Copyright © 2024 by Gregory E. Lang

Appalachia is a geographic and cultural mountain region in the southeastern United States. It is easy to get disoriented, if not overwhelmed, by her landscape’s dense shade, thick and varied vegetation, and the many sounds that echo within her woods. Generations of inhabitants believed good and evil spirits roamed the land. It is a region ripe with colorful depictions of hillbilly life, some accurate, many, exaggerated.

Appalachia has long been a source of enduring myths and distortions regarding the temperament and behavior of her mountain people. They are often portrayed as ignorant and prone to impulsive acts of violence, marriages within their bloodline, and engaging in such pastimes as moonshining, snake handling, river baptisms, and clan feuding. While there were a few such characters, most mountain folk were honest and humble people, simply doing their best to get by with what they had. Families hunted and gathered their food, living off bear meat, venison, fish, and what vegetables they could grow and protect from hungry nocturnal critters. Neighbors shared what they could when it was found that anyone was unable to provide for themselves.

Native Americans first arrived in Appalachia more than 16,000 years ago. Enslaved Africans were brought to the region by Spanish expeditions during the 16th century. When English explorers arrived in the late 17th century, the central part of the region was controlled by the Algonquian Indian tribe, and the Cherokee controlled the southern part.

Between 1790 and 1840, a series of treaties with the Cherokee and other Native American tribes opened up lands in north Georgia, north Alabama, the Tennessee Valley, the Cumberland Plateau regions, and the Great Smoky Mountains along what is now the Tennessee-North Carolina border.  The last of these treaties, spurred on by the white man’s lust for the undisturbed earth of Indian territory during the Gold Rush of North Georgia, culminated in the removal of the bulk of the Cherokee population from the region. This forced displacement of the tribes and their long march to a new reservation settlement in Oklahoma became known as the Trail of Tears. Only a few Cherokee remained behind after a private landowner permitted them to establish a village on his property. Today, that land is the reservation of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina.

The Cherokee taught the region’s early European pioneers how to plant and cultivate crops such as corn and squash and find edible plants such as ramps and fiddlehead ferns. The Cherokee also passed along their knowledge of the medicinal properties of hundreds of native herbs and roots and how to prepare tonics from those plants. Before the introduction of modern agricultural techniques in the region in the 1940s, many Appalachian farmers followed the Indian traditions of planting or fishing by the phases of the moon or when certain weather conditions occurred. Many a seed was sown simply because a full moon could be seen in the night sky within the imaginary borders of the Capricorn constellation. Many a fish were fried the day after a Bluegill full moon.

After the Civil War, parts of Appalachia experienced an economic boom. As a nationwide demand for lumber skyrocketed, lumber firms turned to the virgin forests of southern Appalachia. The mountains and valleys of Appalachia once contained what seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of timber. However, the general inaccessibility of the region prevented large-scale logging in most of the area throughout much of the 19th century. But by the 1880s, an increasing demand for lumber forced logging firms to turn their eyes back to the virgin forests of Appalachia. 

Logging in Appalachia peaked in the early 20th century when lumber companies cut the virgin forests on an alarming scale. This led to the creation of national forests and state offices staffed with foresters to manage the region’s timber resources. 

Yet, in spite of decades of large-scale deforestation, much of the undulating terrain of Appalachia remains untouched by chainsaws and greed. The woods and wetlands range from a palate of dark, misty red spruce forests and skinny, soaring Appalachian Lily trees to layered oak and poplar forests towering over Bloodroot, Crested Dwarf Irises, and Painted Trillium that thrive in the ground made fertile with leaf decay. Silver maple swamps are along the many streams and rivers, and Cottongrass ferns and colorful wildflowers grow on the high plateaus. There are hollows and thickly wooded slopes, and cold springs rising unexpectedly out of dark holes and vanishing again farther downhill or beneath a tangle of mountain laurel and rhododendron bushes.

Appalachia is indeed a landscape full of hidden things. In these mountains that are said to kiss the sky, there are lingering remnants of dashed dreams, traces of the grotesque and vulgar sins of the past, whispers of many mysteries and sorrows, and the echo of unfinished love stories. Within the branches of every tree, there are memories — those almost forgotten and those being made.

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