After decades perusing nineteenth century documents pertaining to the Southern Appalachians, it is easy for me to assume that I've already found all the "Really Good Stuff." Of course that's not the case, though the rare gems I still unearth from time to time have been well hidden.
The work of James Roberts Gilmore is a good example.
A prolific and popular author during and after the Civil War, Gilmore deserves to be better known than he is today. His 1889 novel, Mountain-White Heroine, is a Civil War story set in Western North Carolina. His introduction to the novel is a commentary on the threats posed by lax immigration laws and the diffusion of socialist thought in America. In contrast, Gilmore saw the embodiment of desperately needed "American values" in the mountaineers of Southern Appalachia.
Although his political commentary at the front of Mountain-White Heroine is a somewhat surprising curiosity, I wasn't expecting anything special from the novel that followed. I've read, or tried to read, other 19th century regional fiction. Some of it is worth the effort, but much of it is deeply flawed. Besides if Gilmore was any good, why had I never heard of him?
The Author
Born in Boston, James Roberts Gilmore (1823 - 1903) began his career in New York as a businessman involved in the cotton and shipping industries. During the 1850s, his work took him to the South where he became acquainted with whites and blacks. During the Civil War and the decades that followed, he devoted more of his time to writing, often publishing his work under the pseudonym, Edmund Kirke. He was a novelist, historian, poet and lecturer, spending time in the South to collect material for his books. He took particular interest in John Sevier and other pioneers of trans-Appalachian settlement and stayed in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina while conducting research for his historical book series.
The Novel
As a Civil War story, as a suspenseful tale well-told, Mountain-White Heroine rises well above my low expectations. It warrants a space on the same shelf as similar works by modern writers like Charles Frazier and Robert Morgan. The novel recounts the hardships endured by Union loyalists in Madison County, NC. Sons and husbands who refuse to fight for the Confederacy suffer the most dire of consequences. Several historic figures appear in the novel: Robert Vance (briefly), Daniel Ellis (a Union officer who wrote a popular memoir about his war-time exploits in the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina), and Union Colonel George Kirk. More often than not in other novels and histories, Kirk and his "Raiders" are portrayed as cruel bushwhackers, terrorizing North Carolina mountaineers regardless of their allegiances in the war. Gilmore, though, presents a different perspective on Kirk's Raiders, casting them in an unusually positive light.
Several things ring true in Mountain-White Heroine: Gilmore was intimately familiar with the geographical setting for the story, primarily in Madison County, although action ranged as far as Charleston (Bryson City), Soco, Waynesville and Morganton. Gilmore also had a sense of the social strata of mountain communities. His descriptions of some mountain people as ignorant and slovenly verge on stereotype. On the other hand, he devotes as much or more space to mountaineers who are resolute, principled and brave. Gilmore introduces us to the best and the worst of society.
The novel opens in April 1861 with the arrival of the circus:
...the monster placard announced that the dancing dogs, the monkey that plays the tambourine, and the half-nude goddess who rides four steeds at once, bare-backed, and at full gallop, would soon be on exhibition in the widely-known village of Asheville. The circus stole into town over night, and when the half-asleep dwellers in the place heard its measured tramp on the highway, they knew that a long procession of Mountain-Whites would follow in the morning. And it did. One unbroken stream of both sexes, and all ages, on foot, on horse-back, mule-back, and "critter back," and in every kind of nondescript vehicle, poured into the town, over all its principal thoroughfares, from early dawn till high-noon...
Gilmore devotes several pages to colorful descriptions of the people travelling to the big show:
The most of the people in this procession had dull, expressionless faces, and only a casual glance was needed to show that they were below the average of our rural population in civilization, and intelligence. A considerable portion had the appearance of well-to-do farmers, the remainder are known, far and wide, as "poor whites;" though they are not poor in the sense of being homeless, and destitute of the necessaries of life. However, their homes are often little better than hovels, and their food is usually a ration of salt pork, hominy, and "corn-dodger," which fails to develop in them a very high order of manhood. But the hovels are their own, and so are the small patches of cleared ground which they cultivate in the rudest and most primitive manner.
During the circus, news of the recent attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston begins to circulate through the crowd:
It is probable that not an individual in the assemblage had any adequate conception of the national bearing of the event, or of its vital relation to his own future; and yet, a feeling of dread and uncertainty, a vague sense of a grave crisis having come into their lives, pervaded the entire gathering, and sent each one back to his home pondering the tidings with more than his accustomed thoughtfulness. By none was the political bearing of this event more fully appreciated than by three youths, aged respectively, fifteen, seventeen, and nineteen years, who occupied one of the upper seats of the immense tent at the beginning of the itinerant performance. They were of a better class than a larger portion of the motley audience. Their clothing was of homespun, like that of the others, but it was neat, cleanly, and well-fitting, and sat upon them with the easy grace which betokens good breeding.
Apollonians and Dionysians
A reference to "good breeding" might chafe the sensitivities of the 21st century reader, but so be it. Gilmore's distinctions bring to mind an interview with Charlotte Young (1879-1985) a poet and educator who taught in remote mountains schools in the early twentieth century. She had her own way of depicting the range of virtue and vice that she observed among mountain folk:
According to Greek belief, there two groups in the world. Apollo stood for reaching for Divinity for music and poetry. The followers of Bacchus emphasized the physical side of like, and were called Dionsyians. In Western North Carolina you see that as it was then in Greece and Rome, and everywhere, for that matter. You can see it all over the world now; all civilization, or lack of civilization. It was a fight between those two forces. In North Carolina the force for seeking the Divine is rather strong. Some are followers of Bacchus and some are followers of Apollo, reaching for the Divine in art, in music, in beauty, as Apollo stood for all the finer things of life, as we say. So Bacchus stood only for his wine and women and eat, drink and be merry. In North Carolina, I don't know if it's more so than in other places, but those who are with the group that reach for Divinity are very strong in it; and just as strong are those who like to shake their feet and dance and drink and run with the Bacchus crowd. I find that in my teaching, and I suppose it's more or less that way everywhere.
The three brothers in Gilmore's novel have never been so far from their home across the Ivy River in Madison County. Growing weary of the circus, they leave early to share the news of Fort Sumter with their widowed mother, Mrs. Nancy Hawkins, a saintly woman and the central character of Mountain-White Heroine, a Charlotte Young Apollonian if there ever was one.
Mrs. Hawkins and Sukey
Mrs. Hawkins' relationship with a mountain "wild-woman" named Sukey is remarkably similar to the Ada and Ruby friendship in Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain. For anyone steeped in 19th century mountain narratives, Frazier's "borrowings" from that pool of literature are obvious. Frazier acknowledges as much in an afterword to his novel, listing a dozen books that he found particularly helpful. Nothing by James R. Gilmore is listed. So, the parallels between Nancy-Sukey and Ada-Ruby could be sheer coincidence...or not:
...house-keeping was not Sukey's "gift." She preferred to roam the woods, rifle or shot-gun in hand, in pursuit of the deer or wild rabbit. With these she kept their larder well stocked, and sometimes she brought down game that would have been regarded as a trophy by a male sportsman — on two or three occasions, a bear, and once a panther, which had stretched itself along the limb of a tree, and was about to spring down upon her.
Sukey faces ongoing difficulties with her neer-do-well common law husband, the "Parson:"
"He's just loike what they say uv his farder and gran'ther — lazy as one, an' as big a thief as t'other. Why, he steals game thet I gits by all-day hunting; and swops hit off for bacon. He'd ruther pay twenty cents a pound for greasy swine-flesh, nor eat my best venison for nothin'. An' the swine ar' got inter his blood — made him just loike the porkers, an' thet's the trouble with all the folks round yere. They'se lived on swine so long that they'se got to be swine tharselves."
Word Pictures
Yes, some of the dialect might be an issue for today's reader, but isn't as extreme or pervasive as that found in other Appalachian literature from the same time period, Mary Noailles Murfree (aka Charles Egbert Craddock) being a prime example. Gilmore is also more moderate than Murfree with another common device from that time, florid descriptions of mountain scenery. I happen to enjoy over-the-top word pictures like those painted by Murfree, including this one from The Frontiersmen:
The mockingbirds were singing in the woods outside. The sun was in the trees. The leafage had progressed beyond the bourgeoning period and the branches flung broad green splendors of verdure to the breeze. The Great Smoky Mountains were hardly less blue than the sky as the distant summits deployed against the fair horizon; only the nearest, close at hand, were sombre, and showed dark luxuriant foliage and massive craggy steeps, and their austere, silent, magnificent domes looked over the scene with solemn uplifting meanings.
It is worth remembering that most readers in the mid to late 19th century had no access to full-color, high resolution images of the Smokies. Perhaps they had seen a few black-and-white lithographs in popular magazines, but they relied on their own imaginations to form a mental image of the mountains. Compared to other writers of his time, Gilmore exercises restraint with his depictions of the landscape, and this passage is about as extravagant as it gets:
...the horsemen set off at a brisk gallop down the road to Waynesville, until they came opposite the point where the Oconolufta joins the Tuckasege. There in Indian file, each horseman treading as nearly as possible in the tracks of the one preceding him — they forded the Tuckasege, and striking a north-east course entered, at the distance of a few miles, the wooded ravine bordered by steep mountain ranges, a mile or more in height, through which flows the picturesque Oconolufta. They were now in a magnificent region of mighty woods, majestic mountains, and noisy cascades, which leap over precipitous cliffs, and rush in sheeted foam down steep declivities. Here and there a grassy cove indents the side of the ravine, or a quiet, tree-sprinkled valley, where the mountains had receded farther from the river, and left some luxuriant nook to be one day the abode of man. As yet, however, no human habitation can be found in all the forest-covered region, and a stillness unbroken save by the noisy rush of the river, the startled cry of some bird, or the occasional bleat of a deer, or growl of a bear, reigns over all the leafy solitude.
I'll reveal nothing more about the plot of Gilmore's novel. Despite, or perhaps because of, the literary license he takes with historic facts, he gives us an engaging and valuable perspective on a tragic episode of Appalachian life. The author's obscurity, 130 years after his hey-day, is revealed by googling "James Roberts Gilmore." After reading his novel about the people of Madison County, I would say he deserves to be rediscovered.
Cumberland Chronicler and Presidential Confidante
Among his other books was the historic work, Advance Guard of Western Civilization, focused on James Robertson and the pioneer settlers of Middle Tennessee's Cumberland Region. However, Gilmore's contemporaries were underwhelmed by the depth of his scholarship. With a lengthy footnote in the The Winning of the West, Theodore Roosevelt skewered Gilmore for shoddy research about John Sevier. Even so, and even if Gilmore's version of history might have its shortcomings, Advance Guard is an entertaining read. Until finding Gilmore's book, I knew nothing about Spanish intrique among the trans-Appalachian pioneers in the 1780s, and I was unaware of James Wilkinson, a man who challenges Benedict Arnold for the title of "America's Worst Traitor...Ever."
With a little digging, one can find some unusual items from and about James R. Gilmore. It would seem that President Abraham Lincoln sought his advice, if we are to believe the dialogues in Gilmore's Personal Recollections Of Abraham Lincoln And The Civil War.
[A mysterious petroglyph near Cullowhee, North Carolina has inspired many theories about its origin. Some say that carvings on the soapstone boulder represent a sky map. That is how I depicted it in a painting which included a man and his son gazing at the spectacle in the night sky. A writer in Pakistan saw my painting and crafted his own response.]
Back in 2014, I put my own interpretation of Judaculla Rock on canvas and shared the result online. Who would have guessed that the image would reach a blogger in Pakistan who reflected on that star-map view. Zeeshan Ahmed posted this on September 26, 2015:
As I looked at the celestial objects, up-close, I wondered. I wondered of all the ages, and the people, who had seen it before. I thought of the prehistoric times, when the heavens were brightly lit, and had no artificial, manufactured light to pollute them. I thought of the people who looked above and wondered. They imagined all these fantastic stories, and attempted to give a meaning to everything they saw above. They saw the whole sky as a canvas on which there were these lights, and strange mists. They moved, every night, until the sun came up. The giant, yellow ball of light, hid everything else, until it disappeared and gave way to the celestial painting again.
Not all of them wondered about the heavens, I believe. Like today, there were these people, storytellers, if you will, who wanted to come up with the reason why the ceiling was the way it was, and why it was there. And why this ceiling anyway, which is such a wonderful sight, and not mere emptiness? Oh, imagine if there was nothing above, and just plain darkness. Of course, if that had been the case, we wouldn’t have come up with all these glorious myths, the kind we know of today. There would have been some other kind. These storytellers, I tell you, always find a way to come up with truly amazing tales.
So, if a storyteller belonging to those early days, were here, what would he say? Of course, he would be really surprised at the current state of the world, and its inhabitants. But I will try to keep him far away from the modern world, and ask him questions. I will ask him what he saw in the night sky and what fascinated him. Perhaps, he will tell me that the shimmering dots had their own tales. How some were grouped together, and some were far away. How that misty, hazy pathway above was a gateway to some other world. Then, he might get excited and tell me about these streaks of light which appear, and then vanish. He would perhaps tell me that these were little wanderers who jumped from here and there. They travelled quickly and left behind this wonderful trail of light. At that moment, I will think of these ‘streaks of light’ and think of him, and other such storytellers. Who keep jumping between stories, and worlds, and always have a lot to share with rest of the people. Oh, how fascinating indeed!
[Back in December of 2010, I looked back on my first-time visits to various waterfalls over the preceding months. Good times indeed!]
Leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness. It is the silence of contemplation such as occurs when we let our minds rest on a rosebud, a child at play, a Divine mystery, or a waterfall. -Fulton Sheen One can never visit enough waterfalls. And when I look back on the falls I discovered for the first time this year, I just regret that I didn't get around to more.
May 2 Chau-Ram Falls This one is on Ramsey Creek just before it joins the Chauga River in Oconee County, South Carolina (at Chau-Ram Park on US 76). This was the day I went out hunting for Yellow Lady Slippers in the wild and it wound up being one of the best days of the whole year. Now I want to explore more of the Chauga, a lovely river flowing through what could be my favorite county on the planet.
September 18 Sols Creek Falls This photo doesn't do justice to the 120-foot waterfall, reached after two-and-a-half miles of paddling across Bear Lake, which was remarkably quiet for a Saturday morning. As I came to shore below the falls, two otter-like critters came scampering over the rocks and into the water. I've come to the conclusion that they were weasels. It was a nice surprise. If anyone asks, I didn't really see this waterfall (ostensibly on private property), I didn't really take this picture. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
September 19 Ledbetter Creek Pick up the recently-published map of the Bartram Trail in North Carolina, and you'll see this little waterfall on the cover. The hike to this lovely spot begins next to the Nantahala River, not far from the place where William Bartram and Attakullakulla crossed paths in May 1775. If I can ever commandeer a time machine, that meeting is high on the list of events I would like to witness. In 1730, Attakullakulla was one of several Cherokee men who visited London. I'd like to imagine that Attakullakulla regaled Bartram with stories of attending a play at the Globe Theatre decades earlier. The trail to Cheoah Bald crosses Ledbetter Creek before a long, steep climb up the mountain. Just to look at the map, you don't get a sense of what a demanding hike it is (at least for the first couple of miles). Having scaled the toughest part of the trail, I regretted the necessity of turning back before reaching Bartram Falls and Cheoah Bald. It was mighty pretty up there. Maybe next year...
September 23 Warden's Falls All things being equal, I favor accessing Panthertown Valley from the east. But from Cullowhee, it is a considerably longer drive. And really, any way into Panthertown is the right way. The monarch butterflies were making their annual migration on the day I found Warden's Falls. They were pausing at Duke's powerline right-of-way that runs through the valley.
October 3 Greenland Creek Falls I wanted to revisit this one (another Panthertown waterfall) at a later date to capture a bit more autumn color, but it will have to wait until next year.
October 14 Skinny Dip Falls As many times as I have passed the Looking Glass Rock Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the past 30 years, it was only this fall that I followed the short trail (across the BRP) to Skinny Dip Falls, a nice spot on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail.
October 24 Chasteen Creek Cascade This is a view looking downstream from the top of Chasteen Creek Cascades in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The trail begins at the Smokemont Campground and is as nice a walk as you'll find anywhere.
So we saunter toward the Holy Land; till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, so warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in Autumn. -From Walking, by Henry David Thoreau .
I was received with a great deal of courtesy by the mistress of the house whose husband was away. This woman was young, beautiful, but very devout, and continually reflecting on the different ways of thought among the Methodists, Anabaptists and Quakers. Conversations on these subjects went from seven until ten-thirty; I then became bored with it in spite of the kindness and charm of this woman, and I went to bed. -Andre Michaux, December 1, 1788
The more I delve into Andre Michaux’s December 1788 expedition to the Southern mountains, the more contradictions I find. This trip has earned a place in the history of botanical explorations because Michaux collected specimens of Shortia galacifolia at the head of the Keowee River, and it took a century for subsequent researchers to locate the source of those plants. But the Oconee Bell was not the object of Michaux’s field trip. He was intent on finding Magnolia cordata, a rare tree mentioned by William Bartram on his 1775 trip through the mountains.
If diverse flora was one appeal of the region, Michaux also found a great diversity of people living on this frontier. By all descriptions, the Frenchman was a good conversationalist and well-mannered, but his diary reflects annoyances along the way. On December 1, he arrived near the head of the Savannah River (at the confluence of the Keowee and Tugaloo Rivers) where he stayed at the home of home of a Mr. Freeman (as described above).
Detour Via Cleveland's Ferry
Rather than proceeding straight up the Keowee, Michaux headed northwest along the Tugaloo. He traveled about twenty miles on December 2 and spent the night at the home of Larkin Cleveland. On December 3, he crossed the river to breakfast at the home of John Cleveland:
I crossed the Tugaloo River at the only place used for fording. It was so dangerous that two of our horses narrowly escaped drowning.
Larkin and John had fought beside their brother, Colonel Benjamin Cleveland, who was a hero at the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780. Cleveland counties in North Carolina and Georgia, and the town of Cleveland, Tennessee were all named for the Colonel. After the Revolution, the three Cleveland brothers brought their families to the Tugaloo just east of Toccoa, Georgia.
Returning to Keowee River
Leaving the Tugaloo, Michaux went east, spending the night of December 3 sleeping on the ground at Seneca. That night he wrote that his twenty mile trip had been:
…through country completely covered with forests, like all southern provinces, but it was very hilly…
Michaux spent a couple of days botanizing on the Keowee. On December 6, he proceeded upriver to some unnamed Indian village, where he spent the night with a hospitable native family.
On December 7, after securing a Cherokee guide to accompany him, Michaux continued about fourteen miles up the river, camping on the shores of the river at the foot of the mountains.
Magnolias and Wet Dogs
The next day, Michaux drew closer to the head of the Keowee and found the way becoming more and more difficult. About two miles before the head of the river, Michaux recognized the Magnolia cordata he had been seeking, collected specimens of “a new plant with denticulated leaves” (later identified as Shortia) and also found a place to stay for the night:
In this area there was a small hut inhabited by a family of Cherokee Indians. We stopped there to camp… The weather changed and it rained the whole night. Although we took shelter under a large white pine our clothing and blankets were drenched and soaked. Around the middle of the night I went into the hut of the Indians which could barely hold the family of eight persons, men and women. There were further six large dogs which added to the dirtiness of this housing and to the inconvenience. The fire was in the middle, without an opening on top of the hut to let the smoke escape; however, there were enough openings all over the roofing of this house to let the rain in. One Indian offered me his bed which consisted of a bear skin and took my place by the fire. But finally I was so annoyed by the dogs, which fought all the time for a place by the fire; that I returned to rny camp, especially since the rain had ceased.
On December 9, Michaux wanted to investigate the more precipitous of the two headwater streams to reach the highest mountains:
We had to cross precipices and creeks covered with fallen trees where ten times our horses plunged down and came close to perishing. We climbed up to a waterfall where the thunder of the falling water resembled distant shots of musketeers. The Indians said that at night fires could be seen at this place. I wanted to camp there, but the unexpected snow and the wind were so cold that we looked for an area lower on the mountain that was less exposed to the cold and that had more grass for our horses. The night was terribly cold. There was only pinewood to keep up the fire which burned poorly due to several snowfalls. Our snow-covered blankets became stiff with ice shortly after having been warmed.
Despite the cold temperatures. Michaux collected plants all of December 10 and for part of December 11:
I noticed a chain of high mountains stretching from west to east and where the frost showed little in places exposed to the sun. I gathered a ground juniper (Juniperus repens) that I had not yet noticed in the middle parts of the United States… On these mountains I saw several trees of the northern regions such as river birch (Betula nigra), alternate-leaved dogwood, white pine, hemlock spruce, etc. We crossed an area of about three miles through rosebay rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum).
Botanizing in December
By the evening of the 11th, Michaux had returned to the head of the Keowee. On December 12, he was retracing his steps as he continued downriver:
We kept close to the river and saw several flocks of wild turkeys. Our Indian guide fired at them, but the rifle failed several times since we had not been able to protect it from the rain in the preceding days. Thus our supper consisted of a few chestnuts that our Indian guide had gotten from another of his nation. We made eighteen miles. The weather was very clear. The freeze set in early in the evening, and, after having asked my Indian to tell me the names of several plants in his language, I wrote my journal by the light of the moon.
On December 13th I attempted to shoot a wild turkey at daybreak; there were plenty in this area but I was unsuccessful and we broke camp without breakfast. We were famished and changed our direction towards a camp of Indian hunters, and, although the hills became less steep, it was one o'clock in the afternoon before we arrived there after a journey of six hours estimated at only fifteen miles.
They cooked bear meat for us, cut into small pieces and fried in bear grease. Although it was smothered in grease, we had an excellent dinner, and, although I ate a lot of the fattest part of the meat, I did not become indisposed. The bear grease is tasteless and resembles a good olive oil. It doesn't even have a smell. When some food is roasted with it, it does not congeal until it freezes. After dinner, we made sixteen miles and arrived at Seneca in the evening.
A Geographic Debate
What Andre Michaux actually meant by “the head of the Keowee” has been a subject of disagreement for many years. In 1886, seeking the same patch of Shortia that Michaux had described, Charles Sargent attempted to retrace the 1788 journey. Sargent had his own theory about “tete de Kiwi”:
It has been suggested that the spot described by Michaux as the "Tete de Kiwi" might have been the junction of two rapid mountain torrents, the White Water and the Devil's Fork... It is more probable however, that the spot described as the head of the Keowee is the junction of the Toxaway and Horse Pasture Rivers, several miles above the mouth of the White Water and close to the North Carolina boundary… They are swift rivers flowing through beds cut deep in the rock, broken by innumerable rapids, and full of logs and boulders; in each about six miles from its mouth is a noble fall, or rather a series of cascades of great height and beauty. It was near one of these falls probably that Michaux wished to camp on the evening of the 9th of December, and the evidence favors the belief that it was the falls of the Toxaway.
Sargent believed that Michaux found the old Indian trail that continued up the Toxaway and crossed the Blue Ridge Divide between Hogback and Tigertail (now Panthertail) Mountains. This would have brought Michaux to the Tuckasegee headwaters that flow through Panthertown Valley. According to Sargent, the distant chain of high mountains that Michaux observed on December 11, 1788 would have been the Balsams.
Subsequent investigators have challenged Charles Sargent’s conclusions. In 1983, Robert Zahner and Steven Jones published the results of their attempt to follow Michaux’s path. They assert that the “head of the Keowee” mentioned by Michaux was actually the confluence of the Whitewater and the Toxaway, rather the confluence of the Toxaway and Horsepasture as claimed by Sargent. Instead of going up the Toxaway, Michaux went up the Whitewater to reach the “high mountains” (Chimney Top, Terrapin and Sassafras) where he botanized on December 10 and 11. Zahner and Jones explain that the spot where Michaux collected Shortia, two miles downriver from the head of the Keowee, was very near where Jocassee Dam stands today. This was also the location of an old Cherokee village called “Toxaway” destroyed by Colonel Archibald Montgomery in 1760.
Loyalists and Tories
I would like to see more evidence before casting my vote for one theory over another. Some of that evidence, though, is lost beneath the waters of Lake Jocassee. What remains indisputable is Andre Michaux’s ability to meet the challenges of exploring the backcountry. While returning to Charleston after his December 1788 trip through the mountains, Michaux encountered difficulties of a different kind. His biographers, Henry and Elizabeth Savage, describe the events of December 21:
After fording twenty large streams in bitter cold weather, he sought shelter and warmth in the home of an American loyalist with no love for Frenchmen. “This American tory said to me on my arrival that he would kill me if I spent the night at his house,” recounted the botanist, “and I told him I was not afraid of that because I was not fat enough nor my purse either! He wanted to badger me about my country but I was a match for him and he had to be content with making me pay dearly for my lodging.”
POSTSCRIPT
The illustrations, above, are of the main object of Michaux’s trip, the plant he identified in his journal as Magnolia cordata. He brought back specimens that were introduced into cultivation, but it would be another 150 years before the tree was once again found in the wild.
The “cucumber tree” or “cucumber magnolia,” notable for its rich yellow blossoms is now considered a variant of the Magnolia acuminata species (Magnolia acuminata var. subcordata).
I’m afraid things are not quite that simple, though. Michaux’s magnolia has persisted as a subject of debate and speculation for botanists up to the present time, and for a thorough examination of this subject, we would involve William Bartram, John Fraser, Magnolia auriculata, M. macrophylla, M. fraseri, Mountain Magnolia, Frasers Magnolia and much more. This is not something I will attempt to sort out, but I'll recommend a couple of articles for any intrepid botanical sleuth who wants some context:
And Charlie Williams published “André Michaux and the Discovery of Magnolia macrophylla in North Carolina” in Castanea, (Southern Appalachian Botanical Society), Vol. 64, No. 1 (March 1999), pp. 1-13. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4034119
With apologies to Monsieur Michaux, I will call on his old friend Puc Puggy (aka William bartram) to wax rhapsodic over a tree that he saw near Mobile in the summer of 1775:
…how gaily flutter the radiated wings of the Magnolia auriculata, each branch supporting an expanded umbrella, superbly crested with a silver plume, fragrant blossom, or crimson studded strobile and fruits.
Finally (and this is not too much of a stretch) J J Cale sings about those whippoorwills that Bartram heard in the Keowee Valley where Michaux found that special magnolia.
People in the Old World were always being surprised by reports from America of spiders as big as cats and birds as small as fingernails, squirrels that flew and frogs that whistled, of plants so blessed that they could cure almost any sickness and of others so strange that their discoverers were afraid to describe them, lest they be called fools or liars. Americans forested the parks of rich Europeans with sugar maples and hemlocks, filled collectors’ cabinets with mockingbirds and rattlesnakes, enlivened their gardens with fly-eating tipitiwichets and early blooming skunk cabbages. Their science was a matter of the heart as well as the mind, a way to express their feeling for their land and their countrymen’s unabashed pride in it.
- Joseph Kastner
...aromatic Calycanthean groves on the surrounding heights, the wary moor fowl thundering in the distant echoing hills, how the groves and hills ring with the shrill perpetual voice of the whip-poor-will... -William Bartram, describing Keowee, 1775
Rhododendron calendulaceum
Whenever I'm on the Bartram Trail along the Chattooga or the Little Tennessee I revel in the privilege of walking in the footsteps of a flower-hunter whose ways with words inspired the British Romantics.
Thanks to Bartram’s Travels, our flame azaleas were transplanted to William Wordsworth’s poetry:
Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam Cover a hundred leagues, and seem To set the hills on fire. (From “Ruth” by WW)
The question arises: if Andre Michaux had possessed Bartram’s literary talents, would he be better known today?
Following Bartram's Footsteps
Michaux came to the southern mountains a decade after Bartram. As far as I know, we don't have a Michaux Trail Society. Much of Michaux’s trail is lost since Lakes Jocassee and Keowee have flooded his path along the west bank of the Keowee and the Whitewater River.
In a book on early American naturalists, A Species of Eternity, Joseph Kastner indicates the respect that Michaux commanded:
William Bartram knew him as one of the very few collectors who could go over the ground that he and his father had covered and come back with plants neither of them had found.
Michaux first explored the Carolina backcountry, and the Keowee River, in 1787. Keowee, “the place of mulberries," was principal among Cherokee Lower Towns - a mother town that was a busy center of the deerskin trade. On a contemporary map, Keowee is (or would have been) about 12 miles north of Clemson, South Carolina. Today, the old village and Fort Prince George are both submerged by the waters that cool the reactors of the Oconee Nuclear Station on Lake Keowee.
Now at this point, I must interrupt. I thought this story could be told in ONE blog post. After pursuing an infinity of rabbit trails, I realize that it could take a hundred instead.
Keowee - Frontier Settlement
Keowee was on the west bank of the river, just downstream from Crow Creek. In 1753, the British established Fort Prince George on the east side, across the river from the Cherokee village. By 1760, after ongoing tensions, the British destroyed Keowee. By the time of Bartram’s visit in 1775, Keowee was a ghost town. Bartram writes:
There are several Indian mounts or tumuli, and terraces, monuments of the ancients, at the old site of Keowe, near the fort Prince George, but no Indian habitations at present; and here are several dwellings inhabited by white people concerned in the Indian trade. The old fort Prince George now bears no marks of a fortress, but serves for a trading house.
Fort Prince George, on the Keowee River
Bartram describes the Keowee valley as being “seven or eight miles in extent” and he pictures the thriving place it had been just a few years earlier:
This fertile vale within the remembrance of some old traders with whom I conversed, was one continued settlement, the swelling sides of the adjoining hills were then covered with habitations, and the rich level grounds beneath lying on the river, was cultivated and planted, which now exhibit a very different spectacle, humiliating indeed to the present generation, the posterity and feeble remains of the once potent and renowned Cherokees: the vestiges of the ancient Indian dwellings are yet visible on the feet of the hills bordering and fronting on the vale, such as posts or pillars of their habitations, &c.
Bartram remained at Keowee for a week, hoping to find a Cherokee guide to lead him safely through the mountains. He must be have been struggling with strong mixed feelings. The mid-May spectacle of “the great blue wall” was almost within reach, and yet Bartram was alone, lonely, and aware of the risk he was about to take:
Keowe is a most charming situation, and the adjacent heights are naturally so formed and disposed, as with little expensive of military architecture to be rendered almost impregnable; in a fertile vale, at this season, enamelled with the incarnate fragrant strawberries and blooming plants, through which the beautiful river meanders, sometimes gently flowing, but more frequently agitated, gliding swiftly between the fruitful strawberry banks, environed at various distances, by high hills and mountains, some rising boldly almost upright upon the verge of the expansive lawn, so as to overlook and shadow it, whilst others more lofty, superb, misty and blue, majestically mount far above.
Artist's rendering of Oconee Nuclear Station in the Keowee Valley
The evening still and calm, all silent and peaceable, a vivifying gentle breeze continually wafted from the fragrant strawberry fields, and aromatic Calycanthean groves on the surrounding heights, the wary moor fowl thundering in the distant echoing hills, how the groves and hills ring with the shrill perpetual voice of the whip-poor-will!
William Bartram
Abandoned as my situation now was, yet thank heaven many objects met together at this time, and conspired to conciliate, and in some degree compose my mind, heretofore somewhat dejected and unharmonized: all alone in a wild Indian country, a thousand miles from my native land, and a vast distance from any settlements of white people. It is true, here were some of my own colour, yet they were strangers, and though friendly and hospitable, their manners and customs of living so different from what I had been accustomed to, administered but little to my consolation: some hundred miles yet to travel, the savage vindictive inhabitants lately ill-treated by the frontier Virginians, blood being spilt between them and the injury not yet wiped away by formal treaty; the Cherokees extremely jealous of white people travelling about their mountains, especially if they should be seen peeping in amongst the rocks or digging up their earth.
With no Indian guides forthcoming, Bartram “determined to set off alone and run all risks.”
Leaving Keowee, Bartram travelled west toward Georgia.
Traveling Upriver from Keowee
Years later, In 1788, Andre Michaux stopped near Keowee and did manage to secure a Cherokee guide before continued north along the river. The following entries from Michaux’s journal are translated from the French:
On December 6, 1788, I left for the mountains and I slept with my guide in an Indian village. The chief of the village greeted us courteously. He told us that his son, who was to return from the hunt that very evening, would lead us into the high hills to the sources of the Kiwi. But he did not return and this old man, who appeared to be about 70, offered to accompany me. This man had been born in a village near the sources of that river, he knew the mountains perfectly and I hoped that his son would not return. For supper he had us served fresh cooked deer meat and bread of corn meal mixed with sweet potatoes (Convolvulus batata). I ate with my guide who served me as an interpreter since he knew how to speak Indian. The chief ate with his wife on another bench. Then the mother of his wife and his two daughters, the one married and the younger one about 14 or 15, sat down around the pot in which they cooked the meat. These ladies were naked to the waist, each having no other garments than a single skirt.
On Sunday, December 7, the housewife roasted maize with hot ash sifted in an earthen pot. When it was a little more that half roasted it was taken off the fire where the mixed-in ashes went. It was then carried to the mortar and being crushed it was put into a fine sieve to separate the fine flour which was put into a sack as our provision. When someone is tired he puts about three spoonfulls into a vessel of water, and frequently adds some brown sugar or moist brown sugar. This also very pleasing tasty drink is a restorative which renews strength immediately. The Indians never go on a trip without a supply of this meal that they call. ..[Rokaharmony].
From 7:30 in the morning to 6 o'clock in the evening we marched about fourteen miles. We did not stop except for one hour for dinner. We camped on the banks of the Kiwi at the foot of hills among two genera of rhododendron, mountain laurel [with evergreen leaves], azalea [which sheds its leaves in winter], etc.
On December 8, 1788, as we were approaching the source of the Kiwi the paths became more difficult. Before arriving there I recognized the Magnolia montana which was named M. cordata or ariculata by Bartram. In this area there was a small hut inhabited by a family of Cherokee Indians. We stopped there to camp and I rushed to do some exploring.
Keowee River, ca. 1936
You would think December an odd time of year to go botanizing in the Southern Appalachians, but Michaux was here for more than watching wildflowers bloom. He was collecting plants to send back to France. Since he had already scouted the area in the summer of 1787, his winter visit was an opportunity to gather seeds and roots for propagation.
From "Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee" by S. B. Buckley in the American Journal of Science (1859)
The tedium of the night, when encamping on the mountains, is almost always enlivened by the stories of the guides and their adventures in hunting. They all positively assert that the bears in early spring, when first emerging from their winter quarters, are as fat as when they first retire for the winter.
The "original" Grizzly Adams and Ben, ca. 1860
During the winter they shed the soles of their feet, which renders their walking difficult in the first of spring, when their food consists of the young plants, on which diet they soon become lean, and remain so until the ripening of berries in August and September. They are very fond of hogs and pigs, pork and honey being their favorite diet. Why they bite and scratch the bark and limbs of the balsam and black spruce we cannot tell. It cannot be for food, because they do not generally leave the marks of their teeth on a tree, except in one or two places. Sometime they rise on their hind legs and make long deep scratches in the bark with their fore paws. It may be done for sport or to let their companions know their whereabouts. We have seen those fresh bites and scratches on different trees at all seasons of the year.
The bears show great sagacity in feeding at the leeward of the paths on the mountain ridges, along which the hunter is almost obliged to travel, hence if the wind blows it is almost impossible to get a shot at them, their keen scent discovering the hunter long before he gets within shooting distance. They are stupid and unwary about traps, entering without fear the log pens; these are shallow, with a depth of not more than two feet, over which is raised a very heavy top, which falls and crushes the bear when he disturbs the bait. Hundreds are caught in this manner every year.
In the unfrequented parts of the mountains the large steel trap is concealed in the bear trail; but this is dangerous, and liable to catch dogs, of which we saw two caught in one morning to our great sorrow. The piteous yells of those unfortunate dogs rang in our ears long afterwards. The bears rarely disturb calves or young cattle, but in one locality of the Smoky mountains we were told that they did much damage in killing young cattle, and that there could be no mistake about it, because a large bear had been caught in the act of killing a young steer.
The panther, wild cat, and wolf are all troublesome to the mountain farmer of those regions. The panther destroys sheep and hogs; the wild cat, lambs and pigs. Both are cowardly and thievish, being rarely seen.
