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Buck-Horned Snakes and Possum Women: Non-White Folkore, Antebellum *Southern Literature, and Interracial Cultural Exchange

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Buck-Horned Snakes and Possum Women: Non-White Folkore, Antebellum *Southern Literature, and Interracial Cultural Exchange W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 2010 Buck-horned snakes and possum women: Non-white folkore, antebellum *Southern literature, and interracial cultural exchange John Douglas Miller College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the American Literature Commons, and the Folklore Commons Recommended Citation Miller, John Douglas, "Buck-horned snakes and possum women: Non-white folkore, antebellum *Southern literature, and interracial cultural exchange" (2010). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539623556. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-rw5m-5c35 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NOTE TO USERS This reproduction is the best copy available. BUCK-HORNED SNAKES AND POSSUM WOMEN Non-White Folklore, Antebellum Southern Literature, and Interracial Cultural Exchange John Douglas Miller Portsmouth, Virginia Auburn University, M.A., 2002 Virginia Commonwealth University, B.A., 1997 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the College of William and Mary in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy American Studies Program The College of William and Mary January 2010 ©Copyright John D. Miller 2009 APPROVAL SHEET This Dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved by the Committee, August 21, 2009 Professor Robert J. Scholnick, American Studies Program The College of William & Mary Professor Susan V. Donaldson The College of William & Mary e-Hansen The Center for the Study of the American South at The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill ABSTRACT PAGE The antebellum American South was a site of continual human mobility and social fluidity. This cultivated a pattern of cultural exchange between black, indigenous, and white Southerners, especially in the Old Southwest, making the region a cultural borderland as well as a geographical one. This environment resulted in the creolization of many aspects oflife in the region. To date, the literature of the Old South has yet to be studied in this context. This project traces the diffusion of African-American and Native American culture in white-authored Southern texts. For instance, textual evidence in Old Southwestern Hu'mor reveals a pattern of adaptations of folklore belonging to African-Americans. In particular, Johnson Jones Hooper's Some Adventures ofSimon Suggs (1845) reflects the presence of plots and motifs that originated in African trickster tales. Not all white Southern authors were amenable to creolization, though. Novelists like William Gilmore Simms drew from but resisted the complete integration of non-white folklore in his historical romances. Native Americans and their culture frequently appear in his The Yemassee (1835), for instance, but always in a separate sphere. The differences associated with the creolization of Old Southwestern Humor and the lack thereof in Southern historical romances reflect a distinction in Southern attitudes toward westward expansion and its social implications. In particular, the degree to which these authors did or did not resist creolization reflects their opinion about patterns of antebellum emigration and the backwoods social fluidity that contributed to the phenomenon of cultural exchange. Older conservatives like Simms, for instance, perceived the Old Southwest as a threat due to its rowdiness, materialism, and permeable social class. Novels by these authors displaced this milieu into the colonial past at the historical moment at which it became stabilized. The consequent elimination of Native Americans by whites in these texts marked a symbolic victory for order and stasis. The texts of younger emigres to the South like Hooper reflect an alternate perspective. Their embrace of the creative opportunities made possible by the social instability of the Old Southwest corresponds to their enthusiasm for the economic and social promise afforded by this recently settled region. In other words, the authors' openness to creolization mirrors a tolerance of the chaos born of mobility and a lack of structure. Suggs's antisocial exploits are adapted from African­ American trickster tales whose characteristic disdain for authority and subversiveness contribute to Hooper's satire of traditional attitudes, including paternalism, which sought to limit this social flux. These texts' competing viewpoints of the frontier allow scholars to get a sense of the diversity of social and political thought in the region-in effect, there was no monolithic Mind of the Old South. Additionally, acknowledging that these texts are a product of the multicultural environment reveals the contributions of Africans and Native Americans to Southern literature at its formative stage. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgments 111 Introduction 2 Chapter I. The Cultural Frontier of the Old South 42 Chapter II. Southern Novelists and Native American Culture '· 85 Chapter III. Epic Pasts and Paternalistic Futures 122 Chapter IV. Was Simon Suggs Black? 187 Chapter V. A New Literature for a New Country 247 Afterword 305 Bibliography 309 Vita 325 For my grandparents, w~o could tell terrific stories. 11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For a work that is supposed to demonstrate independent thinking and make an individual contribution to scholarship, this dissertation is deeply indebted to the ideas and the assistance of many others. The list begins with the American Sfudies Program at the College of William & Mary, which has been a lively intellectual home. I am profoundly grateful to Jean Brown and the Program's faculty, especially my advisors, Robert J. Scholnick and Susan V. Donaldson. Both are remarkable scholars and individuals, and this project is a testimonial to their thoughtfulness and patience. I am obliged to them for their guidance, their time, and their faith in me and my work. ·· I am likewise beholden to Professors Melvin Patrick Ely and David Moltke­ Hansen for their interest and assistance in this endeavor. Their scholarship shaped my understanding of the history of the Old South, and this manuscript benefited from their meticulous readings and their comprehensive commentary. William & Mary was the ideal place to develop an interdisciplinary project, and I am grateful for the assistance I received from scholars across its campus, including Professors Jack Martin, Rich Lowry, Tim Barnard, and Robert Maccubbin. I am also thankful for Susan Riggs and Kathy O'Brien and their unflagging moral support. Perhaps as a consequence of the example set by the aforementioned individuals, a superb graduate student ~ommunity flourishes at William & Mary. They also contributed many excellent ideas and much-needed encouragement. Kristen Proehl in particular was generous with her kindness and attentive criticism. I also benefited from the comments of Merit Kaschig, Sean Harvey, Dave Brown, David Kidd, Josh Beatty, Sarah McClennan, Ellen Adams, and Jackson Sasser. For a project that discusses far-flung networks of cultural exchange, it is appropriate that this manuscript itself was the product of a wide web of intellectual influences and contributions. I am obliged to Nicholas Meriwether, Lauren LaFauci, Heath Scott, William Ferris, Trudier Harris, Fred Hobson, Shelley Fisher-Fishkin, Thomas Inge, Matthew Brennan, and David Newton for their willingness to listen to my ideas as well as their excellent guidance. I am especially indebted to Professor Bert Hitchcock for encouraging my interest in the literature of the Old South. This project would not have been possible but for the financial generosity of several institutions that permitted my exploration of special collections across the South and mid-Atlantic. Thank you to the William Gilmore Simms Society and the South Caroliniana Library for their award of a William Gilmore Simms Research Fellowship; the Institute for Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina for a short-term visiting fellowship; Mitchell Smith and Thomas Nelson Community College for a Virginia Community College System Professional Development Grant; and The Office of 111 Graduate and Research Studies and the American Studies Program at William & Mary for several Summer Research Grants. This space is inadequate for conveying the sincerity and the profundity of my gratitude to my family for their commitment to my intellectual endeavors. The dedication of my wife, Megan, never wavered, and this project could not have been realized without the love and moral support of my family and the Pope fafuily. IV BUCK-HORNED SNAKES AND POSSUM WOMEN Non-White Folklore, Antebellum Southern Literature, and Interracial Cultural Exchange INTRODUCTION In 1890, Grace B. Elmore, the then-53-year-old daughter of a South Carolina slaveholder, began writing a never-published memoir about growing up on her father's plantation. Almost every page of her manuscript is filled with memories of her family's black slaves and her interactions with them. Elmore and her brother and sister "were all the time with one or another of the servants, and most of my recollections are mixed up with them," she wrote. 1 One especially vivid memory was when the family's house servants would tell
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