The Diffusion of Upland South Folk Culture 1790-1840

Southeastern Geographer Vol. 22, No. 2, November 1982, pp. 89-98 THE DIFFUSION OF UPLAND SOUTH FOLK CULTURE, 1790-1840 John Solomon Otto and Nain Estelle Anderson To explain why the Backcountrymen, and not the Low Country inhabitants , led the westward migration across the Southern frontier, Newton has hypothesized that the Backcountry inhabitants were culturally preadapted to frontier life. Their Upland South culture, which evolved in the Backcountry between 1725 and 1775 in the "Lancaster to Augusta hearth" (Fig. 1), later permitted them to "preempt a million square miles" of frontier in only a few decades. Upland South culture included such preadaptive traits as a diffuse settlement pattern of farmsteads and rural neighborhoods "which allowed fewer persons to claim more territory;" commonly-shared techniques of horizontal log construction which permitted rapid assembly of houses, churches, and county courthouses; an easily replicated economic, religious, and political infrastructure of crossroad hamlets, independent churches, and county seat towns; and a "generalized stockman-farmer-hunter economy" with a "productive and adaptable food-and-feed complex" and "an extreme adaptability with regard to their commercial crop." (1 ) Although the Upland South model accurately depicts the dispersal of these cultural traits across space and through time, this useful model does not fully explain why the Upland Southerners, dubbed the "plain folk" by historian Frank Owsley, (2) dispersed so rapidly across the South, or why so few people claimed so much territory, or why families moved so frequently, or why the Backcountry agriculture and economy proved so "adaptable" to the Southern frontier. The Southern frontier contained extensive grassy areas, but much of the region was covered with hardwood and pine forests that posed a physical barrier to agriculture (Fig. 1). By superimposing Newton's boundaries of Upland South culture upon a map of natural vegetation in the eastern United States, one finds that the culture of the plain folk was largely confined to the Southern hardwood forests and Southern pine forests. (3) The dispersal of the Upland South plain folk followed Dr. Otto is Research Associate and Ms. Anderson is Senior Administrative Archeologist, Center for American Archeology, in Kampsville, IL 62053. Loncost SOUTHERN CO O Lancaster to Augusta Hearth" (1725 1775 ) Upland South Culture Area (ca. 1835) After Newton (1974) and fe Shontz and Zon (1936). 200 Miles "200 Km. Fig. 1. Upland South culture area about 1835. en O a, H K W > Vl H W O W O O M SJ Vol. XXII, No. 2 91 the woodlands of the Southern frontier; their northward and westward migrations faltered on the prairies and plains of the Midwest and Southwest . Even a cursory reading of the autobiographies and reminiscences left by the pioneer plain folk reveals that their agricultural economy was indeed adapted to the extensive Southern hardwood and pine forests. They grew food and cash crops in fields claimed from the forest; they ranged their livestock in unfenced woodlands; and they fenced in their fields with barriers fashioned from local timber. This woodlands-adapted agricultural economy allowed the pioneer plain folk to produce foodstuffs , cash crops, fodder, and marketable livestock in even the most heavily forested areas. (4) It is the authors' contention that this woodlands -adapted agriculture of the plain folk permitted them to occupy the vast Southern forests in only two to three generations in the period between 1790 and 1840. The movement of the Upland South plain folk into the Southern frontier may have been prompted by the expansion of the plantation regime into the Backcountry during the late eighteenth century. After the Revolution, tobacco and wheat planters from the Low Country of Maryland and Virginia took up fresh lands in the Backcountry. After the introduction of the cotton gin in the 1790s, they were joined by cotton planters. Cotton could be grown commercially wherever there were at least 200 frost-free days a year, a zone that included much of North Carolina, all of South Carolina, and most of Georgia. As the plantation system expanded into the Backcountry, agricultural populations impinged on the unfenced range land and land prices rose. Many Backcountry plain folk farmers and herders sold their "improvements" and homesteads and moved west to obtain cheaper lands on the Southern...