Of Woods and Waters: A Kentucky Outdoors Reader

The Frontier (An Excerpt)

HARRY M. CAUDILL T h e Frontier (An Excerpt) From The Mountain, the Miner, and the Lord (1980) BETTY SEXTON FIELDS was a Melungeon who died at the age of ninety. The origins of the "dark people" are lost in the mists of our country's history. They are found in many parts of the Appalachians and are called by many names. In some places they are known as "Guians," in others as "Red Bones," "Ramps," "Wooly-boogers," and "Portagees." According to lingering traditions they were living deep in the hills long before the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. In any event, Betty Sexton Fields was a Melungeon whose forebear fought in the Revolution. Betty came to my office because of a neighborhood disagreement, and while she was there she told me about her great-grandmother and how a little band of settlers made their way into the headwaters of the Kentucky River "back in Indian times." Betty said that several families came together "so they wouldn't be so lonesome" and for protection against the "savages." They left the old settlements too late in the year and passed through Pound Gap in the Pine Mountain after the leaves had turned brilliant with autumn colors. Thus they had to rely on the grain they carried on their mules, the livestock they herded before them, and such wild game as they could slay in the forests. The families found a dry place under an arching cliff where they sheltered through the winter. They "faced up" the front with upright poles and tough bark peeled from huge chestnut 44 trees. The place was crowded and smoky, but the pioneers were unused to worldly comforts and considered it adequate until suitable lands could be located and "marked" and cabins built. In the spring all these things would be attended to and another fall would find them snugly set up on their own puncheon floors, within chinked walls, and with "rived" white oak boards above their heads. Then winter came on. In January the snows fell and the creeks froze hard as iron. The ground was flinty and the bitter wind zipped through deerskins and woolens like a razor. The mastfall had been light and game was scarce. The men broke the ice to fish in the water but the black bass lay deep and were not tempted by the bait. The stocks of meal and parched corn dwindled and vanished. The families became desperate. The forest was silent. The dense canebrakes in the bottoms at the creek mouths were traversed time and time again without starting deer, elk, or buffalo. Time after time the hunters returned with nothing more than a few rabbits. HARRY M. CAUDILL 45 At last one night the men came home beaten and hopeless. There was no game in this vast wild country or, if it existed, it was hidden beyond their ken. Weak and hungry, they sat down around the fire, resigned to starvation. They could think of no way out of their dilemma and supposed that two or three more days of gnawing hunger and piercing cold would bring the end. While they huddled in despair, Betty's great-grandmother put a chunk of fresh wood on the fire and sat down with the hunters. She told them not to give up, that things would turn out better tomorrow. She said that when they rose the next morning she would be missing from the camp. They must load their rifles with fresh dry powder and go into the forest very early. They would find a sign marked on a beech tree and should wait there in silence. The bark would be cut with an "upside down cross," and she demonstrated in the dust: 4- They must not leave the marked tree under any circumstance. In a little while they would see a herd of deer approaching, led by a black doe. Each hunter would aim at a deer and kill it, but they must not aim at the black doe. "No matter what happens, you must not shoot the foremost deer!" she warned them. Dawn came with calamitous cold. Only glowing embers remained of the fire but it was stoked to desultory life with a few fallen branches from the gigantic oaks and chestnuts that encircled the "rock house." Mrs. Sexton was nowhere to be seen, and everything went as she had predicted. By...