Rural Life and Culture in the Upper Cumberland

7. "That's Not the Way I Heard It"

122 WILLIAM LYNWOOD MONTELL 122 Chapter 7 ”THAT’S NOT THE WAY I HEARD IT” Traditional Life and Folk Legends of the Upper Cumberland WILLIAM LYNWOOD MONTELL As a folklorist and oral historian, I am committed to the study of traditional life and culture of people whose names, actions, attitudes, and behaviors are seldom, if ever, included in history books. The thrust of my academic endeavors for more than forty years has been to write about local people as they perceive themselves. Some historians and folklorists might disagree with me, but I deem stories (or narratives) to be the strongest force in creating and maintaining a strong sense of identification with state, region, community, and home place that most of us know, appreciate, and understand. Thus, because social and economic change is inevitable, one must not neglect to preserve a record of the average person’s role in a region’s cultural heritage. The Upper Cumberland is a subregion of Appalachia that is physically characterized by lush rivers and creek valleys, secluded coves, and upland areas of beautifully sculptured rolling hills and the plateau. Most people of the area now work in the county-seat towns in factories, schools, banks, hospitals, hardware and department stores, and farm produce houses. Yet, many of them continue to live in rural areas on the ancestral lands once occupied by their parents and grandparents. Such dependence on the land provides pleasant memories and a vicarious sense of generational continuity. Much of the folklore and folklife found in the Upper Cumberland springs from the frontier period that began in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and continued across the years because of generational occupation of the same soil, decades of shared experiences, and a “That’s Not the Way I Heard It” 123 strong desire to maintain cultural stability and historic continuity. People here are wedded to the land, and the land holds precious memories. Pioneer settlers in the Upper Cumberland brought along certain items, including iron kettles, feather beds, quilts, seed for the first year’s planting, and the necessary farming implements and tools. Included, too, were their traditional ideas about farming, tending livestock, hunting and fishing, preparing food, schooling of the young, socializing, and worshiping God. Many of these traditions were to undergo change, however, in the demanding new environment. If the early settlers had previously been accustomed to frequent and formal worship, they soon became accustomed to visits by circuit-riding preachers, brush-arbor meetings (services held within the shade of large trees), accompanied by bountiful dinners on the ground.1 Early agriculture of pioneer settlers was subsistence in nature. Clearing the land of trees to make room for agricultural pursuits was a task faced by pioneers and subsequent generations alike, until the early years of the twentieth century. Residents approached this major hurdle communally , as men united efforts in cutting trees, trimming away tree tops Children on the porch of a typical home early in the twentieth century. Courtesy of the Tennessee State Library and Archives. 124 WILLIAM LYNWOOD MONTELL and limbs and stacking the brush into piles, rolling huge logs together, and burning them once adequate drying had taken place. Making things by hand has been an integral part of the area folklife activity since pioneer times. Scholars point out that folk crafts often combine both functional and decorative elements, and that the utilitarian aspect of traditional crafts (i.e., making objects for practical use) ties them most clearly to historical times. In Seedtime on the Cumberland and Flowering of the Cumberland, Harriet Arnow, a native of the Kentucky Upper Cumberland, chronicled certain facets of the early history of practical skills in everyday life. She observed that the first settlers used skills they had learned traditionally, along with intuitive knowledge, to fill basic needs with materials near at hand. The pioneer era encouraged widespread proficiency in many kinds of handwork .2 Self-sufficiency on the Upper Cumberland frontier made the acquisition of traditional skills commonplace well into the twentieth century in remote parts of the area, where rugged terrain and relative isolation kept many families reliant on subsistence farming, hunting, fishing, musseling (for buttons and pearls), whiskey making, and forest-related livelihoods. Similar economic conditions created trends toward specialization in some crafts among families and individuals during the early years of the nineteenth century—a trend that remains unabated at the beginning of the twenty-first century...