The Indians’ maize, or corn, was the most essential crop on the typical Smokies farmstead. Besides being used as food for livestock, it was the staple for the pioneers themselves. With corn they made corn bread, hoe cakes, corn meal mush, and even a little moonshine. The harvested crop was kept dry in a corncrib until used.
As the pioneers became more settled and turned into farmers, they built barns to provide shelter for their cows, oxen, sheep, and horses, plus some of their farming equipment and hay. The large, log barn at the Oconaluftee Farmstead is unusual. It is a drovers’ barn—a hotel for cattle and other animals driven to market. The barn is located close to its original site.
Most farmers had a small blacksmith shop where they could bang out a few tools, horseshoes, hinges, and, later on, parts for farm machinery. These structures were not very sophisticated; they just had to provide a little shelter so the fire could be kept going and to protect the equipment—and to keep the smith dry—during inclement weather.
The springhouse served not only as the source of water but as a refrigerator. Here milk, melons, and other foods were kept, many of them in large crocks. The water usually ran through the springhouse in one half of a hollowed out log, or in a rock-lined trench. On hot, muggy days, a child sent to the springhouse for food or water might tarry a moment or two to enjoy the air conditioning.
The farmstead is open all year, but the house is open only from May to November.
Cades Cove
The Methodist Church, Cable Mill, and Gregg-Cable house are just three of the many log or frame structures still standing in Cades Cove today.
Just as Oconaluftee represents self-sufficiency and individuality, Cades Cove illustrates those traits, plus something else: a sense of community. Here individuals and families worked hard at eking out a living from day to day, but here, too, everyone gathered together from time to time to help harvest a crop, raise a barn, build a church, and maintain a school. The structural evidence of this helping-hand attitude still stands today in Cataloochee (see pages [154-155]) and in Cades Cove.