610 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. is, 1910. 
Life in the Southern Appalachians 
the Dalles, where he had been referee at the 
battle between Heat and Cold. He also brought 
them news of the coming of the people. He told 
them that before long the earth would be popu¬ 
lated with men and women, for he would create 
them. 
“The others agreed that Coyote should have 
his will to rid the country of Iltwewetsix. Coyote 
went down to the river near where the monster 
lay and chose a round, heavy stone and a long 
sharp one. Then he wove for himself' a mantle 
of grass that made him invisible, and with this 
on his back crept up near to where the monster 
lay asleep. With the round stone he struck 
Iltwewetsix a powerful blow on the jaw. The 
monster opened his mouth very wide and blew 
a great cloud of vapor, but it did not hurt 
Coyote, who sprang down the throat and ran 
down the long neck. When he reached the vitals 
of the monster he found all the birds and ani¬ 
mals there, weeping and wailing, for they could 
not get out. Coyote told them to be of good 
cheer; he had come to free them and to slay 
the monster as well. 
“With the sharp stone he hacked a passage¬ 
way out. The monster writhed and roared, but 
being fast to the earth, could not escape. He 
blew great clouds of smoke from his nostrils 
until the whole heavens were blackened, but 
finally Coyote reached the heart and the monster 
died. When the passageway was complete all 
the captives made their escape. Each took him¬ 
self off except Fox, Coyote’s cousin. They stood 
together beside the dead monster and discussed 
what they should do with it. At length Coyote 
said that he had told the other woodsfolk about 
the coming of the people, and he would use this 
body to make them. With that he cut off the 
tail and' created the Blackfeet. He told them 
of their land and sent them there. The hind 
legs were then severed and made into the Flat- 
heads. They, too, were sent to their future 
home. The body he made into the Palouses, and 
the Palouse land was peopled. The front legs 
made the Coeur d’Alenes, and Coyote sent them 
to dwell beside the great lake. The neck and 
head he created into the Cayuses and the Cayuses, 
departed. It was then nearing night and Fox 
asked his cousin why he had not peopled this 
land—the land of the Kooskia, the fairest land 
of all. Coyote replied that he had saved this 
for the last, but was now ready. He ordered 
Fox to bring some water from the river. Fox 
procured a skunk cabbage leaf and brought it 
full of water. Coyote washed the blood from 
his hands and sprinkled the drops on the earth. 
It was night and the cousins departed. 
“The sun came in the morning, warmed the 
earth, and the drops of blood grew. They grew 
very rapidly, and before night the Nez Perces 
had been created. They had nq one to show 
them where to go, so they remained in the valley 
of the Kooskia, and here they are to-day. Iltwe¬ 
wetsix was secured to the earth by his heart. 
The heart remains there to-day and you may 
see it.” 
Such is the Sahaptin story of creation. They 
point out a perfectly round mound that lies near 
Kamiah as the heart of the monster Iltwewetsix. 
I have seen it, as you may, too, should you ever 
visit the country. 
There are several versions of this story, but the 
foregoing is the one told me by Charley Adams 
as nearly as it can be rendered into English. 
A CCOUNTS of life in the Southern Appa¬ 
lachian Mountains—including portions of 
Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, Vir¬ 
ginia and West Virginia—often appear in Forest 
and Stream, yet about these mountains and the 
people who inhabit them we know but little. 
Here is a large area surrounded by a territory 
which is rich, productive and highly civilized, 
“where the people are still living the frontier 
life of the backwoods; where the civilization is 
that of the eighteenth century; where the people 
speak the English of Shakespeare’s time; where 
the large majority of the inhabitants have never 
seen a steamboat or a railroad; where money is 
as scarce as in colonial days, and all trade is 
barter.” 
Of this area and of these people Ellen Chur¬ 
chill Semple wrote some years ago in the Geo¬ 
graphical Journal, published in London. The 
article then attracted much attention. It has 
long been out of print and is now reissued as a 
part of a bulletin of the American Geographical 
Society. It ought to be read by all Americans, 
for it tells of conditions about which Americans 
ought to know, and of a people whose mode of 
life, with its hardships and its struggles, is not 
unlike that experienced by our own ancestors in 
pre-revolutionary times. 
This is a rough country where steep hills rise 
from 700 to 1,200 feet above the gorges which 
hold the streams. There is no level land and 
the stream beds and the road beds are often the 
same. In summer, wagons can be driven along 
the half dried beds of the streams, but in winter 
and in spring, trails cut through the forests of 
the hillsides are the only means of communica¬ 
tion. In most places transportation is by horse¬ 
back. At almost every cabin is found a black¬ 
smith’s forge under an open shed or in an out¬ 
house. Every mountaineer is his own blacksmith 
and does his work well. Men and women alike 
are at home in the saddle. 
Obviously such means of getting about tend to 
limit intercourse, and each mountaineer is con¬ 
fined to his own locality and inhabits a world 
with a radius of only a very few miles. “There 
are many men in these mountains who have never 
seen a town, or even the poor village that con¬ 
stitutes their county seat. Those who have ob¬ 
tained a glimpse of civilization have gone down 
the headwaters of the stream on lumber rafts, 
or have been sent to the State penitentiary at 
Frankfort for illicit distilling or feud murder. 
The women, however, cannot enjoy either of 
these privileges. They are almost as rooted as 
the trees. We met one woman who, during the 
twelve years of her married life, had lived onlv 
ten miles across the mountain from her old 
home, but had never in this time been.back home 
to visit her mother and father. Another back in 
Perry county told us she had never been further 
from home than Hazard, the county seat, which 
was only six miles distant. Another had never 
been to the postoffice, four miles away, and an¬ 
other had never seen the ford of the Rockcastle 
River, only two miles from home and marked, 
moreover, by the country store of the district.” 
As a result of this confinement to a locality 
comes an absence of social life and the close 
intermarriage of families in a district. An old 
judge in Breathitt county told the author that 
in the district school nearby there were ninety- 
six children, all but five of whom were related 
to himself or his wife. This extensive inter¬ 
marriage strengthens the clan instinct, and to 
some extent explains the strength of the feuds 
which rage here from time to time. 
In these mountains and in these isolated com¬ 
munities we find the purest Anglo-Saxon stock 
in all the United States. Direct descendents of 
the early Virginia and North Carolina immi¬ 
grants they “bear about them in their speech and 
ideas the marks of their ancestry as plainly as 
if they had disembarked from their eighteenth 
century -\4essel but yesterday. The stock is chief¬ 
ly English and Scotch-Irish, which is largely 
Teutonic in origin.” 
There is scarcely a trace of foreign blood, 
though rarely a French name is met with, point¬ 
ing to a strain of Huguenot blood from over the 
mountains in North Carolina, or German names 
from those who came down from the Pennsyl¬ 
vania Dutch settlements generations ago. But 
there has been no invasion of foreign immi¬ 
grants such as of late years has over-run the 
United States at large. 
If the country is free from foreigners it is 
also free from negroes. Since the mountains 
having no plantations had no use for slaves, 
negroes never have been in this region and are 
not there now. As a result of this when the 
Civil War broke out between the North and the 
South, this mountain region declared for the 
Union, and its men fought for their flag and 
did good service. 
These people are not sturdy and healthy. The 
women work hard, the men drink heavily of • 
moonshine whiskey which contains 20 per cent, 
more alcohol than standard liquor. They begin 
drinking as boys and it has its effect on them. 
The people look ill-nourished, for their food is 
not of the best. 
Their houses are of logs, sometimes squared, 
or often left with the bark on, and are chinked 
with clay. The roofs are of shakes riven from 
short logs, the chimneys of stone laid up in clay 
or sometimes merely of sticks daubed with clay. 
The furniture of these houses is for the most 
part of home manufacture. The beds are of 
plain wood, roped across and on the ropes rests 
the corn husk mattress. Sheets and blankets are 
woven by the house wife. Only an occasional 
stove, knives, or in some cases an oil lamp tell 
of the outside world. In many cases about the 
houses are little patches of flowers and behind 
the house a vegetable garden. Near this is a 
little patch of tobacco raised for home consump¬ 
tion. Store sugar is unknown, but honey and 
sorghum molasses take its place and are used in 
sweetening coffee. Maple sugar, while made in 
some abundance, is used only as a sweet meat. 
The land is occupied in holding of from 100 
to 320 acres and often by squatter title. The 
chief products of the country are corn and some 
oats. Not a few sheep are owned, but much of 
their wool is made into clothing for the owner’s 
family, and for the surplus he has little or no 
market. Some cattle are raised for home con¬ 
sumption and some razor-back hogs. 
The mountaineers, being far from large com- 
