After my initial folk education with various elders, I attended a local university and completed the requirements for a master’s degree in health studies. I am continually teaching and learning and will never stop either as long as I have breath.
Chapter Four
Many Peoples, Many Traditions
The biggest difference between England and America is that England has history, while America has geography.
—Neil Gaiman
The cotton stalks were sturdy and strong, around three to four feet; tall as a young girl. For the best yields, cotton needed to be spaced properly, just far enough apart to prevent crowding but close enough to fill the rows. It was chopped in the spring to remove broadleaf weeds that might choke out the cotton, and it was during this time that the cotton was also thinned. As a young girl, I became expert at thinning a row, eyeing the number of very small cotton plants that needed removing while leaving the strongest plants for best yields. All across the cotton field, you could hear the sound of many hoe blades clipping into the earth and striking against the small pebbles in the soil—chop, chop, chopping down into the dirt as folks moved along a row. That’s why it was called chopping cotton. It was a distinct sound, and even now I can hear that sound-memory as I write.
But today was a nice fall day and cotton-picking time. I was small for my age, skinny and not very strong. I would gather handfuls of cotton and put in Mama’s pick sack. When I was older and stronger, I was given a small pick sack, half the size of an adult one, and put on the row next to Mama to work along. I was never much good at picking and would fall behind the adult pickers. The days were long and hot, and the cotton rows were longer yet, and my attention easily wandered. Cotton was paid by the pound and I could work and struggle all day and barely pick 25 cents worth of the fluffy stuff.
A cotton stalk can grow up to five feet tall. I’m always amused in movies when they show cotton stalks about twelve inches tall. Yes, picking cotton is back-breaking work, but that is ridiculous. That little short cotton of the movies is perfect for the mechanical cotton picker and is the cotton planted today. That was not the cotton of my youth. On this day, the stalks were almost as tall as me and just right for a little girl to stand upon the bottom two branches and balance, for just a tiny fraction of a second before it bent. It was almost impossible to break a cotton stalk. This cousin of the hemp plant has fibrous stalks that defied the strongest hands and sharpest knives. The stalk would bend rather than break. And so the cotton stalk and I floated to the ground together before Mama yelled at me to “Behave.” But I was a magician escaping from an evil sorcerer who wanted my powers. I floated slowly to the ground upon a winged stallion and escaped his evil clutches. “Behave, I said.” Mama’s voice once again cut through the fantasy, bringing me back to the cotton field. She was pulling ahead in the row and so I hurried to catch up.
It was one of those Alabama autumn mornings—clean and crisp with just a of bite of chill in the air. The smell of leaf mold and wood smoke filled my nostrils. It would be hot by the afternoon, but the morning was divine. This was perfect cotton-picking weather, and here my mama’s family was spending their days. Papa Bright was a sharecropper and worked Mrs. Cranford’s land. She was a good woman, a widow woman, whose husband had died when she was fairly young and left her with some land and a young son. Mrs. Cranford wasn’t a demanding woman nor a greedy one, and was a friend to the family even after Papa Bright retired.
The old farmhouse where my grandparents lived didn’t have indoor plumbing, but neither did ours nor any other members of the family. It did boast a well across the road from the house and another on the back porch. Many a time Papa Bright would draw a bucket of water and put it on the front porch with a dipper for us kids to drink during the day while the grownups worked the fields.
Because Papa Bright was a hunter, there was often a hide tacked to the wall of the house curing in the shade of the porch. It was basically a shotgun house with another section added onto the west side making an L-shape. The outhouse was in the backyard, complete with various catalogues including the Sears Catalogue and the Farm Journal Magazine. Papa Bright had never learned to read but could do his numbers extremely well and would flip through the farming magazine looking at the photos, and when he was done, the magazine became toilet paper.
The four-room house was built on stacked rocks of various sizes and shapes that precariously formed pillars under it, at the corners, and at various points along the outside walls. The stones were dry-stacked, without the use of mortar, and no two stones were the same size or shape. There were several reasons for this architectural design. The odd-sized and -shaped stone pillar design was believed to keep out termites, and I can’t say this isn’t true. Many of these old houses have been abandoned across the South for years and years and are still solid and standing, without a hint of termite damage.
Because the foundation was open, a cool breeze circulated under the house, cooling off the occupants in a time before air conditioning. Under the house, the dogs wallowed out depressions in the sandy soil, staying cool in the summer and warm in the winter. The open foundation plan also eliminated any moisture problems under the house. The air was always circulating, and therefore moisture never built. This was a unique style that combined elements of European, African, and Native American building techniques—one that was perfectly suited to the climate of the South and the building materials at hand.
There were two chimneys in the house. The main heating came from a rock-and-mortar chimney on the east side to accommodate a small coal fireplace. Instead of using the inefficient fireplace, my grandparents connected a coal-burning stove to the chimney, which furnished better heat to the surrounding rooms than a small fireplace could ever do. This was the main room of the house and in true old-fashioned style, it was both the living room and the main bedroom, with a four-poster bed along one wall and a couch along the other. Papa Bright’s easy chair was firmly in place next to the stove and by a window. Here he spent many a winter hour smoking his home-rolled cigarettes or pipe, thinking and staring out the window—waiting once again for planting time.
The other chimney was in the kitchen. It was little more than a rock-and-mortar tunnel through the roof and to vent the wood-burning kitchen stove. On this stove, Mama Bright prepared all family meals, including the meals for the field hands. In those days, Papa Bright believed that if a man or woman worked your fields, were your hands, then you were obliged to pay them and furnish them with a noonday meal. Mama Bright prepared dinner, modernly called lunch, on the wood stove. It was a plain but hearty meal with meat, beans, potatoes, cornbread, some type of vegetables from the garden, and a dessert such as sweet potato pie or cobbler, with coffee for the adults and fresh milk for the children. The field hands ate first, and the leftover food was given to us children. This wasn’t a cruel gesture; it was practical. The people who had to bend their backs and pull the heavy pick sacks needed all the energy available, so they ate first.
On this autumn day, everyone who was going to be picking cotton met at the farmhouse to caravan to the field. I climbed into the back of Papa Bright’s pickup truck along with the cousins. The sideboards were built extra tall, and it was here that the pick sacks were emptied after they were weighed. Mama followed in the car so when the day was done, we could head straight home without going back to the farm. On this day, there was cotton in the back of the truck left from the previous afternoon’s pickings. Once the cotton reached the top of the sideboards, Papa Bright would go to the cotton gin, where it would be weighed and then sucked out the back of the pickup truck with the strongest vacuum imaginable. I loved going to the gin with him and watching this.
Our empty pick sacks were stretched out over the cotton and formed a blanket over the softness as we bounced along the edge of the cotton field and over terraced rows, holding onto the sideboards or each other to keep from bouncing about or out. It was just family in the back of the truck. Any child too young to either
help pick or run around the cotton field unattended was left with Mama Bright.
Papa seldom hired extra field hands. He was just too poor and there wasn’t enough cotton picked to pay those not in the family, but on occasion, when the yield was extra good or speed of harvest was important, he hired extra help. This was one of those times. The cotton had to be picked by the end of the week.
We didn’t often see black people where we lived; there had never been any plantations in the area because it was mountaintop land. But cotton was king and if there was an acre of flat land, then cotton was planted. Papa Bright worked fields all over the mountain because of this—5 acres here and 40 acres there, and so on. The majority of the time, the field hands were white.
Today was different—a black man was going to pick with us. I thought he must have come a long, long way to pick cotton. The only other time I had ever seen a black man was on Papa Bright’s front porch. Three black men had stopped one rainy afternoon to buy some rabbits Papa Bright had killed when hunting. All us cousins had peeped through the window in total curiosity. Our Uncle had told us that black men liked to cut off the ears of little white girls and put them in their stew. And then he had looked straight at me and said they especially liked little red-headed girl’s ears the best and I should be extra careful. I remembered his words as I stood on the edge of the cotton field and stared at the new field hand, both simultaneously intrigued and fearful.
Of course, I didn’t stop to think that my uncle himself also threatened to cut off our ears every time we got in his way or messed with his dogs. He would pull out his pocket knife and start cleaning his fingernails. We would know right then that we were in trouble and would run for our lives. On one occasion, a cousin had lost a bolt from the motor he was rebuilding, and Uncle had actually chased us around and around the house, knife drawn. We had all run and squealed and finally made our escape into the cornfield next to the house, but none of us ever bothered his tools again.
As the morning wore away, I caught myself edging closer and closer to the black man, and when Papa Bright called for the morning weigh-in, I found myself wandering through the plants that grow in the border between the woods and field. The weigh-in was held four times a day—mid-morning, dinner, mid-afternoon, and the close of the day. The cotton was weighed on the scales that hung on an extended sideboard off the back of the truck. Weigh-in was also the time to rest, get some water, and have a snack. Folks chatted and gossiped a bit during the weigh-in, but everyone got quiet when their sack was being weighed. They wanted to know how much they were earning because cotton was paid by the pound. And there was always a bit of competition to see who had picked the most.
Me, I enjoyed just running around the fields, making crowns out of dried cotton bolls, looking at the plants, and finding pretty sandstone pebbles. Between the woods and the field was a wide strip of grassland that was full of plants. I wandered among the plants picking goldenrod, maypop, and aster during the weigh-in. “Those purple flowers are good for fever,” said the black man motioning to the asters. “I know,” I replied rather shyly, barely whispering the words. “What about those yellow ones?” he asked. I shrugged a “don’t know.” “Those are good for the kidneys and passing water,” he said. I looked at the goldenrod with new respect and continued my wandering. “These are good to eat,” I said pointing to the passionflower. “And them leaves will help you sleep,” he added. And then it was time to get back to working the fields. I followed along after him off and on for the rest of the day, sometimes asking questions and sometimes in silence. He let me sit on the end of his pick-sack and scooted me along until it got too full and heavy and he needed to pack the cotton down into the space where I had been sitting. Anyone who’d let me do that was definitely my friend.
As we were heading home at the end of the day, Mama backed the car off a terrace row. The back wheels were barely touching the Earth and the car just couldn’t get any traction. We just sort of hung there, not going anywhere. Luckily, my friend hadn’t left yet and so put his already tired back and shoulders into moving the car as Mama pressed the gas. I was on my knees in the backseat peering out the rearview window as the wheels caught and we drove away. I waved goodbye and he waved to me, and I never saw him again. Cotton-picking was done.
Many years have passed since those cotton field days. I like to think that just as Southern Folk Medicine has its roots in many cultures, so does our family, which is now mixed with many cultures and many colors…all the richer for the diversity.
Many Peoples, Many Traditions
The origins of Southern Folk Medicine cannot be pinned to a specific time or place. As an oral tradition, which has been passed from generation to generation, its origins were never truly documented. It evolved as the need arose, the way any folk medicine is wont to do. As a result, referenced material is very scarce and based on anecdotal stories, diaries, and interviews of practitioners and common folk. What little documentation that does exist is more about its practices and principles and its use of plant remedies rather than its origins.
The South didn’t boast a unified culture until the Civil War. The origins of what is now the Southern states were very different from those of the Northeast United States. For example, the Carolinas and Georgia were settled and controlled by the English, and Georgia was originally settled by debtors and criminals as one of the thirteen original colonies. Spain maintained control of Florida until the early 1800s when it was absorbed into the United States. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, control of the region that later became Alabama, Mississippi, parts of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana went back and forth between Spain and France. Parts of Tennessee and Kentucky had first been under French control but later shifted to the British.
Documentation of Southern Folk Medicine principles and practices can be found in several broad categories of sources that can be easily accessed by the general public. Of great importance are books, diaries, and journals written by explorers, invaders, and settlers to the New World. Especially helpful are the journals written by physicians and botanists who accompanied Spanish explorers here. Books and newspaper articles written during and immediately after the American Civil War provide a wealth of information by physicians, pharmacists, herbalists, and housewives who had no choice but to use herbal medicine as primary care because the South was in a blockade by land and sea, and processed medicines were only available as trade contraband in an illegal market.
After the Civil War, books and articles written by individuals, medical botanists, and pre-1900 physicians continued to document the use of Southern Folk Medicine, especially among poor blacks and whites. Interviews conducted during the Great Depression by the Folklore Project and the American Slave Narratives project of the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration, which are housed in the Library of Congress, provide information about the use of botanicals for healing. And finally, sociological studies and interviews conducted by universities and private foundations on folkways in America from the 1970s to the 1980s provide another layer of information. While documentation is scarce, oral tradition remained rich until the 1980s, when conventional medicine became more accessible due to an increase in the number of physicians in the South and some access to health insurance. However, those living in poverty or those disillusioned with modern medicine continue to use herbal and home remedies as their primary medical care today.
It is not the focus of this book to dig through historical documents and reference each and every bit of information that graces these pages. Most of what I write about is based on oral tradition and hasn’t left a footprint. My intention is to document and codify the folk medicine that I was taught through oral tradition, that was handed down, so it isn’t lost forever. It is important that the tradition is saved.
Southern and Appalachian Folk Medicine is a melding, a blending of several healing modalities from several cultures that came together to create something unique. Each culture contribu
ted vital knowledge and practices to the beginnings of a new healthcare framework for a New World. Upon this fertile land, European conventional medicine, influenced by Greek or humoral medicine, Native American plant use, African spiritual practices, and Irish folk medicine practices, combined to form Southern and Appalachian Folk Medicine.
Let’s explore the beginnings of a unique folk system.
Early Explorations
The beginnings of American history and folk medicine didn’t originate with Plymouth Rock, but in the woodlands and swamps of the American South. By the time the English landed at Plymouth Rock, the South had been explored and settled for almost 100 years, and the origins of our traditional folk medicine had been set. Because of this, many people in the South, including me, carry Spanish blood whether they know it or not.
The primary goals of Spanish exploration and invasion of the New World were simple and basic: accumulate riches, especially gold; develop a source of slaves for the building of the Spanish empire; and find the shortcut to China to break the monopoly on spices held by the Ottoman Empire. The conversion of the indigenous peoples of the New World to Christianity was a corollary goal of the expedition; therefore, Spanish priests arrived with the explorers. The combination of intense, almost obsessive, Christian religious beliefs with humoral medicine was unrestrained during this time in Europe. It was the medicine of Europe. In the New World, coupled with Native American knowledge of plant use, this combination forms the unmistakable foundations of Southern Folk Medicine.
In the early 1500s, under the hot Southern sun, the first adventurers to the New World, Spanish explorers and their Moorish slaves, made their way through humid forests in search of the ever-elusive shortcut to China and the procurement of mythical treasures of gold, silver, and gems said to be hidden by the natives. The expeditions included healers and physicians who practiced humoral medicine based on the works of Galen and Avicenna, and who knew how to fight as well as care for the wounded. Some expeditions also brought botanists and naturalists to draw and describe the exotic plant and animal life of the New World, as well as historians to chronicle the exploits and adventures of the expeditions, especially to extol the leaders.
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