His Friends Called Him Champ

 [From December 26, 2007]

        The Judge shows the Artist's Sketch-Book

…he with camp stool and dripping umbrella slung on his shoulders, with broad slouch hat crushed down over his eyes, and a variegated panorama of the road along which he had passed painted by the weather upon his back--the artist, whose hands were filled with the mystic tin box; behold him! the envied cynosure of boyish eyes.
- Edward King, describing the artist James Wells Champney, who accompanied King on an expedition through the Southern Appalachians in 1873.

Artists have been looking at these mountains for a long, long time...

A thousand years ago they created the petroglyphs on Judaculla Rock.



A couple of centuries ago, naturalists like William Bartram sketched the plant life and other sights they encountered in these hills.



In the 1850s, William Frerichs explored the Blue Ridge and the Smokies to get inspiration for his majestic oil paintings "Tamahaka Falls" in Cherokee County, NC. 



After the end of the Civil War, magazine publishers had an insatiable appetite for travel stories describing the people and scenery of the Southern Appalachians. 

More than one scholar has opined on how these articles shaped and reinforced stereotypes about mountain people. But I’ve not seen much written about the artists who supplied the illustrations that accompanied the travel stories of the late nineteenth century.

Take for instance, James Wells Champney (1843-1903). He accompanied the writer Edward King on travels throughout the South and made more than 500 sketches during their journeys.  The two traveled more than 25,000 miles together.

James Wells "Champ" Champney has been described as:

a prolific artist whose work was of high quality and broad scope. He was very successful as a oil painter of genre scenes, and later was perhaps the foremost pastelist of his day. A lecturer, illustrator, watercolorist and photographer, he was also one of the first Americans to grasp and utilize the spirit of impressionism.

Born in Boston, the artist studied drawing at Lowell Institute and took courses in anatomy from Oliver Wendell Holmes. Champney had already visited Europe for further studies and exhibited at the Paris Salon before he was commissioned by Scribner’s to illustrate the Edward King articles. 

Afterwards, he returned to Europe and provided figure drawings of American life for the French magazine, D’Illustration. By 1876, he settled in Deerfield, Massachusetts where he taught art at Smith College.



J. Wells Champney married Elizabeth Williams (1850-1922) in May 1873, just prior to his visit to Western North Carolina. Elizabeth Champney herself began to publish short sketches, poems, books on art, and romantic travel stories, some of which were illustrated by her husband.



After Mr. Champney opened a studio in New York City in 1879, the couple divided their time between Deerfield and New York, and made frequent visits to Europe. Further, we read:

He was an early and avid amateur photographer, and also used the camera as an aid to his work. He was fond of books and the theatre, was a member of a dozen clubs and artists’ societies, and with Mrs. Champney entertained generously at their Fifth Avenue home and at Deerfield. "When they arrived, and Mr. Champney was seen on the street, the old town always seemed to come alive," wrote one villager.



Champney was in great demand as a lecturer, as suggested in December 18, 1894. New York Times article:

The members of Sorosis had a pleasant gathering in the parlors of Sherry’s yesterday afternoon, when J. Wells Champney told them many interesting things about pastels… The bright and luminous tints of the pastel, Mr. Champney said, are due to the fact that ‘the integrity of the molecule is intact,’ and that there is not ‘gumming together,’ as with paints… He humorously recommended the pastel as a valuable health thermometer, to be kept by every family, for if the pastel showed signs of succumbing to its one great enemy – dampness – the welfare of the household should be looked after.

An 1899 story described Champney’s presentation at the Carlisle Indian School:

On Tuesday evening, J. Wells Champney, the famous pastel artist of New York City, delivered a lecture before the Literary Societies and a large audience from town in Assembly Hall. The lecture was replete with wit and interesting anecdote. From the beginning lines of a straight-edged pig the artist with chalk and crayon led up to the graceful curves of a child's face, and on to the picturesque in landscape, giving scientific reasons for changes of lines, in a most attractive manner which could never tire the listener.



On May 1, 1903, Champney fell to his death. Champney had gone to the Camera Club of New York to make some photographic prints. As Champney got on the elevator, a piece of walnut furniture was too large to be carried in the car, so the operator had placed it on top, where it shifted and jammed the elevator between floors.

The headline of the New York Times article stated "His Death Was Due to His Hurry and Disregard of Warning." As reported by the Times:

Against the protests of the elevator boy, he attempted to swing himself to the floor below. He lost his hold on the car floor and fell down the shaft….

Mrs. Champney was notified by the police of her bereavement, and showed great fortitude after learning of her husband’s death. "We were very happy together," she said. "He was one of the most beautiful characters in the world and was always lovable. His life was just like his work."

So here’s to Champ, and his summer in the mountains 134 years ago, when he looked around Waynesville and Webster, Cullasaja Falls and Whiteside Mountain, and drew the world he saw.
---
Illustrations (From top)
1. From The Great South, "The Judge", a member of the travel party, shows Champney’s sketch book to a group of mountain folks, illustration by James Wells Champney.
2. Judaculla Rock by firelight
3. Morning Glory, by William Bartram
4. Falls of Tamahaka, oil on canvas, William Frerichs
5. James Wells Champney and daughter, Maria, ca. 1874
6. Elizabeth Champney
7. Feeding Chickens, oil on canvas, James Wells Champney
8. The Poppy Garden, James Wells Champney
9. Mount Pisgah from The Great South, illustration by James Wells Champney



239 of Champney’s sketches from The Great South trip are housed at the Lilly Library Manuscript Collection, Indiana University.

Finally, a passage from The Great South, in which Edward King describes their mode of travel:

It is sometimes said that Western North Carolina is shaped like a bow, of which the Blue Ridge would form the arc, and the Smoky mountains the string. Within this semicircle our little party, now and then increased by the advent of citizens of the various counties, who came to journey with us from point to point, traveled about 600 miles on horse-back, now sleeping at night in the lowly cabins, and sharing the rough fare of the mountaineers, now entering the towns and finding the mansions of the wealthier classes freely opened to us. Up at dawn, and away over hill and dale; now clambering miles among the forests to look at some new mine; now spurring our horses to reach shelter long after night had shrouded the roadways, we met with unvarying courtesy and unbounded welcome.

Addendum

If I ever write a book entitled "The Most Interesting People I Never Met," James Wells Champney will definitely merit a chapter.

His superb artistry is evident in several more of my favorite illustrations from The Great South, (and especially his depiction of Dry Falls, on the Cullasaja River):

On This Date: Prophets and Patriots

Prophets

From the Springplace Diaries. at the time of the Cherokee Ghost Dance Movement. Springplace Mission was located in northwest Georgia in the Cherokee Nation:

 February 23, 1812 . . . toward evening the wife of Mr. Charles Hicks [prominent Cherokee leader Charles R. Hicks, 1767-1827] ...brought us a very pleasing letter from him in which he wrote among other things: "The present is a very strange point in time. May God in his great mercy prepare us for the life to come. The people in my neighborhood are deeply disturbed because of the earthquakes, and I believe that fear and terror have spread through the whole Nation. How else could it be? Do not these belong to the signs which are to come to pass before the [last] great day? . . . "

Mr. [David] McNair [a white man living in Tennessee, married to a Cherokee] came in the evening and spent the night here. Again we heard much about dreams and false prophets. May God have mercy. There is at the present time a real tumult in the Nation and a dark, heavy feeling. . . . It is unbelievable to what kind of foolish fables the blinded heathen will give hearing.

During these days the residents of one town fled into the hills and tried to crawl into hiding in the holes of the rocks in order to escape the danger of the hail stones the size of half bushels, which were to fall on a certain day. As the stated terrible day passed without hail, they came back to their dwelling places, ready and willing to believe every new deceiver.

Patriots

During the Civil War, Lieutenant W. B. Ferguson served in Company E, 29th Regiment whose members were from Haywood County, NC and were serving in east Tennessee at the time of the letter. From Davis, Civil War Letters and Memories from the Great Smoky Mountains.:

February 23, 1863

Dear Father and Mother,

I can inform you that I am in reasonable health, for which I feel very thankful to the "great perserver." I am very desirous to hear from you. I have not had a letter from home for these two months. I’d think you might write to me oftener than you have done. 

Wrote you by Capt. Teague and have received no answer. The Capt. has not yet returned. It seems that when any of our men or officers get off home, that they take care not to return. 

Neither do as the law and general orders direct, consequently I have had to drop twenty enlisted men from our company, from the roll in disgrace and I am ordered to have these names published as deserters, how mortifing this is to me.

I hear that brother Robert has deserted his command. If he but knew how little every true patriot think of such conduct, he would return immediately and try and reprieve his character by future mysterious conduct for his country’s sake for his own and for heavens sake and for the sake of his friends. 

Have him return at once.

No one is more ancious to visit him and friends than I. But before I would dishonor myself and family and kin by deserting my colors, comrades and country’s cause, I would suffer even death before dishonor. How acceptable due leave of absence from camp would be, that I might visit you my kind and bereft parents. 

My great desire is and has been to live and see the present national difficulties over and peace and prosperity prevail throughout the whole land, so I can enjoy home and friends no one to disturb my quietetude.

God has been merciful to our family. But how great the wickedness of soldiers. How sinful I have been due to my soldier life. It mortifies me to think of my profanity and wickedness, such as the evils and temptations that I do wrong, while conscience thunderous remorse. Oh how I crave the congenial influence of home and friends that nurture a better feeling than that which naturally prevades the soldier’s heart. There is nothing in the profession of arms but what is revolting to the noble heart and mind.

But they would have it so. The North has forced this war upon us. Now we drink the bitter drugs of revelation, starving for National peace, may it soon be won. May the time hasten when we strike our tents, deposit our arms and return home to enjoy the book of liberty.

- W.B. Ferguson

Old Names for the French Broad

 [From February 18, 2009]

I like lists and, recently, I discovered an intriguing list from the U. S. Board on Geographic Names. According to this most official of official sources, these are the variant names for the French Broad River:

Agiqua

Broad River
John Frenchs Broad River

Poe-li-co
Satica
Tah-Kee-os-Kee
Tah-kee-os-kee

Tah-kee-os-tee
Tokeeostee
Tokeostee
Zillicoah

Charles Skinner, in Myths and Legends of our Own Land (1896) refers to the river by another of its old names, the Tselica:

Among the rocks east of Asheville, North Carolina, lives the Lorelei of the French Broad River. This stream—the Tselica of the Indians—contains in its upper reaches many pools where the rapid water whirls and deepens, and where the traveller likes to pause in the heats of afternoon and drink and bathe. Here, from the time when the Cherokees occupied the country, has lived the siren, and if one who is weary and downcast sits beside the stream or utters a wish to rest in it, he becomes conscious of a soft and exquisite music blending with the plash of the wave.

Looking down in surprise he sees—at first faintly, then with distinctness—the form of a beautiful woman, with hair streaming like moss and dark eyes looking into his, luring him with a power he cannot resist. His breath grows short, his gaze is fixed, mechanically he rises, steps to the brink, and lurches forward into the river. The arms that catch him are slimy and cold as serpents; the face that stares into his is a grinning skull. A loud, chattering laugh rings through the wilderness, and all is still again.

On This Date: Shoeboot and Big Bear

From the Springplace Diaries. Springplace was a Moravian mission located in Cherokee territory just west of the present day town of Chatsworth, GA. The New Madrid Earthquake of December 1811 was felt in this region, and interpreted by some Native Americans as a message from God.

February 17, 1812: The Shoeboot [Chulioa], confessed his perplexity in regard to the unusual earthquakes here in the land and said in a very emphatic way that many Indians believe that the white people were responsible because they had already taken possession of so much of the Indian land and wanted still more. 

God was angry because of that and He wanted to put an end to it through the earthquakes. This much was believed by all the Indians that God was causing the earthquakes. We then let our understanding be told and asked them to pray very diligently the publican’s prayer, "God be merciful to me, a sinner."

In reply, the other one, called Big Bear, said, "I should also like to tell something as I should like to know what you think about it. Soon after the earth had trembled so for the first time, an Indian was sitting in his house in deep thought, and his children were lying sick in front of the fire.

 At that point a tall man, clothed entirely in the foliage of the trees, with a wreath of the same foliage on his head, who was carrying a small child in his arm and had a larger child by the hand, said to him, ‘The small child on his [my] arm is God. 

I am not able to tell you now whether God will soon destroy the earth or not. But God is not pleased that the Indians have sold so much land to the white people. Tugalo, which is now possessed by white people, is the first place which God created. There in a hill he placed the first fire, for all fire comes from God.

Now the white people have built a house on that hill. They should abandon the place; on that hill there should be grass growing, only then will there be peace. And the Indians no longer thank God before they enjoy first fruits of the land. They are no longer organizing, as was formerly the custom, dances in his honor before they eat the first pumpkins, etc. 

Furthermore,’ the messenger said to the Indian, ‘You are sad because you think your children are ill; they are really not ill, but have only taken in a little dust.’ 

Thereupon he gave him two small pieces of bark from a certain tree, which he also named, and told him to cook them and to give the drink to his children, and from that they became well right then. He then also told him about other remedies for use during illnesses and at the end he said he would now take God back home."

During this silly narration, the Indian looked so solemn as if he were really proclaiming God’s will and word. 

We told him that we are no judges of such visions nor do we get involved in such things. We adhere to God’s word and in that his will is clear. It is good to thank God for his gifts, but we wish with all our hearts that the poor Indians might really learn to know Him in his great love and might honor and love Him truly. 

"That is well said," said Big Bear. "Yes," said Shoeboot, "The white people know God from the Book and we, from other things." 

He said further, "I love you; I have never heard anything bad about you. But there are also very bad white people." 

In which we agreed with him.

Illustrating the Mountains (Part 4 of 4)

 [From March 3, 2009]

It overlooks a country of peaks and projections, of frightful precipices, often of naked rock, but generally fringed with delicate foliage; a country dotted with fertile clearings set down in the midst of forests; of valleys inaccessible save by narrow passes; of curious caves and tangled trails; of buttes and knobs, reached only by dangerous passes, where one finds the bluff's base thousands of feet down in some nook, and as he looks up sees the wall towering far above him.
-Edward King, 1875



I opened up the Heart of the Alleghenies and saw this mountain with the curious name, "UNAKA-KANOOS."

The authors (Zeigler and Grosscup) of the 1883 book on Western North Carolina explained:

… we came out before the massive front of a peculiar mountain. Whiteside, or in literal translation of the Cherokee title, Unaka-kanoos, White-mountain, is the largest exposure of perpendicular, bare rock east of the Rockies. It is connected, without deeply-marked intervening gaps, with its neighboring peaks of the Blue Ridge; but from some points of observation it appears isolated—a majestic, solitary, dome-shaped monument, differing from all other mountains of the Alleghanies in its aspect and form.




I don't know much about the artists who created these illustrations of Whiteside Mountain. James Wells Champney did much of the art for The Great South (1875), where the pictures of Devil’s Courthouse and the edge of the abyss appeared. The page with two views of the mountain was from the Harper’s article, By-paths in the Mountains, by Rebecca Harding Davis (1880).





In The Great South, Edward King shares a story told while he was atop Whiteside Mountain:

"One day," said the Surveyor, seating himself with admirable carelessness on the dreadful slope of a rock overhanging the awful depths, "I was taking some levels below, and at last thought I would climb Whiteside. While I was coming up a storm passed over the mountains, and when I reached the top everything was hidden in such a dense mist, fog, or cloud, that one could hardly see his hand before his face. I strolled on until I reached a spot which I thought I recognized, and sat down, stretching my feet carelessly.

"Luckily enough, I didn't move; I was mighty still, for I was tired, and the fog was solemn-like; but pretty soon it blew away right smart, and dog my skin if I wasn't perched on the very outer edge of this line of rock, and about two inches between me and twelve hundred feet of sheer fall.

"I saw the trees in Cashier's valley, and the clearings, and then the sky, for I didn't look twice at the fall below me; but I flattened myself against the rock, and turned over; and I never want to come up here in a fog again."

Imagine a waterfall 2,000 feet high suddenly turned to stone, and you have the general effect of the Whiteside precipice as seen in the single, terrified, reluctant glance which you give from the top. There is the curve and the grand, dizzy bend downward; were it not for occasional clumps of foliage down the sides, the resemblance would be absolute.

The mountain itself lies rooted in the western slope of the Blue Ridge. [Silas] McDowell has compared it to the carcass of some great monster, upon whose head you climb, and along whose mammoth spine you wander, giddy with terror each time you gaze over the skeleton sides.




Edward King imagined the future of the Cashiers Valley and Whiteside Mountain:

The wealthy citizens of South Carolina have long known of the charms of this section, and many of them annually visit it. In a few years its wildness will be tamed; a summer hotel will doubtless stand on the site of "Wright's" farm-house, and the lovely forests will be penetrated by carriage roads; steps will be cut along the ribs of Whiteside; and a shelter will be erected on the very summit. A storm on the vast rock, with the lightning playing hide and seek in the crevices of the precipice, is an experience which gives one an enlarged idea of the powers of Heaven.




For good measure I’ve included a few postcards showing how the portrayal of the Unaka-kanoos has changed over time. The first color postcard of Whiteside (with the river in the foreground) was published before 1908.

Tracking Down Track Rock

[From February 8, 2011]

I try to do my homework before setting out to explore new places. Sometimes, though, that is simply not possible. While wandering the back roads of North Georgia in that enchanted triangle bounded by Clayton, Cleveland and Blairsville, I saw a sign for Trackrock Road.



I remembered a reference to Track Rock in John Muir’s account of his thousand-mile walk to the Gulf in 1867, and I knew that ethnologist James Mooney had visited the site in the 1880s. I figured the odds were in my favor that Trackrock Road would lead to the Track Rock of Muir and Mooney.

Sure enough, the parking area for the Track Rock archaeological site was easy to find, just before a gap in a long ridge. From the parking area, it was a very short walk through the woods to a cluster of boulders bearing some familiar markings. I say familiar because they looked very similar to the petroglyphs on Judaculla Rock near Cullowhee.

The Forest Service has done a nice job of interpreting the site, complete with a whole series of bronze plaques explaining the little that is known about the Georgia petroglyphs, which are estimated to be a thousand years old. More information, including technical details of the archaeological work conducted at Track Rock, is available online at the USFS site, which even mentions Judaculla:

The earliest known reference to the Track Rock petroglyphs dates back to the late eighteenth century. At a town located in a river valley somewhere in the North Carolina and Georgia region a purification ritual was being conducted in which Indians from the town prepared to be adopted by Judaculla, an invisible man who has taken a wife from one of the town’s women. Unfortunately for the townspeople, a shout by two anxious warriors interfered with the ritual and made it impossible for them to join Judaculla in his mountain top townhouse. Because Judaculla’s parents-in-law managed to properly fast and pray, they became the only two townspeople qualified to visit his mountain top townhouse. On their way to Judaculla’s abode, near Brasstown in north Georgia, the parents-in-law “made the tracks in the rocks which are to be seen there” (Haywood 1823:280). Haywood states that the “tracks in the rocks” in this instance refer to Track Rock. Judaculla, who is also known as Tsulkâlû′,or “Master of the Game”, is a giant who came from the land of the dead spirits in the west to visit the Cherokees, stayed a while as a friend and helper, and departed west again. The markings in the rock may well have served as a warning to people that they were approaching a sacred or dangerous area. Judaculla did not like people to approach his abode.

As soon as I got home from Track Rock, I consulted John Muir and discovered he had not made it to Track Rock, although he passed nearby on his southbound route to Mount Yonah. Instead, someone Muir met in Tennessee had urged him to add Track Rock to his itinerary:

Was told by my worthy entertainer of a wondrous gap in the mountains which he advised me to see. "It is called Track Gap," said he, "from the great number of tracks in the rocks — bird tracks, bar tracks, hoss tracks, men tracks, all in the solid rock as if it had been mud."

Charles Lanman did make it to Track Rock and wrote about it in the ever-enjoyable Letters From the Alleghany Mountains:

Logan's Plantation, Georgia, April, 1848.

During my stay at Dahlonega I heard a good deal said about a native wonder, called " Track Rock," which was reported to be some thirty miles off, on the northwestern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. On revolving the information in my mind, I concluded that this rock was identical with one which had been mentioned to me by Professor James Jackson, of the University of Georgia, and I also remembered that the Professor had shown me a specimen of the rock he alluded to, which contained the imprint or impression of a human foot. My curiosity was of course excited, and I resolved to visit the natural or artificial wonder. I made the pilgrimage on foot, and what I saw and heard of peculiar interest on the occasion the reader will find recorded in the present letter.

In accomplishing the trip to " Track Rock " and back again to this place I was two days. On the first day I walked only twenty miles, having tarried occasionally to take a pencil sketch or hear the birds, as they actually filled the air with melody. My course lay over a very uneven country, which was entirely uncultivated, excepting some half dozen quiet vales, which presented a cheerful appearance. The woods were generally composed of oak and chestnut, and destitute to a considerable extent of undergrowth; the soil was composed of clay and sand, and apparently fertile; and clear sparkling brooks intersected the country, and were the first that I had seen in Georgia. I had a number of extensive mountain views, which were more beautiful than imposing; and among the birds that attracted my attention were the red-bird, mocking-bird, quail, lark, poke, woodpecker, jay, king-bird, crow, bluebird, and dove, together with a large black-bird, having a red head, (apparently of the woodpecker genus,) and another smaller bird, whose back was of a rich black, breast a bright brown, with an occasional white feather in its wing, which I fancied to be a species of robin. Since these were my companions, it may be readily imagined that" pleasantly the hours of Thalaba went by."

I spent the night at a place called " Tesantee Gap," in the cabin of a poor farmer, where I was most hospitably entertained. My host had a family of nine sons and three daughters, not one of whom had ever been out of the wilderness region of Georgia. Though the father was a very intelligent man by nature, he told me that he had received no education, and could hardly read a chapter in the Bible. He informed me, too, that his children were but little better informed, and seemed deeply to regret his inability to give them the schooling which he felt they needed. " I have always desired," said he, "that I could live on some public road, so that my girls might occasionally see a civilized man, since it is fated that they will, never meet with them in society." I felt sorry for the worthy man, and endeavored to direct his attention from himself to the surrounding country. He told me the mountains were susceptible of cultivation even to their summits, and that the principal productions of his farm were corn, wheat, rye, and potatoes; also, that the country abounded in game, such as deer, turkeys, and bears, and an occasional panther. Some of the mountains, he said, were covered with hickory, and a peculiar kind of oak, and that on said mountains gray squirrels were very abundant. The streams, he informed me, were well supplied with large minnows, by which I afterwards ascertained he meant the brook trout.

While conversing with my old friend, an hour or so before sunset, we were startled by the baying of his hounds, and on looking up the narrow road running by his home, we saw a fine-looking doe coming towards us on the run. In its terror the poor creature made a sudden turn, and scaling a garden fence was overtaken by the dogs on a spot near which the wife of my host was planting seeds, when she immediately seized a bean-pole, and by a single blow deprived the doe of life. In a very few moments her husband was on the ground, and, having put his knife to the throat of the animal, the twain re-entered their dwelling, as if nothing had happened out of the common order of events. This was the first deer that I ever knew to be killed by a woman. When I took occasion to compliment the dogs of my old friend, he said that one of them was a " powerful runner; for he had known him to follow a deer for three days and three nights." Having in view my future rambles among the mountains, I questioned my companion about the snakes of this region, and, after remarking that :hey were " very plenty," he continued as follows : " But of all the snake stories you ever heard tell of, I do not believe you ever heard of a snake fight. I saw one, Monday was a week, between a black-racer and a rattlesnake. It was in the road, about a mile from here, and when I saw them the racer had the other by the back of the head, and was coiling his body all around him, as if to squeeze him to death. The scuffle was pretty severe, but the racer soon killed the fellow with rattles, and I killed the racer. It was a queer scrape, and I reckon you do not often see the like in your country."

I should have obtained some more mites of information from my host had not a broken tooth commenced aching, and hurried me off to bed.

I left the habitation of my mountain friend immediately after breakfast the following morning, and " ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more."

On the following day I passed through the Blue Ridge, and visited the Mecca of my pilgrimage, and was—disappointed. I was piloted to it by a neighboring mountaineer, who remarked, " This is Track Rock, and it's no great shakes after all." I found it occupying an unobtrusive place by the road side. It is of an irregular form and quite smooth, rises gradually from the ground to the height of perhaps three feet, and is about twenty feet long by the most liberal measurement. It is evidently covered with a great variety of tracks, including those of men, bears or dogs, and turkeys, together with indistinct impressions of a man's hand. Some of the impressions are half an inch thick, while many of them appear to be almost entirely effaced. The rock seemed to be a species of slate-colored soapstone. The conclusion to which I have arrived, after careful examination, is as follows : This rock is located on what was once an Indian trail, and, having been used by the Cherokees as a resting place, it was probably their own ingenuity which conceived and executed the characters which now puzzle the philosophy of many men. The scenery about Track Rock is not remarkable for its grandeur, though you can hardly turn the eye in any direction without beholding an agreeable mountain landscape. In returning through Tesantee Gap and the valley below, 1 met with no adventures worth recording, and will therefore conclude my present epistle with a paragraph concerning the plantation where I am now tarrying.

The proprietor is an intelligent and worthy gentleman, who is reputed to be the nabob of this region. He acquired a portion of his wealth by digging gold, but is now chiefly devoting himself to agriculture. He complains of the little advancement which the people of Northern Georgia are making in the arts of husbandry, and thinks that it would be much better for the State if the people could be persuaded to follow the plough, instead of wasting their time and money in searching for gold, which metal, he seems to think, is nearly exhausted in this section of country. Among the curious things which I have seen under his roof, is a small but choice collection of minerals, fossil remains, and Indian relics, belonging to his eldest son. Among the latter may be mentioned a heavy stone pipe, made in imitation of a duck, which was found in Macon county, North Carolina, fifteen feet below the surface; and also a small cup, similar to a crucible, and made of an unknown earthy material, which was found in this county about nine feet below the surface, and directly under a large tree. But the mail boy's horn is blowing and I must close.

James Mooney visited the site and reviewed the literature that had attempted to explain the Track Rock. From Myths of the Cherokee:

TRACK ROCK GAP: A gap about 5 miles east of Blairsville, in Union county, on the ridge separating Brasstown creek from the waters of Nottely river. The micaceous soapstone, rocks on both sides of the trail are covered with petroglyphs, from which the gap takes its name. The Cherokee call the place Datsu'nalâsgûñ'yï, "Where there are tracks," or Degayelûñ'hä, "Printed i.e. Branded place." The carvings are of many and various patterns, some of them resembling human or animal footprints, while others are squares, crosses, circles, "bird tracks," etc., disposed without any apparent order. On the authority of a Doctor Stevenson, writing in 1834, White (Historical Collections of Georgia, p. 658, 1855), and after him Jones (Antiquities of the Southern Indians, 1873), give a misleading and greatly exaggerated account of these carvings, without having taken the trouble to investigate for themselves, although the spot is easily accessible. No effort, either state or local, is made to preserve the pictographs from destruction, and many of the finest have been cut out from the rock and carried off by vandals, Stevenson himself being among the number, by his own confession. The illustration (plate xx) is from a rough sketch made by the author in 1890.



The Cherokee have various theories to account for the origin of the carvings, the more sensible Indians saying that they were made by hunters for their own amusement while resting in the gap. Another tradition is that they were made while the surface of the newly created earth was still soft by a great army of birds and animals fleeing through the gap to escape some pursuing danger from the west--some say a great "drive hunt" of the Indians. Haywood confounds them with other petroglyphs in North Carolina connected with the story of the giant Tsul`kälû'. [Judaculla]

The following florid account of the carvings and ostensible Indian tradition of their origin is from White, on the authority of Stevenson:

The number visible or defined is 136, some of them quite natural and perfect, and others rather rude imitations, and most of them from the effects of time have become more or less obliterated. They comprise human feet from those 4 inches in length to those of great warriors which measure 17½ inches in length and 7¾ in breadth across the toes. What is a little curious, all the human feet are natural except this, which has 6 toes, proving him to have been a descendant of Titan. There are 26 of these impressions, all bare except one, which has the appearance of having worn moccasins. A fine turned hand, rather delicate, occupied a place near the great warrior, and probably the impression of his wife's hand, who no doubt accompanied her husband in all his excursions, sharing his toils and soothing his cares away. Many horse tracks are to be seen. One seems to have been shod, some are very small, and one measures 12½ inches by 9½ inches. This the Cherokee say was the footprint of the great war horse which their chieftain rode. The tracks of a great many turkeys, turtles, terrapins, a large bear's paw, a snake's trail, and the footprints of two deer are to be seen. 

The tradition respecting these impressions varies. One asserts that the world was once deluged with water, and men with all animated beings were destroyed, except one family, together with various animals necessary to replenish the earth; that the Great Spirit before the floods came, commanded them to embark in a big canoe, which after long sailing was drawn to this spot by a bevy of swans and rested there, and here the whole troop of animals was disembarked, leaving the impressions as they passed over the rock, which being softened by reason of long submersion kindly received and preserved them. 

Return to the Magnificent Forest

 [From February 7, 2009]

Photograph by Margaret Morley

When you start to consider big trees, the story can go in any number of directions.

Around here, with some effort, it’s possible to find a few big trees that give an inkling (and only that) of what the forests used to be. Some of those giants, like the hemlocks up Caldwell Fork in Cataloochee are ailing and won’t be around much longer.

Today, as I consider the big trees, I think back to the 1850s. No issue dominated the newspapers of Western North Carolina as did the highly anticipated coming of the railroad. It represented Progress, a Brighter Future. Mountain farmers would find new markets for their produce. That was the hope and promise.

But in all the hype of those days, I don’t recall any predictions of northern capitalists coming to the mountains to harvest the forest giants. Of course, with the eventual arrival of the railroads in the 1880s, large-scale logging became feasible…and brought unimaginable changes to the forests.

Then, as now, people were incapable of foreseeing the toll of Progress.

So, I’m grateful for those who took the time to describe the big trees, giving us a way to return to those magical forests.

Henry Seidel Canby spent some time exploring the area around Cherokee and, in 1916, published an article in Harper’s Magazine:

Indians and white mountaineers alike have an affectionate regard for their forests that I have not found in the North. They regard with a certain melancholy the invasion of the lumbermen, who, since my first visit fourteen years ago, have hacked their way to the top of the Balsams, and peeled off great areas of spruce. Being human, they do not despise the money that comes into the country, but they deplore the slaughter of the forests. North Carolina is better forested, more beautifully forested, than any other part of the Appalachian; nevertheless, the choppers have already culled the more accessible woodlands, and have gone far upon a more ruinous destruction.

"Seems as if they jes' nat'rally t'ar up everything," was our sheep-herder's comment.

"Soon thar'll be no more big woods," said the Cherokee at Lane Tatem's. But the valley folk cling to their forest lands. I know one who keeps fifty acres of virgin forest at his back door, because "my spring's right thar, an' a man cain't live right without a spring." When we asked of white or Indian where we might still find "big poplars," they were eager to direct us, regretful that there were so few left to find.

Our best information led us up the Oconolufta through the Cherokee nation, and on toward the main line of the Smokies, where they tower up well above six thousand feet into Mt. Guyot. We chose the Straight Fork of the river, for on it lie the twenty-five thousand acres of land sold but lately by the Indians, and still untouched by the lumberman, the finest forest, I am told, in North Carolina; if so, one of the finest in the world….

It was glorious riding, but difficult. Our road clung to one side of the narrow mountain rift where Magee and his sons had scraped a patch here and there for corn or sorghum. Beside us the Lufty shouted over its boulders. Above was a deep jade wall of rhododendron, then towering hemlocks beneath a cliff of waving hardwoods, oaks or chestnuts, until far above one saw through some cleft the faint spires of balsam near the top of Cataloochee. I remembered that I had seen such rhododendron hanging its candelabra of flowers over the mountain torrents in July, and regretted for a moment our September. But we rode through goldenrod as high as our saddles and beds of turquoise aster.

The air was crisp and cool, while beneath the hemlocks and among the rhododendron garnet maple-leaves and crimson sorrel burned in the sunlight. Perhaps there are still many groups of tulip-trees such as we found at last in Round Bottom, but I cannot learn of them. One other grove almost as fine I have seen, but now there are only stumps to show what once could be viewed there. And the tulip-tree-or yellow poplar, as it is more familiarly known-is of course no rarity like the sequoia, which among all trees that I know, at its best, it most resembles. True, like the sequoia again, it is the last of its genus; but once it was abundant everywhere in its Appalachian range; it is still common in our forests; but not at its best, not at all as it grows upon the Oconolufta.

We rode up Straight Fork through a sun-spangled grove of chestnuts, then left the trail to Cataloochee, splashed noisily across green water, burst horse and man through a screen of rhododendron, and entered the dark forest. It was an open forest beneath its high roof. The eye went freely once we were past the door of rhododendron, and at first, in intervals of guiding our scrambling horses, we looked vainly for the poplars. Hemlock shafts, oak bolls aplenty; and then on the upper slope I saw the first, a smooth tower, its head lost above the leafage, and beyond another, and below in the hemlocks a group of four, like cathedral piers beyond the pillars of a nave.

We rode to the first in view. Twenty-one feet in circumference, it rose massively for seventy feet perhaps without a branch; how much above one could not tell in that forest. For as in the redwood groves of California, so here, the eye can seldom take in a whole tree when in its forest setting, the camera never. Indeed, the habit of the great poplar is curiously like that of the giant sequoia. Like the sequoia it rises above lesser neighbors, and flings from the capital of its great trunk a crown of heavy limbs that turn and lift nobly above the forest roof. From an opposing hillside you can pick out these crowns of light-green foliage above the oaks and chestnuts, just as across a Sierra canon one sees the sequoias lift above spruce and fir. Only these two trees, in my experience, have this regal habit. And if the sequoia is vaster, it is less graceful.

As our eyes grew more accustomed to the green shade of Round Bottom, we saw that they were all about us, some springing from the rhododendron of the stream-bed until they had overtopped the hemlocks, some high up on the hillside catching the sunlight on smooth, mossy trunks. And everywhere beneath, clear, gold-lit spaces, and above, through rifts in the foliage, glimpses of great arms rising higher into the blue air above the forest.

Some day I hope to see an Eastern forest like this one not already marked for destruction. But I am not hopeful. There are few left now, and it is nearly too late to save them. Already surveyors are at work on the Oconolufta, and rails are waiting somewhere for the narrow gauge down which the last of the Indian poplars will trundle to oblivion. Surely if California can afford five forests of sequoia, we Easterners might have indulged ourselves with one such tulip cove! I have seen both, and really, if a choice between sequoia grove and tulip bottom should lie before me tomorrow, I should be torn. The one is grander; but the other is our well beloved woods of the Appalachians raised to a power which they never again will attain.

Twenty-five thousand acres, of which Round Bottom is, of course, the most valuable part, the Cherokees refused to lease to the government. The "council," a mysterious central power of varying judgment, was responsible. Then it was sold, or seized-the stories are conflicting-at seven dollars an acre!

When I heard this I lost my temper. A thousand dollars an acre scarcely represents what this tulip grove above the rhododendrons of Oconolufta might be worth – unlumbered - in pleasure and in cash to a more far-sighted generation. We splashed back through the river. At a steep cliff's edge, above a turn in the valley, we stopped our horses and looked up the verdurous canon, past the dark hemlock tops of the stream-line, past the green slopes with their giant arms uplifted, to where a mountain rose, ridge on ridge to a black wall dimly pricked with tiny pinnacles along its crest. "Hit's top o’ Smoky," said the mountaineer, and the Indian assented.

Once before and farther westward I had left the hardwoods behind, climbed through the spruce where its dense columns crowd up through rhododendron higher than horse and rider, and come out upon that distant line where Carolina meets Tennessee. I had watched the ravens sailing below, heard snowbirds in the bushes, and seen where bears had sharpened their claws upon trees by the trailside. But this time it seemed better to leave the black crest a distant goal beyond the valley.

Illustrating the Mountains (Part 3 of 4)

 [From January 13, 2009]

Toccoa Falls, Georgia was a favorite subject for writers and illustrators employed by the popular magazines of the nineteenth century and I've turned up a surprising number of engravings published during that era.






One descriptive passage on Toccoa Falls and nearby Table Rock in South Carolina appeared as early as 1816 and was reprinted in many other books during the following decades:

It is very surprising that two of the greatest natural curiosities in the world, are within the United States, and yet scarcely known to the best informed of our geographers and naturalists. The one is a beautiful water-fall, in Franklin county, Georgia; the other, a stupendous precipice in Pendleton district, South Carolina; they are both faintly mentioned in the late edition of Morse's geography, but not as they merit. The Tuccoa fall is much higher than the falls of Niagara. The column of water is propelled beautifully over a perpendicular rock, and when the stream is full, it passes down the steep without being broken. All the prismatic effect seen at Niagara, illustrates the spray of Tuccoa.

The Table mountain in Pendleton district, South Carolina, is an awful precipice of 900 feet. Many persons reside within five, seven, or ten miles of this grand spectacle, who have never had the curiosity to visit it. It is now however occasionally visited by curious travellers and sometimes by men of science. Very few persons who have once passed a glimpse into-the almost boundless abyss, can again exercise sufficient fortitude, to approach the margin of the chasm.





Almost everyone, on looking over, involuntarily falls to the ground senseless, nerveless, and helpless; and would inevitably be precipitated, and dashed to atoms, were it not for the measures of caution and security, that have always been deemed indispensable to a safe indulgence of the curiosity of the visitor or spectator. Every one on proceeding to the spot, whence it is usual to gaze over the wonderful deep, has in his imagination a limitation, graduated by a reference to distances with which his eye has been familiar.

But in a moment, eternity, as it were, is presented to his astounded senses; and he is instantly overwhelmed. His whole system is no longer subject to his volition or his reason, and he falls like a mass of lead, obedient only to the common laws of mere matter. He then revives, and in a wild delirium surveys a scene, which for a while he is unable to define by description or limitation.

How strange is it that the Tuccoa falls and Table Mountain, are not more familiar to Americans! Either of them would distinguish any state or empire in Europe

I haven't been to Table Rock, but however entertaining the scenery itself might be...watching those who are watching the scenery would be even more entertaining...people involuntarily falling to the ground in a state of wild delirium!




In the era before landscape photography gained prominence, these engravings of Toccoa Falls and Table Rock were among the first views of the Southern Appalachians for many outsiders. Writers were eager to craft their own word pictures in the florid style of the period. In her Journal of a Tour in the United States, Canada and Mexico, Winefred, Lady Howard of Glossop, recounted a four-mile carriage ride from Toccoa to the falls on the bitterly cold afternoon of December 29, 1894:

I got out to walk, or rather scramble, along a path over great boulders covered with green-gold lichens and moss, the ground one sheet of snow-ice, shadowed by solemn ilexes and pines, skirting the river, till I reached a quite open space with semicircular background of vertical cliffs, 185 feet high, pine-crowned, glistening with huge, pendent, fantastic icicles—the Falls in the centre gracefully floating rather than falling in loveliest fairy-like clouds and wreaths of misty foam down the shining ice-wall on to a dazzling snow-heap of frosted silver: then winding their way into deep emerald- green whirling pools hemmed round by green-gold velvety rocks ice-bound—the whole glittering magical scene lighted into a glory of radiance by the scarlet and gold of sunset!

The cold was intense, and at last, rapidly turning into a pillar of ice, I tore myself away, and we drove back to the Hotel Simpson, where I spent a very pleasant evening in the warm little cosy parlour with my kind and agreeable hosts…





I’ll close with some verse composed by Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch (1809-1870) and published in 1834.

LINES
WRITTEN AT TOCCOA FALLS, GEORGIA.

Hail, loveliest, purest scene!
How brightly mingling with the clear, blue sky,
Thy glancing wave arrests the upward eye,
Through thy grove's leafy screen.

Through thy transparent veil,
And wide around thee, Nature's grandest forms,
Rocks, built for ages to abide the storms,
Frown on the subject dale.

Fed by thy rapid stream,
In every crevice of that savage pile,
The living herbs in quiet beauty smile,
Lit by the sunny gleam.

And over all, that gush
Of rain-drops, sparkling to the noonday sun!
While ages round thee on their course have run,
Ceaseless thy waters rush.

I would not that the bow
With gorgeous hues should light thy virgin stream;
Better thy white and sun-lit foam should gleam
Thus, like unsullied snow.

Yes! thou hast seen the woods
Around, for centuries rise, decay, and die,
While thou hast poured thy endless current by,
To join the eternal floods.

The ages pass away,
Successive nations rise, and are forgot,
But on thy brilliant course thou pausest not,
'Mid thine unchanging spray.

When I have sunk to rest—
Thus wilt thou pass in calm sublimity,
Then be thy power to others, as to me,
On the deep soul impressed.

Here does a spirit dwell
Of gratitude, and contemplation high;
Holding deep union with eternity.-^
0 loveliest scene, farewell!

Illustrating the Mountains (Part 2 of 4)

 [From December 26, 2008]

Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Those words are images of thoughts refin'd,
Is my soul's a pleasure; and sure it must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

-John Keats, Sonnet to Solitude



I’ve been looking for the story to be told about visual images of the Southern Appalachians in the late nineteenth century. I’m not sure I’ve found THE story, but I’ve found a starting point for it.

The story begins far from the Southern Appalachians. The scene is Asher Brown Durand’s Kindred Spirits, painted in 1849. The painting was commissioned as a tribute to the artist Thomas Cole, who had died from pneumonia in 1848. In the painting, Cole is pictured along with his friend, the poet William Cullen Bryant.

During his career, Cole's work included naturalistic American and European views, Gothic fantasies, religious allegories, and classicized pastorals. His body of writing consisted of detailed journals, poems, and an influential essay on American scenery. Asher Durand and Frederic Church were two of the artists whose careers Cole had fostered.

Among William Cullen Bryant’s many writings was perhaps the most beloved and quoted poem in nineteenth century America, Thanatopsis.

In Kindred Spirits, Bryant and Cole stand together on a rocky crag overlooking wild scenery of the Catskill Mountains in New York. In describing the scene, one reviewer said:

Not only are the two men meant to be seen as kindred spirits representing the brotherly-like love in the new nation, but the two men are meant as well to be seen as kindred spirits with the natural world spreading out around them like an amphitheater.

Kindred Spirits helped define the Hudson River School of painting. In 2005, it sold at auction for more than $35 million, a record price for an American painting.

William Cullen Bryant went on to edit a massive two-volume set, Picturesque America; or, the Land We Live In. Published in 1874, it was a groundbreaking work containing descriptions of scenic places and superb engravings based on the work of noted artists. The books created enduring and influential popular images of the some of the nation’s most famous scenic spots.

Amazon has early editions of Picturesque America, but be prepared to pay somewhere around $1,500 for it. In his preface, Bryant claimed that the scenery of Europe had become too familiar a subject for landscape painters, in contrast with the inexhaustible abundance of America:

Art sighs to carry her conquests into new realms. On our continent, and within the limits of our Republic, she finds them—primitive forests, in which the huge trunks of a past generation of trees lie mouldering in the shade of their aged descendants; mountains and valleys, gorges and rivers, and tracts of sea-coast, which the foot of the artist has never trod; and glens murmuring with water-falls which his ear has never heard. Thousands of charming nooks are waiting to yield their beauty to the pencil of the first comer.

The book includes illustrations by the English-born artist Harry Fenn, and they are among his best work.



One example is an engraving of Chimney Rock in the Hickory Nut Gorge southeast of Asheville. Shown here are the hand-colored and black-and-white versions of Fenn’s illustration.



Picturesque America shaped the mental images that readers associated with places like Hickory Nut Gorge. The illustrations also inspired subsequent artists. Frederick Ferdinand Schafer almost certainly based his Chimney Rock painting [below] on the Fenn engraving.



Their connections to the Southern Appalachians, if any, were marginal. But the careers of Cole, Durand and Bryant did have an impact on the popular perceptions of the American landscape as presented in the written word and visual art. One commentator concluded:

[They] were crucial in the formation of 19th-century American artistic taste and attitudes toward the natural world... All three viewed the unspoiled American landscape as a great moral teacher.

I was going to close with a few lines from Thanatopsis, the meditation on death that William Cullen Bryant wrote at age 19. But why edit a masterpiece? Here’s the entire poem:

Thanatopsis
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;--
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
Comes a still voice--Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourish'd thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,
The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,--the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, pour'd round all,
Old Ocean's grey and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest: and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side
By those who in their turn shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

Whoop Up the Laggards

 [From December 21, 2007]

From The Great South, by Edward King (1875), illustrations by James Wells Champney

View on Pigeon River, near Waynesville

Our expedition grew rapidly after we left Waynesville, and our group of horsemen, followed by "the baggage train," toiling along the mountain roads, caused a genuine excitement at the farms by the way. One of our most memorable trips was that from Waynesville to Whiteside and the return.

Upon the beautiful country through which we were now wandering the Indian lavished that wealth of affection which he always feels for nature, but never for man. He gave to the hills and streams the soft poetic names of his expansive language--names which the white man has in many cases cast away, substituting the barbarous commonplaces of the rude days of early settlement.

The Cherokee names of Cowee and Cullowhee, of Watauga, of Tuckaseege, and Nantahela, have been retained; and some of the elder settlers still pronounce them with the charming Indian accent and inflection. The Cowee mountain range runs between Jackson and Macon counties, and the valley of Tuckaseege, walled in four crooked, immense stretches, includes all of Jackson county which lies north of the Blue Ridge.

The river itself, one of the most picturesque in the South, "heads" in the Blue Ridge, and swelling into volume from a hundred springs of coldest, purest, most transparent water, which send little torrents down all the deep ravines, it goes foaming and dashing over myriads of rocks, sometimes leaping from dizzy heights into narrow cañons, until it comes to, and is lost in, the Tennessee. Where the Tuckaseege forces its way through the Cullowhee mountains there is a stupendous cataract.



View near Webster, North Carolina

The little inn at Webster, the seat of justice of Jackson county, was none too large to accommodate our merry cavalcade. We came to it through the Balsam mountains from Waynesville, along a pretty road bordered with farms and giant mulberry-trees. In the valleys we saw the laurel and the dwarf rosebay, the passion flower and the Turk's-cap lily, and on the mountain sides the poplar or tulip-tree, the hickory, ash, black and white walnut, the holly, the chincapin, the alder, and the chestnut, each in profusion.

Webster is a little street of wooden houses, which seem mutely protesting against being pushed off into a ravine. For miles around the country is grand and imposing. A short time before our arrival the residents of the county had been edified by the execution of the only highwayman who has appeared in Western North Carolina for many years. The hanging occurred in front of the jail in the village street, and thousands flocked to see it from all the section round about.

Sunset came with a great seal of glory. Before the dawn we were once more in the saddle, en route for the Cowee range. Just below Webster we crossed the Tuckaseege river at a point where once there was a famous Indian battle, and wound up the zigzag paths to the very top of Cowee, now and then getting a glimpse of the noble Balsam left behind.

Now we could look up at one of the "old balds," as the bare peaks' tops are called. (The Indian thought the bare spots were where the feet of the Evil One had pressed as he strode from mountain to mountain.)

Now we stopped under a sycamore, while a barefooted girl brought a pitcher of buttermilk from the neighboring house; now a group of negro children, seeing a band of eight horsemen approaching, made all speed for the house, evidently thinking us Ku-Klux or "Red Strings" resuscitated; and now a smart shower would beat about our heads, and die away in tearful whisperings among the broad leaves. The mile-stones by the roadside were notched to indicate the distance; and from hour to hour, in the mountain passes, stops were made to whoop up the laggards.


The Devil's Couthouse, Whiteside Mountain

Illustrating the Mountains (Part 1 of 4)

 [From December 16, 2008]

For many years, I’ve been interested in how these mountains have been depicted, visually, for outside consumption.

The airbrushed images in brochures and websites promoting gated golf-course communities are just a recent example of a long tradition. A century ago, railroad companies published gorgeous pamphlets encouraging travel and tourism in the mountains. In between, we’ve seen everything from linen-style penny postcard views to stereoscopic Viewmaster reels of the Blue Ridge Parkway, Cherokee and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

I’m especially curious about the illustrations in nineteenth century works on the Southern Appalachians, works published before photography was widely used in such books and articles. For millions of people, these were the first images of the southern mountains they had ever seen.



Some of my favorite illustrations from that era appeared in an 1880 Harper’s Magazine article written by Rebecca Harding Davis, and I’ve included just three of them in this post. The drawing at top shows the Tuckasegee (Tuckaseege) River near Qualla. The next drawing is of three Cherokees. And at bottom is the Waynesville prison.

In Davis’ story, the travelling companions had visited some of the more remote portions of the mountains before returning to Waynesville:

They returned to Webster, and from there to Haywood County. A day or two later, when they were snugly ensconced again with good Mrs. Bright in their favorite village of Waynesville, the Judge caught sight of a prisoner whom an armed man was escorting into the lonely little jail, which stood in a field overgrown with golden-rod at the end of the hamlet….



More images to be posted soon; meanwhile I'm seeking details on the artists who created these illustrations for Harper’s.

[Note - Here we are in 2024 and I'm still not sure who created the illustrations for the Davis article.  However, subsequent articles will delve into the life stories of several artists who visited these mountains in the 19th century.]

The Promise of Spring

All this week, and especially today, Winter has made itself known here in the Cowees. So I began to comb through my old photos for something warm and colorful to post here.  I came across the following and it touches on topics that I ponder often, and more than ever.  My affinity with the plant world, for which I am so grateful, grows deeper and deeper with each new season.

[From February 22, 2010]

Biophilia

Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life.
-Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia



By the end of next month, I’ll be out in the woods slithering around on my belly to take pictures of early spring wildflowers.

I’m looking forward to seeing my friends again. Throughout this cold winter, though, I’ve seen them in my mind’s eye. Just beneath the surface of the frozen ground, they’ve been there all along. Even on the bleakest days, the bright colors of spring are near.

Last year, I began to get serious about learning the wildflowers. I regret waiting so long. It could be a lifelong quest, no matter how long your life, and I’ve learned just enough to recognize how little I know. It’s one thing to identify individual specimens in bloom, but quite another to understand them in a fuller context.

Over the winter, I’ve considered how to botanize this year - by finding a different frame through which to view the world. I got some help with this by attending a native plant symposium over the weekend, hosted by the North Carolina Native Plant Society, Asheville Chapter. By the end of the day, I had some ideas for new perspectives on the upcoming woodland rambles. 

For now, from the symposium…

Tom Baugh, a biologist and former poetry editor of Rapid River magazine, began the day with a discussion of life on earth and our human connection to other life. Baugh shared the quote from E. O. Wilson that I used at the beginning of this post.

E. O. Wilson, a Harvard University entomologist, coined the term "biophilia" referring to our innate affinity with nature. Wilson’s hypothesis is that humans evolved as creatures deeply enmeshed with the intricacies of nature, and that we still have this affinity with nature ingrained in our genotype.

His book, Biophilia, The Human Bond with Other Species, includes essays on his own journey of understanding:

I have argued in this book that we are human in good part because of the particular way we affiliate with other organisms. They are the matrix in which the human mind originated and is permanently rooted, and they offer the challenge and freedom innately sought. To the extent that each person can feel like a naturalist, the old excitement of the untrammeled world will be regained. I offer this as a formula of reenchantment to invigorate poetry and myth: mysterious and little known organisms live within walking distance of where you sit. Splendor awaits in minute proportions.

Among those inspired by Wilson’s eloquent argument is social ecologist Stephen Kellert who has applied biophilia to the design of buildings and communities, as described in the book Biophilic Design: The Theory, Science and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life:

This book offers a paradigm shift in how we design and build our buildings and our communities, one that recognizes that the positive experience of natural systems and processes in our buildings and constructed landscapes is critical to human health, performance, and well-being. Biophilic design is about humanity's place in nature and the natural world's place in human society, where mutuality, respect, and enriching relationships can and should exist at all levels and should emerge as the norm rather than the exception.

Wilson and Kellert co-edited The Biophilia Hypothesis, a collection of invited papers supporting & refuting the biophilia hypothesis

Here are a few thoughts from E. O. Wilson:

The great philosophical divide in moral reasoning about the remainder of life is whether or not other species have an innate right to exist.

Biodiversity is the most information-rich part of the known universe. More organisation and complexity exists in a handful of soil than on the surfaces of all the other planets combined.

Biodiversity of a country is part of its national inheritance - the product of the deep history of the territory extending long back before the coming of man.

Humanity needs a vision of an expanding and unending future. This spiritual craving cannot be satisfied by the colonisation of space. The other planets are inhospitable and immensely expensive to reach. The nearest stars are so far away that voyagers would need thousands of years just to report back. The true frontier for humanity is life on earth, its exploration and the transport of knowledge about it into science, art and practical affairs. Again, the qualities of life that validate the proposition are: 90% or more of species of plants, animals and micro organisms, lack even so much as a scientific name; each of the species is immensely old by human standards and has been wonderfully moulded to its environment. Life around us exceeds in complexity and beauty anything else humanity is ever likely to encounter.

The manifold ways by which human beings are tied to the remainder of life are very poorly understood, crying for new scientific enquiry and a boldness of aesthetic interpretation.

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Wildflower photos from Spring 2009 include (from top):

Geranium maculatum

Trillium erectum

Sanguinaria canadensis

Erythronium americanum