The Pioneers Arrive
Into the Smokies they came, but the coming was slow. The early pioneers of the Old Southwest had conquered the lowlands of North Carolina and Tennessee with relative ease. The higher country of the Great Smoky Mountains, set into the Southern Appalachians like a great boulder among scattered stones, would yield less quickly.
The pioneers began, as the Cherokees had done, with the most accessible land. The level Oconaluftee valley, stretching its timbered swath from present-day Cherokee, North Carolina, on up into the forks and tributaries of the Great Smokies, beckoned with at least some possibilities to the hopeful settler. As early as 1790, Dr. Joseph Dobson, a North Carolina Revolutionary War veteran who had accompanied Rutherford on his 1777 campaign against the Cherokees, entered into deed a tract on the Oconaluftee. But the claim was void; the valley still belonged to the Indians.
John Walker had also ridden with Rutherford. His son Felix, a student and friend of Dr. Dobson, lawfully received in 1795 a sizable land grant to the valley. Young Walker was more than willing to let settlers attempt development of this wild area. Two North Carolina families decided to try. John Jacob Mingus and Ralph Hughes took their wives and children and journeyed into the “Lufty” regions of the Smokies. They cleared small homesteads by the river; they were all alone.
In 1803, Abraham Enloe and his family moved up from South Carolina and joined the growing families of Mingus and Hughes. Enloe chose land directly across the river from John Mingus, and by 1820 Abraham’s daughter Polly had married John, junior. “Dr. John,” as the younger Mingus was respectfully called in his later years, learned much about medicine from the scattered Cherokees remaining in the area.
Other families, Carolinian and Georgian and Virginian alike, arrived and stayed. Collins, Bradley, Beck, Conner, Floyd, Sherrill: these and others settled beside the river itself, and their children moved along the creeks and branches. Fresh lands were cleared, new homes built; the Oconaluftee was being transformed. And further to the southwest, Forney Creek was being claimed by Crisps and Monteiths, Coles and Welches; Deep Creek had already been colonized by Abraham Wiggins and his descendants.
The Tennessee side of the Smokies, furrowed by its own series of rivers and creeks, awaited settlement. By 1800 a few Virginians and Carolinians were drifting into the four-year-old state of Tennessee, willing to settle.
The first family of Gatlinburg was probably a mother and her seven children. This widow, Martha Huskey Ogle, brought five sons and two daughters from Edgefield, South Carolina. Richard Reagan, a Scotch-Irishman from Virginia, and his family joined the Ogles and began to clear land. His son, Daniel Wesley Reagan, born in 1802, was the first child of the settlement and later became a leading citizen of the community. The elder Reagan was fatally injured when a heavy wind blew the limb from a tree on him, reminding the little community once more of the precarious nature of survival in this free, stern country.
Maples, Clabos, and Trenthams followed the Ogles and the Reagans into the Gatlinburg area. Nearby Big Greenbrier Cove became known as “the Whaley Settlement.” Some settlers traveled directly across the crest of the Smokies, via Indian and Newfound Gaps, but these old Cherokee trails and cattle paths were rough and overgrown. Horses could barely make it through, and most possessions had to be carried on stout human shoulders. Besides the usual pots, tools, guns, and seeds were the Bibles and treasured manmade mementos.
Many settlers, having been soldiers of the Revolution, had received 20-hectare (50-acre) land grants for a mere 75 cents. They pushed along the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River, past Gatlinburg, up among the steep slopes of the Bull Head, the Chimney Tops, the Sugarland Mountain. This narrow Sugarlands valley, strewn with water-smoothed boulders and homestead-sized plateaus of level land, attracted dozens of families. But this rocky country forced the settlers to clear their fields twice, first of the forest and then of the stones.
Edouard E. Exline
Uncle George Lamon sits next to one of his honey bee boxes at his home in Gumstand, near Gatlinburg.
The work of clearing demanded strong muscles, long hours, and sturdy spirits. It meant denting the hard armor of the forest and literally fighting for a tiny patch of cropland. Men axed the huge trees with stroke after grinding stroke, then either wrenched the stumps from the earth with teams of oxen or burned them when they had dried. Some trees were so immense that all a man could do was “girdle” them, which meant deep-cutting a fatal circle into the bark to arrest the flow of sap. Such “deadenings” might stand for years with crops planted on the “new ground,” before the trees were finally cut and often burned. Logs and stumps from the virgin forest often smouldered for days or weeks.
The soil itself was rich and loamy with the topsoil of centuries. Land that had produced great forests could also nourish fine crops. During the first year of settlement, all able-bodied members of the family helped cultivate the new ground. Such land demanded particular attention. Using a single-pointed “Bull tongue” plow to bite deep into the earth and a sharp iron “coulter” to cut tough roots left under the massive stumps, a succession of plows, horses, and workers prepared and turned the newly cleared field. The first man “laid off” the rows into evenly spaced lengths, the second plowed an adjacent furrow, and the wife or children dropped in the seed. A third plow covered this planted row by furrowing along its side. A short while later, the same workers would “bust middles” by plowing three extra furrows into the ground between the seeded rows. This loosened the soil and destroyed any remaining roots.
While fields throughout the Smokies were yielding to the plow, even more isolated coves and creeks were being penetrated and settled. Gunters, Webbs, McGahas, and Suttons found their way into Big Creek. And in 1818, John Oliver walked into a secluded Tennessee cove, spent the night in an Indian hut, and then became familiar with one of the most beautiful and productive spots in all the Great Smokies. This broad, well-watered basin of fertile land was named after the wife of an old Cherokee chief; it was called Kate’s Cove, later Cades Cove.
John Oliver settled in that cove. Three years later—two years after the decisive 1819 treaty with the Cherokees—William Tipton settled there legally, bought up most of the land, and parceled it out to paying newcomers. David Foute came and established an iron forge in 1827. By mixing iron ore with limestone and charcoal, this “bloomery forge” produced chunks of iron called “blooms.” The forge, similar to many which sprang up throughout Appalachia, was indeed an asset, but its low-grade ore and the cost of charcoal forced it to close only 20 years later.
Russell Gregory built a homestead high in the cove and ranged cattle on a nearby grassy bald. These mysterious open meadows scattered throughout the Smokies were of unknown origin. Had Indians kept them cleared in years gone by? Had some unexplained natural circumstance created them? Pioneers and later experts alike remained baffled and attracted by the lush grass which, growing among forest-covered crags and pinnacles, provided excellent forage for livestock. The present-day Parson’s and Gregory Balds were named for enterprising farmers who made early use of this phenomenon. Peter Cable, a friend of William Tipton, joined the valley settlement in Cades Cove. Cable’s son-in-law, Dan Lawson, expanded Cable’s holdings into a narrow mountain-to-mountain empire.
Cades Cove, with its vast farmland, soon rivaled Oconaluftee and Cataloochee. The lower end of the cove sometimes became swampy, but this pasture was reclaimed by a series of dikes and log booms. To escape an 1825 epidemic of typhoid in the Tennessee lowlands, Robert Shields and his family moved up into the hill-guarded cove. Two of his sons married John Oliver’s daughters and remained in Cades Cove. A community had been formed.
But the life in these small communities was not easy. Each family farmed for a living; each family homestead provided for its own needs and such luxuries as it could create. Isolation from outside markets made cash crops, and hence cash itself, relatively insignificant. The settlers of the Great Smokies depended upon themselves. They built their own cabins and corncribs, their own meat- and apple- and spring-houses. They cultivated a garden whose corn, potatoes, and other vegetables would last the family through the winter. They set about insuring a continuous supply of pork and fruit and grains, wool and sometimes cotton, and all the other commodities necessary to keep a family alive.
Edouard E. Exline
Most families had several scaffolds in their yards on which they dried fruits, beans, corn, and even duck and chicken feathers for stuffing pillows.
Charles S. Grossman
Near most houses was a smokehouse in which meat was cured and often stored for later use.
Charles S. Grossman
Fruits and other goods were stored in barns or sheds, often located over cool springs.
Edouard E. Exline
Food also was stored in pie safes. The pierced tin panels allow air into the cabinet but prevent flies from getting at the food.
Living off the land required both labor and ingenuity. These early settlers did not mind fishing and hunting for food throughout the spring, summer, and early fall, but there were also the demands of farming and livestock raising. They carved out of wood such essentials as ox yokes and wheat cradles, spinning wheels and looms. Men patiently rebuilt and repaired anything from a broken harness to a sagging “shake” roof made of hand-riven shingles. Children picked quantities of wild berries and bushels of beans in sun-hot fields and gathered eggs from hidden hen nests in barn lofts and under bushes. They found firewood for the family, carried water from the spring, bundled fodder from cane and corn, and stacked hay for the cattle, horses, mules, and oxen.
Aiden Stevens
In the days before refrigerators, many methods and kinds of containers were used in preserving and storing foods. Corn meal, dried beans and other vegetables, and sulphured fruits were kept in bins made from hollow black gum logs.
Women made sure that the food supply stretched to last through the winter. They helped salt and cure pork from the hogs that their husbands slaughtered. They employed a variety of methods to preserve vital fruits and vegetables. Apples, as well as beans, were carefully dried in the hot summer or autumn sun; water, added months later, would restore a tangy flavor. Some foods were pickled in brine or vinegar.
Women also used sulphur as a preservative, especially with apples. Called simply “fruit” by the early settlers, apples such as the favorite Limbertwigs and Milams gave both variety and nutrition to the pioneer diet. A woman might peel and slice as much as two dishpans of “fruit” into a huge barrel. She would then lay a pan of sulphur on top of the apples and light the contents. By covering the barrel with a clean cloth, she could regulate the right amount of fumes held inside. The quickly sulfurated apples remained white all winter and were considered a delicacy by every mountain family.
Food, clothing, shelter, and incessant labor: these essentials formed only the foundation of a life. Intangible forces hovered at the edges and demanded fulfillment. As hardy and practical as the physical existence of the pioneers had to be, there was another dimension to life. The pioneers were human beings. Often isolated, sometimes lonely, they yearned for the comforts of myth and superstition and religion—and the roads that led in and out. The Cherokees in their time had created such comforts; they had woven their myths and had laced the Smokies with a network of trails. Now it was the white man’s turn.
The early settlers of the Great Smoky Mountains were not content to remain only in their hidden hollows and on their tiny homesteads. Challenging the mountain ranges and the rough terrain, they constructed roads. In the mid-1830s, a project was undertaken to lay out a road across the crest of the Smokies and connect North Carolina’s Little Tennessee valley with potential markets in Knoxville, Tennessee. Although the North Carolina section was never completed, an old roadbed from Cades Cove to Spence Field is still in existence. When Julius Gregg established a licensed distillery in Cades Cove and processed brandy from apples and corn, farmers built a road from the cove down Tabcat Creek to the vast farmlands along the Little Tennessee River.
By far the most ambitious road project was the Oconaluftee Turnpike. In 1832, the North Carolina legislature chartered the Oconaluftee Turnpike Company. Abraham Enloe, Samuel Sherrill, John Beck, John Carroll, and Samuel Gibson were commissioners for the road and were authorized to sell stock and collect tolls. The road itself was to run from Oconaluftee all the way to the top of the Smokies at Indian Gap.
Work on the road progressed slowly. Bluffs and cliffs had to be avoided; such detours lengthened the turnpike considerably. Sometimes the rock was difficult to remove. Crude blasting—complete with hand-hammered holes, gunpowder inside hollow reeds, and fuses of straw or leaves—constituted one quick and sure, but more expensive, method. Occasionally, the men burned logs around the rock, then quickly showered it with creek water. When the rock split from the sudden change in temperature, it could then be quarried and graded out. Throughout the 1830s, residents of Oconaluftee and nearby valleys toiled and sweated to lay down this single roadbed.
This desire and effort to conquer the wilderness also prompted the establishment of churches and, to a lesser extent, schools. In the Tennessee Sugarlands, services were held under the trees until a small building was constructed at the beginning of the 19th century. The valley built a larger five-cornered Baptist church in 1816. Prospering Cades Cove established a Methodist church in 1830; its preacher rode the Little River circuit. Five years later, the church had 40 members.
Over on the Oconaluftee, Ralph Hughes had donated land and Dr. John Mingus had built a log schoolhouse. Monthly prayer meetings were held there until the Lufty Baptist Church was officially organized in 1836. Its 21 charter members included most of the turnpike commissioners plus the large Mingus family. Five years later, the members built a log church at Smokemont on land donated by John Beck.
Nothing fostered these settlers’ early gropings toward community more than stories. Legends and tall tales, begun in family conversations and embellished by neighborly rumor, forged a bond, a unity of interest, a common history, in each valley and on each meandering branch. For example, in one western North Carolina tradition that would thrive well into the 20th century, Abraham Enloe was cited as the real father of Abraham Lincoln. Nancy Hanks, it was asserted, had worked for a time in the Enloe household and had become pregnant. Exiled to Kentucky, she married Thomas Lincoln but gave birth to Abraham’s child.
Stories mingled with superstition. The Cherokees dropped seven grains into every corn hill and never thinned their crop. Many early settlers of the Smokies believed that if corn came up missing in spots, some of the family would die within a year. Just as the Cherokees forbade counting green melons or stepping across the vines because “it would make the vines wither,” the Smokies settlers looked upon certain events as bad omens. A few days before Richard Reagan’s skull was fractured, a bird flew on the porch where he sat and came to rest on his head. Reagan himself saw it as a “death sign.”
Superstition, combined with Indian tradition, led to a strangely exact form of medicine. One recipe for general aches and pains consisted of star root, sourwood, rosemary, sawdust, anvil dust, water, and vinegar. A bad memory required a properly “sticky” tea made of cocklebur and jimsonweed.
A chief medicinal herb was an unusual wild plant known as ginseng. Called “sang” in mountain vernacular, its value lay in the manlike shape of its dual-pronged roots. Oriental cultures treasured ginseng, especially the older and larger roots. Reputed to cure anything from a cough to a boil to an internal disorder, it was also considered an aphrodisiac and a source of rare, mystical properties. But scientific research has never yielded any hard evidence of its medicinal worth.
Alan Rinehart
Aunt Sophie Campbell made clay pipes at her place on Crockett Mountain and sold them to her neighbors and to other folks in the Gatlinburg area.
Settlers used ginseng sparingly, for it brought a high price when sold to herb-dealers for shipment to China. The main problem lay in locating the five-leaved plants, which grew in the most secluded, damp coves of the Smokies. Sometimes several members of a family would wait until summer or early fall, then go out on extended “sanging” expeditions.
The search was not easy. During some seasons, the plant might not appear at all. When it did, its leaves yellowed and its berries reddened for only a few days. But when a healthy “sang” plant was finally found, and its long root carefully cleaned and dried, it could yield great financial reward. Although the 5-year-old white root was more common, a red-rooted plant needed a full decade to mature and was therefore especially prized. Greed often led to wanton destruction of the beds, with no seed-plants for future harvests. Ginseng was almost impossible to cultivate.
Ginseng-hunting became a dangerous business. Although Daniel Boone dug it and traded in it, later gatherers were sometimes killed over it. One large Philadelphia dealer who came into Cataloochee in the mid-1800s was murdered and robbed. Anyone trying to grow it, even if he were successful, found that he would have to guard the plants like water in a desert. Indeed, the rare, graceful ginseng became a symbol for many in the mountains of all that was unique, so readily destroyed, and eventually irreplaceable.
As much as the pioneers drew on Indian experience, they also depended on their own resourcefulness. One skill which the early settlers brought with them into the Smoky Mountains involved a power unknown to the Cherokees. This was the power of the rifle: both its manufacture and the knowledge of what the rifle could do.
The backwoods rifle was a product of the early American frontier. Formally known as the “Pennsylvania-Kentucky” rifle, this long-barreled innovation became a standby throughout the Appalachians. To assure precise workmanship, it was made out of the softest iron available. The inside of the barrel, or the bore, was painstakingly “rifled” with spiralling grooves. This gradual twist made the bullet fly harder and aim straighter toward its target. The butt of the weapon was crescent-shaped to keep the gun from slipping. All shiny or highly visible metal was blackened, and sometimes a frontiersman would rub his gun barrel with a dulling stain or crushed leaf.
But the trademark of the “long rifle” was just that: its length. Weighing over 2.5 kilograms (5.5 pounds) and measuring more than 1.2 meters (4 feet), the barrel of the backwoods rifle could be unbalancing. Yet this drawback seemed minor compared to the superior accuracy of the new gun. The heavy barrel could take a much heavier powder charge than the lighter barrels, and this in turn could, as an expert noted, “drive the bullet faster, lower the trajectory, make the ball strike harder, and cause it to flatten out more on impact. It does not cause inaccurate flight....”
National Park Service
A young Smokies lad stands proudly with his long rifle and powder horn before heading off to the woods on a hunting excursion.
The Pennsylvania-Kentucky rifle became defender, gatherer of food, companion for thousands of husbands and fathers. Cradled on a rack of whittled wooden pegs or a buck’s antlers, the “rifle-gun” hung over the door or along the wall or above the “fire-board,” as the mantel was called, within easy and ready reach. It was the recognized symbol of the fact that each man’s cabin was his castle.
Equipped with a weapon such as this, pioneer Americans pushed back the frontier. The fastnesses of the Great Smoky Mountains gradually submitted to the probing and settling of the white man. The fertile valleys were settled, the hidden coves were conquered. The Oconaluftee Turnpike to the top of the Smokies was completed in 1839. And in that fateful year, disaster was stalking a people who had known the high mountains but who had not known of the ways of making a rifle.