plank in the barn floor and he throwed PRON thowed that cat on that old poor horse’s back, and he, then the row started, you’ve never heared no such commotion in all the days of your life down there, my daddy, he hollered for mother, said “come here,” he says, said, “confound it,” said, “that cussed old cat scratched my horse,” he said, “he’s teetotally ruined him.”
Boy, these shoestring pieces, I won’t be bothered with no such talk as that around me, I guess that’s about all for this one.
Wiley Oakley, Gatlinburg, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 104a
My name is Bill Moore, I live in Waynesville, North Carolina, I was raised up on a farm, in my first life I’ll say uh when I was three year old, I learned to play a tune on a banjo, and from that I learned how to play a guitar, and when I became to be sixteen years old, I joined the CCCs, I was sent to Albemarle, North Carolina, I stayed in South Carolina three years with my grandparents, and the most of my life I have spent in the CCs.
Grover Gilley, Bryson City, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 039a
My name is Grover Gilley, I was borned in North Carolina of Bryson City, I went to the CCC camps, April the third, nineteen thirty-nine.
Wilford Metcalf, Del Rio, Cocke County, Tennessee / Disc 039a
My name is Wilford Metcalf, I was born in Del Rio, Cocke County, in Tennessee, I’m twenty-two years old, and I went to school at, at Del Rio for ten years.
Robert W. Ray, Jefferson City, Jefferson County, Tennessee / Disc 110a
My name is Robert William Ray, I was born in Breathitt County, Kentucky, I am twenty-two years old, I went to school at Alton Park for three years, I went to school at Tampico, Tennessee, for three years.
Rebecca Queen, Cherokee, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 108a
Well, I take care of this xx, we’ve been a-living on Indian Creek about, right close to fifty year, I guess.
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I don’t know nothing about South Carolina, I never could recollect, just can barely recollect, heared about my father moving from there to Transylvania, [County] and we lived there till in the time of the Confederate War, of the last year of the Confederates War, and I don’t remember that, but it was, I come to Jackson County and I’ve been in Jackson County ever since, and it’s changed a bit till now, and I’m still here yet, now iffen you folks now knows anything about when the Confederate War ended, well you can tell just how long I’ve been in Jackson County and in Swain.
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Well, I g-, I don’t know, but I guess we’ve been a-living on Indian Creek about fifty year, I never knowed nothing, only just work hard and to live hard all the time, but we tried to live honest.
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Well, that was about the best place ever I did live till I, I lived on Indian Creek, and I lived the rest of it.
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Oh we raised cattle and corn and made lots of stuff while we lived up there.
Well, they done just like rest of us did, they worked hard and tried to live, and they’s several families a- about, about thirty-three families lived up there.
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They was about thirty-three families lived there on Indian Creek when we lived up there, and they all worked and tried to make a living by hard work was the way we tried to live, and had a good time.
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They never had no fellowship [=religious gatherings] there, they didn’t have frolicking up in there much, sometimes they’d gather up a crowd of them and have a little praise, they never had time to, to have frolics, they just had to work too hard.
Gladys Hoyle, Indian Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 108b
I was borned and raised on Indian Creek and, and my mother died when I was twelve hours old, and my father, he raised me and my two sisters, and we had a hard time uh we had to hoe corn and work out in the field and had to walk two mile to school and, and we had a hard time getting down, it was snowy and cold and bad, and we had to walk all the time, and all the other kids up there, they had to walk to school and just had a one-room school and a, a stove in it and, and we had liked to have froze in the wintertime when it was cold and bad and just had one teacher and about six or seven grades and, and we always worked hard and, and the people up there, they farmed and uh, in the summertime, and in the wintertime they’d go hunting and they’d fish and kill squirrels and rabbits and all kinds of games and had a fine time.
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My name is Gladys Hoyle, I live on Indian, I lived on Indian Creek, uh the county of Swain C- County, we moved from Indian Creek four years ago and live at Whittier now.
Jerry Collins, Morristown, Hamblen County, Tennessee / Disc 109a
C: Well, we got to the last stretch of town over there and about come up Company Street, lost control of the car, it turned over on the first curve out here before we got started to town, and I just turned over, the Lieutenant and all the boys come running up, turned it back over, and the radiator’s smashed up on it, Wilfred’s on a bunch of buckets, Jack’s under there cussing, Lieutenant throws a xx on there, guy on top of it had to get back in it to turn the switch key off, and we got it turned back over where he got in and started on off, and Lieutenant grabbed him and wouldn’t let him go, we finally put eight or seven weeks confinement camp, we stayed in here so long we got horny and went to town, got drunk over there, and they locked us up for w-, disorderly conduct and reckless walking, uh I don’t know.
I: Going too fast without brakes.
C: Yeah, going too fast without brakes.
[UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER NOT TRANSCRIBED]
Howard Moore, Saunook, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 109b
Last Friday night, why Joe Hall come to see us over here at Waynesville, and uh he’s going to make some recordings, he came down the road and I was sitting across the road from Bone Hall’s stand, and uh so he uh stopped, and uh boys, they were go-, all gone, and uh so he picked me up and took me down to the boy’s house, and uh he was at home and Bill Moore, my brother, we were hunting for him, him and some more boys was gone off that was going to help us make records, and so we came to Hazelwood a-hunting them, couldn’t find them anywhere, we went back to Saunook, and uh we thought we’d lost out, and we had it in mind to go back down and hunt Bill, and we went back down, he wasn’t there.
Wendell Gates, Robbinsville, Graham County, North Carolina / Disc 112a
This is, this is Wendell Gates speaking in town hall, I was born and raised in the county of Sevierville, home is in Graham County in, at Robbinsville, North Carolina, I think that’s the most of that all.
I been in the CCs ever since the fourth of April.
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My, my camp where I’m located at, located there at Smokemont, Company Three Four Fifty-Three.
J. T. Buckner, Limestone, Greene County, Tennessee / Disc 120b
My name’s J. T. Buckner, born and raised in Limestone, Tennessee, moved to North Carolina, joined the CCs, come to Round Bottom, went to taking care of the horses, jockeys, load up every morning, take off to Tricorner Knob, next to the state line about nineteen mile, from there back to, from there back to Laurel Gap, then back into camp, meet a few bears every once in a while, meet a few bear every once in a while.
I unload the supplies, fold up my blankets and start back, come back into camp, wash up, and eat supper.
Well, it rains about every day I go to Tricorner Knob.
Wiley Oakley, Gatlinburg, Tennessee / Disc 128b
You’re now listening to Wiley Oakley, the Roaming Man of the Great Smoky Mountain, I have now different kind of stories to tell, I have some true and some is not true, and when I yodel to the end of the story, that’s the signal you don’t have to believe it unless you want to, but if, if I don’t yodel to the end of the story absolutely [SCRATCH], so one time I went out a-fishing, and I caught a fish so big that I couldn’t hardly carry it in home, and it wallowed me all over the river [YODELING] Lord, Lord, you can believe it if you want to, is that enough, huh?
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Hello, folks, this is Wiley Oakley, Roaming Man of the Great Smoky Mountain, now I uh, I’m a great bear hunter, one time I went out a-bear hunting, and just as I entered the woods, why I looked up in a tree and, here was a big black bear up in the tree, seemed to be a-chewing the buds off of the end of the limb, so I up with this here big old hog rifle, cap and ball gun, and I took good bead at him and, and I hit him right where I missed him before [YODELING] Lord, Lo-.
? Jackson, CCC Camp, Mt. Sterling, North Carolina
J: You talking about a rough country, but I’m going to tell you one time the roughest country I was in, it was uh steep till the people had to look up the chimney to see if the cows was still in the pasture, was the awfullest hunting place ever I was, was in, went a-hunting one day and the mountain’s so steep, [I] shot and strained my gun, next day I went out a-hunting and seen a bunch of turkeys sitting upon a limb and just had one shot in my gun, so I just decided I’d study up some way to get them turkeys, so I shot up through the limb, caught all the toes, and got them turkeys, so I was going out further and seen a rabbit, up there, I had to pack salt in my en-, end of my gun barrel, to keep the rabbit from falling through uh that thing.
Cataloochee Trio, Haywood County, North Carolina
CataloocheeTrio 1: Ladies and gentlemen, this is some of the unit of the Cataloochee Trio going to play kind of a little sad sentimental number by the name of "Letter Edged in Black," is that right, Curly?
C: Yes, sir.
Okay, let’s take her away.
CataloocheeTrio2: Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Cataloochee Trio playing a little ditty by name of "Cacklin’ Hen", let’s play it.
CataloocheeTrio3: Ladies and gentlemen, this is part of the Cataloochee Trio a-going to do you a little ditty here by the name of "Up Jumped The Devil", and by the way we’ve lost some of them, don’t know where they’re gone, it’s just me and old Dave for you, but we’re going to do the best we can, so what is it, Dave, "Up Jumped The Devil", let’s take her away, boy.
CataloocheeTrio4: Yessiree, ladies and gentlemen, that was a little tune by the name of Up Jumped The Devil, old David was a-holding his mouth just right that time.
Waynewood Band, Hazelwood, Haywood County, North Carolina
WaynewoodBand1: This is the Waynewood Band, and it’s composed of Dick Bumgarner, he’s our fiddler, Miss Marie Gibson on the guitar, Gleason Bell on the five-string banjo, and myself, old Ray on the mandolin, we’ve been following this line of music for something like four or five years, and we enjoy it and play together and play six nights a week, I certainly hope whoever hear, hears this record enjoys listening at it as much as we do playing it.
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Whoa, boy, here comes that old flop-eared mule, mean son of a gun, but I believe we can ride him, this is the Waynewood Band, Dick Bumgarner doing the fiddling, Miss Marie Gibson on the guitar, and Gleason Bell on the five-string banjo, and Ray Bell on the mandolin, let her go, Dick.
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WayenwoodBand2
Folks, this is "Down Yonder", played by the Waynewood Band, Waynesville, North Carolina, Ray Bell doing the fiddling, Miss Marie Gibson on the guitar, and Gleason Bell on the guitar, Dick Bumgarner on the five-string banjo, here we go.
G: My name is Marie Gibson, I live at Hazelwood, North Carolina, this song is one of my own compositions, and the title is "Why Did You Leave Me Here All Alone?", I’ve been playing and singing for about eight or ten years, I’ve been interested in music since I was two years old, and so when I got old enough to play, I tried to play guitar, and I never had a music lesson in my life, but some day I hope to make a success in music.
Howard Moore, Saunook, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 161b
Well, along about twelve o’clock, why we found them, we all got together and went up the road in uh Barber’s orchard and uh had a lot of music, singing, at least we tried, and uh so uh we stayed in the orchard till three o’clock the next morning, the next day I was mighty sleepy, and uh when was that?
William Boulder, CCC Company 145 / Disc 120b
It’s William Boulder speaking, we left Fourteen Fifty-Eight for Cataloochee Four Fifteen to play a game of baseball, went up the mountain seventeen miles and turned down and went through the Indian Reservation, through the Waynesville, then we hit the mountain, was twenty miles from Waynesville, was the steepest mountain I was ever on, we got over to Four Fifteen about nine thirty, and we stayed all night there and we eat breakfast and about ten o’clock we went out to practice for baseball game that day, we got through and we eat dinner and started back about twelve o’clock, we come back through in Newport, we stopped in Newport about fifteen minutes, then we come on around through the Webbs Creek, wasn’t it? and brought an uh Okinolan in, when we got back here it was about five o’clock in the evening, we had a swell time.
Will Palmer, Cataloochee, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 048a, 048b
Well, about nineteen years ago me and uh William Stafford from Tennessee took a notion we’d go out and look for some bear sign, we located the big bear and found he, where he was using, and decided we’d come back and get some dogs and men and go catch him, so we started early next morning with our dogs, gun, men, and me and Mister Steve Woody went on the stand, and they jumped the bear and the bear come to the stand where we was at, and I gave him two good shots, and the bear run off down under the mountain a little and squatted down by a big balsam, and old Uncle Steve Woody says, “I’ll go around down thisaway below him and you go down in on him,” so I run, went down right in on him and give him another shot, and the, the bear then just rolled right down on Uncle Steve Woody and was about to catch him, Uncle Steve hollered “oh Lord, shoot, Will, shoot,” and pretty soon then there was one of the little dogs hemmed the bear and turned him away from Uncle Steve Woody and he turned the bear right off up towards me, come walking off up the hill, and I fell to shooting him, I shot him ten times then before I killed him, and when he went down on his face dead, Mister Woody come up to me and says, “give me that gun, I want to blow his brains out,” I gave him the gun and he stepped up and put the gun right agin his head and fired and says, “I’ll kill you,” well there was about a dozen men in the bunch, we carried the bear in, took him to the scales and weighed him, he weighed four hundred and seventy-five pound, and uh we brought him back then, dressed him, and divided him up, I believe that’s about all I know about that.
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Well, when we got the bear killed, we wanted to get our men all together, and we fired our guns for a signal to, to gather them up, and William Stafford said old Uncle Steve Woody wouldn’t be any happier when he entered the gates of heaven.
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Well, Turkey George Palmer was noted as a great hunter, bear hunter, killed lots of bear, so me and him, we decided to go to his traps one day, and it took a big bear in the trap and he’d come off down to the open woods, he g-, so we was going to the trap and we went to jump across a little swampy dreen and jumped right into the old bear’s face, the bear was hung on the laurel by the grabs, and George raised up with his Winchester and fired, and he never touched a hair on that bear, I said “George, steady yourself agin a sapling there and kill him,” so George, he steadied hisself agin the sapling and cut down and just busted that bear’s head open, so we dressed, we dressed the bear and carried him in home.
Mrs. George Palmer, Cataloochee, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 049a
How to build a turkey pen, you just build a square pen out of ten-foot fence rails, and when you get the wall built, you, you build it up about, oh about three feet high, and then you cover the, the pen a- over with fence rails laid close together all over, and then you go out back a distance from the pen and start a trench, shallow at first, and the deeper you go, get under the rail of the pen, why it’s deep so enough for a turkey to walk under the bottom rail, see, but the trench then sloped out up from the middle of the pen, and a turkey walks through there and they get inside this pen, they raise up and see where they’re at, they get so excited that they don’t notice the hole down there to go out back outside.
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One day Turkey George Palmer and another man went up on the mountain, cattle hunting really was what they was out for, but they uh saw some turkeys, and he shot one through the brush and he just cut its throat, it wen-, fell and, and went fal-, a-rolling and tumbling, floun-, flouncing down the mountain, he told that fellow who was with him to “catch it, John,” and he took after it, had a main race down there till the turkey flopped up agin a big log and couldn’t get over it, and there they caught it.
Mary Alice Palmer, Hartford, Cocke County, Tennessee / Disc 049b
[READING PREPARED TEXT]
I live on a farm in Cataloochee, my grandfather Jesse Palmer was among the first to come to this place and start a settlement, my father, George Palmer, found his place in the wilderness, so he decided to build a house and clear some land, then he married and raised a large family, he was a great bear hunter and turkey hunter, he was reared on Cataloochee and lived here all of his life, he used to own a lot of land here, then the government bought it for a park, so it is now in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.
Bill Barnes, Hartford, Cocke County, Tennessee / Disc 050a, 050b, 051a, 051b
My father was driving some cattle on what’s known as the Cove Creek Mountain, and he come up to a party had been a-fighting a bear, the dogs, and it had eaten up their dogs in a laurel bed, he asked the party for a gun to go down and kill that bear, and there wasn’t a man had a l- load of powder or any loaded gun, and they couldn’t get a- [SCRATCHING] anything to kill it with, and it was just eating their dogs up, he went down to get him a knife, and he went down into that laurel where it was, it had the dogs down, and he run up and stobbed his knife into it and cut a big long gash plumb to the hollow of the bear, and the bear wheeled on him, and he said it felt like he could feel it a-biting him nearly, he could hear it popping its teeth, and the dogs, they come and grabbed it again, you know, before it could, got ahold of him, and it wheeled back on the dogs, and as it wheeled back on the dogs, he took a run-ago and run his arm into that hole he’d cut into it and run it right up about its heart and give a rake or two, and that bear shrunk down and bawled he said like a calf.
Me and a party were on Deep Creek fishing, been out camping out in the, in the woods, and we heared something a-hollering, well, they’s several of us in the bunch, an older man said it was a panther a-hollering, and it hollered several times, whatever it was, traveled, and so went out of hearing directly, later on I’d been up in the field and worked, and me and two of my brothers were a-coming down a branch, going towards the house, and I saw something step in the branch, looked to be four or five foot long, way long something, my brother had a gun, smaller brother was in the middle between us, and I asked my brother to give me the gun and he thought I was just a- d- deviling this boy and he didn’t hand me the gun, if he give me the gun I could have killed whatever it was, and all at once I reckon it discovered me and it jumped, appeared to me it went anyway fifteen or twenty feet the first leap, and it was just as high, I just heared it hit the ground a time or two, well I had some good dogs down at the house, and I run down and got my dogs.
I run down to the house and got my dogs, and the dogs wouldn’t run whatever it was, and the do-, the older people told me that dogs wouldn’t run a panther, later on I was a-going to the mill one morning before daylight, the moon was a-shining bright, I seed something squat down in the road, looked to be a good-sized bulk of something, and I held my dogs, I had a pistol in my pocket, and I stood down my horse a little bit, and it just lay there squatting in the road, and when I started my horse, it sprung right up and I heared it hit the ground two or three times, and it was out of hearing, and if it wasn’t one of them things I don’t know what it could have been.
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My father was borned in Haywood County on Jonathans Creek or Cove Creek, I couldn’t
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I was borned in Haywood County on what was called Cove Creek and, and was raised on Catalooch and Big Creek, North Carolina.
I: What about your schooling?
I guess all the schooling that I ever got, I got it on a little log, in a little log cabin, sit on a bench split out of the logs, just the legs in it for chairs, they set in it, I don’t suppose, I never had no kind of a book but just one of these blue-back spelling books, I don’t guess that I ever went to school more than a month or just not exceeding two months in my life, they got up a writing school, and I went to a writing school about a couple of days, and I got some copy, and I kept fooling with them copies till I could begin to write, and I got so I could write a pretty good hand.
51a
We was out, a-laying out in the mountains at what’s known as the Bend of the River, and they was a cornfield had corn in it out there, and a bear got to coming into that cornfield eating corn, and my father set a gun and killed the bear, he tied a string around the trigger and brought it back behind the guard and stretched the string out way across the path of the bear where he come in the field, when the bear come, why he pressed that string.
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I: Okay, go ahead, go ahead.
He pressed that string and fired that gun and killed that bear, I guess the bear would have net three hundred pound anyway, then he sh-, you want to know about him shooting another’un?
I: Just go ahead ... tell them how they ...
Huh?
I: Tell them how they ...
You have to talk pretty loud, I can’t hear you.
I: Just tell about ...
B: I’m going to stay back a little bit here., huh, and he set his gun at another place where they crossed the fence and shot another one, and uh we uh, I was with him, and we tracked that bear about a mile by the blood and it would lay down once in a while, and we tracked it, before we got down to about a quarter to the mouth of the river, we heared a gun fire down at the river, and we just tracked on, and when we got down there, why that bear had swum the river and they was a crowd camped over on the other side, and they shot the bear and killed it, finished killing it, and grabbed it up and run off with it before we got down there, so they told my father later that they got the bear.
51b
My father and my brother was going, went to the mountains a-hunting out in the Bend of the River, and they killed a little deer, and they camped out there, and next morning they got up just a-getting light and started out into the woods to hunt again, and they looked a-going down a ridge and saw a big large bear going, walking down the top of the ridge, and my father had a large rifle gun shot a good-sized ball, it was a considerable distance for a man to kill a bear, but he fired on that bear, my brother never got to shoot, the bear run, jumped when his gun fired, and my brother never shot him, that bear run down that ridge about a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards and dropped dead, well, they run and took after it, away it run and just pretty soon they run up on it a-laying there, batting its eyes, they said, and my brother, he never got to shoot it with the first shot, but he shot the bear in the forehead when it was about dead, and they sent the boy and my brother in with the little deer that he’d killed, I had a man, a hand hired, he was working for me, and he sent after me and him to come help carry that bear in, so we struck out, there was a little snow on the ground, very cold weather, and we got to the old man, just about sundown we got to where he was, and he was a-dragging up wood to make a fire, and he never had been back to the bear since him and my bro-, brother left it that morning, he’d been out in the woods a-hunting he said, and we just broke to it as quick as we could and all went into skinning that bear, skun it all out, took that hide offen it and cut it into four quarter, the four of us, and we every one had just about what we could tote of bear meat, you see, we went back, we went to where he was a-dragging up the wood with it, and we went to slicing up that bear meat into slices and sticking it on forked sticks, set it up before the fire and baking it, we laid our bread down and let the grease run out of that bear onto our bread, and it warmed our bread up, and I eat and eat, I said to my father, I says, “father,” I says, “I’ll have to quit eating this meat,” he says, “why was that?” I says, “I couldn’t tote a quarter of this meat out in the morning if I can’t eat no breakfast,” he says “eat every bite you can eat,” and he says “I’ll guarantee you in the morning you’ll, it’ll eat just as good as it is now,” God knows I don’t know how much I did eat, but I eat a tremendous, a lot of that bear, next morning I, it tasted just as good as the first bite that night.
Margaret Packett, Bend of the River, Haywood County, North Carolina
That’s the trouble, they come back and Scott says he was a-coming on over their house when Lester, when Lester come back, and Lester didn’t come back and he stayed all night, but Scott said the next morning when he come to me, he said he heared somebody talking in the night and the next morning he went on up to where they were a-talking, and there was Lester and Robert Hicks, and his wife was a-laying in Lester’s arms, and his wife got up and run around the hill, and he tried to get her to come back and talk to him and she wouldn’t, and he come on over to my house then and told me he, that he didn’t care for Lester a-talking to his wife, but he’d kill Carl Miller if he ever catched him with her, but that’s when he said “poor boy, he was a-going to see trouble,” I reckon that’s about all I know.
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Why I did?
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What was it like?
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Oh yes, got two inches left now, ain't it?
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Well, Scott come back to my house next morning, he come on out here and was sitting right here and come on back and went to laying his hands on, his shoes was gone, and he went on up on the mountain and met up with uh Lester Brown and Ona Hicks and Floyd Brown, well Floyd stood there and talked with him, he says, “Floyd,” he says uh, “Floyd,” says “boys,” he says, “I have to go,” he says “if it wasn’t for that I’d be here with ye all day,” now that’s all I told him.
Jake Sutton, Cataloochee, Haywood County, North Carolina, originally of Mount Sterling, North Carolina / Disc 056a, 056b
My name is Jake Sutton, I was borned and raised at Mount Sterling, North Carolina, I’ve been with the Great Smoky Mountain National Park for seven years, back in nineteen hundred and six, I was on the waters of Big Creek, and I heared an awful explosion of dynamite, and on the next following morning I learned that they was six men killed, Ham Sullivan was the foreman of the job, building railroad, and they was uh men a-loading a hole, and the hole got choked, and Mister Sullivan picked up a piece of steel and stove down in on the dynamite and caused the explosion and blown the men to pieces, some of them they blown away till they never found anything but a small part of their body, as much as their little finger, others they blown up till they was parts of their body separate, and uh it blowed Mister Sullivan for something like a hundred yards I suppose, slapped him up agin the face of another cliff, heels over head, and his body was picked up and put in a tub, and the other men was fastened, some of them, between rocks that hydraulic jacks, screw jacks, nor no kind of jacks that could be available was able to press the rock off of the body, so they had to shoot the rock with dynamite to get it off of their bodies, and they was uh pieces of the human beings in large trees for I’d say a hundred and fifty yards away from where the explosion made, so that’s about the story I expect of the dynamite that blown up at that time.
I’ll continue a story about a panther a-running a fellow, his name was Bill Campbell, and his brother-in-law Kels here lived at what we known as the Hickory Butt next to Pigeon River, this fellow Campbell was fishing on what we call Mount Sterling Creek near the mouth of Pigeon River, and he heared something a- make a noise, and he looked around and he saw a large panther a-laying on a log fixing to jump on him, and he had a few feesh PRON, something like eight or ten, and he jumped and broke to run, and the panther took after him, and he still had his fish pole in his hand, and he had a very steep mountain to run up, something like a mile, and this panther followed him, and he looked every minute for him to c-, for it to catch him, so the noise of his fish pole kept the panther backward, and it never jumped on him, and directly he throwed PRON thowed his fish, and the panther stopped to eat his fish, and when it uh eat the fish, it continued on after him, and he still held to his pole was the only protection that he thought caused the panther to not catch him, so he run up and within a hundred yards of the house and jumped the fence and screamed, and the panther just run to the fence and stopped, so he’s known as Panther Bill Campbell, now lives on the waters of Cosby Creek at Tennessee, so that’s the story of Panther Bill.
56b
I want to tell you a little story about one of my uncles, about bear hunting, back about forty years ago, he was on the head of what they call Mouse Creek, he found a bear trail, and he cut him out a little uh road in the laurel, put him a turn-a-pull on the end of his rifle gun till he could see the darkness of the bear, along about one o’clock in the night the bear come along, and Uncle Tobe, he shot the bear, he heared it fall, and it was so dark that he couldn’t see, he didn’t have anything like a match, they had old uh flint rock to strike fire out of when they lay out, and he didn’t have any fire, didn’t have any lights of any kind, and he followed the noise of the bear down a ways as far down as he heared it, and hit was so dark he couldn’t see any further, and he got to feeling with his gun to see if he could feel the bulk of the bear, and he couldn’t feel anything, so later he crawled back up to where he first was setting, stayed there until daylight, and when daylight came, he went down to where he thought he heared the bear last, and he looked off and it had fell off over a cliff he said was something like a hundred feet high and which mashed it up considerably, so he killed the bear and stayed all night there and didn’t have any light nor any way of making any fire, and he come on out then and left his bear and got help and carried the bear in, so that’s about the story of Uncle Tobe’s bear hunt at that time.
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I’ll continue the story of Uncle Tobe, back along about the same time of the story I’ve just now told you, he tuck one of his boys, he was like, something like fifteen or sixteen years old, went back into the Balsam Mountains near the lookout station in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park on Mount Sterling Mountain, he told the little boy to set down there and he’d go around the hill a little further and, if anything come along, to shoot and to hold direct on it, and that he would not be gone long, so Uncle Tobe went off and left the little boy, and he said about eleven o’clock in the night that he heared his gun fire, but still he never went back to him until daylight, he was near a mile away from the little boy at this time, and he went back around at daylight next morning and asked the boy what he’d shot at and he told him he didn’t know, that he shot at something and heared it fall, so Uncle Tobe went down to where he said that he heared the noise, and the boy had killed a large bear, the first’un he’d ever been out to hunt for, and the little boy stayed there all night by hisself, and he was about fifteen or sixteen years old, and Uncle Tobe said it was a powerful bear and he had went farther than he told the little boy he was a-going, he went something near a mile back on into the Spruce Mountains and stayed by hisself all night, but he unluckily never got any bear, so that’s about the story of Uncle Tobe’s next hunt.
Eugene Sutton, Cataloochee Creek, Haywood County, North Carolina / Disc 057a, 057b
Name Eugene Sutton, age forty-three, born and raised in Cataloochee in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park about thirty years ago, well at that time we made a lot of liquor in this country, very near everybody made it, an uncle of mine and a cousin making liquor in above my home, and I was about thirteen, fourteen years old, thirteen, I guess, they got word that the revenuers coming, and so this Johnny, he was, he was scared, but decided to run the liquor anyway, and they gave me a rifle, told me to go up on the mountain and watch for the officers, if the officers come, I was to fire three shots and they could run off, I made them give me a quart of liquor, naturally we all drank then, you know, everybody would drink, big little young and old, and I had the quart of liquor and drank too much, got to feeling good, a bunch of pheasants came up the ridge to me along in the evening, I killed three, fired three shots, which was the signal for them to tear out the still and leave, and my uncle and cousin came very near a-burning themselves up to get this still out, get it away, and then I wanted to show my pheasants that I had killed, so I had to go down to the still, and I was out of liquor too, I drank the quart and spilled a part of it and had to go down get me some more liquor, I went down and I wanted to know what was wrong, said “which way are they coming?” I said “who?”, “why, the revenue officers,” “why, no revenue officers are coming that I know anything about,” “but you fired three shots,” “oh,” I said, “I was killing pheasants,” I say “three shots,” I says “looky here what a pretty bunch of birds I killed,” and then this uncle of mine was about to kill me, he got up a big brush, whipped me all the way down the hollow in home.
Uncle George Palmer, better known as Turkey George in this country away back when he was a boy, did a lot of hunting, and I think his record showed that he had killed a hundred and one bear all in the Great Smoky Mountains pri-, National Park prior to his death a few years ago, and he also hunted for other game, turkey, bear, squirrel, coon, possum, and what have you, and the way he got his name as I understand it and this uh Turkey George said that he couldn’t kill the turkey with his gun, he’d missed so many that he decided to build a pen and baited this pen with corn and went up one morning and had uh oh I don’t know how many, but as the story goes it must have been a half a dozen of the turkeys in the pen, and Uncle George undertook catching them and bringing them home, when he got ahold of the birds, two or three of them at once caught onto him, caught onto their legs, and they just about whipped him to death, and he had to come in and get help, he dropped the pen back down on the turkeys, he still kept a part of them in the pen and come home and got help to go back and carry in the turkeys, and I suppose this is true because very near everybody in the whole country has told the same story, and Uncle George never did deny it.
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57b
My grandfather came to the Cataloochee when he was a young man, married and settled here and raised a family of fourteen children, at his death he was ninety-four years, two months, and seven days old, fourteen children, seventy-six grandchildren, a hundred and eighty-six great grandchildren, fourteen great great grandchildren, and two great great great grandchildren, and only one of his grandsons made a preacher, the Reverend B. B. Caldwell, at the present time of Greenville, South Carolina, naturally Grandfather was kindly proud of him, that he made the preacher, so he was holding a meeting, a revival, in a small church on the m-, over on the mountain, Grandfather was standing up in the pulpit with him, couldn’t hear very well, he was about ninety years old then, and Cousin Brown preaching away, Grandfather talking to the congregation back in the house, and Brown would preach, Grandpa would say, “now pay attention to him there PRON thar, notice him, you’d better listen at him, he’s a-telling you the truth, every word of it,” Cousin Brown says, “my good people, I’m a-going to tell you, if you don’t quit this way of living, quit living in sin all the days of your life, riding in these old automobiles, drinking liquor, playing cards, going to dances, and things like that, every one of you is going to hell,” Grandfather spoke up and said, “yes, and from there to the penitentiary,” said, “they sent four or five of them the other day up there,” said, “I was there PRON thar and heared them send them,” and that’s all.
Another great uncle of mine, Uncle Tyne Woody, raised on Cataloochee in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, was quite a character, he seldom ever left, stayed here very near all the time, when he was seventy-five years old, got to feeling pretty good that day and told some of the boys, “yes, yes, yes, I’m seventy-five years old, but I don’t think I’ll ever make seventy-five more,” well, we all had quite a laugh about that, Uncle Tyne making seventy-five more, although he did make seven more but not seventy-five.
A couple of old gentlemen raised in this country here, to give you a little idea of how they talk, went down to the barn one morning to catch a mule, mule was kind of hard to catch, one wanted the other one to go in the barn and wa- the other one wanted him to go in to get the mule, the mule would shake her head, one spoke to the other, said “go in there, Dave, and catch her,” said “I’m not just about a-going in there,” said “you watch her shake her head,” said “shake her head nothing, Uncle Saul down there’s got two of them, they both shake their heads, “stop that before I’m a-going in there,” and he said “you watch her,” said “she’ll kick me, kick” xx “or not our mule a-kicking" said “Uncle Saul won’t kick and shake their heads,” and that is just about all of that.
Jake Welch, Rowan Branch, Hazel Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 058a, 058b
I: We might tell who you are first and everything and then give your name and where you live.
Yeah, and I, I can tell you about me, me and George Wilson a-catching that one r- right on the mountains there, We went over there a- a-chestnut hunting and took our women with us, he was married one, one fall and, and, and me, Will, he, I was married one fall and him the next, and we went over there and that old dog treed [I: Uh-huh], and, and we started back home, the women says “hain't you going to that old dog?” and, and we told them that he had a groundhog treed and had the ax with us, went on down there and, and the hit uh and had a cu- a cub bear treed, and he wanted me to come back home and get my gun and kill it, and I wouldn’t do it, I told him, I says “George, just cut it down and catch it,” “why,” he says “he’ll eat you up, fool,” I says “no, it won’t, no, it won’t,” we cut that tree down, down, it was up a big chestnut oak, and when the tree fell, hit broke and run right back, r- right uh back, back to me, and I run it a little piece and catched it, says “I want you to know when he got there, it, hit uh hit had all my clothes scratched off of me, then I w-, he was a-fighting I said and me ahold of it, yep, we had one more time with that devilish infernal thing, and I pulled my shoestrings out and tied it, and so we, we brought it home and kept it till hit was got to about two year old, it got so mean we had to sell it, took ten dollars for it right up there.
I: Now tell us one about when your ...
Well, if I’d knowed you uh fellows would have been a-coming till I could have s- been a-studying about it, why and one, one thing or another, hit would have been another thing, but then I, I ain't for-, I ain't forgot, you know uh, that I, I told you fellows, but then me and, me and Al Walker went to the head of of Hazel Creek one time just by ourselves, I ain't uh, I ain't forgot that never, and the dogs treed two ones in the ground to, and we just didn’t have nothing but some old hog rifles, I killed one of them as hit come out, and he was afraid, he, he was afraid of shooting, and that old she, sh- come out and I want you to know, mister, man, we’s, uh we left there, I struck out of my gun but missed it, but now we killed some deer and turkey and coons and everything else, me and old Al Walker did, that was up here on the head of Hazel Creek.
I: What about a hunt uh with uh Little John Casey or Doc Jones, did you ever go out with them?
Yes, lots and lots of times.
I: Can you tell us about a hunt you took with them?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and we went right up here on, on, on Walkers Creek at one time, me and Little John and Doc, Cray’s Forks, we drove the, the Walker Creek laurel, sent them on above, we turned the dogs loose, and then me and Little John did, we both come back and went on to the mouth xx we did, before we got to them we heared them shooting, went on up there, Little John was pretty bad to curse, he says, “by God,” he says “we’ve got him,” I says “have you, John?” he says “yeah,” he says “by God,” he says “we’ve got him,” and we went on up there to him, he was a big’un and, and, and, and hit fat, and me and John and Dan kept k-, I, I got the best tickled I ever was in my life, we all went back up there, and the dogs run off and went to the back of the Smoky Mountain, the next day we come in, me and Dan and a whole crowd of us wanted to come in, and Little John, he wouldn’t come, him and Doc cou- uh uh wouldn’t, and, and L- when Little John spoke, say “I’m a-going to stretch me a bear hide,” he says, “before I, before I go home,” that was Dan, who was his brother, he says, “John, that there whiskey stretching
one after you go home,” until I says, “God,” I said, we had one more time with this fool bear, him a-driving and everything.
Well w-, uh well when we they a-deer, a-deer driving now, ever once in a while we’d find where a, a panther would, wo-, would kill a deer and, and cover it up, just every once in a whiles we would, and some of them was plumb, we found one or two was warm out, out here w- uh one winter, now he'll kill deer, now they ain't no devilishness about that, and a wolf will, f-, will, it’ll uh will follow your dogs right into the camp, and the, the, the, and if you got ary slip in the i-, in the, in the in, in gang, a wolf a- will a-, w- will, will follow right into the camp and how-, uh and howl all around your camp, now they’ll do that, yes they will, and we’d watch, we-, we’d kill them devils in front of panthers PRON painters and every one we know, where, where our dogs would run them, but now th- uh they hain't one dog in a, in a hundred that would run a panther, I can tell you that right now, they won’t, but they’ll pretty near any of them uh run, uh run a wolf, though.
I: You say that Tom xx killed a panther maybe about fifteen years ago until uh, could you tell us a little bit how Tom xx killed that panther?
W: No, I don’t.
I: What did you, what did you hear about that?
W: No, I don’t remember, if it has, I, I’ve forgot it, I forgot half I ever heared and half I know, half I ever knewed, but now if I’d knowed you fellows been a-coming and had studied up, why I could have give you fellows a whole lot of news, but then well I wasn’t looking, I wasn’t thinking about it, don’t you see?
I: Uh-huh, what do you think of the national park, Mister Welch?
Why, hit’s, uh hit’s all right, yeah uh, hit, hit’s all, all, all right, course it’s pretty hard on the boys and ever been uh hard on the, on me and, and, and my boys, we don’t bother nothing, we own a whole lot of lan-, the land here and want kill us a mess of squirrels, why we get out and kill them here on our own land, and the park business is, is all right.
I: ... saying anything you want.
W: Yeah.
I: We’re just wondering how the national park affected people around here, you know, the hunters can’t do as much hunting as they did one time.
W: No, no, no, no, no, of course they’s a lot of hunting done in this country now, but then as far as that concerned, but we don’t, they’d keep a, they would, they w- got some warders here, I want you to know when they catch a fellow a-, a-hunting, they uh they take him to Bryson [I: Because they’re] yes, they do, I’ll bet you they do, catch him a-coon-hunting ... a-fishing, hunting, or anything, why it don’t cost you much, about twelve dollars and a half or a twenty months, and he just comes right back and goes to hunting again, yeah.
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Why uh there in the uh, the uh, the uh park uh, uh of the the-, they a-, there’s two fellows who come right here now and surveyed the uh, the uh this uh branch out from the mouth to Deep Gap right next to, up, up yonder, and I the- and the- uh they, uh they had it wrong, and on the-, on, on their map, they’s surveying it out, and they asked me, well uh they, uh they say “now uh hain't this the, the, uh the, the, the, the, the Long Hollow?” I says “no, no,” he says, “what, what the-, what they call,” he says “this, this?” I says “It’s been called the, the Rowan Branch ever since I was a, a young’un,” he says, “where’s Pine Mountain at?” I says “right back there,” I did, that’s the Pine Mountain, “well,” he says, he says uh “I, well, well, we’ll just change it then,” he says, “you ought to know,” he asked me how long I’d lived here and I told him with the rise of fifty year,” I says “It’s been called the Rowan Branch ever since I can remember, I’ve lived here” I says that, he, well he says “I’ll just change it then,” yeah, yeah.
I: Uh how much uh land do you have up here?
W: Hundred and fifty acr- ...
I: A hundred a fifty.
W: Yes.
I: How much of that is wilderness?
W: I, I don’t know what it is, it is, uh we own this patch of, of land at, at, at the back of tha- that uh, that ridge right there, and it runs back and takes in that cove and back in there towards Tipton Settlement, they’s a hundred acre on this side.
I: Do they make different crops here?
W: Yeah, yes, it, it’s good stuff, make plenty to do us here.
Zeb Crisp, Hazel Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 059a, 59b
Here we go.
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C: All right, Z. B. Crisp, was born in North Carolina, uh age is abo-, about sixty-four, you hear that? my daddy was borned in North Carolina.
I: Where, in Swain County?
C: In Swain County, both of us in Swain County and herded cattle on the Smoky Mountain, let’s see, it’s been about thirty, about thirty-two years since I herded any cattle on the North Carolina side, Tennesseans, on their Tennessee side of the, Tennesseans herded cattle, top of Smoky was the line, the state line, Tennessee and North Carolina, between Tennessee and North Carolina.
I: About where along the top of Smoky was it?
C: Well, I herded right the-, we herded lots right along on the line, right on top of Smoky, lots of cattle, there, yes, that was where we first tuck them to, when we first tuck them up there, we took them right on top, but we kept them on this side the most of the time.
I: This side?
C: Yeah, North Carolina side.
I: Did you herd them as far down as xx?
C: Yes, yeah, we herd them plumb on down, way pretty low down.
I: As far as Clingman’s Dome?
C: Yeah, far as, yeah, went to Clingmans Dome with them lots of times, yeah, Clingmans Dome.
I: Was there any one point where you herded xx?
C: Well, yeah, we, we kept them on the, along what them, what we call on top of the Meadows, right on top of the Smoky Mountain mostly there where we, the tame grass was sowed.
I: Uh what meadows was it?
C: That was what they call the uh, the uh Siler Meadows.
I: Siler Meadows?
C: Siler Meadows, yeah, that’s right, Siler Meadows.
I: And there’s tame grass on it?
C: Tame grass sowed there, yeah, I guess they’s about ten or twelve acres in tame grass sowed up there.
I: Is there any cabin where you stayed in up there?
C: Yeah, there’s cabins, we had cabins up there right along on top.
I: What did you call those cabins?
C: Uh I don’t know, no, I don’t think they had ...
I: Log cabins?
C: Well, they had, there was one up there that was called the Hall Cabin, but Tenn-, the Tennesseans, they stayed in that most of the time.
I: And uh ... Spence Place?
C: Yeah, Spence Place, yeah, let’s see, what they called the Spence Cabin too, they had a cabin there, Spence Cabin.
I: Around how many cattle did you have up there?
C: Well, we’ve had I guess fifteen and twenty at a time lots of times, and less sometimes.
I: Did you stay up there with them all the time?
C: Well, not all the time, we didn’t, but then there was a while there at the, along towards the last, a year or two before we quit, why we, we kept a man there with them all the time.
I: Did you leave the cattle up there in the wintertime?
C: Yeah, lots of them, we’d leave lots of cattle up there in the wintertime, horses too.
I: Hogs?
C: Oh hogs was there all the time, yeah.
I: xx
C: Yeah, the sheep, we kept sheep there all the time, winter and summer.
I: Did the bears bother the hogs and cattle up there at all?
C: Never did, never did know a cow or brute caught in my life up there with a, by a bear.
I: Why was that?
C: Well, the best there what I figured out that the bear had plenty other stuff to eat without catching the cattle, had wild stuff, wildcats, panthers, wild hogs, plenty of them.
I: How long has it been since you’ve seen the wolves up here?
C: Well, I’m going to have to guess at that, but then I can guess pretty close, I guess it’s a-, been about forty year, yeah.
I: Could you tell us a little bit about that wolf that you chased one time?
C: Yeah, I know, I know all about that, it’s terrible, well, it killed them sheep down there next to the, below Chambers Creek, and we got after hit and run it right up to the top of the mountain, and it cut up on top of the bald, it took right up to the top of the bald and then right up to the top of Smoky, right up to the top of hit, we run it about a day and night,
Well, let’s see, what do you want me to finish?
I: The story about the wolf.
C: Yeah, about driving that c-, that wolf out, well, let’s see, we ran him on top of the s-, top of Smoky, and we, the dogs, they stopped, and the men followed him one night till, nearly all night, and he got away from them, and that’s the last you ever seed of any wolf in this country, never seed nary an- another wolf in this country anymore.
I: Have you ever heard of the howl around here?
C: No, I never have since I come here, never have heard that, no.
I: Could you tell us a good cure for uh warts?
C: Yeah, I can tell you what a, how I cured them a many a time, yeah, just uh get you two moles and take them in your hand and smother them, don’t, don’t mash them to kill them but smother them to death, two of them, and then you can rub them warts with your hands, and I haven’t, I can just take them off, for I have a many a time, I guess I’ve took off five, I’ve took off five hundred I guess in all, in light of what I have.
I: You couldn’t tell us how you put out fire in a burn, could you?
C: No, I don’t know of, don’t uh know nothing about that.
I: Well xx a story xx.
C: Well, I could, I could tell you something about the weather and such like as that if you want, if you want me to do that, tell you how the weather used to be back when I was a boy like and a man getting, a man grown, used to be a rough weather up there, I’ve been there lots of times that I could stay on top, and it would come a storm and cold weather, why I’d have to get off down in the hollows to just, to, to get out of it, I’ve had my mustache to freeze, to freeze till I could hardly get my breath, and had a few minutes, saw it rain, looked like it was raining down in the country and no rain up there many a time, seed the snow up there lie there for I guess for sixty days, never melt many a time, now lately you don’t find it this day and time that way.
I: Can you tell us how the cattle, how the cattle froze along the mountain?
C: Yeah, our c-, c-, cattle, our cattle froze, and about, in the spring of the year come a spell of snow, and it covered the cattle up, lots of them, nearly, nearly covered them up, nearly covered up with snow, and they was lots of them died, they had their head laid back, turned back on them the- there now, and they found them dead with their head alive, back on them, turned back just like they they a-sleeping, the cattle were dead.
I: How did they look xx?
C: Well, sir, they looked just as natural, they, the cows didn’t look like they was anything the matter with them, not a thing in the world, just looked as nice as if they was a-living, but they were dead.
I: Were they all huddled together?
C: Yeah, there was lots of them in a pile together, I don’t know how many we caught, seed them lying in, piled up in the snow dead.
I: Is that how Bone Valley got its name, when the cattle froze?
C: Well, I think Bone Valley had its name before that, I don’t know how come hit to get its name, but then I’ve heard it before that time.
I: So you xx have to xx ...
C: Well, I don’t know about that, maybe they ...
Clara Crisp, Hazel Creek, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 060a
C: The wife of Zeb Crisp, Clara Crisp my name, and you want my initials too? my initials?
I: Could I get your, could I get your age?
C: Fifty-five years old.
I: Where were you born?
C: Graham County, and you want me to tell about the sewing?
I: xx
C: Well, uh back when I was growing up the first sewing I done I was about thirteen years old I guess, and I sewed with my fingers and made sheets, pillow cases, and all kinds of bed clothes with my fingers, I never sewed any on a machine till I was nearly grown, I guess about seventeen ye-, teen years old, and we didn’t can any and my grandmother didn’t, she always dried her stuff up till I was nearly grown, she done her cooking mostly on the fire, never had any stove till I was little, and she could bake cakes, she was just the nicest, one of the best old-timey cooks.
I: How did she do her baking?
C: She baked in a oven, she done her baking in a oven, she baked cakes, I don’t know what number of cakes she’s baked in an oven.
I: And how many xx xx xx xx placed in the fireplace?
C: Yes, she, she baked them on the fire, take out her coals and put her oven down on the fire, and she’d bake them and heat the oven as she went, you know, to bake her cakes, she’d bake her cornbread in, in pones, she’d take it up and bake her potatoes, and sometimes her family wasn’t any gone, she’d uh put her cake or bread on one side, the potatoes in the other, and that, that’s most of the way we lived in my younger days, and the way my grandmother lived, what they, you going to say?
I: You said that uh you didn’t do any canning when you were young, your mother didn’t either?
I: What kind of stuff would you dry?
C: Uh fruits and dry apples and uh blackberries, they didn’t dry any other kind of berries, and, and that’s about all the dried stuff we had that I remember.
I: Did they dry beans?
C: No, well they’d dry their beans, yes, they dried leather britches beans, what a thing to call it, I suppose I’ve got some now.
I: How long do you dry the beans?
C: Well, I dry mine in the sun, my grandmother dried hers uh on a string, hung them up in the porch or around the fireplace and dried them, and she’d dry pumpkin that way, and I don’t dry any pumpkin myself, but I still dry the leather britches beans, that’s what they called them then, I suppose that’s what you want.
I: Yeah.
C: And I don’t know of anything else now that would be any important.
I: Would you tell about how your grandmother would, she would bake cakes?
C: Oh yes, those they pound cakes.
I: Oh pound cakes?
C: And the way she baked her cakes now at, at Christmas time, times they hard then, they didn’t have uh, they couldn’t afford this stuff all the time, and the way they baked them at Christmas time, she’d uh, she’d take a dozen of eggs and a pound of sugar and a pound of butter, and she’d make her pound cakes and pour them in a pan with a, with a pound cake pans they called them, they had a spout run up that way and poured this dough right around this lid, and hit would raise to the top with a hole in the middle, and she’d get her a w- wild leaf flower or something or another and decorate the top of that, usually uh holly berries, and, or else she’d stick a large piece of candy down in it, put them on the Christmas tree for her old friends, and, and then they’d eat them and laugh and talk and enjoy theirselves through Christmas, and that’s about all they is to the pound cake except a little flavoring she’d use.
I: xx xx xx.
C: Well, they enjoyed it a lot better because they enjoyed it in a religious way, and these days we j- enjoy it to have a good time mostly, you know, that’s all of the world, and they just enjoyed theirselves, I’ve heared her tell about the, having log rollings, you know, back in her raising up, and after she started raising a family, they’d have these log rollings, they’d all go and enjoy themself.
Jack Johnson, Townsend, Blount County, Tennessee
J: My name’s Jack Johnson, I live at Townsend, in Tuckaleechee Cove, Townsend is my post office address, Blount County, Tennessee.
J: My name is Jack Johnson, and I live at, in Tuckaleechee Cove, my post office address is Townsend, Tennessee, I heared my brother-in-law tell a tale about his, about a man a-driving mules and horses to South Carolina, he come to a place and called to stay all night, and this, he got to stay all night there, and in the, in the night when he went to bed, why they was a man under the bed with his throat cut, and they come upstairs to kill this man, and he uh, they knocked him in the head, and, and they said he wasn’t a-bleeding, he had tuck the man out from under the bed and crawled under the bed hisself, and so next morning he come downstairs, and they had tied silk cords around a jack’s legs till he couldn’t walk, and it surprised them kindly when he come walking down the stairs, so he went on to another place and told them, they axed him how he could, how he ever got away from there, axed him where he stayed all night, axed him how he ever got away from there, never had been a man went there that stayed all night but what he never was heared tell of no more, and he told them how it was, and they went back then to, they went there then and arrested all of them and took them out of there, but I don’t know what they done with them, that’s all of that, me and my brother-in-law one time left the White Oak, Dan Fry, left the White Oak and went to a-, went a-coon hunting one night, we went out to the s-, what’s called the Stocking Holler, it’s in the park now, and my dogs started right in the mouth of the big holler and run up till what’s called the hornet tree on the Defeat Ridge, we catched two kitten coons up there, and we set a big poplar tree afire down in there and burnt one up, I guess, so we come on back home, and you bet we had a mess out of that pie, that’s all that I ha-.
I: Another one now you could tell us?
J: My, me and my brother went to the mouth of Devils Nest one time and, on what’s called the West Prong of Little River a-coon hunting, but we never done that much good, we just catched about three coon, two or three possum, and I believe we catched a polecat and killed one turkey on the tree.
Aaron Swanninger, Cades Cove, Blount County, Tennessee / Disc 062b, 063a, 063b
I: You ever been to school, Mister Swanninger?
S: No sir, I never went but just a little in, in my life.
I: Yeah, I guess you can read and write then.
S: No.
I: You can’t read and write?
S: Yes sir, I got to, I got to go to that, the teacher had me to, she was raising me and Benny Darling, she was my cousin, she’d have us to, have us to stay together all the time.
I: Yes sir.
S: ... just little fellows, you know, and the teacher kept us up there with her.
I: She did?
S: She says “you children go on and wash your face and get you a drink, both go together now, now you mind me,” I says “all right,” we went on, had a Gray daughter up there, she was my cousin, she and Raymond got to laughing about falling off the bench.
I: Did he?
S: Yeah, we was so little we, and we was old enough, we was small both of us, and they got to deviling us about sparking, you know, well he, Will says “now boys, that, that’s got to be cut out, deviling them children, they don’t know what sparking is, me and Grady, darnit, he was smart as he is, to tell me that he hid, to hear what we was talking about, you know, I was telling Benny, I says “I like my teacher pretty well, don’t you?” he says “yes,” said “I like her well” and I was just mighty amused, well he, Grady says, “I like her too,” I jumped, so he said “don’t let me scare you too bad,” and I says to him, I says, “Mister Dunn, well, what is it, what is sparking? me and Benny wants to learn,” “why,” he says, “I don’t know,” he says “I’ll tell ye, children, both of ye,” says “they’ve got to quit deviling you, for you’uns don’t know what sparking is,” what about that? Smith and Benny don’t know what it’s for [I: Yeah], what it means.
I: Yeah, did your cousin’s family have much of a farm back there?
S: Yeah, on this side they had a good farm, yeah.
I: About how many acres was it?
S: Yeah, had about, let’s see, about three hundred and fifty acres.
I: What did you do when you were a little kid down, uh did you help out on the farm?
S: Yeah, I helped on the farm [I: Did you do the fishing ... ], and uh we’d have to hoe corn and then we got to going to school, you know, went about a, a week and then we had to stop to pull fodder.
I: So you stopped about ... start ... about November ... the fodder?
S: Yeah, about November.
I: xx.
S: Yeah, and we’d take jobs on the farms, you know, and pull fodder.
I: So did you even do very much fishing and hunting over there in Cades Cove?
S: Yeah.
I: What did you ... ?
S: I was always fishing and squirrel hunting.
I: Yeah, what kind of a gun did you use?
S: I was using a rifle then, had a, decided the last time we’d take a shotgun.
I: Go with you?
S: Sometimes old Dan could follow me anyhow, or he’d go without us.
I: He would?
S: Yeah.
I: Did he?
S: And then Raymond would go too.
I: He went ...
S: Yeah.
I: He brought the knife?
S: Well, he wouldn’t take the ... they’ll make up their mush first and make up the mush and uh let it stand about two days, and then you make up the mash, put it in and, and stir it till it begins to boil, uh begins to, begins to uh, mean you stir it.
I: xx.
S: Yeah?
I: To get it to work?
S: Yeah, you, you put it in and, and break it up, and then you and, and then let it stand till, then it goes to work, it worked then and it just worked right on then and, and the bubbles run up and they bust and, and then it sinks, goes to sinking then, whenever it goes to sinking, just rise and sink, by then she, she’s ready then to make up, ready to go to boiling and then put it in the still then and, and then she goes to rise, be hard to tell that much without out xx actual-, hit’ll, hit’ll tell it though, maybe.
I: What’s the difference between mush and mash, is there any difference?
S: Yeah, a little bit of difference.
I: What is it?
S: It’s the, the mush is just made in mush, you know, and then you make up the mash, and uh that there kept, pour hot water on it and, and stir it up and make it up sort of PRON sorty, and put a little sugar in it.
I: That’s the mash?
S: Yeah, and the, and rye meal and, and that, that’ll, that, that’s all right then, you put it in and hit’ll go to boiling, you make it and, and then let it drip out in a little stream, but you’ll have to watch it there when it starts going up, that’s what it’s about to, about the, uh it’s boiling over, never, it never does that when you put your hand on the arm thisaway, but then if, if it’s hot, why you have to draw the fire, draw the fire out, you know, and then, it just runs to a, runs off to another stream, and then you, and then you put it to boiling, boy, she gets to roaring when she’s boiling.
[COUGHING]
S: That like a thump at all, you can hear it as far as from here down to Dave Sparks, just uh be thirty five in a beat, and if they uh make a thump, well, I’d rather have, have singlings than doublings.
I: What are the singlings?
S: That’s the, that’s the first that runs off, you know, that’s how come me to get back from the hospital, mush, why I uh I was drinking the first shots of singlings, you know, and it made me drunk, that’ll make you drunk when they’re b-, when they’re beading.
I: Yeah.
S: Yes sir.
I: It’s powerful stuff.
S: Yeah.
I: What is a doubling?
S: Why, that’s when you double back, you know, to start up again.
I: ... for a doubling.
S: Yeah, yeah.
I: Did the law ever raid you when you were making whiskey?
S: Yeah.
I: They did? did they take any of you under arrest?
S: No, yeah, they r-, they arrested me, took me to Bryson jail.
I: They did?
S: Yeah.
I: How long did you have to stay there?
S: Stayed there about three week.
I: Do they make much liquor over in xx County?
S: Yeah, they make it all the time in there PRON thar.
I: ... around Scarsboro.
S: Yeah.
I: Did you make ...
S: No ...
I: Yeah.
S: I’ve heared of it but I ain't never been north.
I: Uh when did you come into Cades Cove?
S: Well, dogged if I know, I’ve been in here, I come in, I forget now when it was, it I come on the Tenet [?] River over here at Rabbit Creek and stayed there a year or two and then come back over here, I come over here then and, and uh I stayed at Dave Sparks down here, well I stayed at on up here in the Russell Field a long time, two or three year, I lived there just by myself.
I: Uh, any cattle up there in Russell Field?
S: Yeah, ain't none there this year, though.
I: No, they don’t allow it now.
S: My ...
I: Can you do that?
S: Me and, me and Tom Graves was a-standing, and uh Hank Martin, and we went down i-, i- in a hollow, you know, and Tom says “there’s, there’s a gold mine in here somewheres, and let’s find it,” I said, “all right,” we went to, I went up to here and I seen it, found the gold mine, Hank Martin says, “now boys, you found that gold mine,” he said “don’t, don’t tell it to nobody,” he was getting ready to open it up.
I: Yeah.
S: And then it wasn’t too much more, Mister Asbury don’t tell me about it, he saw me, Mister Asbury said “let’s go up and see that boy, see what he says about it, and uh you have to look at it, don’t you?” yeah, and uh he uh he said “let’s go up and see him,” he says “and Tom come and set right down by it, I’ll see it, that mine you and Tom Graves found,” say, “how can you go to it?” and I said uh “it uh, hit’s right up on from here,” I says, “I never went to head of Pole Mountain this time of year unless I get down, and uh that’s on the other side of the river there,” and I says, “I’d, and well just go on up to the Pole Mountain till you come to a ivy thicket on the Pole Mountain, and then uh, and then put your hands on a rock, there’s a high rock stands there, put your hands on the high rock and say ‘good morning, rock, how’s everything blowing here?’ and walk around the rock, you have to put your hands on it,” Uncle Tommy said they had to do that, but then, then said every time, they’d be caught off every time if they didn’t put their hand on the rock, “well,” he says “now Asbury,” he said, “I don’t tell the rock ‘good morning, how’s everything a-going here?’” and he uh, we went then and Uncle Tommy says “the offer is three hundred dollars if you don’t show it, it’s on my land,” I said “all right, Uncle Tommy, I says, "I won’t let nobody know where it’s at,” I said, Tom Graves would tell it just around everywhere, I took Jones over there to hu- hunt for it, and it uh Fred, and they couldn’t find it, they hain't found it yet, turns out Turkey George tell me to come out and, and uh he wanted me just to show it to him and nobody else, he said, said “now come, don’t you do it, don’t you just show it to him, we tried to undermine him, show us the way and then they, they’d a-beat it out of that mine, don’t show it,” said, “mine’s good, it’s already been tested, you know, proved out to be good,” and then he, he uh, I told him I wouldn’t tell it and, and I’d never have told it yet over there, Tom’s old daddy’d tell him to tell me to come out, and he wanted me to show it to him, maybe he could find it next time, if I’d tell him, I says “you’re not going to show it to Tom” “no, I ain't going to, I wouldn’t show it to him,” I says, “I just don’t know whether I’ll have any work or not” xx Mister Asbury sent me word when he come not to show it to Tom, everyone that, all that I talked to yet said not to show it to him, Tom said he wished I’d come out, so I may show it to him and well yeah, take him and show it to, show it to him, and I ain't going to tell it, would you?
S: Yeah, it’s uh silver, I xx, gold and silver, well, it, hit’s, hit’s silver, more silver than anything else.
I: xx
S: I don’t know where the mine is, no, I’m, dogged if I know, they, they said uh to go to rock, go to where you can, you can see the rock in three places.
I: xx.
S: Yeah, right above the mine.
Steve Cole, Sugarlands, Gatlinburg, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 064b, 065a, 065b
This is Steve Cole, that lives in the Sugarlands near Gatlinburg in the park, been a-living here ever since the park was established, sev-, about seventy-one years old, him and his brother-in-law w- one night back years ago, about forty, went out a-bear hunting or a-possum hunting or other, treed a bear, he minded it up the tree till it come down, I shot it, it rolled off down the mountain a piece, tore loose from the dogs and run away on down the flat and treed up another tree, we minded hit up there a good long while, finally it come down from up there, we had us a big fire made up at the root of the tree, when it come down why we had a good fire light to fight it by, when it come down I shot again, didn’t hit it the last time, when I shot it the last time, shot at it, why, just throwed my gun down and jumped a-straddle of it, grabbed it by both ears PRON years, me and my dogs, I thought I could help him and make him kill it, but I couldn’t do that, I broke the dog’s hold, seed I couldn’t hold it myself and I let it loose, it started to run back around the tree, the bear took after me, and just as I got around next to the fire, the dogs caught it again, I turned around and jumped on it again a-straddle of it, called for the ax, and my brother-in-law, he’d had the ax to fight the bear with and he’d laid it down and burnt the handle in two, he couldn’t hardly find the ax, but he hadn’t holped me a bit, he hadn’t fit none of the time, when he got to hunting for the ax and reaching for the ax, I knocked it in the head ever so many licks before I could get it to lay over and hush hollering, finally we got it killed, drug up around next to the fire, I got to looking at it, just looked a-scared to look at a bear a-thinking a man of my s-, age or size would jump on a bear to fight fist and skull without something to fight with, so we killed it, brought it in home that night about daylight next morning, about as far as I can go with that.
Well, I was going to talk a little more about that bear hunt that I took on the mountain up there when I killed that bear, I never told quite all of it, in scuffling and fighting around, why I a- aimed to help the dog kill it, broke the dog’s hold, and then the, it bit my dog, and when I grabbed at its foot to keep it from scratching the dog, I stuck my hand in its mouth, and it bit me and I had to choke it loose, I took my right-hand and hunted its windpipe and choked the bear loose from my hand, so when I got that done why then I called on my brother-in-law for the ax, he brought the ax in and I killed it, got it back up around next to the fire, and I guess that was about all.
Back, back several years ago, about forty or forty-five years ago, when I was married, the way people lived in, way people lived in this country, they had an awful hard time, couldn’t hardly get any money, used to sell a, a good calf for about a dollar and a quarter and a dollar, work for forty cents a day, sometimes less, couldn’t hardly pay their taxes, and lived very scanty, I lived five mile up above where I’m a-living now, near Smoky, for fourteen years and raised ten children, had a very hard time, and I’d get out and work for just any way to get a little money to live on, my wife done the same thing, we’d just make a little crop of a summer, raise what potatoes and garden stuff we could get along with, everybody else would do the same, they was several old people, my grandfather, my father lived around up there close to me, and they had hard times too, they wasn’t no stores any closer than five mile, and we had to walk to the store, no way of getting there, only walking, when you got any goods in here from anywhere to sell in the stores, you had to go to Knoxville, it’d take a week to get them here, start off on Monday and get back on Saturday.
So we just managed in any shape or any way we could to live at them times, all the old people, and back at that time when a person would get sick, we had good neighbors in here, they’d bunch up if you was sick and come work your corn for you and make quiltings and roll logs and grubbings and one thing or another and help you when you was sick and disabled or you couldn’t help yourself, but they don’t do that anymore, all that’s left them, they ain't got that principle about them I don’t reckon in this country, so that’s uh the way we sort of lived in this country, and along back about the time the park started in here, why this country around here where I’m a-living now was just settled up thick, lots of families lived around here, all the old settlers lived around here and they’re about all gone now, I reckon I’m the oldest one that’s in this country around here, so uh that’s about all I could tell you of any interest, in this now.
C: My name’s Steve Cole, and I live in the Sugarlands in the park near Gatlinburg, been here for uh, been here soon be seventy-one years, seventy, going on seventy-one, been ...
I: xx
C: Yes sir.
I: xx
C: Yes sir, and her father was borned here at Gatlinburg, I was borned right around in here and raised here, and my wife’s father was at Gatlinburg, and he lived around here all his life, my father.
About thirty or thirty-five years ago, me and my father started to North Carolina a-bear hunting at Deep Creek, we went up on top of Smoky at the Indian Gap, we got up there, we heard some dogs down in North Carolina, and he come on up, I’d beat him up there a little and he come on up, he says, “they’re after a bear,” and he says “give me the gun, I’ll go out here and kill it,” I reached him the gun and some cartridges and he went on out there, stayed a little while, and after a while he come on back and, and he come back down to where I was setting, why the dogs was right out where he went to kill the bear, after the bear, and he just reached me the gun and says “here, take the gun and run down the road here to where the water runs the road, to where the river runs the road, and kill it,” says “it’ll cross right there,” well, I just grabbed the gun and as I started off, I said to him, I said we had two s- pretty severe dogs with us, Plott hounds, I said to him, I said, “you tie up your dog and just let mine go with me,” so when I got down there, why, right where he said for me to go, why, and just stopped long enough to get my breath, and, and the bear jumped out right in the road before me, squatted, and looked down at me just like he was ready to catch me, I shot at it, j- just jumped off of the road, but I never hit it, went out in the laurel there and fit my dog a while and went on down around the side of the mountain for about a mile, me and my first cousin followed it on down there and finally it treed, went up a tree, I rushed on up to where the dog had it treed, I got up there, why it was way up in the top of a big balsam tree, we rested about thirty minutes, I was tired and he was too, finally I said to him, I says, “well, we’d better kill it, hadn’t we?” he said “yes,” I says, “where’d I better shoot it?” “well,” he said, “If you ain't scared, shoot it in the head,” I says, “I ain't scared a bit,” so uh when the bear got in the right position, I pulled the trigger on it, it just let all holds go and fell over on two limbs there and just laid there just as dead as it could be, never kicked enough to kick out of the tree, we turned in to shooting at the limb under it where it was sort of weak and finally got it weak enough till the limb broke with the bear and fell out, that was the biggest bear that I ever killed or ever saw in my life, so we rolled it and drug it off down to the highway or to the road, went back up the road to where we first saw it, where I first shot at it, then we met the dogs a-coming that had run it off of Deep Creek, I muched the dogs a little and they come up to me, tried to get them to go on up towards the top of the mountain with me but they wouldn’t go, they just took on after the bear and we had to run back down to where we killed that bear so they wouldn’t tear the bear up, when we got down there, why they come on down there and just jumped right on the bear, we made them quit, when we made them quit fighting the bear, they went to fighting theirselves, just one another, they just fit there pretty hard awhile, and I finally knocked them loose with a stick, got them quieted down, and we went on back up to top of the mountain, told my daddy we’d killed it, we s- had rations and everything fixed to go to Deep Creek to stay a week bear hunting, so I took them dogs off of, off over down in North Carolina a little piece, give them all the bread they’d eat, scold them off, and let them go home, they went on home and I never did hear from them anymore for a good long while, and finally I heared about them a-running the bear off and never did hear where it went to, so we brought the bear on in, it was awful fat, we cleaned it and cut it up and cut middlings out of it just the same as we was a-cutting up a hog, we had plenty of bear meat while it lasted, and that is the largest bear that I ever killed in my life.
I: ... get your name again?
C: This, this is Steve Cole, this is Steve Cole, in the park, at Sugarlands, near Gatlinburg, lived here all his life for seventy, going soon be seventy-one.
Rhoda McMillon, Catons Grove, Cocke County, Tennessee / Disc 066a, 066b
M: My name is Missus McMillon, Rhoda PRON Rhody McMillon, I was borned and raised in Cocke County, and, and I’ll be seventy, seventy years old next November if I live that long.
[SOMEONE IN THE BACKGROUND IS VERY FAINTLY PROMPTING HER TO NAME HERBS]
M: What?
I2: Eighth day of November.
M: Eighth day of November, yes.
I: xx.
I2: Boneset.
I: xx.
M: Boneset’s a good remedy for typhoid fever and flu and all those sorts of fevers, colds.
I: xx long way xx wild alum.
M: Wild alum, that’s a good, that best thing I ever saw used for cholera and marvus and diarrhea.
I2: Life everlasting.
M: Life everlasting, that’s another good remedy for all colds and fevers and flu.
I2: Black snakeroot, what’s it used for?
M: M- black snakeroot, that’s a g- one of the best remedies I ever saw used for hives, isn’t it, in children? take black snakeroot and cut it up and a little sulfur and take the heart out of a onion and roast, put it in, the heart of it, the alum and sulfur, and roast it and squeeze the juice out, and I’ve never knowed it to fail to cure hives in a baby.
I2: xx
M: Yes, and also black snakeroot’s real good for weeding the breast.
I2: Ground ivy.
M: And ground ivy is a good tea for a hives for babies.
I2: Catnip tea.
M: And c- catnip tea is good, what’s next?
I2: Pneumonia.
M: Huh, pneumonia, a good remedy for pneumonia, rub the breast good with uh turpentine, and it gives good laxatives.
I2: Jerusalem oak.
M: Jerusalem oak’s another good thing for uh worms in children, take it and stew the seed in uh honey or molasses and give it to them, a small teaspoonful before bedtime, real good remedy, next one.
I2: xx white oak.
M: White oak? White oak bark tea is real good for diarrhea.
I2: Sweet flag, that’s the next one xx.
M: Yes, sweet flag’s good for stomach and for your gums, throat, anybody that’s singing it’s good for.
I2: xx.
M: What’s the name?
I2: Calamus roots.
M: Calamus roots is good for, to chew for your throat and gums and for colics and sick stomach, and mint, branch mint’s also good.
I2: It’ll cool a fever xx.
M: Yes, it’s cold and will cool a fever and fevered stomach.
I2: Wild cherry bark, of what use was it?
M: Wild cherry bark is, is good for the blood and for the uh, for coughs, really good.
I2: Now back in your young days you couldn’t get any doctors then, go ahead and say what you had to learn.
M: Back in my young days we couldn’t get no doctors them days hardly ever, and we had to do our own doctoring and we learnt up on these herbs, I know they’re good.
I2: And ballygilly buds, tell what their use is for.
M: Ballygilly buds is good for to make salves, the best salve I ever used was made out of bammygilly buds, take it and fry them in the fresh butter or sheep’s tallow, and then make some life everlasting tea, about a half a teacupful full, and put in with it and boil it down and strain it and hit’s the best tea that I’ve, uh best salve I ever used.
I2: Heart leaves and their remedies, what they’re good for.
M: They’re good for a, heart troubles and good to make salve out of.
I2: See, that’s all of that, that’s all of that and ...
I: Can uh uh you tell ...
I2: Yeah.
M: I, I guess you people would like to know about the serenades and how young folks got along back seventy years ago and longer, we had serenades, they’d make old big rattletraps they’d call them, and they’d have bells and plows and every old noise, and they’d run around the house and they’d have awful times, and they’d, they couldn’t get in, why they’d just keep right on, and whenever they’d get in they’d go through the house and my, how, how they’d rattle and, and bang around.
I2: Go right ahead.
M: And they’d sometimes, some people would let them have a little dance after the serenade and some wouldn’t, but they was always peaceable, they didn’t dance them times like they do now when they, just two get up on the floor and dance together.
I2: xx.
M: I don’t, I guess that’s about all the, about the serenading that I used to ever know anything about.
I2: Did they ever make the bridegroom uh ride a rail?
M: Do they? they used to make the bridegroom ride a rail they said, but they never treated me that dirty, they let me off with a, some good apples.
I2: Did they ever make you jump a broom?
M: No, they never made me, they never made us jump no brooms, but they made us bring out the cakes and everything.
I: Did you ever hear uh of the brides having to jump the broom?
M: No sir, I never heared of it.
George Thomas Baxter, Cosby, Cocke County, Tennessee / Disc 067a
Folks, this here is George Thomas Baxter, was born and raised on Cosby and went to school at Liberty and moved to Jefferson County, and going to read you a little story about a rat.
[READS ARTHUR THE RAT PASSAGE]
I j-, I joined up to the CCs at Jefferson County and come in the fourth of uh April and been in eight months and ...
I: xx
B: Been working on the road banks, building trails, and first one thing and another.
I: xx.
B: What’s that?
I: Tell how you like Newport.
B: Newport’s a mighty fine place for a young man to go, he can really have a good time, it’s a nice place.
Ralph Corbin, Jellico, Campbell County, Tennessee / Disc 067b
Margaret Parton, Copeland Creek, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 068a, 068b
Well I was borned on Grassy Fork and was brought here, turned into six years old and r- bor- uh was raised here, my father’s name was Michael Teague, of course, he’s dead now, has been, and I can’t never remember seeing my daddy as far as that goes, I was raised by a stepfather, and that’s all right, yes.
I: Can you tell us your name, please?
P: Well, it’s Mag L., it’s Mag L. Teague, Parton now.
I: How many children did you have, Missus Parton?
P: I had twenty, five girls and the balance of them boys.
I: And uh how many are living now?
P: Five -- is all.
I: Could you tell us a little bit about that story of the woman who was uh drinking with the men down in Sevierville?
P: Well uh she uh left here and went to Rhode Loveday’s, and she was there and left in the night, her and the man’s name was Teague, I can’t call his other name, of course, but his first name I can was Teague, and they come on to the Shinbone on the river, and there was, they was both drunk, and there they ru- fell off of the bank into the river and was both killed there and drownded together, and they brought her home the next day, and we buried her the next day after that.
I: What did she say before going out to the river?
P: Well, she said that she was going to see, Uncle Rhode Loveday had asked her to stay all night, he says “you can’t get home” he says “I won’t at all,” “yes, but” she says “I’m going to see home” she sa- uh uh “see Emerts Cove or hell one before daylight,” now that’s what she said.
I: Uh were the White Caps and the Blue Bills up in this country?
P: Yes sir, they was up here, a plenty of them, they whipped Jerome Russell and Ida Cook and Rhoda Breeden over here on Copelands Creek, tarred them, feathered them, well then they, Nance Mayner out on Scatter Ridge, they liked to beat her to death there at Julia Newcome’s, well, Henry Proffitt and Julie hid theirselves, they went there to whip them and they hid theirselves in a shuck bin, and they went in to draw her out to whip her and they brought, they couldn’t find her, and they come on back out, and as they passed by, why they took fire on them and shot two of them, Llewallen Sneed and Brooks, that’s all I can tell you about that.
I: Could you tell us a little bit about that woman that they treated so badly?
P: How about ...
I: They roughed her up.
P: Well, that was Nance Mayner, and a, she come then, her and Rhoda Breeden come to my house, well I, there’s a little dirty trick that I done, they come there and they teased when Mitchell and Brother Bobs went possum hunting, well they come there and they, they was a, a stake, a fence built above the house, and they was a stake that the moon shined on, a rail, well it just looked like someone there, well, they was scared to death about the White Caps, so then they got in under the floor in the cellar, and they stayed there, I hid them in under there, told them to be still, I told them, though they went on so that Rhoda, she got to laughing and making fun of Nance, well so Nance, she turned in to crying, well hit sort of made me mad, I was acquainted with Nance Mayner but I wasn’t much acquainted with Rhoda, so she said that uh she’d uh help the White Caps hold Nance, and I saw that and it looked like somebody, I says “yes,” I says, “right now,” I says, “yan’s the White Caps now,” well, of all the hiding you ever seed they just hit the floor and run from those men, it tickled me, I couldn’t keep from being tickled. because I ...
P: Other than just commence and tell it over again?
I: Just tell about the White Caps and how you came to meet them.
P: Well, my husband, he was sick, and I, he sent me to his grandma’s about, near about two miles after the sun went down, well hit was dark as I came back, cause of course the moon shined very nice and bright and I came near to the top of the hill and they was a, near a flat, sort of a flat place and I came on, there set six White Caps out on the right of the road from the trail in a bunch, I passed on up and the last one, I was aiming to trot on and not let on like I saw them, I was sort of afraid of them, well, the last one that I came to, why he says “don’t you say nothing about this” he says, “at all,” he said, well, I just passed on, just went on, I didn’t give no answer, come on to the next six, and there the last one says, “now do you be certain” he says, “that you say nothing about this” he says, “If you do” he says, “the penalty” he says, “will be yours,” now that’s the last of that.
I: Why, why were these White Caps made into an organization? How did they come to be?
P: Well, I couldn’t say about that for I don’t recollect, but they were sworn in to it and disguised, they all had on masks and uniforms, you know, of, made out of black cloth, just like mother hubbard dresses, now that’s the way they first started out in our country here, they wore, wore them, Missus Price and Missus Brooks made them at Squire Price’s house, I saw them making them, and I never did say anything about this at all till the, after the White Caps was done put out, the Blue Bills cut them out, and now that’s all.
I: Would you like to tell us a little bit about your sanging, uh when you were a girl, uh how you used to pick sang, to gather the sang?
P: Uh-huh, well of course, I had to pick sang up and pick up chestnuts for to buy what we had to wear, I went barefooted from the time that I w-, I never can remember of having a pair of shoes till I was big enough to go to the no B-, Birds Branch, what they call, that’s way in the head of the Greenbrier, and crack out chestnuts for to buy me a pair of shoes and a dress, we wove, spun, and made, carded PRON kyarded and spun and made our cloth with looms them times what we had to wear, but we went barefooted through the winter season, I’ve waded the snow knee deep just as barefooted as I ever come into the world, we had no shoes, we had no, nothing to make no shoes out of, they was no stores for us to get anything, a- and Mother and Pap would take their sang and go to Cosby to the store, what they call the Kings, Kings Store on Cosby, and buy our coffee and our cloth for it and thread to make our clothes, they had to buy clipped thread and weave it.
I: Could you tell us a little bit about your mother’s remedies when you were sick? Did you make tea and ...
P: Why, she’d gather the herbs PRON hairbs and made teas, we had no doctors, of course, we, she just gathered the herbs and made teas and we drunk it, that was our doctoring, we’d make sang tea.
Arlie Loveday, Copeland Creek, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 069a
My name is Arlie Loveday, I am eighteen years old, I was born in Sevier County, Tennessee, I went to school at Pittman Center for nine years.
[READS THE STORY OF JOHN]
Noah Ogle, Emerts Cove, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 070a, 070b
O: Are these all ready now? my name is Noah Ogle, I was borned in eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, I was borned near Gatlinburg, I can remember as far back as eighteen hundred and sixty-five, I can remember of seeing the s-, the soldiers at the close of the Civil War, they were just three houses in uh, in Gatlinburg at that time, one of those houses was occupied by Caleb Ogle, the second one was occupied by Levi Ogle, the third one was occupied by Isaac Ogle, they’re all dead now, some of their folks are in that community yet, Gatlinburg though has been a, a, a v- very progressive place, especially for the last uh, well I’d say for the last thirty years, they elected a man over there as the justice of peace about thirty-five years ago, and he seemed to be a very int-, intelligent man, his name was I. L. Maples, he went to work and he had a good road b- built in there about the first thing he ever done, that opened up the place, people begin to, people begin to visit the place then, and uh you, Gatlinburg has been very progressive ever since that time, they’s uh I im-, I imagine something near two thousand eighty in-, inhabitants there now, and they go- they, they have one of the, one of the finest schools there that I know of in East Tennessee anywhere, when I was a schoolboy over there s- sixty-five or s- seventy years ago, our school buildings there was a log cabin, our desks that we sat on was a h-, was a s- split log with four pegs in it, that was th- the uh desks that we u- used, and uh w- we uh, we had about three months schooling during the year, now then they have ten months of school there every year during, as the year comes, and uh Gatlinburg is a v- very progressive place, now the uh, I, I don’t know how, I couldn’t say how far back it was, but something near two hundred years ago, they were five Ogle b- brothers that uh e- emigrated there from, from South Carolina, and four of them stopped there, Isaac Ogle stopped there at Gatlinburg, Tom Ogle stopped at Gatlinburg, and Dewey Ogle stopped at Gatlinburg, and Harkless Ogle stopped there, four of the Ogle b- brothers stopped there and they raised considerable families, and that was about the same time that they emigrated here from s- from S- South Carolina, they was a lot of Ogles emigrated to the state of Illinois, and they’ve increased until they was, uh they uh uh have what they call Ogle, Ogle County up there now in the state of Illinois, I met some of them not, but not very many, met some of those Ogles from Illinois some three or four years ago, they are English people, they first or- ner- na- or- originated from, from England, and they’re a dark complected s- s- set of folks, and they have high cheek bones like the Cherokee, my family of Ogles th- though uh have gotten mixed up with the Irish, there’s where we get our red complexion, and now we’ll go back to Gatlinburg, and I, I’m a, I’m going to go back there today, to, to, to visit, and I hardly ever meet anybody that I know, there’s a, th- they’s one man living there y- y- yet though that was a man grown when I was a, just a little boy, he uh, he told me the other day that he was ninety-four years old, and he’d uh, he a, he a gets about ab- about as w- w- w- well as a, as a h- as a boy sixteen years old, now then my home is in Emerts Cove, Emerts Cove lies east of G-, of G- G- Gatlinburg, s- something like t- ten miles, Emerts Cove, when I first knew Emerts Cove it was in the, it was sixty-five years ago, eighteen and seventy-five, eighteen seventy-four, there were just uh six or eight families then in Emerts Cove, there was Squire Emert, the Shults family, and uh some of the Parton families, but they’re all gone from here now, and uh up uh in the Greenbrier Cove l- lies just uh so- s- south of Emerts Cove, that’s a wonderful place, some of the finest forest timber there that I ever had l- l- looked at in all my life, and it’s a great place to fish and to hunt for game of all sorts, it’s a great place to rest and to camp, and uh I don’t know of any place a- a- anywhere that I’d rather spend a few nights out in the woods than I would up in Greenbrier, but a man’s under restrictions up there now that’n the great national park’s bought that country out, and when a man goes there he doesn’t have the privileges that he once PRON oncet had uh when uh when I was a boy, and now there isn’t uh, there I- isn’t a- anyone stays in Greenbrier Cove now except a few r- rangers and a few fire guards, there isn’t any citizens that lives there at all now, now that’s about all of it, Greenbrier was first settled something like two hundred years ago, about the time Gatlinburg was settled and about the time Emerts Cove was settled, but here uh some six or eight years ago the great national park b- begin to buy out the land there and uh, the people are all gone and the country is being grown up again, it’s a-going to soon be just a natural forest like it w- once was before there was uh ever any i- i- improvement made there at all, that’s about all I know about the Greenbrier.
I: Like to tell us a little about Sevierville and Newport away back?
O: Sevierville is the county seat of Sevier County, and uh Sevierville, Sevierville hasn’t progressed very fast, not like I have saw some other towns in East Tennessee, hit’s not been very l- l- lucky to get railroads there as, as early as some other counties has, it hasn’t been as l- lucky to get v- very much manufacturing there, and so there isn’t very many payrolls there, there’s but very li- uh li- little th- there, there to induce people to uh undertake to try to live in, in Sevierville, Newport though is one of the most liveliest towns that I n- n- know of, in eighteen hundred and seventy-two I visited n- Newport, there were two stores there, a corn mill and an old-fashioned jump-up-and-down sash saw that sawed lumber, that was in eighteen hundred and seventy-two, and their inhabitants there now is uh, oh hit’s uh something near five thousand, they have a large tannery there.
Newton Ownby, Wears Valley, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 071a, 071b, 072a
I: Can you give us your name first, please?
O: Newton Ownby.
i: And where were you born, Mister Ownby?
O: I was borned on the head of Fighting Creek.
I: And when did you first move to Elkmont?
O: I moved there about, well I mean, I told you ...
I: You were eight years old?
O: Yeah, and I moved there when I was eight years old.
I: I don’t know, I don’t know, you moved there about eighteen and seventy-four, eighteen seventy ...
O: Yeah, I moved, moved there about that time.
I: Did your family move there with you?
O: Yeah, my daddy and mammy.
I: How much land did they own at ...
O: Well, they had about, about eight hundred acres.
I: Where was that land located?
O: Laying right up and down Little River.
I: Not on Jakes Creek itself, huh?
O: No, uh it wasn’t a bit of that land laid on Jakes Creek, it was in below the mouth of Jakes Creek.
I: And who, who were the first settlers up there at Elkmont country?
O: A fellow by the name of Catron, and the next one was, the next one was a fellow by the name of Jake Houser, and another’un was named Jerry Water, the next one, the next one was a fellow by the name of Toots, and that’s all that ever lived there till we moved there.
I: Was uh Gatlinburg pretty well, pretty well settled when you were a boy?
O: No, no, not much.
I: About how many families do you suppose could’ve been around there then?
O: Well, when we moved there, they was about fifteen or twenty families.
I: Fifteen or twenty families.
O: Yeah, I guess fifteen or twenty.
I: Why did the people uh go up to Elkmont? Was there any special reason? Was most of the land around Gatlinburg pretty well taken up at that time?
O: No, was just uh, just kind of a hunting ground out there, and when we went out there we just moved out there to hunt mostly.
I: And there was plenty of game up there to hunt?
O: Just plenty of it, just plenty of fish, bear and deer and coon, just plenty of it, catch a coon anytime or kill a deer anytime that we wanted to.
I: Uh your, your uh, your family were good hunters?
O:Yes, we was good hunters, me and brother Baus could just get out there and get a deer anytime we took a notion to, and we kept deer meat and bear meat and coon meat and turkey all the time, we had a little black fine smokehouse we’d kept it hung in, we just kept it hung full of bear meat and deer meat and turkeys all the time, when I wanted a mess of these little slick trouts, all we had to do just step out to this river there and get them, and in twenty-five minutes I’d catch twenty-five or thirty, yeah, that’s what we done.
I: Have you done much hunting here yourself uh on top of Smoky?
O: Yeah, I’ve hunted lots up there.
I: Uh about how many bear have you got?
O: I’d just, I’d just have to make a guess, why ...
I: Fifty or sixty?
O: Fifty or sixty, yeah, or we’uns can say nigh of two hundred would come a heap closer, well, that was my brother Baus, me and my brother Baus and brother George, we all hunted together, and we, whenever we took a notion to kill a bear or kill a deer w- anytime, we’d kill it.
I: Where was the best hunting grounds around, right on top of Smoky or ...
O: No, back under this side, under the north side of Smoky and along there.
I: Did you have to clean off that ground when you first moved up there?
O: Down on here at Elkmont? Yep, we cleared all that.
I: And how many, how many acres did you clear off about, all of the acres?
O: No, we didn’t have to do that, we cleared up about a hundred acres there right close about a, I guess it’d be a hundred or almost a hundred.
I: I guess it’d be very easy to make a living up there on the bald.
O: Wasn’t a bit of trouble, all you had to do was just make your bread there and cook it and eat it.
71b
I: Where did you buy your provisions when uh you were a boy, Mister Ownby?
O: Never bought it, we made it right there, we didn’t have to buy nothing, only just our coffee, and we’d go out to, to Gatlinburg and buy that, that’s, that’s all we bought, we had plenty of meat and then we raised our potatoes PRON taters there, raised our beans, we just lived right there at home, we didn’t have to buy a thing, only just our clothes.
I: Uh, who had a, did you buy your clothes or did you make your clothes?
O: We made our clothes, my mother wove the cloth on a loom like one of these right here, and she’d w- weave them, weave the cloth, we had a gang of sheep, they’d shear the sheep and she’d spin the wool, uh the thread, and make our britches and our shirts all, we didn’t buy a bit of clothes that out of the store.
I: What did you call the cloth that was used to uh make your clothing then?
O: Jeans, jeans cloth, yeah.
I: Uh, and what did you call the cloth that was used in the women’s clothing?
O: They pretty generally used the jeans cloth, they called it plain, plain jeans, yes.
I: Did they uh they also use a cloth called linsey?
O: Yeah, yeah.
I: Yeah, now who owned that store in Gatlinburg back then?
O: Gatlin.
I: Gatlin?
O: Yeah.
I: Did you ever know Gatlin?
O: No, I never seed him in my life, never did.
I: And do you know anything about Gatlin, where he came from?
O: No, I couldn’t tell you that.
I: When did you first move down to uh Wears Valley, Mister Ownby?
O: I moved down here about ten year ago.
I: And why, why did you have to move down here?
O: Well, I had to move down here because the park bought us out up there, run us out, took our, we sold out our land to the park up there.
O: Well, they felt pretty well when they first got to buying, but before they got done buying they felt pretty bad about it, they hated it because they left the mountains, all the people pretty generally hated it, and all the people that left the mountains is a-wanting back.
I: Did many uh people lose their money when they uh sold out to the park?
O: Yes, more than half the people lost their, all their money.
I: How was that?
O: Because they’d go off about and they’d buy uh farms and make a payment on them and then couldn’t reach the next payment, the land would have to go back to the owner.
I: Yeah, do you find living any easier down in Wears Valley than up in Elkmont?
O: No, I lived the easiest at Elkmont.
I: Uh was that uh because, because of the uh, the uh plentiful game up there?
O: Well, no, they was game, well but we’d kill game along all the time, but I could herd cattle, sell cattle, and it didn’t cost me anything to keep them.
I: How many cattle did you have uh when you lived up at Elkmont? Could you make a guess?
O: About how many, do you guess? I had right, I had close a hundred head.
I: And where uh did you herd those?
O: Herded them along on Smoky Mountain in part of the time and part of the time on what we call the Long Arm.
I: On what part of Smoky did you herd the cattle?
O: Well, just the main of the mountain.
I: Where would you stay at?
O: We called it the Derrick cabins.
I: The Derrick cabins?
O: Yeah.
I: Was that down in the vicinity of Silers Bald?
O: It’s about five mile this side of Silers Bald, well, my cattle run clear to Silers Bald.
I: Did you uh, uh herd them as far as uh, Clingmans Dome?
O: Yes, my cattle would get out that far.
I: How did you sell those cattle?
O: Well, the buyers would come there to me, and I’d sell them right up there at home, just sell them off, I’d sell, sometimes I’d sell a thousand dollars worth at once PRON oncet, five to six hundred dollars worth just lots of times.
I: Did you go down to Knoxville very much in those early days?
O: Yes, go down there a good, good deal, I’ve been to Knoxville since you was here t’other day.
I: xx.
O: One Saturday morning me and brother Baus, I was a-wanting to go out to, to meeting, church, and he wanted to go with me to help him hu- hunt, hunt the cattle up and catch a coon, and we treed a little coon up a leaning, big leaning poplar tree and I cut it, we cut it down, and when we cut the tree down, the dogs run up and it jumped on the biggest bear I’ve ever saw in the Smoky Mountain, well, we run up there to the dogs, and the bear tore loose from the dogs, and they run around the mountainside a little piece and run that bear up a tree about twenty feet high, and Baus had the gun in his hand and I, and I told him when he shot it it’d come right down here on us and catch us, Baus says, “I’ll shoot if it catches us both,” I says “cut loose after, I’ll take care of myself and you take care of yourn,” and when he shot that bear, hit fell right down right on us, and hit, when hit fell out, hit got one of our dogs up in its arms in its forelegs a-killing him, and I run up to strike it in the head with the ax, and when he’s, when I run up to strike it, they was a limb over me and catched my lick, and hit, d- drawed back with that dog and hit throwed him about twenty feet right down the mountain, well, Baus loaded up the gun and shot the bear before, before it got away from us again, sh- shot it in the right hind leg, and we run that bear about one mile right a-towards home, and we killed it there, and that was the biggest black bear I ever saw.
[INDISTINCT TALKING]
Well, they was one time a man was passing my house, and I lived up on Jakes Creek, started to North Carolina, he missed his way and went the wrong way and got lost, and we hunted for him and inquired after him and never could hear of him, and about five year after he passed my house, we found him a-laying in a sinkhole back on what they call the Middle Prong of Little River, and we, we went out there and took him up, held a jury over him with twelve men, and he’d got catched in a steel trap, and the jury give it in that they was a boy or he’d been killed by somebody and was catched in that steel trap, and they covered him up with what they call hemlock brush PRON bresh.
I: Hmm.
O: They’d just, they just left his bones a-laying there, and we took him up, every bone was to its place but one, we took that man in, put every b-, had a doctor to come to him, put every bone back right to its place and buried him out there at Gatlinburg, and they thought, they thought they knowed who it was catched him and took him up, the law took him up, and they couldn’t prove direct on him, and he, they just turned him loose.
Amos Reagan, Gatlinburg, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 073a
My name is Amos Reagan, I was borned in in Sevier County, Tennessee, at Gatlinburg, up on the mountain where Uncle Tom Campbell lived when he died, I’ve been a logger all my life up till the last six, a little better than six years, about six years ago, June the second, nineteen and thirty-three, I joined the CCCs, I worked as a leader up till the second day of November in nineteen and thirty-three, and I was transferred into the Park Service, I went to cutting timber, had a great deal of trouble with the CCC boys cutting trim-, timber, as they didn’t know anything about cutting timber, and later on I went to Cove Mountain and built the Laurel Falls Trail, and we had several rock on that trail and nothing to, to drill those rock with, only just a steel and, and eight-pound striking hammers, and I want you to know it was a very difficult job training those boys to drive steel with handles PRON hannels, switch handles, we used switch handl-, handles in this park here that when you lay them across your shoulder the handle, the hammer falls down on your back, but we got along pretty well and went to shooting those rocks off and blew them off down in the hollows and had a great deal of trouble then a-picking up the broken rocks and hiding them and so on, we got the Laurel Falls Trail done, why we built a tower, a lookout tower up on top of the mountain and got it complete and come back off the main camp, later on we went to the Newfound Gap and built a trail from Newfound Gap to LeConte, we didn’t have quite so much trouble with the rock on that trail for the reason it was soft slate rock, but it was a very hard place to work, high up on the mountain, cold weather and lots of rain up there, and the boys, they’d want to come in every weekend, and two or three of them would get sick during the week, and it’s a very hard job fooling with these CCC boys when you get some of, some of them that you can’t get much work out of, you have a right smart trouble training them up, one thing and another, the most difficult tra-, trail I’ve ever built since I been in the Park Service was the Trillium Gap Trail, went up on this Trillium Gap Trail the year nineteen and thirty-five and worked all summer on it, went back again in thirty-seven and worked another six months, and then in nineteen and thirty-nine I went back up there in June, complete the trail, got the trail done, but they was rock bluffs up there that’s eighteen and twenty feet high, put those boys up on top of the rocks, have to tie them with ropes, make scaffolds and use those switch hammers, and tell you it was pretty dangerous, but we had good luck with the trail and didn’t get anybody hurt, when we got the rock shot down, picked them all up, hid them, covered them up, mossed lots of them over, had lots of big walls to build, when we got the trail done then we come back over the trail and hid all the brush and logs and things that we had along in sight, and we’ve moved out of up there now, we’re back down in Greenbrier, to side camp, doing trail maintenance and other kind of work, I’ve been with the CCCs now little better than six years, would like to stay on with them as long as I live, I’m not having much trouble with the boys now, I have very bun-, good bunch of boys, the boys is getting trained till they know how to do things, might tell you a little bear tale too before I quit, while we was up at Trillium Gap last summer we had a bear that came to the camp several times while we was up there, the biggest bear I ever seen in my life, and one of the boys, one night he took a notion to run, jumped down off a log and scared the bear to death, and when he jumped, why his feet flew out from under him in some tin cans and one thing and another, and he got on those cans and rolled right in there under the bear, and he scared the bear nearly to death and he liked to scared him to death too, we had lots of fun about the bear, well, I’ll see you all later, come back again, that’s all, is that enough?
W. M. (Willie) Stinnett, Emerts Cove, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 074a, 074b
[I2 in the following section is the voice of Mrs. Leona Stinnett]
Willie Stinnett, W. M.
I2: Tell him your name now.
S: Willie Stinnett, W.M.
I: W. M. Stinnett.
S: W. M. Stinnett.
I: And where were you born, Mister Stinnett?
S: Born on Webbs Mountain.
I: And how far is Webbs Mountain from here?
S: About five miles.
I: Uh how long did you spend as a boy in, in Webbs Mountain?
S: Well, about ei-, seven or eight years.
I: And was there much of a settlement down in Emerts Cove when you first came here?
S: Well, a right smart little, right smart little, not ...
I: About how many families do you suppose lived here?
S: Well, I, I couldn’t hardly tell you, they wasn’t very many, no.
I: About ...
S: There, there was a family lived right over there, and a family lived right on up just a little piece further.
I2: Could you, could you tell them their names, Marts and Emerts was down here, the first?
S: Marts, Marts, yes, the Emerts down here first, old Roger, old Uncle Roger Timmons.
I2: First?
S: And uh John Headrick, no, John Headrick was first, I believe, no.
I2: Yes, John Headrick.
S: No, no, old man, old man ...
I2: Shields?
S: No, ’twasn’t Shields, Shields did move there later on, aw I know his name, Shults, old Uncle Bill Shults lived in the first house in Emerts Cove, when we moved to this country here, and then he sold out to Shields, then Shields, he, they lived there.
I2: Then old Uncle Rogers Evins.
S: And then old Uncle Rogers Evins, he was the next house, and, and then ...
I2: Mart Shults.
S: Mart Shults right over here, well, and, and uh old Mister Tooter lived on, on above.
I2: Right here at the end of the lane.
S: Right at the end of the lane.
I: Was there much of a settlement up in Greenbrier when you first came up there?
S: Well, not a big thing, they was several people lived there.
I: Who was the biggest landowner up in uh Greenbrier Cove?
S: Well ...
I2: Fred Emert would be one?
S: Fred Emert, and I expect my daddy owned about as much as, not hardly as much as Fred Emert, but he was right at it.
I: Well, what was your father’s name?
S: John Stinnett.
I: Uh when did uh John Stinnett come to this country?
S: When did he?
I: Yeah, do you have any idea?
S: No.
I: Was he born here, right in Sevier County?
S: He was borned in Jo-, he was borned in Jones Cove, yes.
I: Born in Jones Cove?
S: Yes sir.
I: Uh-huh.
I2: He and his, him and his wife moved from Joneses Cove back here to ...
I: Yes.
Yes, that’s what he done, he moved, he moved to Greenbrier from Webbs Mountain.
I: Uh how many families do you suppose there were up in uh Greenbrier Cove uh when you were a boy?
S: Well, I expect they was fifty.
I: About fifty families then?
S: Yes.
I: About how many families were there when the park came in?
S: Oh, law, I couldn’t, I couldn’t guess, they ...
I2: They was thick xx.
S: They was thick, in every hollow nearly.
I: Do you suppose there were three to four hundred families there?
S: Yes, I guess they was.
I: Was there more than that?
I2: I’d say between three and four hundred.
I: How did those people feel when the park came in?
I2: They was pleased to start in with ...
S: They was pleased reasonable well when they star-, started in, but they got till they didn’t like it.
I: Why, why didn’t they like it?
S: Well, they, they got dissatisfied with their homes that they bought and couldn’t pay for them, they lost their money and all like that.
I: They lost their homes.
S: Lost their home.
I: Why was it that they lost their money, the banks failing or ...
S: No.
I2: No, they couldn’t pay for it xx.
S: No, they couldn’t pay for the land and the, and land had to go back.
I: Took off a bigger bite than they could chew.
I2: Yes.
S: Yes, yeah, yes.
I: Well, how do the people around here feel about the, this part of the park, uh do they uh like it or ...
S: Well uh they don’t like it real genuine, all I hear them talk say it’s the worst thing ever happened.
I2: Most of them lost everything to the park xx.
I: Yes.
S: I’ve heared a few talk that said that worst thing that ever happened to Greenbrier and Emerts Cove too.
I2: Well, I think that xx worst thing that’s ever happened.
I: Well, why do you, why do you suppose they think it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened?
S: Well, they was dissatisfied, they was men give their lives just back up from Greenbrier, they is.
I: Two years ago, Mister Stinnett, you told me uh you found traces of Indians through this country.
S: Yes sir.
I: What did you, what kind of uh evidence did you find around here?
S: Well, I found rocks that they’d worked at.
I: Speak a little louder, please.
S: I’d found, found rocks, different kind of rocks, you know, that they’d worked at, a regular passway out through here with them, they uh claimed to me, and I suppose they lived here somewheres, I don’t know just uh whereabouts.
I: Did you find arrowheads?
S: No, I don’t think I did.
I2: Well, Will, you found a plenty of arrowheads.
S: Oh yes, yes, plenty of them, yeah, just a, just plenty of them.
I: Uh you had spoke of a couple of buildings that were here uh way back when you were a boy which might have uh been used as defense against the Indians, could you describe those buildings?
S: they was one that stood right down here, a big log house right down below my barn, had portholes in it, made in that shape.
I: Portholes?
S: Yes sir, they could see back up the road here, you see down the road and see any way they wanted to.
I: Hmm, uh did you see many Indians through here when you were a boy?
S: No, I never saw many.
I: Uh where did that pathway uh seem to run, from where to where?
S: Went through what they call the ga-, Indian Gap back here, right on through.
I: Indian Gap?
S: Yes sir.
I: Uh-huh, and where did it come from toward Indian Gap?
S: Well, it come from towards, through here, Cosby, and through h-, through here, you know, and the Indian Gap, what they used to call it up here, right up here on the, what they call the Grapeyard Mountain, uh the Indians laid there, camped there on that mountain they tell me, yeah.
I: Um, how much Indian are you, Mister Stinnett?
S: Well, I’m about a fourth.
I: About a fourth Indian?
S: Yes sir.
I: Is that on your father’s side or on your mother’s side?
S: On my father’s side.
I: Uh-huh, Cherokee Indian?
S: I suppose so.
I: Uh what do you think about the English uh running the Indians out when this country was first settled?
S: Well, they ... I don’t know hardly, that was pretty bad, that was pretty bad for them to do, they run them away from their homes as, I took it to be, I’d hate for a man to run me away from my home, yeah, just force me away.
I: Yeah.
S: Yeah, I think they done wrong running the boys out of here.
I: About how many acres did your farm have when you first moved to Emerts Cove?
I: Yes sir.
S: Well, two hundred and four acres and three-fourths, that’s what the old deed called for.
I: Is your farm still as, uh big as that?
S: Yes, I suppose it is, right at it.
I: Uh-huh, uh what are, how are your crops here? Could you tell us a little, a bit about them?
S: Well, the crops are good, generally good.
I: What do you raise mostly?
S: Corn, some wheat, timothy hay, make anything you put on it.
I: Do you raise much tobacco?
S: No, I don’t raise much tobacco, but hit makes fine tobacco, raise some tobacco, makes fine tobacco.
I: What kind of land would you call this here that your farm is located on?
S: Well, hit’s loamy, sandy land, portion of it, a portion clay, you know.
I: Would you call it bottom land?
S: Yes, some bottom land.
I: Uh have you ever raised much cattle?
S: Yes, that’s a big thing right here, cattle.
I: Where did you, where do you let the cattle graze?
S: Well, I let them graze here on my farm.
I: Uh-huh.
S: But I used to uh, when I lived in Greenbrier, my father lived up there, we’d put them in the mountains.
I: Back on Smoky?
S: Yes sir, back up in there.
I: Just about where along the Smoky Mountains?
S: Along this side of Smoky, and in them big coves, rich coves he’d keep them.
I2: Porters Flats.
I: Porters Flats?
S: Porters Flats and the Stony Flats.
I2: Stony Flats.
S: And he’d keep as much as two hundred head of cattle there every summer.
I: Where did he market those cattle?
S: Well, he, they’d come up from in below here and buy them.
Leona Stinnett, Emerts Cove, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 075a, 075b
S: Uh Leona Stinnett’s my name.
I: What was your father’s name?
S: Dallas James.
I: And your mother’s name?
S: Narsina, Narcissus uh Plemmons, no, Miles was my mother’s name, and my grandma was a Plemmons.
I: And where was your father born at?
S: He was borned in North Carolina.
I: What county?
S: Buncombe County.
I: And your mother?
I: Uh-huh, I believe that about two years ago you told me that uh some of your uh foreparents came from Virginia.
S: My great grandma on my father’s side t- uh, came from the eastern part of North Carolina.
I: The eastern part of North Carolina?
S: Yes sir.
I: What was her name?
S: Uh, I’d, can’t remember, Polly, uh.
I: Well, that’s all right, uh were you born in uh Emerts Cove?
S: No sir, I was borned in Buncombe County, North Carolina, and I came here when I was about seven years old.
I: What did uh Emerts Cove look like when you first came here?
S: Well, it looked uh kind of nice to me, for I wasn’t acquainted with uh nice level lands, you know, our farms was hilly back in North Carolina where I came from and, and uh this was level and nice, it looked quite interesting to me, you know, I was quite small.
I: Uh did you see a tree here that uh appealed to you particularly?
S: Why, yes, the, I seed some sycamore trees, something I never had seen before, you know, and they was uh white, you know, and I asked uh my father what made them paint them trees white, and he said “why they didn’t be, they wasn’t painted, they growed thataway, that they was sycamore trees, they uh it looked quite funny to me, you know, I was so small.
I: Yes, when you were a girl, there probably weren’t uh any doctors here, your mother probably uh treated you when you were sick.
S: Why yes, of course, she uh ...
I: How uh, what kind of remedies would she uh give to the family?
S: Well, teas, one kind and another.
I: What kind of teas?
S: Well, I couldn’t just exactly tell you what kind of teas altogether she made, burbine tea and, and uh spicewood teas and uh evergreen teas and sassafras teas, that was the ...
I: Boneset?
S: Boneset tea,
I: What was boneset tea used for?
S: Uh for colds.
I: For colds?
S: Yeah, that was the fever medicine.
I: Uh-.
S: Yes, that was fever medicine, and they’d make uh horehound candy for colds and coughs, that was our medicine.
I: And what was sassafras tea used for?
S: Well, I couldn’t uh tell you what they used it for, but when we’d get uh sick or anything, they’d make sassafras tea, you know, and have us to drink it.
I: Uh-huh.
S: and ...
I: If uh, if someone uh in the family took sick with the pneumonia, how would your mother ...
S: Why, she’d uh doctor with boneset tea.
I: Boneset tea?
S: Yes sir.
I: Did she ever make a poultice of any sort?
S: I don’t remember whether she made poultices or not.
I: When you and Mister Stinnett were married, was there any celebration?
S: Not much, not so very much.
I: Uh what uh did they call those uh celebrations when people were married here way back, perhaps thirty or forty years ago?
S: Well, uh called them a wedding dinner or something, wedding supper or something, that’s about all there was to that.
I: Uh did you have any serenading here in uh Emerts Cove?
S: Yes sir, they’d serenade people.
I: And what was a serenade like?
S: Well, they’d get bells and guns and old buckets and things and beat and bang on them and shoot around, run around the house a few times with old bells.
I: Uh did they make the bride jump the broom?
S: No, they never made the bride to jump the broom with me.
I: What did they call uh the man who was getting married, did they call him the bridegroom?
S: I think so.
I: And they’d call the uh woman who was getting married the bride, or ... ?
S: Yes sir.
I: What did they call the best man?
S: xx.
I: Who were, who were waiters at the wedding, Missus Stinnett?
S: Well, the gentleman that would sit by the side of the, the one that was a-going to be married, and they, they would be a lady to sit by the side of the woman that was a-going to be married, that was called the waiters.
I: And uh what was the infares?
S: Well, it was when, when uh one would start from where they was married to go to their, their husband’s home, that was called the infare.
I: Uh how many uh children do you have, Missus Stinnett?
S: One daughter.
I: And what does that daughter do?
S: Well, she housekeeps, works all the time at something.
I: Is she a nurse that’s getting them better?
S: No sir, no nurse.
I: Uh did your mother sing any, any of these old love songs when you were a girl?
S: No sir, I never heard her sing love songs, I’ve heard her sing religious songs, I never did hear her sing any love songs.
I: She didn’t sing Barbry Allen or Pretty Polly?
S: No sir, no sir.
I: Uh did she just uh like the uh religious songs particularly?
S: Yes sir, yes sir.
I: How did the people uh here think about the uh, about love songs?
S: Well, I don’t know, some people likes them very well and some don’t like them so well.
I: But the uh church isn’t opposed to singing love songs, are they?
S: Well, I don’t know.
I: Hmm uh what does the church uh feel about card playing with men?
S: Well, I expect the church would feel pretty cold about that.
I: What about dancing?
S: I don’t expect they’d approve of it very much and ...
I: But there’s a good deal of dancing and frolicking, I suppose, here.
S: Yes sir, there’s plenty of it, I guess.
I: Uh-huh, what kind of music did they have, the uh dances here?
S: I couldn’t tell you, I never was at one.
I: We’ll just stop there.
Eunice Smelcer, Emerts Cove, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 84a
I: Uh, would you tell us your name, please?
S: My name is Eunice Smelcer, and uh, and Willie Stinnett is my grandfather, and I’m very glad to say it.
I: You have a good grandfather.
S: Yes sir.
I: Do you have children?
S: Yes, I have two, a boy and a girl.
I: How did you amuse yourself when you were a girl, Missus Smelcer?
S: Uh well when, till I was twelve years old, I went to school, but I didn’t like it.
I: You didn’t like school?
S: No, I never did like school, I wanted to, I wanted to be part Indian and go a-hunting, I liked to squirrel hunt.
I: So would you tell us a little bit about a squirrel hunt?
S: Yeah, anything you want to know of.
I: Uh so would you go with boys or would you go with girls?
S: No, I goed myself.
I: You went by yourself?
S: Uh-huh.
I: Did you take a dog along?
S: No, I want a gun.
I: Uh, so you would kill them then?
S: Yeah, I reckon you’d call it that, I, I, I killed six uh one day.
I: Six squirrels one day?
S: Uh-huh.
I: What was the weather like that day?
S: Well, it was pretty and sunny and quiet.
I: Pretty and sunny, what do you think is the best weather for squirrel hunting?
S: Anything in the world for me, I have good luck anytime.
I: You have good luck anytime?
S: Uh-huh.
I: Some of them say that the best kind of weather to squirrel hunt in is uh, a kind of foggy day.
S: Well, I just have as good luck at one time as I do another, and uh, uh I take my kids with me and, and I have as much fun with them as I do if I was by myself.
I: Do you use uh long-range bullets?
S: No, I use a double-barreled shotgun.
I: A double-barrel shotgun?
S: Uh-huh.
I: Do you do any possum hunting or coon uh coon hunting?
S: Uh-huh.
I: Coon hunting?
S: Uh-huh.
I: Tell us a little bit about possum hunting and coon hunting when you do it.
S: Uh well you do it when uh, after it goes to frosting, when the uh, when the fur gets ripe, then is when you want to catch them for the market, uh unless you want to eat them, and we don’t like to eat them.
I: You don’t like to eat them?
S: Huh-uh.
I: Well what does possum meat uh taste like?
S: Well, it tastes like something I never tasted before.
I: Did you ever eat any bear meat?
S: Yes.
I: Uh how do you like bear meat?
S: I like it.
I: What does it taste like?
S: Well, it tastes similar to hog meat.
I: Similar to hog meat.
John Burchfield, Cades Cove, Blount County, Tennessee / Disc 076a, 076b
I: Uh tell us your name, please.
B: John Burchfield, Cades Cove.
I: What is your age?
B: Well, I’m forty-eight, uh will be uh I mean fifty-eight, will be fifty-nine on Christmas Day, just in a few days now.
I: Can you tell us when and how your family came into Cades Cove, when they came in?
B: Grandfather, my grandfather came from North Carolina in eighteen and twenty-five and bought the farm, a hundred and sixty-five acres, and staying on the place till the war come up, he died, and father, he took hold at thirteen year old and stayed on the place, not for being away from home over two weeks at a time at work, he still lived on the place till he was eighty-six year old and died.
I: Do you happen to remember from what county in uh North Carolina?
B: No, I don’t, no, I don’t, Yancey County I think is where it was, I ...
I: Oh Yancey.
B: Yancey County I think is the place, I just heared them talk, you know.
I: Yes, were there very many people in Cades Cove when uh Burchfield first came here?
B: No, just a few, Mister Oliver and Mister Cable, the first settlers here, you know, why they wasn’t many here then till when he come in, you know, just farm for a living, you know, their crops, made it pretty hard.
I: Well the going here was pretty hard.
B: Yes, yes, that’s right.
I: Could you tell us a little about the times when you were a boy, how you got along?
B: Well, not much, I worked pretty hard, and uh I would work on the farm, I’ve drove a yoke of cattle over the place, fixing ground to plant corn, you know, but we’d still work the horse stock making the farm.
I: Where did you uh market the crop?
B: Well, at Knoxville.
I: In Knoxville, would you have to carry them in there, or would you ...
B: We’d take a team, it’d take us right about four days to make the trip, we’d sell our crops, you know, Irish potatoes and fruit, we had a lot of fruit then, apple trees, and we had lots of orchards, you know, we’d haul that off and haul our chickens and such as that and drive our stock, we’d, our cattle, we’d drive them to market, you know, at Knoxville.
I: About how many cattle did you have?
B: Well, he’d have oh twenty-five or thirty, you know, and he’d sell ten, fifteen off along, just sort of raised up, you know, and bought it.
I: Where did you uh graze the cattle?
B: At the Gregory Bald, at the top of Smoky.
I: Did you have uh someone taking care of them there [B: Yes sir] pretty much of the time?
B: Yes sir, we’d have two herders, we’d pay seventy-five cents for our stock on the head five months to the year, these men would stay up there and tend to them, you know, we’d take up about the last of April and gather the first of September.
I: There about the first of September or ...
B: They’d come in.
I: Would it be cold up there by the first of September?
B: Yeah, it’d be cold and bad by then, we’d bring them into the pastures then, you know, and put them on the market, we had lots of sheep, we put them on top of the mountain.
I: Most of the people ih here xx on the mountain?
B: Well, most all, yeah, and most, would keep a few stock, you know, our sheep, hogs, now our hogs, we’d run them in the mountain, we had lots of chestnuts then, chestnut timber, you know, was good then and bring our hogs off of the mountain in home, feed them a while, and then kill them, they’d be so fat, aw they’d be fine.
I: What was the best way to make money here at the cove, from what, from the crops or the stock?
B: From the stock, we had a better chance, you know, we, we could run them on the mountain something like five months of the year, you know, and then we had our meadow land, we could put up our hay and feed through the winter, keep them up thataway, you know, and the, the stock was the best way of making money we had here.
I: xx
B: Yes sir, yes sir, we’d sell, you know, they’d come in, and when they didn’t, why we’d drive to market.
I: Well, where would you go to get provisions around here?
B: Well, we haul-, we hauled from Maryville.
I: From Maryville?
B: Yes sir.
I: You had it pretty hard up here.
B: Yeah, it was a awful hard way, yeah, they ...
I: Each family sent for their own provisions or ...
B: No.
I: Uh Would you tell us a little, Mister Burchfield please, about the, about the uh women weaving?
B: Oh yeah, yeah, my grandma and my mother would work together with that loom, you know, they’d put that loom up and put in the web of cloth, and they’d do their own weaving, do that in the wintertime, then they’d set around the fire at night and knit, knit our socks and stockings, you know, they fixed the yarn, we’d shear our sheep, you know, and they even carded the wool theirselves, you’ve saw the cards.
I: Yep, yeah.
B: Yeah, uh they’d do that, you know, and they’d fix that all theirself, yeah, they worked hard to what we do now.
I: Yeah, they worked hard all day.
B: Yeah, yeah, all day and then sit up at night, you know, and work till late, yeah, they would have big old fires, you know, built on another big wood, you know, green wood, and well the fireplace would be about five foot, you know, and you could just imagine how far them place, how, what a fire that helt.
I: Yeah.
B: Yeah, we’d have good fires, and law probably at this time of year, you know, we’d get in ham, we’d kill about seven or eight hogs, yeah, when you go to kill our, kill our meat, you know, we’d have someone to come help us, and they would uh haul dry wood and pile rock on that and heat them rock, they’d throw that in thataway to heat the water, to scald the hogs, they’d, we’d get right in and clean them, you know, and hang them up, we’d, we’d have a time, you know.
I: What did ...
B: They didn’t depend on buying then everything, we’d make, most of the time we made everything we eat.
I: Uh-huh, and I suppose you’d have to send out for your salt and xx?
B: Yeah, yeah, we’d, we’d have to send after salt now, you see that uh cedar tree?
I: Oh, yeah.
B: One of my uncles brought that from Louisville and set it out, he’d went after a load of salt, when you spoke about salt, he’d uh, there’d a man go after a load, you know, he’d, be several, send maybe get four or five sacks, a hundred and fifty pound to the sack then, you know, and he brought that back here, and he set that out now there at the graveyard.
I: From Louisville, Kentucky?
B: No, just from Louisville, down here below Maryville.
I: Oh, below Maryville.
B: Yeah, yeah, he’d bring in a load, you know, that was when the war was coming up, that’s how come that tree out there, they kept up everything around here all right, you know, it’s grew up.
I: Well, when he sent out to Maryville for provisions, I suppose several families could send, send for something with one person going out?
B: Yes sir, that was the way they’d manage that, you know, yeah, I remember when they’d bring in the stuff through the mountains here with a yoke of cattle to, to the wagon, they hardly ever worked horses across, but they’d bring them in now with a yoke of cattle, what we call the Cooper Road back in, back here, it’s not by Townsend, we’d come twenty-two mile from here to Maryville the old way, come in thataway, come out there by the college and back through here by Crooked Road.
I: When did they have the first store here at the cove?
B: Well, I couldn’t tell you, I, now I’m, I’m fifty-eight, and I remember them just having the one store, you know, just a little fellow going to that store, Mister Leason Gregg sold over here a mile from here.
I: Can you tell us a little about how people amused themselves when you were a boy? They worked hard, but how did they play? What did they do for enjoyment?
B: Well, they would kind of have a dance, you know, through Christmas, have fiddling, dancing, such as that, hunting, aw they got along all right, you know, thataway, they’d, that time of year from about December up, they, they’d hunt, you know, for a living, get in their meat thataway, you know, and they’d have a fine time.
I: Was the dancing different than it is today?
B: Aw yeah, yeah, it wasn’t nothing like what they done now, you know.
I: How, and how would they have it?
B: Well, they would ...
I: Couples dancing?
B: Yeah, about two or maybe four, you know, would dance, and sometime the women would dance with them, and yeah, they’d have a lively time, you know, right smart of booze, you know, yeah, that, that was the way with that, yeah, they’d have the booze with them, yeah, we had a, made it pretty hard and had a pretty good time, too.
I: Did you ever make much liquor here in the cove?
B: Oh yeah, there was a lot of liquor made here till the, till the park come in, yeah.
Fonze Cable, Nine Mile, near Maryville, Blount County, Tennessee / Disc 077a, 077b, 078a
C: Old Uncle Quill Rose was an old, be an old man over at, that lived in the Smoky Mountains, what they call Eagle Creek, had a hard way of making a living, he had to come out across the Smoky Mountains, what they call Cades Cove, and he had a big old oxen, he fixed him a pack saddle on him, and he’d drive him over here in the, in the cove and get him a load of provisions and take it back to Eagle Creek, well, he thought he was doing a little better then, he swapped that old steer off and got him a jackass, he’d shoulder up his Winchester and get on that jack and ride across the mountain, he was a-going across one day and the, the old mule kicked his, up and got his foot in the stirrup, the old man Quill Rose said “hmmm, by God, if you’re going to ride, I’ll get off and walk,” he went on, though, his mule got his foot out and he rid on and he, when he got back home with his stuff, the old man R. E. Woods was there and his wife, Montvale Lumber Company, they was logging Eagle Creek, they had a big fire on, it was wintertime, in the fireplace, and this lady and gentleman setting before the fire and the old man Quill was setting in a corner smoking, his old dog come in, got between him and the fire, and he hauled back and he kicked his hind end and he jumped in the fire, now old Aunt Vi said, “Quiller, what the world did you kick that dog for, in the fire for?” he said “hmmm, by God, I didn’t kick him in the fire, I kicked his ass and he jumped in,” that’s a little tale.
C: Fifty-nine year old when I killed it, twenty-six bear, have I, has he got it on?
This here’s the old residenter and bear hunter Fonze Cable, I’ve killed twenty-six bear, well I guess I’ve been a-hunting something like thirty-eight year, I reckon though what makes me be such a hunter, like to hunt, my father was a bear hunter, him and one of his nephews went a-fishing one time and they was up on what’s called Desolation, and they had a dog with them, he’d run a bear in on them and they got to rocking it, and they, it got his dog down, and he run in and jerked it off, and it went to showing its teeth, it jumped back and went to showing its teeth at them, he said, “Riley, knock its damn teeth out of there,” and he, he cut down with a rock and right in the mouth he took it, and they, they throwed rocks there, and big rocks, and it wouldn’t faze him, directly he picked up him a little rock and it took about the burr of the ear and down he fetched it, he run in there and jobbed his knife in him, and, and then the old bear jumped and he grabbed him by the sleeve and jerked his shirt sleeve off, and this boy knocked him down again, and that time he run in and he s- he finished killing him that time, they killed hit with a knife and rocks, well, I’ll tell a little about myself, I was in on, well we went a-fishing, was going to go fishing and went out the mountain and found where a bear had killed one of my hogs, we turned back then and the next morning we got our dogs and started in there, these other fellows, Thomas Sparks and Asa Sparks, Bill Shuler, they went out to the mountain stand, I got down under there and I struck him, and we run him up on, bait him on Killpecker Ridge, I crawled through the roughs and got up there to him, nearly to him, and he, he left out and went back around by the standers and then come back, no, he about had my dogs whipped PRON whupped and I kept hollering at them and hollering at them and then directly well they kept coming on towards me, one of my old dogs, he seen me and he whupped off under the hill and we went to hollering, I thinks to myself “I’ll just slide down there and see if he’d make me holler,” down I went, I got up and about, oh I guess something like ten foot of it, there he stood, he’d look at me awhile and then he’d look up a tree awhile and then he’d turn and look off, then he turned back on them, me a-snapping at him with old punk shotgun, directly the gun fired, and uh when it fired, he fell just the same as it blowed his head off, it jumped up then and come right at me with his mouth open, and I jumped to try to run, I seen I couldn’t and I hollered my dog “catch him,” the old dog grabbed him by the ...
Well uh, we was, passel of us fellows of us gathered up here to bear hunt, and we appointed Doc Jones for the, to lead the hunt, he says for us to go now, for us drivers to go to the Calhoun Ridge and start this bear and uh John Cable and uh Allen Crisp, they was to go to the mule lot, Doc, he was a-going to the Brier Knob, well hit, we’s, Fonze Cable’s the driver, he drives Bone Valley, right in on Bone Valley there he rousted one, it come out through there, and run over Doc Jones, he was out a-kindling up him a fire and it got by, between him and his gun, the dogs went on and they, when the standers come or the driver come on out, the dog was in the Devils Courthouse a-fighting the bear, there we all lined up and we hit in that Devils Courthouse after it, and we wandered around through them roughs and we called it lettuce beds, and dark catched us in there, there we let the bear get away, and there we all come in, we’re all sad, you know, and had our wood to get up after dark and all out a-picking up wood, camp fires, and we didn’t get nothing that trip.
[UNINTELLIGIBLE]
This party come from Jacksboro, Tennessee, to bear hunt with me, and we went up on top of Smoky Mountain, what’s called the Spence Place, we, snow on the ground about three inches deep, I guess, we hit out down on what was called the Antony Ridge, we struck a big bear there and we trailed him around and jumped him under some rock cliffs, and he come right over some cliffs and they was a boy climbing right up this cliff, and the bear went right over the top of him, he shot two shoots with the automatic pistol, he hit him in the bottom of the foot, the bear run on and the snow a-boiling, dogs a-fighting, and run across the Antony Ridge over onto what we call the Little Spruce Ridge, a fellow by the name of Bob Walker run in there and shot him, he broke his neck the first shoot, and he didn’t know whether he’d killed him or not, he jumped again and he broke his foot that time, his own foot, and we had to carry him in then, the bear, and had to carry the bear in, then we took a horse and went back and got the man, we all gathered up and we come down into what’s called Cades Cove to one of our friends there, we stayed all night and dressed to our, finished dressing our bear and dividing it up, they all said that was the biggest black bear they ever seen, these old fellows guessed it to weigh five hundred pounds.
Fonze Cable, borned in North Carolina, in eighteen and eighty.
Well I guess xx something about xx, about, so I’ve been in Cades Cove about twenty, or thirty-six years, then I moved out over here to the, what’s called Nine Mile, about fifteen mile below Maryville, the old bear hunter’s about sewed up now.
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I told the dogs to catch him, he grabbed him by the hind leg and jerked him, and the bear fell down, rolled over once, he got up then and walked around the hill and the dogs put in after him again, bayed him around there, well I looked up the tree, I allowed it might have had some cubs there and whooped them up the tree, I looked around there for cubs, couldn’t find none, and I got to looking around for my shells, and I couldn’t find them, well, I got to studying how nigh that bear come a-getting me, and uh I just got scared so bad it just appeared like my heart was right up in my mouth just a-beating, well, I kept worrying around there, I got sort of over that and the bear come in and, back around to the other side of the Killpecker, right into a sink hole, they bayed him again, well I crawled out up at the top and I thinks I’ll try him again, I’ve got some big laurels run around here, and I took, they was a log a-laying right above to the sink hole, and I thought I’d run and jump on that log and shoot him as he went out, well when I went to make my spring to jump, a running brier catched me right under my chin and down it fetched me, and that scared the bear and he walked out, got away from me, I never did get up with him anymore, then one time my father and a fellow by the name of Bill Cope, they was a-bear hunting, they run one over in the Devils Courthouse and treed it, well they kept wandering on till they got to him, and they shot hit, uh well, when they got there we, the bear went to making a noise, growling and popping its teeth, this fellow by the name of Cope, he says, “Little John, Lord God, run, that’s that old panther,” and he said “no, that ain't,” and they crawled down to a little closer, and Little John says, “I believe I can gut shoot him here,” said “come on down to me and we can both shoot,” Cope says “no, you shoot there, I’ll shoot from up here,” and he cut down after him and out he fetched him and down into the laurel a-fighting, him and the dogs, they got down in there with them and shot it again, and then they’d have, they’d have got to trying to get to it, the dogs to it, they thought it, that it’d quit, they got in to him and they, when they struck, no they struck a match, and when they struck the match the dogs landed onto it again, and Cope says “Lord God, run, John, it’s a-going to get you,” and they found out it was dead then, and they buried or hung him up and crawled out of there, that’s all, I reckon.
Dan Cable, Cable Branch, Proctor, Swain County, North Carolina / Disc 078b, 079a, 079b
C: I was supposed to run up that trail, you know, and thought I’d make the dogs catch it, I, I got right under the bush it was in before it jumped out, this laurel fell out from the road right before me and every one of them dogs just a-run back behind him making a holler holler, was just like they was catching it, hit didn’t, hit didn’t run, hit just trotted off looked like that, trotted off, well I, I turned around then, I had no business up there, no gun, you know, and hit a-looking thataway, had a head as big as a dinner kettle PRON kittle, its ears stuck up thataway, I just run and went back down to the cabin, so he says “why didn’t you kill it?” I said “what did I have to kill it with?”
I: When did that happen?
C: That’s been, that’s been thirty year ago, I guess.
I: About the last, last of this quarter of the xx.
C: About the last, no, it’d be since xx.
I: Do you know anything about uh Tom Sparks?
C: I guess you, you’d know, why he was out salting his cattle, him and Fonze was herding up there, you know, at the Spence Place, and Tom, he was out and he heared somebody holler, it’s getting dark, he said he just knowed it was Fonze come, come in, from the cattle, he said he answered him and said he sat down there and stayed a long time and said he got up and hollered and says to him, told him to “come into, come on, I’m a-going to the cabin” said he got up and started, said something just grabbed him by the arm there and scratched his arm, hurt, hurt, he took his butcher knife then, they killed it on Deep Creek there afterwards, he thought it was Fonze, you know, come in from the cattle to where he was at.
I: Well, I wonder about how many years ago.
C: I don’t know just how long it’s been, but I guess it’s been ten or fifteen years maybe, that, yeah, I guess it’s been about fifteen I expect.
I: xx.
C: All right now, let’s begin, going to start that again, missed the first of it,
78b Why we started from here a-coon hunting up there, I thought we’d go up and stay two or three nights, you know, got up above the old Hall place up on Bone Valley, and the old dog we had with us, an old hound, he struck something’s track, and he trailed on up that creek, I guess trailed two mile, every bit of it, and we stopped to build us a little cabin, a camp, we just cut down a little linn tree and split puncheons, you know, and laid them down and tossed them up there as shelter, it quit raining, after dark a while I says to Van, that’s my brother, I says, “we might go up the creek here a piece and catch a coon,” and he says, “where will we go?” we just had, we didn’t have no lantern, we just had some pine to carry a light, we just took a little of that pine, and we went up the creek a piece, and that old dog, he went back to where he quit and he went to trailing on again just, hisself, now we had a bench-legged feist with us, that old feist, and then we had some young pups that’s getting about big enough to run, you know, to train them, took them on up there and that feist there, he was just a-yelping like he was looking at it, I says to Van, I said “he’s a-going to catch it directly” well, about that time just in a breath or two why that feist went to hollering, you know, just like he was a-dying, we hollered to him and that old dog wasn’t a-running much, just trailing along, viewing along, that feist, he got loose on him, he come back to us, all the blood was just a-dripping off of his ears, you know, and all over his face and just scratched his head all over nearly, that old hound then, he’d went to trailing on again and he stopped and went to barking, I says, “he’s got it treed,” I says “let’s get the light up there,” we went in there and that old dog was just a-standing on a big root where it had come out thataway, a big spruce, he was standing there just looking down the hill, “dou, bou,” and we hissed him, there’s great holes in that Killpecker Ridge, that’s where it was, I says, “what, we, could we put the light in there, I w-,” I says, “what would shine a bear’s eyes at night,” went on, that old hound then, he just followed us on, then it went to raining again, we go down to Desolation and went to cross that, and all the dogs was right with us, they just stove right out at it, and there it was up on a hill about fifty yard and went to barking, we went down there, treed up a little old water birch not nary wasn’t as big as a man’s body, I says to Van, I says “let’s shine its eyes and shoot it,” we had an old hog rifle, we didn’t have no cartridge gun then, “aye,” he says, “no,” he says “just hack it down,” he says “it’ll fall just in a minute, just hack it,” he says, well, we, I struck a few licks on it, it’d just go forwards, you know, just a little birch, my dogs, they wouldn’t, wouldn’t run into it, the lap of it, I says “I never seed these dogs act thataway on an old coon tree,” I says “hell, when you cut one down, they was right into the lap of that” and they wouldn’t go at all, I run into it, cut a lap off and hissed the dogs, and that little old feist, he got after it and run just about as far as to that house out, about a hundred yards, I reckon, went to barking up a big spruce, looked like a spruce from where we was at, it turned into kind of sleeting, and we just had a little pine, we come, we was going to start to him, we come across a little old dead birch that fell and lodged up in the spruce tree, I says to Van, I says “we’d better, we’d better cut this here right here and build us a fire,” I says, “it’s fixing to turn cold and us no lights, we can freeze to death,” we just went to cutting that old stob, you know, start us a fire with, we just stood up there all night, hit rained all night, we just stood up there all night, and this big old coon come down about fifteen steps from where we was at, we just stood there till it went to breaking daylight and it went to snowing, I told Van that the old dog, he come up from the starter gate, he come down, scents that breeze, scents and “awwoo, awwoo,” I says, “there’s been a coon come right here to us,” and I says "he’s trailed on up on Killpecker and went to barking," well I says to Van, I says “you, you take that old gun,” I, we just throwed it down in the rain, I knowed it wouldn’t shoot, I says “I’ll take the ax and I’ll mark the tree and we’ll go and get our breakfast, when we come back, we’ll cut it down,” I just thought it was a coon, I went up there and that, the old dog’s setting in one of them big bear trails, ju-, just looking back yonder, I hissed at it, I was as close as the Bryant there, close, when I hissed him, why he was up there big eyes a-shading.
I: Okay.
C: Drove all day that day and hadn’t got nary race and was coming on back going to the cabin and the dogs, they winded one, and down under the hill they went in one of them slicks and jumped him, you know, and they put him up a tree, John and Cope, they ...
I2: They started down there.
C: What?
I2: They started down there.
C: Yeah, they went on to him.
I2: And they went, fell over hollows to go down, and he went over that cliff, he went over ...
C: John, he went over that clift PRON, it was a big clift, high as that barn there, and he just slid down, you know, and catched to a laurel and slid down till his feet about hit the ground, and Cope, he, he was a little scary, he says, “I’m a-coming,” he says, John says “hit’s all the way to the ground here,” and he just jumped right in there and fell right at their feet, the dogs, they just rared out there, and he, Cope says “hell,” he says, “It’s that old panther” he said, John says, “no, it’s a bear,” I says, “well, I can see it” he says, “setting up there,” he says, “I can see the bulk of it,” says “I, I can kill it.”
I2: Thought he was a-making a light.
C: Yeah, yeah, made him a light, and he didn’t have nothing to make it with, and ...
I2: Dead laurels wouldn’t have worked.
C: Yeah, but that was after they had it down on the ground, and they, John, he shot it and shot it through back there, Cope, he shot at it and never touched PRON tetched it, it fell out in front of them dogs, they just cussed it, you know, and they couldn’t get into it till dark, John says, “hell,” he says, “make us a light” he says, “and we, we’d shoot the thing’s brains out,” Cope says “I hain't got nothing to make a light out of,” John says, “strike a match,” he struck a match and the dogs, they just grabbed it, you know, hit was a-down out of that tree then, it fell down, and Cope, he just run backwards over John, you know, and fell, he says, “here it is,” and hit had died right there, they stayed right there, they come in to hunt them, these stood, you know, they come to hunt for the drivers. shot up pretty close, shot till they could hear them, shot, answered them back, and they come on in down there then and skinned out and packed him out the cabin that night.
I: What cabin was that?
C: That was the Hall cabin.
I: You, how long, how many nights would you stay there usually?
C: I don’t know how, how long we did stay there.
I2: Well, you’d stay five or six some ...
C: Some-, sometimes we’d stay a week, wouldn’t we? yeah, when we’d go.
I2: Stay about five, six ...
C: Yeah.
I: Would you eat much of the bear up there?
C: Yeah, we’d eat bear meat until you couldn’t dress for it.
I: You ever know nur- uh Nate Burchfield?
C: Yeah, I’ve knowed old Nate.
I: Could you tell us a little bit about Nate Burchfield?
C: Now I, I d- don’t, n– never, never was out with him a-hunting nor nothing, I saw him several times, but I don’t, I don’t know much about him.
I: Tell us uh what you know about Horace Kephart.
C: Well I, I uh, he, he appeared like a mighty nice man, he’d come up there where we was a-hunting and fooled around with us, but he, he never went out on no hunts with us that I know of, he’d have his book, you know, on along with him and ...
I2: Take pictures?
C: Take pictures, you know, and make films, that’s about his occupation he had up there, and look over the country, you know, he’d go out on them high knobs and look all about over them rough slicks, you know, we call them slicks but it’s just rough, just laurel beds and ivy, you know, uh growed up, nothing in it hardly, just a tree once in a while, and then we went up there then again, one of my boys, they was the two of them, they treed a big bear, the dogs did, and they went in there and killed hit, we had to tie it on a pole, it wasn’t but a little piece from the cabin, we tied it on a pole and, and it was me and Jake and Dan, Little Dan, we packed that bear in to the cabin, before we got there the dogs all come to us about where we was tying that old pole, we got right back in about a half a mile of the cabin and the dogs, they just stove off a little, little old, into a little laurel patch and there they jumped another big’un, they run it down to Eagle Creek and back up and, me and, me and, let’s see, me and Franz, yeah, we grabbed us some rocks to keep it scared back on the, on this side, on the North Carolina side, didn’t want it to go across into Tennessee, well hit, hit never, we never seed it then, and hit run back down there again and just coming back in and they catched it before it got back to us, we just, we were standing there with rocks, we never had ...
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We stayed at the Hall cabin on top of the mountain, and we’d tie our dogs and, and go till we found to where they’d been a-feeding, you know, found the track, and then we turned them dogs loose, and run them through the stands if they went, if they got there, if they didn’t why they went up a tree, so run in and kill them, as close PRON clost as you can to them and soon could kill the bear.
I: Now just tell us who went on that hunt now.
C: They was Jess Cable and Doc Jones and Joe Cable, that was my brother, and Little John Cable, that’s all, and me, Dan Cable, that was all there was right there.
I: Yeah, uh tell us, uh tell us a little about another hunt now you went on.
C: Well, we
I: Uh, tell all you want about it.
C: We went, come in home, fetched them in home and went back, and next day after we got out there that evening, why we went a-hunting and turned our dogs loose and they jumped trees, and they’d parted and the dogs had treed one, and they went down and killed hit, Jess Cable killed it and come back and they was just ready to catch another’un, I think, and the dog got in a bear trap where they had it set for the bear.
I: Yeah.
C: And the bear jumped over the trap and the dog got in it, and we had to go and hit was getting late and we just tied him, had to tie him to get him to follow us, he wanted to run on after the bear after he was catched in the trap and we turned him out, and we killed, let’s see, we killed three that, that trip, but generally most of them we, they put them up a tree and we had to kill them in the tree, the dogs did it, then the next, Jess Cable, I d-, I wasn’t with them that time, Jess Cable and Little John ...
I: And Mister Cable.
C: And Allen Crisp.
I: Uh-huh.
C: They’d went up there a-hunting and it was just them three, and they killed, killed four that day, Jess Cable killed three and Little John said he pulled out his watch when they went to cross the mountain, and he thought they’s going to go across PRON acrost the mountain on the Tennessee side, and he was standing on top, and he said “in just a minute by his watch killing them three bear,” they had, then the dogs got after another’un and they killed hit to make four, killed four that day.
I: Hmm, could you tell us a little how you organize a party for a hunt?
C: Yeah, we’d all just fix us up a s- sack of rations, you know, and every fellow would take his rations up there, had to pack them on our back, there wasn't PRON wadn’t no roads nor nothing, they’s just trails, and we’d just have to pack them on our back, and we’d just go there and stay like we was staying at home, you know, we had beds up there and cooking vessels and have to cook in a oven, we didn’t have no stove, we just cooked in a, a baker like, and we’d rake out next morning after them bear.
I: Now how do you divide the party?
C: How di-, divide the ...
I: Yeah, uh how would you form a party of uh standers, there’d be ...
C: Yeah, some, yeah, there, some go to the stands, you know, and the, generally two of us drove all the time, just took two to lead the dogs, you know [I: Right], two of us would drive, whenever we found where a bear had been that night, why we’d turn our dogs loose after it, we’d notice what, whichaway it’d been a-going, you know, and, and turn the dogs loose and in just a little while we’d have a bear up, and then the fun’s, when fun commenced then, us trying to get to it.
I: What’s the best place for the stands?
C: Which?
I: What’s the best place for the standers, what kind of a place?
C: Oh, a, a rough pine sort of, a little like that out there, where it, the laurel and everything comes up in a little knob, they generally cross over a, the highest knob they is in reach of it, they don’t go through a gap like a deer, they, they go over that high part.
I: Uh-huh, and where do the drivers begin?
C: Uh they just commence, whenever we start we’d go till we get to them, them roughs, you know, or a cove where they feed, we’d go to their feeding ground and that, there’s where we’d get our start on the bear.
I: Uh, how do you begin looking for the bear?
C: Uh we’d just go and look where they been a-feeding, they rake just like turkeys.
Columbus Cardwell and Edwin/Edmund Thomas, Emerts Cove, Sevier County, Tennessee / Disc 081b
I: Say uh how many canteen books do you draw at the end of the month, do you guess?
C: All the way from two to three.
I: Two or three.
C: Well sometime I could draw five or six.
I: Uh do you ever get cold standing in the chow line waiting for the sergeant or mess steward to let you in?
C: Yeah, I’ve got cold several times.
I: Guess you throwed snowballs at each other while you’re in line?
C: Yeah.
I: Have a lot of fun there, don’t you?
C: Sure do.
I: Did you ever get extra duty for turning your plate over a little too quick?
C: No, I never did get no extra duty.
C: No.
I: Did you have any extra duty at all?
C: No, I never did have no extra duty.
I: Never had no extra duty, didn’t have a, didn’t have a gymnasium account?
C: No.
I: Didn’t play no basketball?
C: No, I didn’t play much basketball.
C: No.
I: Did you play baseball?
I: Who’d y’all play, what camp did you play?
C: Four eleven.
I: Play four eleven, did you ever beat them?
I: Never beat them, well, you must not have had a good team to work.
C: No, I never did have much of a team.
I: Well uh how do they feed over there?
C: Pretty good.
I: Pretty good, huh? y’all had, y’all have a chaplain in your company?
C: Yeah.
I: And you hold services once in a while?
C: Yeah, every once in a while.
I: Uh, y’all have a very hard time policing up in the morning, have police calls?
C: Yeah, a pretty hard time.
I: You didn’t take exercise during the cold weather, though, did you?
C: Yeah, they, they didn’t care for the cold weather.
I: Did they retreat too?
C: Yeah.
I: Well, hey, that’s, that’s pretty tough, we don’t have to do that, uh what kind of a lieutenant do you have, pretty good?
I: What was your lieutenant command officer’s name?
C: Floyd.
I: Floyd?
C: Yes.
I: So he’s pretty good?
C: Yeah, pretty good.
I2: Just tell about the time that xx.
I: What’d he say to you about that car? Didn’t you tell us something about, something about taking your car out?
C: Yeah, he told me to take my car out of there, and I brought it in to come back in home in, I was getting discharged in about a couple of weeks, and, and he told the sergeant to tell me to take it out, and I told them to just let it be there for about three more days and I’d take it out and he’d never see it no more.
I: They say anything more about it?
C: No, he never did say no more about it.
I: Didn’t say no more?
C: Nope.
I: Well, he knew you was going to take it out anyhow sometime, didn’t he?
C: Yeah.
I2: Tell about the time you uh [EXTENDED UNINTELLIGIBLE PASSAGE].
C: I don’t remember about hit ...
I: What kind of sergeants y’all have over here?
C: Pretty good’uns, yeah.
I: And mess stewards, was they all right?
C: Yeah, they’re good stewards.
I: That reminds me, did they feed y’all them good scrambled eggs over there every morning like that?
C: Yeah, they uh sure did.
I: Bet you got that half pint of milk too, then?
C: Yeah.
I: That’s pretty good there, you know it?
C: Yeah.
I: You get, you get a half bottle, I mean, a bottle of milk’s a half-pint, wasn’t it? they ever, they ever give a pint over there anytime?
C: Yeah, they give a pint a few mornings.
I: Did they?
[EXTENDED UNINTELLIGIBLE PASSAGE]
I: Tell about when you made music around here.
C: Well, we made some music over there one night and me and bunch of boys and we’d just all sit there and we’d just pass the guitar around and sing and pick and we had, sure had a big old time ... Columbus Cardwell.
I: Edwin Thomas.
Nancy Benson, Cosby Creek, Cocke County, Tennessee / Disc 086a
B: Perlie Evans, back, no in old times she use to card and spin and weave to clothe her children, what was that?
I2: Well how, how, how did they used to do it xx?
B: They, back in old times they made shoes.
I2: Well, how?
B: Uh calf hides, and the, the menfolks wore uh linsey britches, cotton shirts, they wove them.
I: How ...
B: Out of linsey they wove xx in the chimney,
I: How’d they cook?
B: Cook in an old-time kettle on the fireplace, they didn’t have no stove, … and they carded and spun their cotton and wove them.
Frank Lambert, Smokemont, Swain County, North Carolina, Disc
Mark Cathey, Deep Creek, Swain County, North Carolina, A Bear Hunt in Deep Creek, a [RETELLING OF STORY ON DISCS 044 and 045]
Ready for the story? well, in nineteen and twenty-one, they was a party of us went to the Bryson cabin on a bear hunt, and they was twenty-nine of us, natives from here and a bunch from Tennessee, Knoxville, and Oakdale, Tennessee, and one fellow from Bulls Gap, Tennessee, John Edwards, J. H. Edwards, so we started out the next morning for the bear drive, that I went, I always, they put it on me to place the standers, so our drivers driv that Easy Ridge and Pole Road, that’s on the west side of Deep Creek, and the standers stood on the Bear Wallow Ridge beyond Bear Creek, well the drivers driv to, out to the Burnt Spruce Gap, that is the ridge between Pole Road and Bear Creek, and they found no bear signs to cut, turn the bear hounds a-loose on, so they just turned them all loose as they usually did to go back into camps, and we had some four or five real bear hounds that turned off on the Bear Creek side in the laurel and picked up a cold trail, well I stayed on my stand till they was practically out of hearing, a-listening at them, then I went to rounding up some men to go on with me after the dogs, and I found six or eight stand, standers that I had left, and uh I said to them, I said “let’s go on after them dogs,” they was a, the dogs then was a-going on in to the head of the left-hand fork of Deep Creek into the slicks, so they said, “no, why they’s no use to follow them dogs, that’s a bobcat, a coon, or a deer they’re after,” “well,” I said to them, I said “now I’ve got some dogs in there that won’t run nothing much but a bear,” and I said “that’s undoubtedly a bear,” “no,” they said, “no, we’re going for camps,” so I left them and went on after the dogs, and I happened to run onto a, a fellow a mile up the creek up in the woods, I didn’t know that he was there, he was one of the party, our party, but I didn’t know where he’d got to, so I said to him, I said, “let’s go on after the dogs,” “why,” he says “I heared them go through here” he said, “that’s a wildcat,” and I told him, I said “no,” I said, “it’s a, that’s a bear they’re after,” so I started on up through the jungles and got up two or three hundred yards above him and he hollered to me, he says, “well,” he says, “you go on to Bear Pen Gap,” and he said, “I’ll come on up there as quick as I can and see what’s a-going on,” well, I went on and topped out in Bear Pen Gap, that’s at the far winter range at the back of Round Top, well, when I topped out, the, the, the hounds was a-fighting right in under, well to the right of the Clingmans Dome, they was in three hundred yards of the top of Smoky fighting, and I stood there and Hunnicutt finally come on up, the fellow, and I said to him, I says, “listen at that pack of hounds,” I said, “does that sound like a wildcat to you?” “well,” he says, “that’s, they’re a-fighting a bear,” “yes sir,” I said, “they’re fighting a bear,” well, he said, “let’s go to them,” “no,” I said “we’ll stand right here,” said, “they’re not a-going to let him cross the Smoky,” I said “he’ll turn back down directly,” well they fought up and down and around there for I guess for thirty or forty minutes and finally they turned right back down the Big Wooly Head Ridge between the two forks of the left-hand fork of Deep Creek, just, just held their ground there, and they fought right down into the foot of the, foot of the ridge into the flat laurel and commenced barking, and I thought it was treed, well, I told, I says, “they’ve bushed him, Waitsell” I said, “I’ll go on and see.”
So I went on to where the dogs was a-barking and they was gone when I got down into this particular place, I couldn’t hear nothing of them, so I crossed that, the river, and clim out on the east side of that river and clim out I guess a half a mile and couldn’t hear nothing, and I was supposed to wait on this fellow at the forks of the creek where we heard the dogs a-barking when I left him, so I come back into forks of the creek and pretty soon this fellow came on down, and I told him, he says, “where’s the dogs?” I said “well, they’re not here,” I said “they’re gone," and he says “well,” he says, “they fought down the creek,” “no,” I said, “they don’t very often do that,” I says, “those bear always fights up into the roughs,” I said, “they’d went up the right-hand fork here,” well, he quit me there, said he was a-going to camp, and I talked pretty rough to him and told him to go, that I was a-going to stay with the dogs, so I started out up the right-hand fork and this fellow, I got two or three hundred yards away and he hollered to me, “well,” he said, “I’ll come on in hearing if you get up with them,” he said, “I can’t keep up with you,” well, I went up I guess a half a mile up the face of the mountain and it got so rough, I turned across and, and went into the creek, but anyway before I left the mountain face I heard the dogs a-barking right in at the head of the right-hand fork of, the left-hand fork of Deep Creek, so I just turned, pulled right off and took the creek, just waded it, was wet all over, and ice froze on my toes, it was in November, so I got on up into where I could hear, well, I w-, I guess in three hundred yards of the dogs, they was out on the left-hand side of the creek about three hundred yards and they was treed that time with a big hemlock, a broken- topped hemlock, well, I was a-crawling up through the down laurel and they, I heard something a-coming down, passing along through the laurel, and it was one of our bear hounds, a black and tan hound, well, he came up to me and he was tored all to pieces, eat up by the bear, uh and I patted him and muched him and hissed him, and he went right on back and commenced barking up the tree, well, I got on up in, I was aiming to get around above the tree to shoot the bear, but I got in sight of him and he started down and turned around on the limb and I, I shot I guess a hundred yards at him, had to shoot him anywhere I could, I’d aimed to shoot him in the head, so I shot him right through the shoulders, well, I went on up to under the tree and there all was a-standing there and no bear there, well, I begin to wonder what had happened, I knew that I had a good bead on him when I fired, and I hardly ever missed, to this day never have, and the bear was gone, and the dogs was just a-standing around there barking, well, of course, they was all whipped, just about whipped, I commenced hissing and I couldn’t get them to go, and then I commenced searching and pretty soon I found where the bear had went out through the laurel and doghobble in the direction of the other fork of the creek across the Wooly Head Ridge, well I called the dogs out and put them on the track and they picked up pretty well and pretty, I went on and pretty soon I begin to find plenty of blood in the bushes, and so I begin to find lots of blood, and the dogs had started on and left me and I had followed by the blood the trail of the bear on to the top of the, the big fork ridge between the two forks of the left-hand fork of Deep Creek, and when I topped out I heard them a-barking down on, right on the, the river, so I went on down, and the bear was under a drift, they had came a water spout in time and drifted in a whole lot of, well a big lot of timber, spruce and hemlock and stuff, and the bear was in under this drift, and the dogs was, was a-barking around the drift and I went down and the bear commenced to hissing and I couldn’t get in under there, I could hear the bear in the water under the logs a-splashing the water, and I’d hiss the dogs and pretty soon they buoyed up kind of and would go in, and I could hear the bear run them and snap his teeth, but they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t go in and catch him, so I fooled there, it was a-getting late in the evening then, so I got me a pole and got up on this drift, laid down my gun, and commenced to punching down through where the drift was hollow, open spaces all through the top of it, commenced to punching down through there with a pole and pretty soon I got it opened up and I gouged him with a pole down, and he’d bite the pole, just snap it and roar, well, I kept on and the drift was open at the, to my left, so pretty soon I heard a racket here, and I whirled and looked and the bear was uh, was coming out finally to the sloping bank there, he was just going over the bank when I got sight of him, I grabbed my gun and fired on him, had to do it quick and undoubtedly, well he had to have his right hind leg pretty straight, I hit him right down in the hock there, pretty low down in the hind leg, and the ball lodged up in his hip, so the dogs took after him and he went on out I judge about a quarter, got in under some old windfall logs that had rooted up, well, I went on out there and hit was so rough with down laurel that I couldn’t see without getting right up in striking distance, so I crawled, the dogs was a-barking and I could hear him back under there a-snapping and roaring and I crawled on up right up to him, trying to get a sight of him to shoot him again, and he made a lunge out of there of course, he came out at the dogs but they just fanned out of the way and he took after me, and he run me I guess a hundred yards, a-nipping at me, I looked back occasionally, not very often, I didn’t have time, so the dogs come in behind, commenced to catching him, and he fought them off and drug part of them back and run right back into the same place the second time, so I went right on in back to him xx right at him, well pretty soon I seen, well just his nose and about the fork of his mouth down, and I, I took sight of him, I was shooting a Thirty Thirty, and I broke both of his underjaws, just snapped them in two, well he came out of there and went from me and dragging the dogs and he went on out, I guess two hundred yards and they stopped him in the laurel xx come out and give him a couple of shots, and that finished him, and so I had to wade, it was just about dark when I left the spot where I killed the bear, and this fellow Hunnicutt come to me, well, I wanted him to come into camp and give word and he wouldn’t do it, so I lit out to the Bryson Place, which figured nine mile, and then haul it out and xx the bear was xx, so they was eleven men went back in that night and packed the bear out the next day, they stayed about xx, so I left Hunnicutt with the bear and went on into camp, it was after dark, considerably after dark when I got into camp, well I met a bunch of the men out, up the road from the Bryson cabin all a-hunting for me to meet me, uneasy about me, didn’t know what had happened, well, they was a fellow Edwards, John Edwards from Bulls Gap, Tennessee, along, me and John hunted together quite a lot, had, and John asked me, he says, “what in the, what have you been a-doing?” “well,” I said, “I’ve been a-following them dogs after that old bobcat, John, all evening,” “well,” he says, “I’ve always figured that you was kind of crazy, and” he says, “I know you are now,” he says, “I told you that was a wildcat,” well, I’d got a considerable lot of blood on my duck’s back clothes, and when we got into the cabin to the light, why he’d noticed the blood on me, and he said to me, he says, “you’ve killed a bear,” “well,” I said, “yes, I’ve killed the, the biggest bear that ever walked the Smoky Mountains, Johnny,” I said, “he, I left Hunnicutt with him at the head of the left-hand fork of Deep Creek,” so they fixed up, they was eleven men went back into where the bear was, they, they had a fellow Sam Hunnicutt in the party and that was well acquainted with the Smokies, he, well in fact he knew just exactly where this drift was at, and I told him to tell him where he could take the men back in, so he led them back in and they camped with the bear and packed it out the next day, well, they was a doctor along, Doc Carr from Oakdale, Tennessee, and I, he was a little weakly, delicate fellow, I tried to keep him from going in the party, and he said “why,” he says “I’m a-going,” he says “I come up here to bear hunt,” he says, “I’m a-going, I want to see that bear,” “well,” I said, “go ahead, Doc, you’ll learn something,” so he went on and he give out on them, fell in the creek and got wet all over and give out on them before they got in to the bear, and they had to carry him about, car-, pack him the last, about the last two miles, and they got in, back in the next day with the bear about one o’clock, and old, this doctor come with a big walking stick, a-packing no bear meat, well, the first words he said to me, I was sitting on the porch at the Bryson cabin, when he come up into the yard, “well,” he says, “Cathey,” he says, “I’ll take you at your word the next time, why,” he said, “I had no idea of being into such a tight, in a fix like I have had,” “well,” I says, “I tried to tell you, Doc, and you wouldn’t listen to me,” and so that is, that winds up the bear story.