Cades Cove: The Life and Death of a Southern Appalachian Community, 1818-1937 (review)

Book Reviews Dunn, Durwood. Cades Cove: The Life and Death of a Southern Appalachian Community, 1818-1937. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988. This is a fine book in several respects. It is not just a history of a particular place in the Great Smoky Mountains, it is the story of the way of life of a tight community of families in a time stretching from pioneer days to modern society. It is mostly about community and interrelationships , and thus it refutes much of the literature that presents Southern Mountaineers as individualistic, irreligious , violent, and unlawful. In the fall of 1818, John Oliver, a veteran of the War of 1812, and his wife Lucretia brought their family to Cades Cove, a remote but beautiful wilderness, still inhabited by Indians, in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. In 1937, the great-grandson of the pioneers, also named John Oliver, who had spent his life bringing new ideas to improve the lives of Cove people, lost his last court battle against the federal government and the state of Tennessee and moved to make way for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In its more than century-long life, Cades Cove was culturally and socially a world apart in many ways, and yet Dunn never lets the reader forget that it was always influenced by national and international economic and social trends. Cades Cove was remote, but the people of the cove made journeys to Knoxville and Maryville , the Blount County seat, to trade, to politick, and to learn what was happening in the larger world. But this reviewer was mostly intrigued by the way of life in the cove and how the people conducted their business and their lives. Dunn's chapters deal with such topics, as the impact of the wilderness, the economy, religion, the Civil War, the folk culture, family and social customs, government, law and politics, progressivism and prohibition, and the death of the community through eminent domain. The story is ajourney through American time, of pioneer settlement, the struggle to overcome physical danger and hardship and to build a community. It is the story too of how the people of the community succumbed in the end not to the physical challenge nor personal weakness but to the encroachment of government and the perceived needs of modern society outside the cove. In this way, the story parallels the experience of other communities which were able to deal with concrete and present dangers that they could see and understand but were vulnerable to the slow pressures of a changing society. Anyone driving the dozen or so miles around Cades Cove today cannot help being grateful that the federal government had the foresight to set aside this profoundly beautiful place for all of us to enjoy, including the pioneer buildings of those who made a way of life there in an earlier time. Yet readers of this book will be saddened, perhaps even angered, by the price the residents had to pay and to learn that officials of the state of Tennessee and of the US Park Service misrepresented their intentions in regard to acquiring the land as a part of the 62 Great Smoky Mountains Park and made promises to the residents of the cove that they did not keep. It is also disturbing to learn that the Park Service was initally unclear on its purposes in the cove, first proposing that the formerly carefullytended fields be allowed to return to wilderness and then deciding to preserve the artifacts of this remarkable community , but only the pioneer material folk culture. Thus they erased evidence of the progressive nature of the people. An interesting theme in the book is the influence of the church on the life of the cove. The strongest body was the Primitive Baptist Church, which strictly regulated the behavior of its members, who were, for the most part, leaders of the community. Primitive Baptists shaped attitudes in regard to slavery, led a proUnion stance politically, and organized the people for defense against marauding Confederates from North Carolina. Members of this church refused to disband after takeover by the Park Service and continued to hold services in the...