How the Natchez Found Refuge in the Mountains

 [Published February 1, 2018 in Smoky Mountain Living magazine.  One of the under-appreciated chapters of Southern Appalachia heritage and history is the presence of native people other than the Cherokee.]

Eight hundred years ago, across the southeastern region of North America, the great Mississippian civilization flourished. Artisans crafted stone and metal into objects of sublime beauty. Farmers grew vast fields of corn on the river bottomlands. Laborers raised up enormous flat-topped mounds, some as tall as 100 feet and with enough space at the top to accommodate a modern-day football field. On those mounds dwelt an elite caste of priests who ruled over their people in peace and war.

When Europeans arrived in the 1500s, the Mississippian world was already dwindling away. One likely cause was climate change:  the Little Ice Age began in the 1300s and continued through the 1700s. With cooler temperatures, crop yields suffered, upsetting every other aspect of life in the once-mighty Mississippian societies. 

Art was neglected. Fields went fallow. Vast plazas and mounds were deserted. Priests lost their power and prestige.

More than all the other descendants of the Mississippians, the Natchez kept the old traditions alive, well into the 18th century. The homeland of the Natchez was the lower Mississippi River Valley, where they observed an ancient caste system with a demigod called the Great Sun as their paramount leader.

The Spanish and the French colonizing the Gulf Coast targeted the Natchez for enslavement in the early 1700s, and for many years the Natchez skirmished with the French. The Great Sun died in 1728, and soon thereafter an uprising by the Natchez ended with their crushing defeat.

Driven from their homeland, remnant bands of survivors sought aid from the Creek, the Catawba and the Cherokee. One Natchez group settled among the Overhill Cherokee near the confluence of the Little Tennessee and Tellico rivers. Eventually, their village was called Natchey Town, and a nearby stream still bears the name Notchy Creek. 

Around 1740, the Natchez on the Little Tennessee crossed the mountains to the Hiwassee, near a Cherokee village and mound in Peachtree Valley, east of present-day Murphy, North Carolina. Cornelius Doherty, the first white trader among the Cherokees on the Hiwassee, encouraged them to take in the Natchez, explaining that even though they were small in number, their alliance would strengthen the Cherokee. The Natchez settled on the northern bank of the river directly across from a granite petroglyph depicting a horned serpent. The Cherokee name for the site was Gwalgahi, meaning “Frog Place.”ActiveCampaign

While the Cherokees welcomed their new neighbors, they did regard them as “a race of wizards and conjurers.” Known throughout the Southeast for their wealth of ritual knowledge, the Natchez were unrivalled as dance leaders. The sights and sounds of their ceremonial dances in the Peachtree Valley must have been unlike anything witnessed before or since in the southern mountains.  They preserved their unique culture by discouraging marriage outside the tribe, speaking their own language and holding their own councils.

The Natchez settlement on the Hiwassee continued until 1820, when the American Baptist Foreign Mission Board acquired the land for a mission, school and farm. To make way for the mission, the Natchez moved five miles southeast where they joined Cherokees residing on Brasstown Creek.

Though the Natchez integrated more fully into Cherokee society, they never completely abandoned their heritage. A woman named Alkini, of full Natchez blood, lived among the Cherokee until her death in 1895. She was remembered for speaking with a drawling tone that was distinctly Natchez.

Ties between the Natchez and the Cherokee extended beyond their living in close proximity. The renowned Cherokee statesman of the 18th century, Attakullakulla, lived for a while in Natchey Town on the Little Tennessee. He married Nionne Ollie, who was born Natchez, taken captive as a child, and adopted into the Cherokee tribe. Their son, Dragging Canoe (1738-1792) became a war chief of the Chickamauga Cherokee. His fiery defiance was the extreme opposite of his father’s cool diplomacy.

After the 1775 Treaty of Sycamore Shoals ceded a large tract of Cherokee land, and 65 years before the Trail of Tears, this offspring of a Natchez-born mother anticipated the future struggles of the Cherokee and the shared fate of the Natchez in their midst:

“We had hoped that the white men would not be willing to travel beyond the mountains. Now that hope is gone. They have passed the mountains, and have settled upon Cherokee land. When that is gained, the same encroaching spirit will lead them upon other land of the Cherokees, and the remnant of the people, once so great and formidable, will be compelled to seek refuge in some distant wilderness. Should we not therefore run all risks, and incur all consequences, rather than submit to further loss of our country? Such treaties may be alright for men who are too old to hunt or fight. As for me, I have my young warriors about me. We will hold our land.”

Neighbors on the Mountain

One evening last week, I stepped out my back door and noticed the leaves of a wild grape vine.   I stopped to take a closer look at various galls and damage to the leaves, where insects had been feeding.  

I turned over one leaf and noticed a tiny spider, Spintharus flavidus. 

Hello!

Their face-like abdomens are only about the size of a SESAME SEED, hence a bit of blur in the image. These beauties have the ability to adjust the color of their silk to enhance the effectiveness of their webs.  Given their diminutive size, it's a miracle I even saw them. 

The view out my window, some might assume, is a simple still life.  But, no, it is a busy thriving complicated community, a place of life-and-death dramas and colorful characters, like Spintharus flavidus.

From Arachnids of North Carolina

Spintharus are typically found in leaf litter or the undersides of leaves in low vegetation where they construct small and difficult to observe webs. These webs are simplified ‘H-webs’ (Levi, 1963a; Agnarsson, 2004) where the spider is in the middle facing down towards the gluey droplets at the base of the web. Agnarsson et al., 2018. From there, Spintharus monitors a pair of lines, and awaits potential prey's blundering into and becoming trapped by them.

"Longing for Freedom is a Mental Disorder" - Pt. I

 [From November 6, 2016 - Anticipating the Drapetomania Pandemic.]

“In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is...in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
- Theodore Dalrymple

“By now we are even unsure whether we have the right to talk about the events of our own lives.” 
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Despite the focus of the past few posts here, my recent ruminations have been framed in a much broader historical context than a single election cycle.  We probably overestimate the impact of electing one candidate over another.  Elections reveal culture as much or more than they change culture.  And so, the story to tell will not come to an end (or begin anew) after next Tuesday.

The dystopian present and future we face will not be averted by electing the “right” candidate.  Nevertheless, political theater does shed light on the deep dysfunction of our society and the threats that do exist.

So, I need to revisit HRC’s “basket of deplorables” quip, (for hopefully the last time): 

…what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that…. Now, some of those folks -- they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.

As revealed here a couple of days ago, it is almost certain that the Clinton speechwriters lifted the laundry list of deplorables from an enlightening article by James Simpson writing for Accuracy in Media, “Reds Exploiting Blacks – The Roots of the Black Lives Matter Movement.”

There is plenty of unfortunate name-calling across the political spectrum.  Rather than engaging in a legitimate debate over issues, it seems easier to discredit those who disagree.  From the Left, we’ve heard the endless repetition of "hate-filled," “bigot,” “racist,” or fill-in-the-blank “-ophobe” applied to anyone advocating an alternate approach to current problems. Hence, voicing concerns about the potential for terrorist infiltrators among Syrian refugees earns one the label “Islamophobic.”

As Stephen Paul Foster explains:

The strategy here is to turn all potential opposition on the right into Klansmen or Nazis, stereotyped creatures of low intelligence and primitive animosities.  People like this, of course, have no place on the political spectrum other than the far fringes where they can be alternately ridiculed or ignored, or perhaps even, punished….  

Foster goes on to suggest there is something more repressive to the “phobic” designations than mere insults:

This proliferation of “phobias” is by design of the left yet another way to marginalize people who disagree with them.  Phobias are a kind of mental illness, and hence irrational. Irrational people cannot be taken seriously except as threats to themselves or those around them.  

If you object to unrestricted immigration from the various hellholes across the world, you are a “xenophobe”.  

If you have a traditional view of marriage, you are a “homophobe”.  

If you think bringing a lot of young Muslim males into the country from places like Syria and Somalia is not a good idea you are “Islamophobic.”  

You do not argue, debate or reason with phobic people. You ignore them, or, if necessary, repress them.  They “thankfully” as Hillary said are “not America”, that is that social-political part of America where people get to compete in making their case for their beliefs and their way of life. 

By being “sick” in this intended psychiatric-phobic sense, a person loses the respect and consideration for his wishes and opinions and potentially even the legal protection of his freedom and property.  Refuse to sell a wedding cake to gay couple and see what happens. Don't want your daughters to share bathrooms and shower with guys who like to think they are girls?  This is just the beginning. 

In other words, "Basket of Deplorables" is more or less equivalent to "Looney Bin."

Of course, pathologizing dissent is not without precedent in American history.  But it is looking more and more like the old Soviet approach to political repression.  Sasha Shapiro, writing in Vestnik: TheJournal of Russian and Asian Studies, recounts that era:

  

The Marxist-Leninist understanding of consciousness allowed Soviet psychiatry to adopt the view that a healthy citizen was one who lived according to Soviet society's expectations and norms. Thus, if human consciousness is the affirmation and manifestation of social life (as Marx proposed) and simultaneously the reflection and creation of the objective world (as Lenin argued), then a political dissident is someone who rejects his objective social world and displays an incoherent understanding of his environment. Anti-Soviet behavior such as protesting Soviet laws and customs, attempting to travel abroad, or participating in human rights protests was taken to be symptomatic of mental illness….

Under Leonid Brezhnev's administration after 1964, psychiatry was harnessed as a tool for censorship to suppress dissent. Official records show that 20,000 citizens were hospitalized for political reasons, mainly on charges of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, and dissemination of fabrications with an aim to defame the Soviet political and social system. Most historians and scholars agree that this number is an underestimate on account of unreleased documentation.

Many of these hospitalizations happened quietly and quickly without attracting media attention and were justified by psychiatrists and high-level political officials in the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). In these cases, officials from the Ministry of Health were given direct orders from regional officials from the City Soviet to target certain individuals who had been marked by the KGB for certain anti-Soviet behavior.

Sidney Bloch and Peter Reddaway, after examining 200 such cases, developed a classification of the victims of Soviet psychiatric abuse. They were categorized as:

1. advocates of human rights or democratization;
2. nationalists;
3. would-be emigrants;
4. religious believers;
5. citizens inconvenient to the authorities.

In his 1970 open letter to the public entitled, This Is How We Live, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote: 

The incarceration of free thinking healthy people in madhouses is spiritual murder, it is a variation of the gas chamber, even more cruel; the torture of the people being killed is more malicious and more prolonged. Like the gas chambers, these crimes will never be forgotten and those involved in them will be condemned for all time during their life and after their death.

At this point, I have about forty pages of notes to distill into a discussion of the current pseudo-science of psychiatry and its manipulation for political purposes in the United States. This has been a problem of no small concern to individuals on both the political right and left.  Suffice it to say that, in the near future, a cunning political operative can avoid the discomfort of attempting to outlaw “homophobia” or “Islamophobia” or “you name it” by having those “conditions” treated as “psychological disorders requiring treatment.” 

And even when powers-that-be stop short of incarcerating "free-thinking healthy people in madhouses" we've seen plenty of other more nuanced measures to pressure and inhibit and silence individuals - to strip them of their freedom, little by little.

And here is what I find most objectionable about political correctness, just how insidious and coercive it has become throughout our society.  Again, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

“If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?”

Our increasingly Orwellian society will be addressed in future posts.  The PC police are not the only agents of rampant dehumanization, but their role in that process is undeniable.  

For now, it might be helpful to revisit a chapter from early American history demonstrating the misuse of psychology for political ends. When I first encountered “drapetomania” I thought I had stumbled upon some clever satire.  But no, this really happened.  David Pilgrim, curator of the Jim Crow Museum, tells the story:

In May, 1851, Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, a Louisiana physician, published a paper entitled, "Report On The Diseases and Physical Peculiarities Of The Negro race." The paper appeared in The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, a reputable scholarly publication. Cartwright claimed to have discovered two new diseases peculiar to Blacks that he believed justified enslavement as a therapeutic necessity for the slaves and as a medical and moral responsibility for their White masters. He claimed that Blacks who fled slavery suffered from drapetomania. In his words:

"Drapetomania is from draptise. A runaway slave is mania mad or crazy. It is unknown to our medical authorities, although its diagnostic symptoms be absconding from service, is well known to our planters and overseers. In noticing a disease that, therefore, is hitherto classed among the long list of maladies that man is subject to, it was necessary to have a new term to express it. The cause in most cases that induces the Negro to run away from service is as much a disease of the mind as any other species of mental alienation, and much more curable as a general rule. With the advantages of proper medical advice strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented, although the slaves are located on the borders of a free state within a stone's throw of abolitionists."

It was common in the 1840s and 1850s for proslavery advocates to claim that Blacks benefited from being enslaved to Whites. For Cartwright, and other proslavery defenders, any Black slave who tried to escape must be "crazy." The "uncontrollable urge" to run away was a symptom of the mental disorder. Later, Cartwright would argue that drapetomania could be prevented by "beating the devil out of them." Amputation of the toes was also suggested.

Cartwright also described another mental disorder, Dysaethesia Aethiopica, to explain the apparent lack of work ethic exhibited by many slaves. The diagnosable symptoms included disobedience, insolence, and refusing to work -- and physical lesions. What treatment did Cartwright suggest? "Put the patient to some hard kind of work in the open air and sunshine," under the watchful eye of a White man.

Parallels to today’s plantation of Political Correctness should be obvious to any thinking person. 

The War on Beauty

 Brilliant analysis from Julia James Davis.  Fabulous channel.

Exploring the Past on Courthouse Hill

My path to retrieving a timely document from long ago took an unexpected detour and I discovered more than I expected:

But first, some background is needed.



The old Jackson County Courthouse in Sylva, North Carolina is touted as the most photographed courthouse in North Carolina. And I can believe that.

I’ve photographed it many times myself. And I’ve gathered vintage postcards featuring the structure.

Having resided in the Cullowhee Valley and Cowee Mountains for “several” decades I suppose I’ve SEEN the courthouse thousands of times, though mostly in my rear-view mirror. And it will continue that way until the highway engineers finally devise a plan to have the one-way stretch of Main Street run TOWARD, rather than AWAY FROM, the attractive historical building.

The star of the scene, however, must be the long, long stairway ascending from the fountain on Main Street. I remember driving , and even walking, to the top of the hill to find the courtroom, or Clerk of Court, Register of Deeds, Sheriff’s Department, County Jail, Employment Security and several other government departments as I recall.

Local government back then looked a little dilapidated and penurious, especially compared to today’s burgeoning facilities.





When first I came to Sylva, the stairway on that hill brought to mind the Laurel and Hardy movie where the duo struggles to move a crated piano up a precipitous flight of stairs, at great peril to themselves, innocent bystanders and the musical instrument itself.

That is not what I intended to write about although I have more to add on the subject...eventually.

What I intended to write about was a speech delivered atop the courthouse stairway on Sept 18, 1915.




On that date, General Theodore F. Davidson addressed those who had gathered for the dedication of the Confederate Soldiers Monument. 

Why bring up that event now?

Because the monument at the center of that 1915 ceremony, returned to the top of the local news this week. To recap as succinctly as possible:

1915 - The monument, topped with a statue of a Confederate soldier, was installed and dedicated

2020 – Activists mobilized to demand the removal of the Confederate Soldiers Monument

2021 – After deliberation by the Jackson County Board of Commissioners, the monument and statue remained. New bronze plaques were attached to the sides of the monument, covering the original inscriptions.

2025 – The current Jackson Commissioners ordered removal of the bronze plaques, restoring the monument to its original appearance. In response, activists have renewed their calls to remove the monument.

That is where we are as of this week.

A lot of ink has been spilled on the controversy, on the origins of the monument and the alleged intent of its builders. So, I will limit myself to adding just ONE obscure document to flesh out the story.

Several years ago, knowing that the dedication of the monument was such a Big Deal in 1915, I suspected and hoped that the text of the keynote speech had survived somewhere. And, EUREKA!, much of the speech is included in an article published the following day in the Asheville Citizen-Times newspaper, reprinted in its entirety herein.

But, let’s return for a moment to my distracted musings over mental images of Laurel and Hardy on the steps of Courthouse Hill.

It is no wonder that “The Music Box” released in 1932, was etched in my memory. It earned the first Academy Award ever presented for Best Live Action Short (Comedy) and it is included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. And some critics suggest it is the most iconic of Laurel and Hardy’s movies.  Click here to watch the complete movie.

No, it wasn’t filmed in Sylva. The actual filming location, including the stairway, remains intact in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles. The famous stairway consisted of 133 steps, 26 more than 107 steps connecting Sylva’s Main Street and Old Courthouse. Tourists still delight in finding the stairs made famous in a classic comedy, marked now by a commemorative plaque.

Onward, at last, to the original point of this mission. General Theodore F. Davidson delivered the speech. He was a leader in business, politics and other civic endeavors in Western North Carolina and his comments came 50 years after the end of the War. I wish I could have been there to hear General Davidson’s lofty oratory. I wished I could have joined in their picnic. And I wonder if they brought plenty of fried chicken, potato salad and banana puddin’.


General Theodore F. Davidson

For the rest of this installment let’s turn the spotlight to the General and his eloquent remarks at the monument dedication:

Asheville Citizen-Times, September 19, 1915

Jackson County’s Monument to Confederates is Unveiled – Impressive Ceremonies Mark the Unveiling of Beautiful Memorial at Sylva – General T. F. Davidson of Asheville, Speaker of the Day

Speaking to the large audience which filled every seat of the big auditorium, General Davidson paid a splendid tribute to the North Carolina mountaineer solder, who with little or no interest in negro slavery, fought, the speaker declared, for the great foundational principle of the God-given right of every people to regulate the form of government under which they are to live. He spoke in part as follows:

Comrades, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Love of country, veneration for the memory and pride in the valor and achievements of ancestors, have ever been the distinguishing characteristic of great peoples, and have been the inspiration of their statesmen and warriors, their painters and sculptors, and the themes of their historians, poets and orators.

All history is the record of the possession and exercise, or the lack of these virtues; civilization has no monopoly of them; the painted savage, chanting the weird death song over the body of his dead chieftain, obeys and expressed the same impulse and emotions that tuned the harps of Homer and Scott, and inspired the pens of Herodotus, Tacitus, Hume and Macauley.

Unhappy must be the lot and contemptible the character of that people, if such there be, in whose souls these sentiments have no place. We feel their inspiration today as we come together, not to recall, for that would assume we had forgotten, or were in danger of forgetting, but to dedicate this beautiful monument and consecrate this spot to the memory of the men and the events of fifty years ago, when our fathers and brothers and comrades, the flower of the manhood of the age, made the most heroic struggle and exhibited the most illustrious qualities, courage, endurance, fidelity, devotion, for which history has no parallel. Most of them have crossed over the river, and “sleep the sleep that knows no breaking,” but thank God, their memories shall never perish from the face of the earth.

How the Confederate soldier fought is known to all men. In every capital, and every city of the south there stand beautiful and costly monuments with eloquent tributes to the valor of the Confederate soldier: in hundreds of cemeteries from the Potomac to the Rio Grande there are countless tombstones and tablets – many, many with the sad word, “unknown,” the only epitaph, with tender inscriptions voicing the love and loyalty of the southern people.

In every public library and museum, and in a great many private collections, there are stored hundreds and thousands of books, pamphlets and manuscripts collected, prepared, edited, preserved and printed, solely with the purpose of transmitting to future ages a true history of the exploits and renown of the Confederate soldier. The record is made; upon it we take our stand; and with heads erect, look in the face of the future, and like our first parents in their original purity in the Garden of Eden, we are not ashamed.

But why they fought, it is vital should be kept constantly prominent. In our natural anxiety to preserve stainless the conduct of the Confederate soldier on the field and the southern people under the varying conditions, civil and military, of that long struggle. I have sometimes thought it might be we would overlook, or not sufficiently appreciate the great principles which lay at the foundation of the contest, and which were so closely involved.

It is a painful reflection that there is among our people, of all classes, especially among that portion which must soon assume the political and social duties and responsibilities of the country, so little inclination to acquire knowledge of the fundamental principles, or even of the practical workings of our system of government, state and national.

This general indifference, or ignorance of these vital questions is most deplorable and dangerous. May I venture to suggest to the excellent and devoted men and women in charge of the education, public and private, of our youth, that much of responsibility for this state of things might be brought to their doors, or rather to the doors of the modern systems of education they have adopted in their solicitude to keep abreast with what some call the “advanced methods” of the day?

It may be all right to teach the boy who is soon to be a man and citizen, and as such a factor of more or less influence in governing the state, where his liver is located, and what food and drink will best suit it; and perhaps the art of reading before learning the alphabet, or how to spell may be desirable, but it surely would not detract from the intellectual or utilitarian value of our schools should they give a small portion of each day to instruction upon the simple principles of government. These principles teach us in every hour of our lives, our happiness and prosperity depend upon them, and yet, I doubt if there are half a dozen schools, including our higher institutions, where the constitution of our state, of our republic, finds a place in the curriculum.

Let us hope that there will be some improvement in this direction. And I venture to take the liberty of urging upon all my fellow-citizens the importance, nay the solemn duty of giving greater consideration to these topics, for if they sincerely desire to be useful citizens, such knowledge is absolutely essential; and if they desire, as I have no doubt they do, to preserve untarnished the record of the Confederate soldier, they will find his greatest vindication in a true understanding of the great natural and constitutional questions for which he went to war.

A Troubadour Tramps Through the Mountains (Part 3 of 3)

 XIII

Croquet on the garden terrace, Biltmore Estate, May 1906

Vachel Lindsay departed from the House of the Magic Loom and crossed Mount Toxaway en route to Asheville. In his diary, he recorded:

If I cannot beat the system I can die protesting, I can give things away and keep ragged. Count that day wasted in which you are not giving away the work of your hands.

In A Handy Guide for Beggars, Vachel Lindsay recalled that same morning in early May 1906:

All through the country there had been that night what is called a black frost. By the roadside it was deep and white as the wool on a sheep. But it left things blighted and black, and destroyed the chances of the fruit-bearing trees. All the way to Mount Toxaway I met scattered mourners of the ill-timed visitation.

After he arrived in Asheville, Lindsay visited the Biltmore Estate, where his studies in architecture and gardening came into play. As was his style, he described the spring verdure of Biltmore as being “like the Dutch Gardens, like Lord Bacon’s garden, like the Italian terraces.”

Vachel remembered one Asheville encounter as “A Not Very Tragic Relapse into the Toils of the World, and of Finance.” I don’t know the identity of the potential benefactor, (perhaps it was Asheville YMCA General Secretary Mr. O.B. Van Horn) but Vachel’s account of the meeting is hilarious:

Having been properly treated as a bunco man by systematic piety in a certain city further south, I had double-barrelled special recommendations sent to a lofty benevolence in Asheville, from a religious leader of New York, the before-mentioned Charles F. Powlison.*

It was with confidence that I bade good-by to the chicken-merchant who drove me into the city. I entered the office of the blackcoated, semi-clerical gentleman who had received the Powlison indorsements. My stick pounded his floor. The heels of my brogans made the place resound. But he gave all official privileges. He received me with the fine manly handclasp, the glitter of teeth, the pat on the back. He insisted I use the shower bath, writing room, reading table. Then I suggested a conference among a dozen of his devouter workers on the relation of the sense of Beauty to their present notion of Christianity or, if he preferred, a talk on some aspect of art to a larger group.


Biltmore Farm Village, 1906

He took me into his office. He shut the door. He was haughty. He made me haughty. I give the conversation as it struck me. He probably said some smart things I do not recall. But I remember all the smart things I said.

He denounced labor agitators in plain words. I agreed. I belonged to the brotherhood of those who loaf and invite their souls.

He spoke of anarchy. I maintained that I loved the law.

He very clearly, and at length, assaulted Single Tax. I knew nothing then of Single Tax, and thanked him for light.

He denounced Socialism. Knowing little about Socialism at that time, I denounced it also, having just been converted to individualism by a man in Highlands.

The religious leader spoke of his long experience with bunco men. I insisted I wanted not a cent from him, I was there to do him good.

I had letters of introduction to two men in the city; one of them, an active worker in the organization, had already been in to identify me. A third man was coming to climb Mount Mitchell with me.

Edith Vanderbilt on the French Broad ferry, 1906

He doubted that I was a bona fide worker in his organization. Then came my only long speech. We will omit the speech. But he began to see light. He took a fresh grip on his argument.

He said: "There is a man here in Asheville I see snooping around with a tin box and a butterfly net. They call him the state something-ologist. He goes around and — and — hunts bugs. But do you want to know what I think of a crank like that?" I wanted to know. He told me.

"But," I objected, "I am not a scientist. I am an art student."

He expressed an interest in art. He gave a pious and proper view of the nude in art. It took some time. It was the sort of chilly, cautious talk that could not possibly bring a blush to the cheek of ignorance. I assured him his decorous concessions were unnecessary. I was not expounding the nude.

There was an artist here, and Asheville needed no further instruction of the kind, he maintained. The gentleman had won some blue ribbons in Europe. He painted a big picture (dimensions were given) and sold it for thousands (price was given).

"He is holding the next one, two feet longer each way, for double the money."

I told him if he felt there was enough art in Asheville, we might do something to popularize the poets.

In reply he talked about literary cranks. He spoke of how Thoreau, with his long hair and ugly looks, frightened strangers who suddenly met him in the woods. I thanked him for light on Thoreau. . . . But he had to admit that my hair was short.

Biltmore Village, 1906

He suspected I was neither artist nor literary man. I assured him my friends were often of the same opinion.

"But," he said bitterly, "do you know sir, by the tone of letters I received from Mr. Powlison I expected to assemble the wealth and fashion of Asheville to hear you. I expected to see you first in your private car, wearing a dress-suit."

I answered sternly, "Art, my friend, does not travel in a Pullman."

He threw off all restraint. "Old shoes," he said, " old shoes." He pointed at them.

"I have walked two hundred miles among the moonshiners. They wear brogans like these." But his manner plainly said that his organization did not need cranks climbing over the mountains to tell them things.

"Your New York letter did not say you were walking. It said you ' would arrive.'"

He began to point again. "Frayed trousers! And the lining of your coat in rags!"

"I took the lining of the coat for necessary patches."

"A blue bandanna round your neck!"

"To protect me from sunburn."

He rose and hit the table. "And no collar!"

"Oh yes, I have a collar." I drew it from my hip pocket. It had had a two hundred mile ride, and needed a bath.

"I should like to have it laundered, but I haven't the money."

"Get the money."

"No," I said, "but I will get a collar."

- - -

*Charles F. Powlison was, at that time, with the Young Men’s Christian Association, and eventually went on to become General Secretary of the National Child Welfare Association. Powlison’s name popped up in a New York Times story, published just two months prior to Vachel Lindsay’s Asheville visit. Apparently, an incident amidst a crowd lined up for a Mark Twain lecture at the West Side YMCA ended with charges of police brutality. There’s a great line in the story:

Mark Twain was introduced as a man "well worth being clubbed to hear."


Mark Twain, ca. 1906

What the heck, here’s the whole thing:

The New York Times, March 5, 1906
POLICE HUSTLE CROWD AWAITING MARK TWAIN
Bungle at the Majestic Theatre Angers Y. M. C. A. Men.
WOULDN'T OPEN THE DOORS
Mr. Clemens Gives Some Advice About the Treatment of Corporations and Talks About Gentlemen.

Members of he West Side Branch of the Young Men's Christian Association found that entering the Majestic Theatre yesterday afternoon to hear an address by Mark Twain had a close resemblance to a football match. No one was injured, but for a few minutes the police were hustling the crowd backward and forward by sheer force, a mounted man was sent to push his way through the thickest of the press and the jam was perilous.

The doors of the theatre should have been opened at 3 o'clock, and about three hundred persons were there at that time. It was an orderly crowd of young men with a sprinkling of elderly ones, but Capt. Daly of the West Forty-seventy Street Station would not allow them to be admitted until he has summoned the reserves. It took twenty minutes for these to arrive and every moment the crush grew greater. Still there was no disorder and the police as they formed into line had to face nothing more dangerous than a little good-humored chaff.

The crowd was ranged in a rough column facing the main doors of the lobby. The Young Men's Christian Association authorities came out several times and asked the Captain to allow the doors to be opened.

"If you do it, I'll take away my men and there'll be a lot of people hurt or killed," he replied. "I know how to handle crowds."

Then he proceeded to handle the crowds. He tried to swing the long solid line up against the southwestern side of Columbus Circle and force them in by the side entrance of the lobby, instead of the one they faced. First he sent a mounted man right through the column. The patrolmen followed and in a moment the orderly gathering was hustled and thrust in all directions.

Capt. Daly's next maneuver was to open the side door. The crowd surged up, but he had them pushed back, and closed the door again. The crowd was utterly bewildered. Then the Young Men's Christian Association authorities opened one-half of the door on their own responsibility. Through this narrow passage the crowd squeezed. The plate glass in the half that was closed was shattered to atoms, and the men surged forward. A few coats were torn, but in spite of the way in which they had been handled everybody kept his temper. If there had been any disorderly element present nothing could have avoided serious accidents. In the end all but 500 gained admission.

Hold Police Responsible.

At the opening of the meeting, the Rev. Dr. Charles P. Fagnani, the Chairman, said: "The management desires to disclaim all responsibility for what has happened. [Cheers.] The matter was taken out of their hands by the police. [Hisses.] You have been accustomed long enough to being brutally treated by the police, and I do not see why you should mind it. [A voice: "You're right."] Some day you will take matters into your own hands and will decide that the police shall be the servants of the citizens."

At the end of the meeting, Charles F. Powlison, Secretary of the West Side Branch, stated he had been asked to submit a resolution condemning the action of the police, but it had been decided it was better not to do so.

Mark Twain was introduced as a man "well worth being clubbed to hear." He was greeted with a storm of applause that lasted over a minute.

"I thank you for this signal recognition of merit," he said. "I have been listening to what has been said about citizenship. You complain of the police. You created the police. You are responsible for the police. They must reflect you, their masters. Consider that before you blame them.

"Citizenship is of the first importance in a land where a body of citizens can change the whole atmosphere of politics, as has been done in Philadelphia. There is less graft there than there used to be. I was going to move to Philadelphia, but it is no place for enterprise now.

"Dr. Russell spoke of organization. I was an organization myself once for twelve hours, and accomplished things I could never have done otherwise. When they say 'Step lively,' remember it is not an insult from a conductor to you personally, but from the President of the road to you, an embodiment of American citizenship. When the insult is flung at your old mother and father, it shows the meanness of the omnipotent President, who could stop it if he would.

Mark Twain Got the Stateroom.

"I was an organization once. I was traveling from Chicago with my publisher and stenographer - I always travel with a bodyguard - and engaged a stateroom on a certain train. For above all its other conveniences, the stateroom gives the privilege of smoking. When we arrived at the station the conductor told us he was sorry the car with our stateroom was left off. I said: 'You are under contract to furnish a stateroom on this train. I am in no hurry. I can stay here a week at the road's expense. It'll have to pay my expenses and a little over.'

"Then the conductor called a grandee, and, after some argument, he went and bundled some meek people out of the stateroom, told them something not strictly true, and gave it to me. About 11 o'clock the conductor looked in on me, and was very kind and winning. He told me he knew my father-in-law - it was much more respectable to know my father-in-law than me in those days. Then he developed his game. He was very sorry the car was only going to Harrisburg. They had telegraphed to Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and couldn't get another car. He threw himself on my mercy. But to him I only replied:

“Then you had better buy the car.'

"I had forgotten all about this, when some time after Mr. Thomson of the Pennsylvania heard I was going to Chicago again and wired:

" 'I am sending my private car. Clemens cannot ride on an ordinary car. He costs too much.' "

Definition of a Gentleman.

Mark Twain went on to speak of the man who left $10,000 to disseminate his definition of a gentleman. He denied that he had ever defined one, but said if he did he would include the mercifulness, fidelity, and justice the Scripture read at the meeting spoke of. He produced a letter from William Dean Howells, and said:

"He writes he is just 69, but I have known him longer than that. 'I was born to be afraid of dying, not of getting old,' he says. Well, I'm the other way. It's terrible getting old. You gradually lose things, and become troublesome. People try to make you think you are not. But I know I'm troublesome.

"Then he says no part of life is so enjoyable as the eighth decade. That's true. I've just turned into it, and I enjoy it very much. 'If old men were not so ridiculous,' why didn't he speak for himself? 'But,' he goes on, 'they are ridiculous, and they are ugly.' I never saw a letter with so many errors in it. Ugly! I was never ugly in my life! Forty years ago I was not so good-looking. A looking glass then lasted me three months. Now I can wear it out in two days.

" 'You've been up in Hartford burying poor old Patrick. I suppose he was old, too,' says Howells. No, he was not old. Patrick came to us thirty-six years ago - a brisk, lithe young Irishman. He was as beautiful in his graces as he was in his spirit, and he was as honest a man as ever lived. For twenty-five years he was our coachman, and if I were going to describe a gentleman in detail I would describe Patrick.

"At my own request I was his pall bearer with our old gardener. He drove me and my bride so long ago. As the little children came along he drove them, too. He was all the world to them, and for all in my house he had the same feelings of honor, honesty, and affection.

"He was 60 years old, ten years younger than I. Howells suggests he was old. He was not so old. He had the same gracious and winning ways to the end. Patrick was a gentleman, and to him I would apply the lines:

So may I be courteous to men, faithful to friends, True to my God, a fragrance to the path I trod.

When inquiries were made last night at the West Side Branch as to whether a complaint of the action of the police would be made by the association to Commissioner Bingham, it was said to be improbably that any official action would be taken.

XIV

I liked the concept of Chautauqua as soon as I heard about it many years ago. What’s not to like about a festival of the arts, sciences, philosophy and public affairs…from low-brow to high-brow and everything in between? President Theodore Roosevelt called Chautauqua "the most American thing in America."

The original summer assembly of adult education and recreation began in the little town of Chautauqua, New York in 1874. In 1904, traveling “Circuit Chautauquas” spun off from the assembly format, featuring many of the same lecturers and orators. Chautauqua, both itinerant and at fixed locations, remained popular for several decades.

Vachel Lindsay crossed paths with one Chautauqua lecturer during his brief time in Asheville:

I looked up a scholar from Yale, Yutaka Minakuchi, friend of old friends, student of philosophy, in which he instructed me much, first lending me a collar. He became my host in Asheville. It needs no words of mine to enhance the fame of Japanese hospitality. . . .

Three years earlier, the Cincinnati Post reported on Minakuchi’s wedding to a Kentucky socialite:

As the bride of Yutaka Minakuchi, one of Kentucky’s belles will be borne away across the blue Pacific to the tea gardens and rice fields of quaint Japan. An American girl of wealth, rare beauty and accomplishments, will bid adieu to a reign among Blue Grass belles and beaux to go far across the water, where jinricksha men, sandaled and straw-clad, replace the fast lythe trotter, and where tea gardens and Buddhist temples line the roads instead of tobacco barns and little red brick churches.

But this does not mean that Miss Olivia Buckner is going to live in a new religion, as well as a new environment, for her husband-to-be is a minister of the gospel, although he is a wealthy Japanese of partly royal blood. Yataka Minakuchi needs only the title of Ph. D. to make him satisfied with his studies in America, and he is going to get that at Harvard after his honeymoon trip. Then he and his fair-skinned bride are going to visit Japan and give the Oriental girls something to gossip about behind their fans, just as the young bloods around Lexington and Paris, Ky., are now discussing the success of their Japanese rival.

He has traveled extensively and before coming to this country to enter college he spent two years at St. Petersburg with his uncle, who was a Japanese minister to Russia. He speaks fluently in five languages, but most effectively, it seems, the language of love.

Journalism ain't what it used to be, eh?

Yutaka and Olivia resided at 77 Montford while he served a congregation in Asheville and maintained a busy schedule as a traveling lecturer. One evangelist endorsed Minakuchi as a stirring orator and philosopher:

He is a clean, strong, magnetic young chap of great intellectual power, and a speaker of tremendous ability. He captures the people wherever he goes. Though a Japanese, he has spent most of his life in America. If you want a “hummer,” get the American Jap. He is in a class all by himself.



One of Minakuchi's popular lectures was “The Border Land,” in which he discussed:

...certain contributions which the eastern and western civilizations have made toward world progress. An effort will be made to find the “border land” – the place of reconciliation between these two seemingly opposed civilizations.

Minakuchi’s career came crashing to an end during World War II. On March 24, 1942, the Associated Press reported:

Held for investigation to determine whether, as an enemy alien, he was "dangerous to the peace and security of the United States," the Rev. Yutaka Minakuchi, 63-year-old Congregational minister and former Chautauqua lecturer, was accused today of being in the pay of the Japanese Consulate.

A recent radio program on wartime internments of Japanese residents mentioned Minakuchi:

The fact that he was getting a stipend from Japan and had been ever since he had left his job in Peacham as the minister where he had been for ten years - people really latched onto that as proof that he must be a spy. And there had been a lot of talk that he was sending coded messages from a radio and there was an antenna up in back of their home in Glover. And it was true that there was a radio, but they searched for the antenna and never found anything like that.

After the war Minakuchi found work in New York and Pennsylvania as a butler, with [his second wife] Nellie as housekeeper. When it was finally legal for him to do so, he became a naturalized citizen. After Nellie's death, he returned to Vermont, where he died one year before President Gerald Ford apologized and rescinded Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, calling for wartime internments.

.

Much more on the life of Yutaka Minakuchi and his experiences during World War II:
http://www.vpr.net/community/vermont_reads/files/minakuchinewsletter.pdf

XV

Just this time, I'm jumping ahead to Vachel Lindsay's travels in Tennessee. This is why I like him. From A Handy Guide for Beggars:

The Tailor And The Florist

Now the story begins all over again with the episode of the well-known tailor and the unknown florist. Just off the main street of Greenville, Tennessee, there is a log cabin with the century old inscription, Andrew Johnson, Tailor. That sign is the fittest monument to the indomitable but dubious man who could not cut the mantle of the railsplitter to fit him.

I was told by the citizens of Greenville that there was a monument to their hero on the hill. So I climbed up. It was indeed wonderful — a weird straddling archway, supporting an obelisk. The archway also upheld two flaming funeral urns with buzzard contours, and a stone eagle preparing to screech. There was a dog-eared scroll inscribed, "His faith in the people never wavered." Around all was, most appropriately, a spiked fence.

But I was glad I came, because near the Tailor's resting-place was a Florist's grave, on which depends the rest of this adventure, and which reaches back to the beginning of it. It had a wooden headstone, marked "John Kenton of Flagpond, Florist. 1870-1900." And in testimony to his occupation, a great rosebush almost hid the inscription. Any man who could undertake to sell flowers in Flagpond might have it said of him also, "His faith in the people never wavered."

XVI

This virtual walk through the southern mountains with Vachel Lindsay has taken several weeks longer than his actual walk in the spring of 1906. So be it.



There's more to go. Two more (?) installments after this one, including a PERFORMANCE by the troubadour himself.

From Vachel Lindsay, A Poet in America, by Edgar Lee Masters:

The first day out of Asheville he made twenty miles. He was now penniless. A man was willing to give him lodging for the night for thirty cents. Lindsay substituted his shirt and collar for the money, much to the host’s disgust, who was a silent man ruling a grim household. He was partially deaf and could not read. Lindsay was bedded with a crippled child. That evening Lindsay read “The Tree of Laughing Bells,” being compelled to trumpet into the ear of this dour North Carolinian. The diary now reads, “Hospitality now wanes, and I am far from home. I do not seem to have any fight in me today. Five dollars in my pocket would give me all the nerve in the world.” Where was the soul of Johnny Appleseed at this hour? Were there not the stars to sleep under in this May of North Carolina?

The diary now shows how far he was from the full philosophy of the road: “My book must have a few dreadfully cynical poems about money, dedicated to the merchants of the world. I must say, Brothers, though I have rebelled, I must acknowledge sometimes that there are a few things more honest than a trade. The soul is so seldom its high self in extremity that it cannot emanate enough spiritual glory to give a fair exchange, even for a night’s lodging, and we must get back to a money basis…

He now encountered a Negro preacher with whom he walked for many miles. Coming to Little Creek, Madison County, North Carolina, he was a quarter of a mile from the ridge of Ball Mountain. Here he received hospitality from a generous woman who gave him corn bread, beans, and buttermilk. She looked like the cartoon of a peasant in Simplicissimus, and played the banjo famously; while a sister naemd Diana danced in plough-shoes and red stockings, with her waist half open at the throat, around which was tied a blue handkerchief. This hostess was managing the little farm alone, her husband being in prison for moonshining.

She glad to have “The Tree of the Laughing Bells.” Look how quickly the temperamental spirits of Lindsay were raised! “As far as the raw material of womanhood in concerned I could love her forever,” was his tribute to Diana. “The hills have done wonders for me.” And he set forth again with “visions of brown-eyed womanhood to make me forget the perils of the way. Farewell to the fairest of all North Carolina. Biltmore and all its glories is not arrayed like the tigress who toils with the hoe because her husband is in state’s prison”; misdefended, the tigress had confided to the poet, by a lawyer named Lindsay...

XVII

I came along several years too late to know my great-grandfather. He lived among fellow descendants of German immigrants whose neatly-kept farms added beauty to the rolling hills of the Southern Piedmont. He worked as a miller until the day the gypsies came.



They robbed him, beat him, and left him for dead by the millrace. Somehow, he survived the attack, but he never fully recovered. To be precise, the "gypsies" were likely “Irish Travelers” from a group that had settled in the South fifty years earlier. They would fan out across the countryside every spring, trading horses and mules and finding other, often questionable, ways to make a living.

In May of 1906, after he had crossed the mountains from North Carolina into Tennessee, Vachel Lindsay crossed paths with gypsies, but his meeting had a more satisfactory outcome.



According to his biographer Edgar Lee Masters, Lindsay neared Greenville, Tennesee and was received into a store in the midst of wheat fields where he spent the night:

Across the way from the store was a camp of gypsies, “Who live better and cleaner than any people since Asheville.” The gypsies asked many questions and told him that he was entering the land of hospitality. Along the way now through the valleys were numerous snakes; but there were many rose bushes in luxuriant bloom in the pretty yards of the farmers.



Though he declined an offer to join the gypsies, the encounter inspired Lindsay to compose a bit of verse:

THE TRAMP'S REFUSAL
On Being Asked by a Beautiful Gipsy
to Join her Group of Strolling Players.

Lady, I cannot act, though I admire
God's great chameleons, Booth-Barret men.
But when the trees are green, my thoughts may be
October-red. December comes again
And snowy Christmas there within my breast
Though I be walking in the August dust.


Often my lone contrary sword is bright
When every other soldier's sword is rust.
Sometimes, while churchly friends go up to God
On wings of prayer to altars of delight
I walk and talk with Satan, call him friend,
And greet the imps with converse most polite.


When hunger nips me, then at once I knock
At the near farmer's door and ask for bread.
I must, when I have wrought a curious song
Pin down some stranger till the thing is read.
When weeds choke up within, then look to me
To show the world the manners of a weed.


I cannot change my cloak except my heart
Has changed and set the fashion for the deed.
When love betrays me I go forth to tell
The first kind gossip that too-patent fact.
I cannot pose at hunger, love or shame.
It plagues me not to say: "I cannot act."


I only mourn that this unharnessed me
Walks with the devil far too much each day.
I would be chained to angel-kings of fire.
And whipped and driven up the heavenly way.

XVIII

In 1931, the makers of Lysol promoted its effectiveness as a douche.



Some Lysol customers had already discovered its usefulness as a contraceptive.

On December 5, 1931, Vachel Lindsay found one more use for Lysol. Declaring victory, “They tried to get me - I got them first!” he drank a bottle of the disinfectant and died.

His longtime friend, Sara Teasdale, remembered him in verse:

In Memory of Vachel Lindsay

“Deep in the ages”, you said, “deep in the ages,”
And, “To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name.”
You are deep in the ages, now, deep in the ages,
You whom the world could not break, nor the years tame.

Fly out, fly on, eagle that is not forgotten,
Fly straight to the innermost light, you who loved sun in your eyes,
Free of the fret, free of the weight of living,
Bravest among the brave, gayest among the wise.

Fourteen months after Vachel’s death, Sara herself committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills.

Weeks ago, I mentioned Vachel Lindsay’s “chanted” or “sung” poetry. I knew there wasn’t much point in my attempting to describe his unique style. But hearing is believing and I have managed to piece together some actual recordings of his performance of “The Congo.” This was recorded shortly before his death:



Many years later, Robert Frost reflected on Vachel Lindsay:

I was as happy about Vachel as we jealous poets, artists can be, you know. He was one I could be happy about. . . . Vachel was one of these disarming people, very good boy, and one of the real kind of genius, you can call it, you can say there was [something] a little strange about him, lofty, and he did some very crazy things and he knew how to do them without trying. Some of these poets seem to get in a corner and gnaw their fingernails and try to get a dark corner, you know, and try to go crazy so they will qualify. There's none of that in Vachel. He was just crazy in his own right; he did some of the strangest things.

During the Beat Era, Allen Ginsberg wrote a poem inspired by the troubadour:

TO LINDSAY

Vachel, the stars are out
dusk has fallen on the Colorado road
a car crawls slowly across the plain
in the dim light the radio blares its jazz
the heartbroken salesman lights another cigarette
In another city 27 years ago
I see your shadow on the wall
you're sitting in your suspenders on the bed
the shadow hand lifts up a Lysol bottle to your head
your shade falls over on the floor

I don’t know any clever or profound way to sum up this series about Vachel Lindsay and the spring days he spent wandering the mountains of Western North Carolina. Wallace Stevens said, “Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right.”

Regardless of the literary merit of the verse left by Vachel Lindsay (or the lack thereof), his walk through the mountains was a valiant effort by one brave soul to “get the world right.”

And that is reason enough to remember Vachel Lindsay.

.

I already posted this video, but it bears repeating. One of Sara Teasdale's last poems has been adapted as an a cappella choral composition by Frank Ticheli (b. 1958):

THERE WILL BE REST
by Sara Teasdale

There will be rest, and sure stars shining
Over the roof-tops crowned with snow,
A reign of rest, serene forgetting,
The music of stillness holy and low.
I will make this world of my devising
Out of a dream in my lonely mind.
I shall find the crystal of peace, – above me
Stars I shall find.


.