Oct. is, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
Gil 
munities and of independent spirit, are largely 
a law unto themselves. They make moonshine 
whisky and the greater the effort made by the 
Government to destroy these stills, the more 
earnest the resolve of the mountaineers to de¬ 
fend what they believe to be their rights. 
Though great tracts of splendid timber owned 
by people outside of the State grow on the Ken¬ 
tucky Mountains, the mountaineers cut it with¬ 
out any regard to who owns the land, roll the 
logs down the hills to the banks of the streams 
and wait till a rise supplies water enough to 
move them. Often it takes this timber a long 
time to get down to a stream large enough to 
float it, and often it never gets there, but rots 
on the bank. 
The condition of his life makes each moun¬ 
taineer a handy man—able to do many things. 
He may make the shoes for himself and his 
family, shoe his horses, mend his plough and 
grind his flour, while the women spin and weave 
as did the backwoods women of two hundred 
years ago. 
' “Here is reproduced the independence of the 
pioneer home. Spinning and weaving survive as 
an industry of the women. In some few locali¬ 
ties one can still see the flax in every stage from 
the green growth in the field to the finished 
homespun in 100-yard pieces, or again one sees 
a cotton patch in the garden, a simple primitive 
gin of home invention for separating the fiber, 
and understands the origin of the cotton thread 
in the linsey woolsey cloth of domestic manu¬ 
facture which furnishes the dresses for women 
and children. Cotton and flax spinning, however, 
have died out greatly during the past few years, 
since the introduction of cheap cotton goods irito 
the mountain districts. Spinning of woolen yarn 
for stockings is still universal, with the concomi¬ 
tant arts of carding and dyeing, while the weav¬ 
ing of linsey woolsey for clothes or blankets is 
an accomplishment of almost every mountain 
woman. One native housewife showed us her 
store of blankets woven by her mother and her¬ 
self. They were made in intricate plaids of 
original design and combination of colors, and 
the owner told us she worked without a pattern 
and without counting the threads, trusting to her 
eye for accuracy. Many of the dyes, too, she 
made herself from certain trees, though a few 
she bought at the country store. The home 
woven counterpanes are very interesting, because 
the designs for these have been handed down 
from generation to generation, and are the same 
that the Pilgrim fathers brought over to New 
England. 
"But the mountain woman puts forth her best 
taste and greatest energy in making quilts. In 
traveling through this section one looks out for 
some expression of the aesthetic feeling as one 
finds it in the wood carving of the Alps and 
Scandinavian Mountains, the metal work of the 
Caucasus, the Cashmere shawls of the Hima¬ 
layas, and the beautiful blankets of the Chilcat 
Indians. Gradually it is borne in upon him that 
quilt making amounts to a passion among the 
women of the Kentucky Mountains; that it does 
not merely answer a physical need, but is a mode 
of expression for their artistic sense; and there 
is something pathetic in-the thought. They buy 
the calico for the purpose, and make their patch- 
work in very intricate designs, apparently getting 
their hints from their own flower gardens; at 
any rate, the colors in certain common garden 
flowers were reproduced in some quilts we saw, 
and the effect was daring but artistic. Qmlt 
making fills the long leisure hours of the winter, 
and the result shows on the open shelves or cup¬ 
board which occupies a corner in every house." 
Women and children earn money by gathering- 
ginseng and other plants which are bartered at 
the stores. 
We hear of the mountaineers of Eastern Ken¬ 
tucky chiefly as engaged in the prosecution of 
feuds, which are long kept up and may descend 
from father to son. To murdef committed under 
feud conditions no disgrace is attached, and 
these feuds often arise from the most trifling 
differences. “A gate left open and trespassing 
cattle, the scooting of a dog, political rivalry, or 
a difficulty over a boundary fence may start the 
trouble. The first shooting is sometimes done 
in the madness of moonshine intoxication. These 
mountaineers are men who hold life as light as 
a laugh and to such anything is sufficient provo¬ 
cation to shoot; so the first blood is easily shed. 
The feud once started, a long and bloody war 
ensues, often for several years, in which way¬ 
laying, shooting from ambush and arson are 
regular features.” 
If crimes against the person are common, those 
against property are rare. Horse stealing is con¬ 
sidered one of the worst of crimes, the stealing 
of logs out of a stream is perhaps the next. 
Property is sacred, as it is likely to be in primi¬ 
tive communities. 
As might be expected, these people though of 
good intelligence, are deplorably illiterate. Of 
the women over twenty-five years old and men 
over forty, 80 per cent, can neither read nor 
write. This matter is now being bettered. The 
increase of population has been followed by the 
establishment of more district schools, and so 
more children are brought within reach of the 
school house. School lasts for five months, from 
Aug. 1 to Christmas, and the number of pupils 
at a school may range from fifty to one hundred, 
of varying ages from six to twenty, all in charge 
of a single teacher. 
Even this five months of schooling is broken 
up by various interruptions, and it can be said 
of it only that it is better now than the teaching 
has been in the past. Of the teachers who con¬ 
duct these schools many are pitiably ignorant, 
for their ’opportunities have been wholly lacking. 
At a meeting of the Teachers’ Institute in one 
of the mountain counties it appeared that of 
fifty-six public school teachers present only one 
in eight knew the Lord's prayer, while a ma¬ 
jority of them did not know what it was, nor 
where it came from. Such education as these 
teachers have is confined to what they have 
learned at the district school and to a few 
months’ training at the so-called Normal School 
of the county seat. Those who have the force 
to leave their homes and to seek learning in the 
lower lands work with great industry and energy, 
and this with their usually vigorous minds carries 
them a long way. 
It has been said that the life of the Kentucky 
mountaineer bears the stamp of the eighteenth 
century. “His cabin home is rich in the local 
color of an age long past. The spinning wheel 
for flax and wool, the bulky loom in the shed 
room outside, the quaint coverlets on the beds 
within, the noon mark on the door, and, more 
than a’l. the speech of the people, show how the 
current of time has swept by and left them in 
an eddy. The English they speak is that of the 
Elizabethan Age. They say ‘buss’ for kiss, 
‘gorm’ for muss, ‘pack’ for carry and ‘poke - for 
a small bag. Strong past tenses and perfect par¬ 
ticiples like ‘holp’ and ‘holpen’ and the syllabic 
plural of words ending in st, like ‘beasties,’ are 
constantly heard. The Saxon pronoun ‘hit’ sur¬ 
vives not only in the upland regions of Ken¬ 
tucky, but also in the Virginias, Carolinas and 
Tennessee.” 
Not only the speech of a past century, but 
many customs of a similar kind survive here. 
When two horsemen or wagons meet on a road, 
the “rule of the road” is that of England, not 
of the United States; in other words, each wagon 
turns to the left. A very remarkable case of 
such survival of ancient customs was discovered 
in 1878 by the late Prof. N. S. Shaler, of Har¬ 
vard, on the borders of Virginia and Kentucky. 
Here in a v secluded valley he found men hunt¬ 
ing squirrels and rabbits with old English short 
bows. “These were not the contrivance of boys, 
nor of to-day, but were made, strung and the 
arrows hefted, in the ancient manner. The men. 
some of them old, were admirab’y skilled in 
their use. They assured me that, like their 
fathers before them, they had ever used the bow 
and arrow for small game, reserving the costly 
ammunition of the rifle for deer and bear.” 
If these people have thus preserved a multi¬ 
tude of customs centuries old, if they weave 
their own clothes, use hand mills to grind their 
grain and the bows and arrows of their fore¬ 
fathers to kill small game, they have in some 
respects fallen behind the customs practiced by 
their ancestors who first occupied the region. 
They have lost whatever knowledge those an¬ 
cestors had of printed books. These they could 
not carry in their journey across the mountains, 
and the literature which they brought with them 
lives only in the memory of the people. This 
still exists in the old English ballad poetry which 
has been handed down from lip to lip through 
generations, scarcely changing its form. 
As we read of these people in this beginning of 
the twentieth century, and of their ways almost 
unchanged, from the life of two hundred years 
ago, we are reminded constantly that the mind 
of man is always the same. We see that these 
mountain people, whose blood is perhaps the 
purest Anglo-Saxon of any people living in 
America, are animated by the same motives and 
practice many of the same customs that char¬ 
acterized the wild Indians of the plains half a 
century ago. 
Living by themselves as they do, cut off from 
their fellowmen and wholly ignorant of the ways 
of the outside world, these mountain people have 
many failings and weaknesses. They are sensi¬ 
tive, suspicious of strangers, self-wil'ed, lawless, 
and their code of morals, in certain respects, is 
low, yet if they have these primitive failings they 
possess also primitive virtues. They are proud, 
independent, self-respecting and beyond all ques¬ 
tion brave aryd kindly. They are most hospitable, 
welcoming and doing everything in their power 
for the trusted guest, whose rare visits bring 
them news and information from the outer world 
and furnish them subjects for conversation long 
after the traveler has gone on his way. 
The Forest and Stream may be obtained from 
any newsdealer on order. Ask your dealer to 
supply'you regularly. 
