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.