I have just read a part of an article on the Mountaineer folk of the Southern Highlands—especially those in the Brevard, North Carolina section—written by Williard Price and published in your periodical. The whole article, in so far as it attempts to portray the typical Mountaineer is a gross injustice, and a labored insult to every man living in these hills. Mr. Price does not even know the language of our people; he could not pass a simple examination in the kindergarten department of the Mountaineer’s dialect, and the woeful ignorance he displays in attempting to describe their customs and characteristics is really appalling, when one considers he is professing to picture for the readers of a great Christian paper, the types, customs and characteristics of a great, pure-blooded people.
To begin with, this versatile Globe trotter and observer of many peoples (he says he has travelled very extensively and observed rather closely) finds in the very heart of the backwoods the real queen of the Mountaineers, whom he designates as Queen Hester McGaha. Now this Queen Hester, as he calls her lives less than five miles from Brevard, N.C., a beautiful and thriving town of some 2,000 souls. She is not a product of the mountains, and is in no sense, typical of those people usually referred to by the theoretical uplifters as “Mountaineers.” She is a graduate of the cotton mills of South Carolina, where she and her “Ma” spent the greater part of their existence. She can also read, since the cotton mills school took enough interest in her to see that she got that much of Mr. Price’s “eddication.” It is also untrue that this royal Queen Hester, created by Mr. Price’s fervid imagination, and falsely held out as typical of the Mountaineers, never saw a train or a piano, and that she wore a home spun dress woven by herself from the wool of a sheep which she sheared. She has heard the whistle of the train hundreds of times—can hear it from her home; she has seen and heard pianos, organs, violins and other musical instruments, and really, I suspect she could get as much music out of any one of these as could the accomplished Mr. Price. I very seriously doubt if she or her parents ever owned a sheep; I know they never sheared one and wove the wool into cloth. I know these people and I did not acquire my knowledge in a 30 minute visit for the purpose of writing some lurid article that would excite the pity and commiseration of some benevolently inclined souls; neither did I visit her and have her sit on a steer that I might take her photograph for public exhibition, as the royal Queen Hester of the Southern Highlands. This would not have been playing the game fairly.
Furthermore, the assertion that this Queen Hester “cut out her dress by a homemade pattern because she had never seen a store pattern is wholly untrue. These patters have been kept by merchants of Brevard for years and are used in almost every household in this country, the assertion of Mr. Price to the contrary notwithstanding. And his narrative about his Queen Hester weaving the cloth for her home made frock carries about the same amount of truthfulness as his assertion that she never gets any mail because she cannot read and write, and is too poor to buy a mail box. He should have informed himself that her father holds the fee simple title to the home where he found her, and is not too poor to buy a mail box.
The whole article of this Mr. Price is a belabored effort to ridicule, criticize and hold up to public contempt and scorn, a noble and pure-blooded people, and puts into her mouth expressions that a Mountaineer never used, and attributes to her characteristics that a Mountaineer never acquired. About this “Queen,” whom he has so designated in a spirit of ironical indifference, he weaves a story of abject poverty, ignorance and stupidity, and cries out to the world, behold I have found the real representative of the Mountaineer! He has made a wonderful discovery and should report immediately either to the Smithsonian Institute or the Bureau of History. Gibbon and Ridpath have nothing on the versatile doctor Price, and I really expect him to announce very soon the authoritative discovery of the missing link between the man and the monkey. What’s to hinder his inquisitive mind from thus functioning? Now it may be possible that the wise doctor in his extensive travelling may have fallen among the “huckle berry” pickers of New York state. I do not know. But I do know that he knows about as much about the language and customs of the Mountain Folk as a full frog would know about the music of the Spheres. For instance, he says that notwithstanding her pitiful ignorance of trains, automobiles, pianos, etc., “Ma” McGaha immediately recognized the function of a modern camera and at once wanted her “likeness took.” Now “Ma” McGaha “Likeness” at all. I doubt if she said anything, but if she did she said “picture.” Perhaps the expression is just a mental recrudescence of what the perambulating Mr. Price heard from some street urchins of London. You see there is no way of controlling the mental gymnastics of a man like the doctor. He’s like the proverbial Irishman’s flee,(?) “now you got him and now you aint.”
Having finished with his Queen Hester and her Ma, the inquisitive Doctor asks this remarkable question: “Who are these people cast high and dry upon the lonesome mountain tops by the sea of civilization, like castaways on remote islands?” Well, I think I can tell him so that he will not forget it. They are the purest blooded Anglo Saxons on the Western Hemisphere, and fear no one except the God of Heaven. For Him they have a deep and abiding reverence instilled from childhood. It does not matter how much a Mountaineer may sin, he is never troubled with thoughts of infidelity and skepticism. Int e storms that beat about his mountain peaks, and the wild lightning leaping from crag to crag, he sees the power and might of God, and in the voice of gentle winds that whisper through sleeping valleys, and the fern bending by the brooklet’s side, he feels a touch of the loving tenderness of the Father of his people. His code of moral and domestic life is clean and wholesome, and if practiced by some of those “eddicated” butterflies of society that live in our cities, our civilization would be a purer one, and our criminal courts would take a vacation. Another thing, the word of a Mountaineer is his bond. He never breaks it. If he violates the law, and he does occasionally, the Sheriff does not have to go after him with the posse comitatus. Just send him word that you expect him in town on a certain day to arrange his bond and he will be there. I have known them to go to prison with an officer. But they will fight, yes, to be sure, but they do it fairly and look their antagonist squarely in the face while it is going on. The Mountaineer hits quick, hard, and straight from the shoulder, and if you lick him, he will shake your hand and tell you that you are a man. And these people are honest to the very bone. Their homes, cribs and barns go unlocked, and are unmolested. They sleep the sleep of the unafraid, and travel the roadways and trails of their homeland in safety and peace of mind.
Furthermore, the Mountain folk are generous to a fault, and never forsake or betray a friend; they will divide their last crust with the needy, and turn no one away who needs shelter or food. Deception and double dealing is, with them, one of the major sins. They are “natural” diplomats, but their diplomacy is of the straightforward manly sort, not of the Tallyrand school too frequently employed out in the doctor’s “great civilization.” They come nearer living up to the Golden Rule than any people of whom I have ever read; there is not a participle of hypocrisy or deceit in their makeup; they look one straight in the eye at all times, and cringe before no man. A pauper—if he carries the manly parts—is as good to them as a pampered Prince: they would call a Prince a liar if he merited it, just as quickly as they would a man of the Hills.
And again this versatile doctor Price calls up an imaginary young Mountaineer who had been “out to see the World,” and came back home and proceeded at once to cut some openings in his windowless house so that he might enjoy the proper ventilation. However, as soon as the young man had gone, we are informed by the doctor, that his family immediately boarded up the window openings with the remark, “What’s the use of having these holes to let in the wind.” His character is purely a creation of the imagination, and never had any more existence in the Mountain country than did Eurydice have in Hell. Neither did any Mountaineer ever use the expression quoted above. They would never use the word “Of” as Mr. Price has used it. In fact they would not employ the phrase at all. Furthermore, there is not a mountain home in all the country without windows or window openings; all of them are not fitted with glass sash, some are provided with “shutters,” but they all have windows nevertheless. I am a Mountaineer myself and have never had any occasion to be ashamed of it. I have been in their homes—hundreds of them—and have never seen any such “cabin” as this writer describes.
But to proceed a little further; this eminent doctor informs us that the mountain folk rarely build permanent homes, and he quoted one as saying: “When I move all I hatter do is to call the dog and put out the fire.” This is another expression born of the doctor’s excitied imagination. No mountaineerever used the word “hatter” as used in the above sentence. It is not his language. If he had attempted ot use the expression at all he would have said all I “got-er do” or “hafter do.” But the truth is, he never used the expression because it would have been untrue, and the mountaineer is not in the habit of lying about his own people, or anybody else for that matter. A big majority of the mountainfolk are home owners, not renters. Teir homes are permanent, and in hundreds of instances children are living upon the very spot their grand father entered and built his home. They are less migratory than any people I know of.
Doctor Price says that he found so many children in these mountain homes that the parents could not find enough names for them, and were therefore compelled to call the youngest child, who was more than eight months old, simply, ‘The Last Un.” Now that is another one of the doctor’s mental gymnastics originating doubtless in a passionate desire to make a readable article. If he will come down here and really learn something of the etymology of our names, words and phrases, he will find that we have more pure English and Bible Christian names than any people he has ever seen. The ridiculous thing about his assertion concerning the “Last Un,” however, is that while he takes pains to portray the parents of the “Last Un” as grossly ignorant and unable to read and write, he has the mother diligently searching a seed catalogue three times for a suitable name for this last child of her affection, and holding a debate with her son and “the old man” over the fore syllabled “jawbreaker” Chrysanthemum, as to whether it had enough euphony to suit the occasion. Now if the mother could not read or write, why in the world was she looking through a seed catalogue for a name, and then select one that no one except a thin-lipped professor could pronounce? No they do not have to search seed catalogues for names for their offspring. They have learned too many simple and beautiful ones from the Bible, and their folk lore, which have been handed down from generation to generation. Neither do they select a name because it “yells easy” as the doctor informs us. They choose it for its simplicity, its rhythm, its meaning, its identity.
Furthermore, this much traveled author is not content to picture the mountain folk as coarse and pitifully ignorant, but ascribes to them a moral and domestic degeneracy that could hardly be said of a semi-savage. Listen to him when he says:
“In another cabin too small for its family, the visitor was invited to stay all night. He furtively looked around for a bed, and saw none: Hanging on the wall, however, was a matress. The cabin measurng only 10 feet by 12, was too small to accommodate a bedstead. When bedtime came the chairs were cleared out of the way and the mattress was laid on the floor. The candidates for sleep undressed in the yard, removing outer clothing only, each one hanging his garments on a separate limb of a cherry tree. Then all lay down on the mattress--crosswise for there would not have bene enough room for all lying lengthwise. The visitor lay next to the fireplace, then the boy; then a space was left for father who was coming late; then mother; then small daughter; then grown daughter. Six in one bed.”
(To Be Continued Next Week)
From the Brevard News, April 8, 1921. He wrote so much there wasn't room to print it in one issue of the newspaper.
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