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Two Worlds in the Tennessee Mountains: Exploring the Origins of Appalachian Stereotypes
Most Americans know Appalachia through stereotyped images: moonshine and handicrafts, poverty and illiteracy, rugged terrain and isolated mountaineers. Historian David Hsiung maintains that in order to understand the origins of such stereotypes, we must look critically at their underlying concepts, especially those of isolation and community. Hsiung focuses on the mountainous area of upper East Tennessee, tracing this area's development from the first settlementin the eighteenth century to the eve of the Civil War. Through his examination, he identifies the different ways in which the region's inhabitants were connected to or separated from other peoples and places. Using an interdisciplinary framework, he analyzes geographical and sociocultural isolation from a number of perspectives, including transportation networks, changing economy, population movement, and topography. This provocative work will stimulate future studies of early Appalachia and serve as a model for the analysis of regional cultures.
224 pages, Paperback
First published February 27, 1997
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May 26, 2019
Subtitled "Exploring the Origins of Appalachian Stereotypes," the book especially focuses on the stereotype of the independent, isolated (and usually lanky) mountaineer popularized by local color writers John Fox, Jr., and Mary Noailles Murfree. Hsiung's theory is that the more prosperous, better connected, lower-elevation people living in the same counties as the mountaineers originated the stereotype and conveyed it to visitors from the outside, who spread it to the world.
There is very much in this book that is of great interest. Going back to Kings Mtn. (seeing things from Tory perspective largely through quotes from Brit officer/raider Patrick Ferguson) and the State of Franklin, and up into local color literature, Hsiung assembles a fascinating assortment of sources -- letters, statutes, land valuation, population persistence data, settlement patterns, railroad promotion literature, and antebellum (1858) travel-writing Harper's correspondent (David Hunter Strother, whose nom de plume was Porte-Crayon (Pencil-Wielder) -- to examine how the stereotype might have come into being.
Hsiung's strongest argument in support of his thesis has to do with mid-19th century population persistence in the state-line fastnesses of then-Washington (now Unicoi) County, TN, that were not well served by the limited system of county roads. Even here, though, Hsiung is tentative as to the existence of a social split due to movement "up the coves": "Such movement suggests how different groups in East Tennessee may have [my italics] diverged socially by the middle of the nineteenth century. … The requisite conditions existed, then, for the development of characteristics that eventually came to be seen in stereotypical terms." He then cites a unique 1824 incident of killing and a revenge involving one of these outliers that "evokes many stereotypical Appalachian attributes, including violence, lawlessness, physical strength, and derangement," concluding from this that "Perhaps [my italics] the residents, deranged or otherwise, who chose to separate themselves from society afford the raw material for images of Appalachia."
Hsiung hurts his own argument by frequently referring to everyone living west of the Great Smoky/Unaka divide as "mountaineers," even those -- like the very earliest settlers -- who clung to the rivers and the bottom land in the east Tennessee valley. Granted, the valley was walled off on both sides by mountains and river travel was more problematic than it was to the west, but nonetheless there were people who prospered to an extent and who in no way saw themselves as "mountaineers." It is telling, for example, that the heroes of Kings Mtn. were known not as mountaineers but as "the Overmountain men": they had passed the barrier and are seen in Hsiung's own telling as working to establish civilization where (in their own minds) it had not existed.
As for the transmission of a locally-formed "us vs. them" to outsiders like the local color writers, who then spread it to the world, Hsiung does little more than suggest it as a possibility: "Perhaps the town residents' different views of the mountaineers provided the source material for local colorists such as Murfree. … One can imagine a prosperous farmer telling the young Mary Noailles Murfree about the state of his crops, the fair prices he obtained at distant markets, the railroad that made such sales possible, and, conceivably, the destitute mountaineers who had no such access to modern transportation." While this "perhaps" could possibly apply to Murfree, it does not apply to local color writer John Fox, Jr., of Big Stone Gap, VA, author of Trail of the Lonesome Pine whom Hsiung regards as a major formant of the stereotype. Fox lived and traveled in the area and seems to have formed his own views of the mountaineers by way of his own observations.
Despite having these criticisms, however, I found the history presented in Hsiung's book to be lively, engaging, and informative.
There is very much in this book that is of great interest. Going back to Kings Mtn. (seeing things from Tory perspective largely through quotes from Brit officer/raider Patrick Ferguson) and the State of Franklin, and up into local color literature, Hsiung assembles a fascinating assortment of sources -- letters, statutes, land valuation, population persistence data, settlement patterns, railroad promotion literature, and antebellum (1858) travel-writing Harper's correspondent (David Hunter Strother, whose nom de plume was Porte-Crayon (Pencil-Wielder) -- to examine how the stereotype might have come into being.
Hsiung's strongest argument in support of his thesis has to do with mid-19th century population persistence in the state-line fastnesses of then-Washington (now Unicoi) County, TN, that were not well served by the limited system of county roads. Even here, though, Hsiung is tentative as to the existence of a social split due to movement "up the coves": "Such movement suggests how different groups in East Tennessee may have [my italics] diverged socially by the middle of the nineteenth century. … The requisite conditions existed, then, for the development of characteristics that eventually came to be seen in stereotypical terms." He then cites a unique 1824 incident of killing and a revenge involving one of these outliers that "evokes many stereotypical Appalachian attributes, including violence, lawlessness, physical strength, and derangement," concluding from this that "Perhaps [my italics] the residents, deranged or otherwise, who chose to separate themselves from society afford the raw material for images of Appalachia."
Hsiung hurts his own argument by frequently referring to everyone living west of the Great Smoky/Unaka divide as "mountaineers," even those -- like the very earliest settlers -- who clung to the rivers and the bottom land in the east Tennessee valley. Granted, the valley was walled off on both sides by mountains and river travel was more problematic than it was to the west, but nonetheless there were people who prospered to an extent and who in no way saw themselves as "mountaineers." It is telling, for example, that the heroes of Kings Mtn. were known not as mountaineers but as "the Overmountain men": they had passed the barrier and are seen in Hsiung's own telling as working to establish civilization where (in their own minds) it had not existed.
As for the transmission of a locally-formed "us vs. them" to outsiders like the local color writers, who then spread it to the world, Hsiung does little more than suggest it as a possibility: "Perhaps the town residents' different views of the mountaineers provided the source material for local colorists such as Murfree. … One can imagine a prosperous farmer telling the young Mary Noailles Murfree about the state of his crops, the fair prices he obtained at distant markets, the railroad that made such sales possible, and, conceivably, the destitute mountaineers who had no such access to modern transportation." While this "perhaps" could possibly apply to Murfree, it does not apply to local color writer John Fox, Jr., of Big Stone Gap, VA, author of Trail of the Lonesome Pine whom Hsiung regards as a major formant of the stereotype. Fox lived and traveled in the area and seems to have formed his own views of the mountaineers by way of his own observations.
Despite having these criticisms, however, I found the history presented in Hsiung's book to be lively, engaging, and informative.
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