THE OUTLANDER AND THE NATIVE
Among the many letters that come to me from men who think of touring or
camping in Highland Dixie there are few but ask, "How are strangers
treated?"
This question, natural and prudent though it be, never fails to make me
smile, for I know so well the thoughts that lie back of it: "Suppose one
should blunder innocently upon a moonshine still--what would happen? If
a feud were raging in the land, how would a stranger fare? If one goes
alone into the mountains, does he run any risk of being robbed?"
Before I left the tame West and came into this wild East, I would have
asked a few questions myself, if I had known anyone to answer them. As
it was, I turned up rather abruptly in a backwoods settlement where the
"furriner" was more than a nine-days wonder. I bore no credentials; and
it was quite as well. If I had presented a letter from some clergyman or
from the President of the United States it would have been--just what I
was myself--a curiosity: as when the puppy discovers some weird and
marvelous new bug.
Everyone greeted me politely but with unfeigned interest. I was welcome
to sup and bed wherever I went. Moonshiners and man-slayers were as
affable as common folks. I dwelt alone for a long time, first in open
camp, afterwards in a secluded hut. Then I boarded with a native family.
Often I left my belongings to look out for themselves whilst I went away
on expeditions of days or weeks at a time. And nobody ever stole from me
so much as a fish-hook or a brass cartridge. So, in the retrospect, I
smile.
Does this mean, then, that Poe's characterization of the mountaineers is
out of date? Not at all. They are the same "fierce and uncouth race of
men" to-day that they were in his time. Homicide is so prevalent in the
districts that I personally am acquainted with that nearly every adult
citizen has been directly interested in some murder case, either as
principal, officer, witness, kinsman, or friend.
This grewsome subject I shall treat elsewhere, in detail. It is
introduced here only to emphasize a fact pertinent to the present topic,
namely: that the private wars of the highlanders are limited to their
own people. In our corner of North Carolina no traveler from the
outside ever has been a victim, nor do I know of any such case in the
whole Appalachian region.
[Illustration: Many of the homes have but one window]
And here is another significant fact: as regards personal property I do
not know any race in the world that is more honest than our backwoodsmen
of the southern mountains. As soon as you leave the railroad you enter a
land where sneak-thieves are rare and burglars almost unheard of. In my
own county and all those adjoining it there has been only one case of
highway robbery and only one of murder for money, so far as I can learn,
in the past _forty_ years.
The mountain code of conduct is a curious mixture of savagery and
civility. One man will kill another over a pig or a panel of fence (not
for the property's sake, but because of hot words ensuing) and he will
"come clear" in court because every fellow on the jury feels he would
have done the same thing himself under similar provocation; yet these
very men, vengeful and cruel though they are, regard hospitality as a
sacred duty toward wayfarers of any degree, and the bare idea of
stealing from a stranger would excite their instant loathing or
white-hot scorn.
Anyone of tact and common sense can go as he pleases through the darkest
corner of Appalachia without being molested. Tact, however, implies the
will and the insight to put yourself truly in the other man's place.
Imagine yourself born, bred, circumstanced like him. It implies, also,
the courtesy of doing as you would be done by if you were in that
fellow's shoes. No arrogance, no condescension, but man to man on a
footing of equal manliness.
And there are "manners" in the rudest community: customs and rules of
conduct that it is well to learn before one goes far afield. For
example, when you stop at a mountain cabin, if no dogs sound an alarm,
do not walk up to the door and knock. You are expected to call out
_Hello!_ until someone comes to inspect you. None but the most intimate
neighbors neglect this usage and there is mighty good reason back of it
in a land where the path to one's door may be a warpath.
If you are armed, as a hunter, do not fail to remove the cartridges from
the gun, in your host's presence, before you set foot on his porch. Then
give him the weapon or stand it in a corner or hang it up in plain view.
Even our sheriff, when he stopped with us, would lay his revolver on the
mantel-shelf and leave it there until he went his way. If you think a
moment you can see the courtesy of such an act. It proves that the
guest puts implicit trust in the honor of his host and in his ability to
protect all within his house. There never has been a case in which such
trust was violated.
I knew a traveler who, spending the night in a one-room cabin, was fool
enough (I can use no milder term) to thrust a loaded revolver under his
pillow when he went to bed. In the morning his weapon was still there,
but empty, and its cartridges lay conspicuously on a table across the
room. Nobody said a word about the incident: the hint was left to soak
in.
The only real danger that one may encounter from the native people, so
long as he behaves himself, is when he comes upon a man who is wild with
liquor and cannot sidestep him. In such case, give him the glad word and
move on at once. I have had a drunken "ball-hooter" (log-roller) from
the lumber camps fire five shots around my head as a _feu-de-joie_, and
then stand tantalizingly, with hammer cocked over the sixth cartridge,
to see what I would do about it. As it chanced, I did not mind his
fireworks, for my head was a-swim with the rising fever of erysipelas
and I had come dragging my heels many an irk mile down from the
mountains to find a doctor. So I merely smiled at the fellow and asked
if he was having a good time. He grinned sheepishly and let me pass
unharmed.
The chief drawback to travel in this region, aside from the roads, is
not the character of the people, but the quality of bed and board. Of
course there are good hotels at most of the summer resorts, but these
are few and scattering, at present, for a territory so immense. In most
regions where there is noble scenery, unspoiled forest, and good
fishing, the accommodations are extremely rude. Many of the village inns
are dirty, and their tables a shock and a despair to the hungry pilgrim.
There are blessed exceptions, to be sure, but on the other hand the
traveler sometimes will encounter a cuisine that is neither edible nor
speakable, and will be shown to a bed wherein it needs no Sherlock
Holmes to detect that the previous biped retired with his boots on, or
at least with much realty attached to his person. Such places often are
like that unpronounceable town in Russia of which Paragot said: "The
bugs are the most companionable creatures in it, and they are the
cleanest."
If one be of the same mind as the plain-spoken Dr. Samuel Johnson, that
"the finest landscape in the world is not worth a damn without a cozy
inn in the foreground," he should keep to the stock show-places of our
highlands or seek other playgrounds.
By far the most comfortable way to stay in the back country at present
is in a camp of one's own where he can keep things tidy and have food to
suit him. If you be, though, of stout stomach and wishful to get true
insight into mountain ways and character you can find some sort of
boarding-place almost anywhere. In such case go first to the sheriff of
the county (in person, not by letter). This officer is a walking bureau
of information and dispenses it freely to any stranger. He knows almost
every man in the county, his character and his circumstances. He may be
depended upon to direct you to the best stopping-places, will tell you
how to get hunting and fishing privileges, and will recommend a good
packer or teamster if such help is wanted.
Along the railways and main county roads the farmers show a
well-justified mistrust about admitting company for the night. But in
the back districts the latch-string generally is out to all comers. "If
you-uns can stand what we-uns has ter, w'y come right in and set you a
cheer."
If the man of the house has misgivings as to the state of the larder, he
will say: "I'll ax the woman gin she can git ye a bite." Seldom does
the wife demur, though sometimes her patience is sorely tried.
A stranger whose calked boots betrayed his calling stopped at Uncle
Mark's to inquire, "Can I git to stay all night?" Aunt Nance, peeping
through a crack, warned her man in a whisper: "Them loggers jest louzes
up folkses houses." Whereat Mark answered the lumberjack: "We don't
ginerally foller takin' in strangers."
Jack glanced significantly at the lowering clouds, and grunted:
"Uh--looks like I could stand hitched all night!"
This was too much for Mark. "Well!" he exclaimed, "mebbe we-uns can find
ye a pallet--I'll try to enjoy ye somehow." Which, being interpreted,
means, "I'll entertain you as best I can."
The hospitality of the backwoods knows no bounds short of sickness in
the family or downright destitution. Travelers often innocently impose
on poor people, and even criticise the scanty fare, when they may be
getting a lion's share of the last loaf in the house. And few of them
realize the actual cost of entertaining company in a home that is long
mountain miles from any market. Fancy yourself making a twenty-mile
round trip over awful roads to carry back a sack of flour on your
shoulder and a can of oil in your hand; then figure what the
transportation is worth.
Once when I was trying a short-cut through the forest by following vague
directions I swerved to the wrong trail. Sunset found me on the summit
of an unfamiliar mountain, with cold rain setting in, and below me lay
the impenetrable laurel of Huggins's Hell. I turned back to the head of
the nearest water course, not knowing whither it led, fought my way
through thicket and darkness to the nearest house, and asked for
lodging. The man was just coming in from work. He betrayed some anxiety
but admitted me with grave politeness. Then he departed on an errand,
leaving his wife to hear the story of my wanderings.
I was eager for supper; but madame made no move toward the kitchen. An
hour passed. A little child whimpered with hunger. The mother, flushing,
soothed it on her breast.
It was well on in the night when her husband returned, bearing a little
"poke" of cornmeal. Then the woman flew to her post. Soon we had hot
bread, three or four slices of pork, and black coffee unsweetened--all
there was in the house.
It developed that when I arrived there was barely enough meal for the
family's supper and breakfast. My host had to shell some corn, go in
almost pitch darkness, without a lantern, to a tub-mill far down the
branch, wait while it ground out a few spoonfuls to the minute and bring
the meal back.
Next morning, when I offered pay for my entertainment, he waved it
aside. "I ain't never tuk money from company," he said, "and this ain't
no time to begin."
Laughing, I slipped some silver into the hand of the eldest child. "This
is not pay; it's a present." The girl was awed into speechlessness at
sight of money of her own, and the parents did not know how to thank me
for her, but bade me "Stay on, stranger; pore folks has a pore way, but
you're welcome to what we got."
This incident is a little out of the common, nowadays; but it is typical
of what was customary until lumbering and other industrial works began
to invade the solitudes. To-day it is the rule to charge twenty-five
cents a meal and the same for lodging, regardless of what the fare and
the bed may be. When you think of it, this is right, for "the porer
folks is the harder it is to _git_ things."
The mountaineers always are eager for news. In the drab monotony of
their shut-in lives the coming of an unknown traveler is an event that
will set the whole neighborhood gossiping. Every word and action of his
will be discussed for weeks after he has gone his way. This, of course,
is a trait of rural people everywhere; but imagine, if you can, how it
may be intensified where there are no newspapers, few visitors, and
where the average man gets maybe two or three letters a year!
Riding up a branch road, you come upon a white-bearded patriarch who
halts you with a wave of the hand.
"Stranger--meanin' no harm--_whar_ are you gwine?"
You tell him.
"What did you say your name was?"
You had not mentioned it; but you do so now.
"What mought you-uns foller for a living?"
It is wise to humor the old man, and tell him frankly what is your
business "up this 'way-off branch."
Half a mile farther you espy a girl coming toward you. She stops like a
startled fawn, wide-eyed with amazement. Then, at a bound, she dodges
into a thicket, doubles on her course and runs back as fast as her
nimble bare legs can carry her to report that "Some-_body_ 's comin'!"
At the next house, stopping for a drink of water, you chat a few
moments. High up the opposite hill is a half-hidden cabin from which
keen eyes scrutinize your every move, and a woman cries to her boy:
"Run, Kit, down to Mederses, and ax who _is_ he!"
As you approach a cross-roads store every idler pricks up to instant
attention. Your presence is detected from every neighboring cabin and
cornfield. Long John quits his plowing, Red John drops his axe, Sick
John ("who's allers ailin', to hear _him_ tell") pops out of bed, and
Lyin' John (whose "mouth ain't no praar-book, if it _does_ open and
shet") grabs his hat, with "I jes' got ter know who that feller is!"
Then all Johns descend their several paths, to congregate at the store
and estimate the stranger as though he were so many board-feet of lumber
in the tree or so many pounds of beef on the hoof.
In every settlement there is somebody who makes a pleasure of gathering
and spreading news. Such a one we had--a happy-go-lucky fellow from
whom, they said, "you can hear the news jinglin' afore he comes within
gunshot." It amused me to record the many ways he had of announcing his
mission by indirection. Here is the list:
"I'm jes' broguin' about."
"Yes, I'm jest cooterin' around."
"I'm santerin' about."
"Oh, I'm jes' prodjectin' around."
"Jist traffickin' about."
"No, I ain't workin' none--jest spuddin' around."
"Me? I'm jes' shacklin' around."
"Yea, la! I'm jist loaferin' about."
And yet one hears that our mountaineers have a limited vocabulary!
Although this is no place to discuss the mountain dialect, I must
explain that to "brogue" means to go about in brogues (brogans
nowadays). A "cooter" is a box-tortoise, and the noun is turned into a
verb with an ease characteristic of the mountaineers. "Spuddin' around"
means toddling or jolting along. To "shummick" (also "shammick") is to
shuffle about, idly nosing into things, as a bear does when there is
nothing serious in view. And "shacklin' around" pictures a shackly,
loose-jointed way of walking, expressive of the idle vagabond.
A stranger takes the mountaineers for simple characters that can be
gauged at a glance. This illusion--for it is an illusion--comes from
the childlike directness with which they ask him the most intimate
questions about himself, from the genuine good-will with which they
admit him to their homes, and from the stark openness of their domestic
affairs in houses where no privacy can possibly exist.
In so far as simplicity means only a shrewd regard for essentials, a
rigid exclusion of whatever can be done without, perhaps no white race
is nearer a state of nature than these highlanders of ours. Yet this
relates only to the externals of life. Diogenes sat in a tub, but his
thoughts were deep as the sea. And whoever estimates our mountaineers as
a shallow-minded or open-minded people has much to learn.
When Long John asks, "What you aimin' to do up hyur? How much money do
you make? Whar's your old woman?" he does not really expect sincere
answers. Certainly he will take them with more than a grain of salt.
Conversation, with him, is a game. In quizzing you, the interests that
he is actually curious about lie hidden in the back of his head, and he
will proceed toward them by cunning circumventions, seeking to entrap
you into telling the truth by accident. Being himself born to intrigue
and skilled in dodging the leading question, he assumes that you have
had equal advantages. When you discuss with him any business of serious
concern, if you should go straight to the point, and open your mind
frankly, he would be nonplussed.
The fact is that our highlanders are a sly, suspicious, and secretive
folk. That, too, is a state of nature. Primitive society is by no means
a Utopia or a Garden of Eden. In wilderness life the feral arts of
concealment, spying, false "leads," and doubling on trails, are the arts
self-preservative. The native backwoodsman practices them as
instinctively and with as little compunction upon his own species as
upon the deer and the wolf from whom he learned them.
As a friend, no one will spring quicker to your aid, reckless of
consequences, and fight with you to the last ditch; but fear of betrayal
lies at the very bottom of his nature. His sleepless suspicion of
ulterior motives is no more, no less, than a feral trait, inherited from
a long line of forebears whose isolated lives were preserved only by
incessant vigilance against enemies that stalked by night and struck
without warning.
Casual visitors learn nothing about the true character of the
mountaineers. I am not speaking of personal but of race character--type.
No outsider can discern and measure those powerful but obscure motives,
those rooted prejudices, that constitute their real difference from
other men, until he has lived with the people a long time on terms of
intimacy. Nor can anyone be trusted to portray them if he holds a brief
either for or against this people. The fluttering tourist marks only the
oddities he sees, without knowing the reason for them. On the other
hand, a misguided champion flies to arms at first mention of an
unpleasant fact, and either denies it, clamoring for legal proof, or
tries to befog the whole subject and run it on the rocks of altercation.
The mountaineers are high-strung and sensitive to criticism. No one has
less use for "that worst scourge of avenging heaven, the candid friend."
Of late years they are growing conscious of their own belatedness, and
that touches a tender spot. "Hit don't take a big seed to hurt a sore
tooth." Since they do not see how anyone can find beauty or historic
interest in ways of life that the rest of the world has cast aside, so
they resent every exposure of their peculiarities as if that were
holding them up to ridicule or blame.
Strange to say, it provokes them to be called mountaineers, that being a
"furrin word" which they take as a term of reproach. They call
themselves mountain people, or citizens; sometimes humorously "mountain
boomers," the word boomer being their name for the common red squirrel
which is found here only in the upper zones of the mountains.
Backwoodsman is another term that they deem opprobrious. Among
themselves the backwoods are called "the sticks." Hillsman and
highlander are strange words to them--and anything that is strange is
suspicious. Hence it is next to impossible for anyone to write much
about these people without offending them or else falling into singsong
repetition of the same old terms.
I have found it beyond me to convince anyone here that my studies of the
mountain dialect are made from any better motive than vulgar curiosity.
It has been my habit to jot down, on the spot, every dialectical word or
variant or idiom that I hear, along with the phrase or sentence in which
it occurred; for I never trust memory in such matters. And although I
tell frankly what I am about, and why, yet all that the folks can or
will see is that--
A chiel 's amang ye, takin' notes,
And, faith, he'll prent 'em.
Nothing worse than dour looks has yet befallen me, but other scribes
have not got off so easy. On more than one occasion newspaper men who
went into eastern Kentucky to report feuds were escorted forcibly to the
railroad and warned never to return. The feudists are scarce to blame,
for the average news story of their wars is neither sacred nor profane
history. It is bad enough to be shown up as an assassin; but when one is
posed as "cocking the _trigger_" of a gun, or shooting a "forty-four"
bullet from a thirty-caliber "automatic _revolver_," who in Kentucky
could be expected to stand it?
The novelists have their troubles, too. President Frost relates that
when John Fox gave a reading from his Cumberland tales at Berea College
"the mountain boys were ready to mob him. They had no comprehension of
the nature of fiction. Mr. Fox's stories were either true or false. If
they were true, then he was 'no gentleman' for telling all the family
affairs of people who had entertained him with their best. If they were
not true, then, of course, they were libellous upon the mountain people.
Such an attitude may remind us of the general condemnation of fiction by
the 'unco gude' a generation ago."
[Illustration: The Schoolhouse]
As for settlement workers, let them teach more by example than by
precept. Bishop Wilson has given them some advice that cannot be
bettered: "It must be said with emphasis that our problem is an
exceedingly delicate one. The Highlanders are Scotch-Irish in their
high-spiritedness and proud independence. Those who would help them must
do so in a perfectly frank and kindly way, showing always genuine
interest in them but never a trace of patronizing condescension. As
quick as a flash the mountaineer will recognize and resent the intrusion
of any such spirit, and will refuse even what he sorely needs if he
detects in the accents or the demeanor of the giver any indication of an
air of superiority."
"The worker among the mountaineers," he continues, "must 'meet with them
on the level and part on the square' and conquer their oftentimes
unreasonable suspicion by genuine brotherly friendship. The less he has
to say about the superiority of other sections or of the deficiencies of
the mountains, the better for his cause. The fact is that comparatively
few workers are at first able to pass muster in this regard under the
searching and silent scrutiny of the mountain people."
Allow me to add that this is no place for the "unco gude" to exercise
their talents, but rather for those whose studies and travels have
taught them both tolerance and hopefulness. Some well-meaning
missionaries are shocked and scandalized at what seems to them incurable
perversity and race degeneration. It is nothing of the sort. There are
reasons, good reasons, for the worst that we find in any Hell-fer-Sartin
or Loafer's Glory. All that is the inevitable result of isolation and
lack of opportunity. It is no more hopeless than the same features of
life were in the Scotch highlands two centuries ago.
But it must be known that the future of this really fine race is, at
bottom, an economic problem, which must be studied hand-in-hand with the
educational one. Civilization only repels the mountaineer until you show
him something to gain by it--he knows by instinct what he is bound to
lose. There is no use in teaching cleanliness and thrift to serfs or
outcasts. The _independence_ of the mountain farm must be preserved, or
the fine spirit of the race will vanish and all that is manly in the
Highlander will wither to the core.
It is far from my own purpose to preach or advise. "Portray the
struggle, and you need write no tract." Still farther is it from my
thought to let characterization degenerate into caricature. Wherever I
tell anything that is unusual or below the average of backwoods life, I
give fair warning that it is admitted only for spice or contrast, and
let it go at that. But even in writing with severe restraint it will be
necessary at times to show conditions so rude and antiquated that
professional apologists will growl, and many others may find my
statements hard to credit as typical of anything at all in our modern
America.
So, let me remind the reader again that full three-fourths of our
mountaineers still live in the eighteenth century, and that in their
far-flung wilderness, away from large rivers and railways, the habits,
customs, morals of the people have changed but little from those of our
old colonial frontier; in essentials they are closely analogous to what
we read of lower-class English and Scottish life in Covenanter and
Jacobite times.