Dan’s wife was a turkey raiser and her flock of bronze birds, roosting on the stake-and-rider fence that cross-stitched the barn lot, was a sight to behold. She explained to me that when the fowls were young she “poked a grain of black pepper into each one’s throat and made it swallow it” as an inoculation against disease. In the late fall, the great flocks of turkeys were herded to the market place at Springfield like so many sheep or cattle.
Uncle Henry told me how he took eggs to market when he operated a country store near the ferry. They were packed in clean straw in a wagon bed, a layer of straw alternating with a layer of eggs to the top of the bed. Boards were placed over the top and clamped down to keep the eggs from shaking and breaking. At Springfield they were put into crates and shipped by train. Freighters had skillets and coffeepots tied to the sides of their wagons as they camped out going and coming. It took a week to make the round trip of about eighty miles.
Stories and music and repartee made the evening pass too speedily. I had found an Anglo-Saxon seed bed in the fat marrow land of the Ozarks and was reluctant to leave it. But hillfolks do not keep late hours, and at ten o’clock Dan took a lamp and lighted me to my room. I sank into a bed of soft feathers and immediately went to sleep. A visit like this is an experience to tell one’s grandchildren.
Backgrounds and Movements
Half a century before the Civil War, folks from the Appalachian Mountains began trekking westward, pushing across the Mississippi River and settling the highland regions of Missouri and Arkansas. With slow ox teams and boat-shaped wagons they followed the Indian trails and the crooked streams to the land which destiny seemed to have reserved for them. Here they built homes and institutions which carried the pioneer spirit to the fourth decade of the twentieth century.
A Spanish philosopher said: “The native Briton carries his English weather in his heart wherever he goes. It becomes a cool spot in the desert, and a steady and sane oracle in all the deliriums of mankind.” The old regime in the Ozarks in its way exemplified British character, which had been planted first on the Atlantic seaboard, then moved west into the Appalachians, and later transplanted in the Ozarks. These people have retained much of their racial purity to the present day. When the great tides of immigration swept westward to the Pacific, the backhill sections of the Ozarks were passed by. Left alone, it was natural for the hillsman to preserve the traditions and continue the customs and beliefs of his ancestors. There was no melting pot in the hills. Communities were “kinned-up” with first cousins and “last cousins” without end. For more than half a century there was little marriage with outsiders. This practice is considered to be a genetic evil, if carried too far, but in the Ozarks it resulted in a remarkable purity of the race. Two things have contributed to this: first, the rough contour of the country which provided a measure of geographical isolation; second, the staunch character of the men and women who settled it.
The movement westward from the Atlantic seaboard to the fertile valleys of the wilderness beyond the crest of the Appalachians began as early as 1765, but the migration did not reach its peak until the years following the Revolutionary War. In 1763, King George III drew a line along the ridge of the Alleghenies and prohibited settlement beyond it, but that did not keep hardy frontiersmen from filtering through. Daniel Boone left his home in North Carolina in 1769 to risk settlement in “the dark and bloody ground” beyond the mountains. There were several hundred settlers beyond the Appalachian ridges when the Revolution broke out in 1775. The greatest influx of settlers came in the early part of the nineteenth century. From 1800 to 1820 there was a population gain of over 320 percent in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee.
Stories of the Wilderness Trail have become a vital part of our history. From the thirteen original states, settlers pushed westward along the Mohawk River or through southwestern Virginia and into the valley of the Tennessee River. There were various feeders to these roads from the east and the south. Wagon trains moved up the James River in Virginia and up the Yadkin in North Carolina. At Kingsport, in the upper Tennessee Valley, the trail divided. The right fork went through the mountains at Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky. The left route proceeded to Knoxville where it was joined by a road from the south, then on to Nashville where the level land began. From these strategic points the travel movement spread out like fans, catching in its folds the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, the hills of western Tennessee, the prairies of Indiana and Illinois, and the Ozark and Ouachita highlands west of the Mississippi. The Wilderness Trail was followed by thousands of families during the half century that followed the Revolutionary War. Another route to the Ozarks was down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh or up the Father of Waters from New Orleans. Even before the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, St. Louis was an important gateway for thousands who traveled the river route.
The French were the first white men to enter the Mississippi Valley and to put their mark upon the land. Some of them pushed into the eastern Ozarks, to work in the lead and salt mines of that region, and became permanent settlers. Numerous place names attest to this. French-Canadian trappers combed the hills and streams for beaver and other fur-bearing animals. This French influence is remarkable because of its tenacity. In a recent study of the descendants of these pioneers in one community, Professor Joseph Carrière said, “The habits and customs of the villagers have changed but little since their forefathers founded the community in the eighteenth century.” The dialect of this Gallic people is unintelligible to the average American.
In the early eighteen hundreds economic conditions in Europe sent thousands of settlers of sturdy rural stock to the Western world. In the year 1827, a total of 22,000 Irish and Germans came across. Some of these people caught the western craze immediately and followed the Wilderness Road into the mountains. A small portion found the way to the Ozarks. But the imprints of these peoples are comparatively insignificant. The mark of the Briton predominates.
Arthur H. Estabrook, in a study of the population of the Ozarks, makes the following statement concerning the early settlement of the Missouri and Arkansas hill country:
A large part of the population of the Ozarks in 1820 to 1840 was derived from the migration out of the Southern Appalachians. The story of this migration, its duration, and the original sources of the migrants, is partially told in the 1840 and 1850 United States census records of the Ozark Mountain counties. The birthplace of each member in a family is recorded in these census records. The movement of any given family can be traced. The record of one family in Newton County, Arkansas, in 1850, selected at random, gives the picture of this migration. William Lewis was born in 1801 in Virginia. His wife was born in 1805 in Tennessee. They had children born in Kentucky in 1825, 1827, 1829, 1832, 1834 and 1836. Their next child was born in Newton County, Arkansas, in 1838. Thereafter, five children were born in Arkansas. Many such examples could be cited from the records. A few of the older members of the family groups were recorded as having been born in some European country, especially England, Wales, and Scotland. For the most part, however, their birthplaces were given as Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, or the Carolinas. A small percentage of the general population of the Ozarks at this time came from Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. Only a few had come from the northeastern states.
The Ozarks, like other sections of the country, had a continuous migration from the first years of settlement. In the third decade of the nineteenth century, Texas was opened to settlers from the United States and many Ozarkers followed Stephen F. Austin to settle the lucrative prairies of that virgin land. Countless Ozark families helped compose the wagon trains of the forty-niners and later migrations to the west. The Mountain Meadows Massacre of Arkansas emigrants in 1857 was a tragic incident of these migrations. Others went to the fertile level lands of Oklahoma and Kansas and the prairie states farther north. Since 1890 there has been a shift of the rural population of the hill country to Midwest industrial centers such as St. Louis, Kansas City, Joplin, Springfiel
d, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Memphis, and Little Rock. But regardless of these movements a large portion of the population remained locked in the hills.
The natives of the Ozark Country may be divided roughly into two classes. First, the old-line Ozarker who came early and established himself permanently in the hills. He is usually a fundamentalist in his thinking and determinedly unprogressive in the eyes of the outside world. His speech and mannerisms are true to the mold of his ancestry. He was schooled in hardship and nourished with patriotic fervor, and is one of our best examples of the conservative American. His sons and daughters of recent generations have taken places of trust and responsibility throughout the country as business and professional workers.
On the other hand, there is an undesirable class in the Ozarks just as in other parts of the country. Many of them are modern nomads, seeking green pastures wherever they may be found. Some are faulty branches of good ancestral trees. The low economic level of these people has contributed to their moral delinquency. It is from this type that the outside world gets its prevailing impression of the hillbilly. Imaginative writers, speakers, and actors have played up this element as typical of the highlands, much to the discredit of the old-line Ozarkers. From all sides the hillsman has been shot with ridicule and stabbed with criticism. He has been accused of living in a state of culture lower than the Indians we dispossessed. He has been labeled as a descendant of “the white trash of the lush midlands who fled to the hills for sanctuary during the Civil War, when the quality folks were fighting for La Belle Confederacy.” He is said to wallow in squalor and ignorance, and it is alleged that meanness crops up in him like bristles on a razorback hog. These libels are based upon free use of the imagination, faulty observation, or downright ignorance.
The hillsman is not the long-whiskered, tobacco-chewing illiterate the movies picture him to be. He differs from the average American because of his century of isolation, but good roads, improved methods of transportation, and better schools have almost completely leveled this inequality. The hillsman is losing his distinctive traits and is becoming a drab, standardized American. Once the transformation is complete, the romantic Ozarks will live only in song and story. The average Ozarkian does not realize the value of his heritage to himself and to the world, and is making no serious attempt to guard it against the inroads of twentieth-century civilization. The chief attraction of the Ozarks is the integrity and independence of its citizens, and it is discouraging to see conventionalism wiping out this priceless heritage of freedom.
Of course, we have an undesirable class in the Ozarks but it is a mistake to think of this group as composed entirely of people of low economic level. Many of them have made money and gained power and prestige in their communities. They drift into politics and help rot the core of the body politic. All through the years there has been a slow transfusion of blood from undesirable sources into the veins of some of the old-line Ozark families, and it has left its mark. Such infusions must be considered to get a true idea of Ozarkian character. Some of the finest old-line families have petty traits that reveal a mixed inheritance. People here are good and bad, shiftless and thrifty, as in other sections of the country.
The population of the vast Ozark mountain region, including the foothills, is approximately one million people, and it is spread over one hundred counties in three states. Sociologists have divided the people roughly into three groups. The first group lives in the cities and larger towns such as Springfield, Joplin, Fort Smith, Fayetteville, Harrison, Monett, and West Plains. Here economic, educational, and social conditions are on a level with the country as a whole. The rural population is divided into two groups: first, those living in privileged conditions in the smaller towns and villages and in the favored rural sections where the land is productive and modern methods of farming and marketing have been introduced; second, the folks of the underprivileged sections where low economic, social, and educational levels prevail. Much of the soil in these regions is too poor for profitable farming and the one important resource, timber, is nearing depletion. Probably one-fifth of the total Ozark population is now centered in the cities and larger towns. An equal number lives in the favored rural sections. That leaves approximately 600,000 people in the Ozark and Ouachita areas who must struggle for a livelihood against adverse economic conditions.
Regardless of the contrasts and inequalities of the Ozark Country, I have found it to be a modern arcadia where one may enjoy simple happiness, innocent pleasures, and untroubled quiet. It is true that the old ways of living are disappearing rapidly and the shifting of the gears of custom adds bewilderment to the hillsman’s problems. But it is still possible in some sections of this romantic land to turn back the clock and listen to the hum of the spinning wheel, the creak of the loom, the groan of the waterwheel at the mill, the rhythmic poetry of the cradle in its golden sea of grain, and to enjoy the generosity that springs from every true hillsman’s heart. This is the background of a people nurtured in solitude and unspoiled by the workaday commercial world.2
CHAPTER III
Hillsman’s Harvest
Toothsome Treasures
I’ll go up on th’ mountain top
An’ grow me a patch o’ cane.
I’ll make a jug o’ molasses, too,
Fer t’ sweeten Liza Jane.
Poor little Liza,
Little Liza Jane,
Poor little Liza,
She died on th’ train.
I went t’ see my Liza Jane,
She was standin’ at th’ door,
Her shoes an’ stockin’s in her hand,
Her feet all over th’ floor.
Poor little Liza,
Little Liza Jane.
Lem Logan sang as he pounded the anvil in his blacksmith shop at Woodville. Attracted by the sound of his voice and the clang of steel on steel, I turned aside from the main trail. I knew what it meant when Lem sang “Liza Jane” in a reckless sort of way. Business was dull and he was just killing time. In his lucid mind were visions of fishing adventures and bee hunting.
Arriving at the shop, I found Lem making nails, forging them on the end of the anvil which was made for that purpose. Yes, business was dull. Lem Logan never made nails when he had anything else to do. Forty years ago he had worked with his father on this same spot making nails. Old Joe Logan was one of the best nailsmiths in the Ozark Country. But this honorable trade had had its day. Lem could make five hundred nails in a twelve-hour day but a machine in St. Louis could turn out the same number, polished and sharpened, in less than two minutes. No use competing against the impossible. But this thrifty smith still made a few nails for his own use and sometimes he sold a handful to a tourist who was interested in relics of bygone days.
My entry into the shop caused Lem to lay down his hammer and stop his singing. I could see from the faraway look in his eyes that he had something on his mind.
“Yer jist th’ feller I’ve been wantin’ t’ see,” spoke the blacksmith as he reached for his snuffbox and laid a quantity of the dust behind his lower lip. “Remember me tellin’ ye ’bout that thar bee tree I found last week on Smackover Ridge? Wal, today is a good a day as any t’ cut it. What d’ye say we give ’er th’ works?”
I knew little of woodcraft and had never helped cut a bee tree, but anxious to learn folkways firsthand, I agreed to help him. Within ten minutes we were headed for the ridge with ax, cross-cut saw, smoke bellows, and four tin pails to take care of the honey.
Wild honey is a gift of the gods to the lover of sweets in the backhills. It is a source of sweetening of great importance, a toothsome treasure to relieve the monotony of a coarse diet of corn bread, sow belly, and pinto beans. Almost every man of the more isolated sections of the Ozark Country is an expert bee hunter and he seldom fails to bring home the honey. An average tree contains forty or fifty pounds of this wildflower concoction, and occasional rich ones produce twice that amount.
In the old days when a frontiersman found a bee
tree he usually killed a deer, skinned it, and sewed up the salvaged honey inside the animal’s skin. That was before the age of tin containers. Tubs and buckets were made of wood and were none too plentiful in pioneer homes. The woods were full of deer and it was an easy matter to make a kill. The deerskin, properly stitched with buckskin thread, made an excellent sack for the honey.
The life of a bee hunter is an adventurous one, but it has strict requirements. It is no child’s play to “course” a bee through the woods to its homing tree. Bee hunting has its highly specialized technique. As Lem Logan explained, the insect must first be properly baited, and the coursing process that follows is done in a scientific manner. It requires a keen eye and a peculiar natural aptitude.
Lem Logan was an experienced bee hunter and seldom did he fail to find a tree when a bee sampled his bait. As we walked up Goose Neck Hollow en route to Smackover Ridge, he told me how he did it.
“’Bout all a feller needs t’ go bee huntin’,” he said, “is a can of water an’ sugar mixed purty thick t’ use fer bait. I soak a corncob in th’ sweet’nin’ overnight an’ then lay hit on a stump or th’ top of a rail fence where I have seen bees a-workin’. Purty soon a yaller bee’ll come buzzin’ along an’ load up on th’ sugar. Hit takes on all it can carry an’ then makes two or three circles above th’ bait ’fore hit goes bee-line fer th’ tree. A feller’s got t’ have a good eye t’ keep up with th’ critter while it’s makin’ them circles. When I git th’ direction it goes, I don’t lose no time gittin’ through the woods. If ’n I know th’ country, I have a purty good idey where the tree is fer bees have a way o’ flyin’ that lets a feller know ’bout how fur they’re goin’. Sometimes I set a second bait ’bout fifty steps away frum th’ first one an’ let a bee take off frum thar. Hardly ever have t’ set more’n two baits t’ git th’ right direction. But even then it ain’t easy t’ find th’ tree. I keep my eyes peeled fer a big holler oak. When I git close enough I can hear th’ buzzin’, an’ if th’ wind is jist right, I can smell th’ honey, too.
Ozark Country Page 6