The Land of Saddle-Bags: a Study of the Mountain People of Appalachia
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University of Kentucky UKnowledge United States History History 1924 The Land of Saddle-bags: A Study of the Mountain People of Appalachia James Watt Raine Berea College Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Raine, James Watt, "The Land of Saddle-bags: A Study of the Mountain People of Appalachia" (1924). United States History. 15. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_united_states_history/15 The Land of Saddle-bags TO DISREGARD PHYSICAL COMFORT, TO MEET EMERGENCIES, TO FACE DAN GER WITH COURAGE AND COOLNESS, TO EXERCISE RESOLUTION AND INDE PENDENCE OF SPIRIT-THESE ARE ESSENTIALS TO A RIDER IN THE LAND OF SADDLE-BAGS. The Land of Saddle-bags A Study of the Mountain People of Appalachia James Watt Raine Foreword by Dwight B. Billings THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Publication of this new edition was made possible by grants from the E.O. Robinson Mountain Fund and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 1924 by The Council of Women for Home Missions and Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada Foreword to 1997 edition copyright © 1997 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Raine, James Watt, 1869–1949. The land of saddle-bags : a study of the mountain people of Appalachia / James Watt Raine ; foreword by Dwight B. Billings. p. cm. Originally published: New York : Council of Women for Home Missions and Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada, c1924. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8131-0929-9 (paper : alk. paper) 1. Mountain whites (Southern State)—Social life and customs. 2. Appalachian Region, Southern—Social life and customs. I. Title. F210.R15 1997 306'.0975'091423—dc21 96-49955 ISBN-13: 978-0-8131-0929-9 (paper : alk. paper) This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses CONTENTS Foreword by Dwight B. Billings ~x Preface xlv 1 Introducing Ourselves 1 2 The Spell of the Wilderness 19 3 Adventurers for Freedom 33 4 Elizabethan Virtues 65 5 Mountain Speech and Song 95 6 Moonshine and Feuds 127 7 The Mountains Go to School 163 8 The Religion of a Stalwart People 191 9 Health and Happiness 207 10 Wealth and Welfare 221 11 The Challenge 241 TO MY FATHER ILLUSTRATIONS In the Land of Saddle-bags FRONTISPIECE From a Mountain Top 4 A County Seat 5 A Windowless Cabin 52 Where Rivers and Streams Abound 53 Quilts and "Kivers" 68 Cooperation and Compensation 69 When a Road Isn't a Road 148 The Secret of the Future 149 A Modern Priscilla 164 Five Miles from a Store 165 A Meeting at Wildcat Mountain 212 Reminders of Elizabethan Days 213 The Warp and Woof of Mountain Art 228 A Class in Cheese-making 229 This page intentionally left blank FOREWORD specially since the publication in 1978 of EHenry D. Shapiro's intellectual history of the idea of Appalachia, Appalachia on Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountain eers in the American Consciousness, 1870-1920, Appalachian scholars have vigorously investi gated the social origins of the notion that the mountain South is "a coherent region inhab ited by an homogeneous population possess ing a uniform culture."1 With the publication of this present edition of James Watt Raine's The Land of Saddle-bags, the University Press of Kentucky makes available to contemporary readers one of the most important early books on mountain life, a book that has had a pro found and lasting impact on how we think about Appalachia and, indeed, on the fact that we commonly believe that such a place and people can be readily identified. The Land of Saddle-bags, first published in 1924, belongs to a genre of first-hand documen tary accounts of the people and customs of the southern Appalachian Mountains that ranks second in importance only to the earlier local color fiction of popular writers such as John Fox Jr. and Mary Noailles Murfree in con structing enduring images of the southern mountaineer that still flourish in popular thought. Among many such works published ix X Foreword during the early decades of the twentieth cen tury that were intended to describe authorita tively the inhabitants of the southern moun tains to curious readers elsewhere, Raine's book probably ranks just below John C. Campbell's The Southern Highlander and His Homeland (1921) and Horace Kephart's Our Southern Highlanders (1913 and 1922) in im portance and influence.2 Lacking the empirical depth of Campbell's survey of the region but less sensationalistic than Kephart's "narrative of adventure" in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Ten nessee, Raine's work is far and away the best "read" of these three early documentaries. Al though much of his scholarship is outdated, Raine was an able literary stylist who at tempted to strike a balance between broad, historical generalizations and illustrative an ecdotes in his descriptions of life in Appala chia. Indeed, even the book's normally somber first publisher, the Council of Women for Home Missions and Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada, advertised Saddle-bags as a "racy book, full of the thrill of mountain adventure and the delicious hu mor of vigorously human people."3 Born to a Scottish family in London, En gland, in 1869, James Watt Raine, along with Foreword X£ his father and two brothers, moved to the United States upon the death of his mother when Raine was twelve years old. Unlike many of the early interpreters of Appalachia who went there only as adults, Raine acquired early first-hand acquaintance with life in the south ern mountains since his family first lived in West Virginia and later settled in Arkansas. Perhaps the experience of migrating to Amer ica from London as youths and living in the rural South encouraged the young Raine lads to be attentive to the color and character of America's diverse regions. In any event, James Watt Raine was not the only member of his family to achieve success as a local colorist. His brother William MacLeod Raine Jr. was one of the most widely read western novelists of his era, and his other brother, Edgar, a U.S. Trea sury official, was hailed as "an authority on Alaska."4 Raine graduated from Oberlin College in 1893 and received a Bachelor of Divinity de gree from Union Theological Seminary in 1897. Following brief teaching stints at Oberlin and Kansas State Agricultural College, he served as the pastor of two Congregational churches in Ohio and New York from 1897 to 1906. In 1906, he began a thirty-three year teaching career in Appalachian Kentucky at Berea Col- xu Foreword lege, where he first served as a professor of English literature and later as head of the English and drama departments. Raine's writ ings include a number of pageant plays per formed at Berea College as well as a full-length biblical drama entitled Job, the Prince of Uz, which was also produced there.5 In addition to the scholarly work for which he is best remem bered, The Land of Saddle-bags, he also pub lished a collection of mountain ballads, a mod est number of academic papers, and a much less familiar short book on the people of East ern Kentucky entitled Saddle-bag Folk: The Way of Life in the Kentucky Mountains. 6 Raine retired from Berea College in 1939 and died ten years later at age 79 at his hillside farm near Berea. Significantly, the release of a new edition of Raine's book brings forth a highly influential version of Appalachia that was based upon selective images of the Kentucky mountains and on the educational agenda of Berea Col lege. The geographer Tyrel G. Moore has shown that the early literary images of Appalachia reflected a "dominant geographical bias" that portrayed certain highly remote and undevel oped sections of the Kentucky Mountains as representative of the larger Appalachian re gion. Thus, for many readers outside the moun- Foreword xzn tains, the highly selective descriptions of Ap palachian Kentucky by fiction writers such as John Fox Jr. and social scientists such as Ellen Churchill Semple came to signify the whole southern mountain region. 7 As a consequence of this stereotyping, a "regional diversity of resources and development patterns was over looked," according to Moore, in favor of the "per ceived homogeneity of conditions in Appala chia." Raine's The Land of Saddle-bags cer tainly did not present all there was to be known about eastern Kentucky or the whole of the Appalachian region, but its Kentucky-based images of the mountain people registered a wide resonance among American readers.