MANY MOVED
When the Smokies became Government land, a great many people were moved out. But also a great many were left in. Today there are around 400 native mountain people still living in the Tennessee half of the park, probably an equal number on the Carolina side.
But it is hard for them. They are no longer masters of their own souls. His independence is a mountain man’s staff of life, and the reason he was here in the first place.
Today a mountain man in the park dare not go hunting. He can’t even have a gun, unless he’s a trusted old-timer allowed to keep it for sentimental reasons.
He cannot trap. He cannot cut down a tree. He dare not cut balsam boughs for an outdoor bed. When a mountain schoolteacher wants to give some of the boys a whuppin’, he has to get a Park Warden to cut the switches for him.
The mountain people live within the shell of their traditional existence, but it is an empty shell. The spirit has gone out of the old log house; an unseen guard stands watch at the door over their liberties. They are gradually leaving.
It is impossible both to retain, and to exhibit publicly, a natural way of living. Two more generations, and the old mountain culture of the Smokies will live only in the museums and the empty log cabins with Government signs on them, and in the schools that teach the newly educated youngsters how to weave and spin and hew as their forefathers did. That’s all that will be left.