ETHNOGRAPHIC OVERVIEW AND ASSESSMENT ETHNOGRAPHIC OVERVIEW AND ASSESSMENT New River Gorge National River and Gauley River National Recreation Area Mary Hufford, Ph.D. With Thomas Carroll, Rita Moonsammy, Linda Lee, Cynthia Byrd, and Dana Hercbergs Prepared under cooperative agreement with: The Center for Folklore and Ethnography, University of Pennsylvania Northeast Region Ethnography Program, National Park Service Boston, MA September 2007 KEY FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS KEY FINDINGS This ethnographic overview and assessment of the New River Gorge National River and the Gauley River National Recreation Area describes the local cultural and historical context for the national rivers. Our study team has documented ways in which the presence of the national rivers affects local communities and shapes their cultural concerns, and we have identified kinds of ethnographic resources within the parks that are significant to the lifeways and identities of traditionally associated communities. We have also presented specific examples, though there are undoubtedly many specific sites and resources that did not come to our attention during the period of this investigation (March 2004–July 2005). Members of the communities we engaged include people whose collective history is attached to landscapes that extend into the boundaries of the parks. This history is embraced by people who lived and worked within the boundaries of the park, but now live outside of the boundaries, as well as by people who continue to live within the boundaries of the park, and by their descendants who reside outside the park boundaries. While this history is intertwined with the history of industrialization, and associated with the landscapes of railroads and coal towns, in the broader sweep of history the most enduring relationship is with the landscape itself. Descendants of Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans who settled in the region during different periods have learned to participate in the landscape in traditional ways that predate industry and have been modified over the generations. The research for this project involved the following principal tasks: 1. Compiling an annotated bibliography of relevant ethnographic and historical scholarship. 2. Collecting and tabulating census data for the region from 1860–2000. 3. Reviewing transcriptions of interviews from four previous documentation projects. 4. Observing and photographing modes of landscape participation throughout the entire region of the Gauley and New Rivers, including fishing, hunting, i NERI and GARI Ethnographic Overview and Assessment gardening, religious observances, cemetery customs, boating, swimming, and home-making. 5. Conducting open-ended, ethnographic interviews with approximately 60 community consultants. 6. Identifying ethnographic resources profiled in historical and ethnographic archives and scholarship. Out of this collection and assessment of existing resources we have developed an overview of the historical process that has shaped the landscape and communities in and around the National Rivers, and we have identified gaps in historical and ethnographic research. We supplemented this research through conversations and in-depth interviews with close to a hundred local residents. Our interviews and observations provide a sense of how people in the region engage its history to shape collective identity in relation to the landscapes surrounding the rivers. Our findings suggest that many people living in most communities in and around the New River Gorge National River and the Gauley River National Recreational Area meet the Park Service’s criteria for traditionally associated peoples. An ongoing effort to maintain land-based family and community ties is a distinctive feature of life in and around the National River from Summersville to Gauley Bridge, and from Hawk’s Nest to Hinton. We found that the landscapes of the parks, as they are historically connected to surrounding landscapes, support the collective memory on which community members rely for cultural and economic survival. The landscape that mediates family and community relationships is the particular landscape of the mixed mesophytic forest and associated watersheds. “Mixed mesophytic” is the name that botanist E. Lucy Braun gave to the hardwood forest system that overlays the coal- bearing plateaus stretching from northern Alabama to southeastern Ohio and southwestern Pennsylvania. Never glaciated, this region has given rise to the world’s most biologically diverse temperate zone hardwood system. It is likely that this landscape forms one of the most intact exemplars of a community forest and watershed to be found in North America. The mixed mesophytic forest of the Central Appalachian plateaus is already widely recognized as a globally significant resource. The knowledge of how to participate in this landscape is expressed through a host of practices that appear to have antecedents in distinct waves of settlement and land use, ii NERI and GARI Ethnographic Overview and Assessment including Native American practices dating from 16th and 17th century contact between European and Native American peoples, Scotch-Irish, German, and African American patterns of settlement and agriculture dating from the period of frontier settlement (1700–1880); the industrial period (1880–1960); the post-industrial pre-park period (1960–1980); and the present era of the National Rivers. Our principal finding is that the ethnographic resource which is vital to both cultural and natural conservation in the parks and in the region in general is the landscape of the mixed mesophytic watershed in tandem with the collective memory that animates and is animated by this landscape. While the historical and archival record implies the presence of a community forest, little systematic attention has been paid to it by the park or by scholars. To understand the mixed mesophytic community forest in its historical and contemporary contexts, we conducted close to sixty tape recorded interviews, four times the number anticipated in the scope of work. We found that: 1. There are people living in the Gauley and New River basins whose ecological memories and sensitivities could be drawn upon in order to frame a plan for regenerating and protecting the mixed mesophytic forest and associated landscapes and collective memory. 2. Participation in this landscape, conditioned by local knowledge that is generations deep, is the basis for continued ethnogenesis in this region. 3. While there are local venues for sharing cultural and ecological information about the status of the mixed mesophytic community forest and watershed, there is presently little, if any, venue at the regional level (i.e. the New and Gauley River basins). 4. By expanding some of its existing initiatives and developing its themes, the park could play a leading role in developing a regional program for regenerating and monitoring the mixed mesophytic community forest and watershed as a global biocultural resource. iii NERI and GARI Ethnographic Overview and Assessment Regenerating and protecting the mixed mesophytic community forest and watershed in consultation with the collective memory available in the region could be a very powerful and effective strategy for cultural conservation as a means of ameliorating the effects of global climate change. What follows is a brief summary of recommendations for management and further research. RECOMMENDATIONS Management • Constitute the Mixed Mesophytic Community Forest and Watershed as a Ground for Civic Engagement Finding ways to engage with traditionally associated people around the task of regenerating, monitoring, and tending the mixed mesophytic community forest and watershed as a landscape that is the expression and medium for community life is critical to the management of this resource, and therefore fundamental to the purpose for which the park was created. In this plan, the collective memory of traditionally associated peoples about the mixed mesophytic watershed would not simply be documented and stored in the park archive. Rather the landscape itself would continue to function as a living archive. While the park would continue to regulate the use of land and resources within its boundaries, it could exercise leadership in restoring the mixed mesophytic watershed by engaging (and employing) people inside and outside the park boundaries in the propagation of mixed mesophytic species and in the cleaning up of invasives. Further Research, Programs, and Educational Products • In Consultation with Traditionally Associated Communities, Develop Programs for Educating Park Visitors about the Biocultural Underpinnings and Global Significance of the Mixed Mesophytic Watersheds of New River and Central Appalachia. Local residents comprise a knowledgeable constituency for the mixed mesophytic watershed in ways that most visitors to the park do not and cannot. The collective memory that circulates in talk and practice and the reservoir of deep affection for the environment that many of our consultants expressed are resources on which the park could build a program of ongoing research and public education. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Key Findings And Recommendations i Key Findings ............................................................................................................................... i Recommendations ..................................................................................................................... iv Management