Away up in an extreme
corner
of Tennessee I found them--them or it, for what I found is a remnant of
a lost or forgotten race, huddled together in a sterile and isolated
strip of land in one of the most inaccessible quarters of Tennessee.
When I started out upon my hunt for the Malungeons various opinions and
vague whispers were afloat concerning my sanity. My friends were too
kind to do more than shake their heads and declare they never heard of
such a people. But the less intimate of my acquaintances coolly
informed me that I was “going on a wild-goose chase,” and were quite
willing to “bet their cars” I would never get nearer a Malungeon than
at that moment. One dear old lady with more faith in the existence of
the Malungeons than in my ability to cope with them begged me to insure
my life before starting and to carry a loaded pistol. Another, not so
dear and not so precautious, informed me that she “didn’t believe in
women gadding about the country alone, nohow.” Still I went, I saw and
I shall conquer.
How I chanced to go and how I
first heard of the Malungeons was through a New York newspaper. Some
three years since I noticed a short paragraph stating that such a
people exist somewhere in Tennessee. It stated that they were rather
wild, entirely unlettered and largely given to illicit distilling. It
spoke of their dialect as something unheard of, but failed to locate
the human curiosities. I had but one cue by which to trail them--viz:
they were illicit distillers. After repeated inquiry, and no end of
laughter at my expense, I went to Capt. Carter B. Harrison, who was
once United States marshal and did a good deal of work in this
district. “The Malungeons?” said Capt. Harrison. “O, yes; you will find
them in -------county (I will give the county later), and Senator
J----, of the state senate, can tell you about them.” I trailed Senator
J--- for six months and with this result. “Go to -----,” said he, “and
take a horse forty miles across the country to ---Tenn. There strike
for----- ridge, the stronghold of the Malungeons.” I have followed
directions faithfully, and just here let me say if any one supposes I
made the trip for the fun it might afford, he is mistaken. If any one
supposes it was prompted by a spirit of adventure, or a love for the
wild and untried, he is grievously in error. I have never experienced
more difficulty in traveling, suffered more inconvenience, discomfort,
bodily fatigue and real dread of danger. It required almost superhuman
effort to carry me on, and more than once, or a dozen times, I was
tempted to give it up.
The Malungeons are a most
peculiar people. They occupy an isolated land except for horse or foot
passengers, inaccessible territory, separated and alone, not mixing or
caring to mix with the rest of the world. There are, however, a few, a
very few, exceptions. I went one day to preaching on Big Sycamore,
where the people are more mixed than on their native mountains. I found
here all colors--white women with white children and white husbands,
Malungeon women with brown babies and white babies, and one, a young
copper-colored woman with black eyes and straight Indian locks, had
three black babies, negroes, at her heels and a third at her breast.
She was not a negro. Her skin was red, a kind of reddish-yellow, as
easily distinguishable from a mulatto as the white man from the negro.
I saw an old colored man, black as the oft-quoted ace of spades, whose
wife is a white woman. I am told, however, the law did take his case in
hand, but the old negro pleaded his “Portygee” blood and was not
convicted.
Many of the Malungeons claim
to be Cherokee and Portuguese. Where they could have gotten their
Portuguese blood is a mystery. The Cherokee is easily enough accounted
for, as they claim to have come from North Carolina, and to be a
remnant of the tribe that refused to go when the Indians were ordered
to the reservation. They are certainly very Indian-like in appearance.
The men are tall, straight, clean-shaven, with small, sharp eyes,
hooked noses, and high cheek bones. They wear their hair long ( a great
many of them) and evidently enjoy their resemblance to the red man.
This is doubtless due to the fact that a great many are disposed to
believe them mulattos, and they are strongly opposed to being so
classed. The women are small, graceful, dark and ugly. They go
barefooted, but their feet are small and well shaped. So, too, are
their hands, and they have the merriest, most musical laugh I ever
heard. They are exceedingly inquisitive, and will ask you a dozen
questions before you can answer two.
The first question that
greets you at every door is--even if you only stop for water--”Watcher
name?” the next is, “How old yer?” and, “Wher yer live ter?” and then
comes the all-important—“Did yer hear an’thin’ o’ ther railroad
cumin’up ther ridge?” They all look for it constantly and always, as if
they expect to see, some glad day, the brunt of the iron track, the
glorious herald of prosperity and knowledge, come creeping up the
mountain, horseback or afoot, bringing joy to the cabin even of the
outcast and ostracised Malungeon; ostracised indeed. Only the negroes,
who having themselves felt the lash of ostracism, open their doors to
the Malungeons. They are very dishonest, so much so that only a few,
not more than half a dozen, of the best are admitted into the house of
the well-to-do native.
During the war they were a
terror to the women of the valley, going in droves to their homes and
helping themselves to food and clothing, even rifling the beds and
closets while the defenseless wives of the absent soldiers stood by and
witnessed the wholesale plundering, afraid to so much as offer a
protest. After the war the women invaded their territory and recovered
a great deal of their stolen property. They are exceedingly lazy. They
live from hand to mouth in hovels too filthy for any human being. They
do not cultivate the soil at all. A tobacco patch and orchard is the
end and aim of their aspirations. I never saw such orchards, apples and
apples and apples, peaches and peaches and peaches, and soon it will be
brandy and brandy and brandy. They all drink, men, women and children,
and they are all distillers; that is, the work of distilling is not
confined to the men. Indeed the women are the burden-bearers in every
sense. They cook, wash, dig, hoe, cut wood, gather the fruit, strip the
tobacco and help with the stills. There is not so much distilling now
among them as there was a few years back. Uncle Sam set his hounds upon
their trail, and now they are more careful of the requirement of the
federal law at all events, as their miserable little doggeries, dotted
here and there, go to prove. They wondered very much concerning my
appearance among them. Yes, I am right in the midst of them, and such
an experience is almost beyond my power to picture. My board rates
(continue to next column, pg. 10) 15 cents per day. (Let the Maxwell
blush.) [Ed. note: The Maxwell was a very prominent and well-known
Nashville hotel.] Thank fortune, my purse and my destiny have at last
“met upon a level.” No, do not say I am swindling my poor hosts. (I go
from place to place.) Wait until I tell you. After I really struck
their settlement, I entered upon a diet of cornbread and honey. Coffee?
Oh, yes, we have “lots” of coffee. It sets (or stands according to its
age) in a tin pot in the shed (or under it), between the two rooms.
There are never more than two rooms. Any one who is thirsty helps
himself to coffee. Cold? Aye, cold as this world’s charity and as
comfortless. But it saves a walk to the spring and so we drink it. I
had some trouble in getting board, because I asked “for board.”
And let me say, I have never
drawn a good easy breath since I landed and found a dozen pairs of
little black Indian eyes turned upon me. Always they are at the cracks,
the chimney corner, “window-hole,” the door, peeping through the
chinquapin and wahoo bushes, until I feel as if forty thousand spies
were watching my movements. I had not dared to take out a pencil for
three days, except last Monday night after I went to bed. I tried to
write a letter in the dark, by a streak of light which fell through a
chink in the door. But the next morning, when my hostess--a little
snap-eyed, red-brown squaw--flung open my door (the room had but one
and she had removed the fastening, a wooden button, the night before)
and sung out:
“You, Joe!--time you’s up’n
out’n there,” and a little, limp, sleepy-looking Indian crawled out
from a pallet of rags in a corner. I felt pretty sure the boy had been
put there to watch me, and so I didn’t try that kind of writing again.
They are exceedingly suspicious and are as curious about me as can be.
They received an idea that I am travelling for my health, as quite a
number come from the valley to drink the mineral water with which this
magnificent country abounds. Still, they suspect me, and they come in
droves to see me. Seven little brown women, with bare feet and corncob
pipes, sat on the doorstep yesterday to see me go out. I stopped a
moment to speak to them; told them my name, which is the greatest
puzzle to them, not one daring to try it, my age, and was informed that
if I wasn’t married “t’wair time.” And then one grizzle face old squaw
kindly offered me a “pull at her pipe.”
I visited one house of two
rooms--Mrs. Gorvins’. She was out in the orchard gathering apples to
dry, and out to the orchard I went. The prettiest girl I ever saw came
to meet me with her lap full of apples. She pointed to a seat on a rude
bench and poured the apples into my lap, at the same time calling,
“Mai! Mai! Come er-here!” (Please call that word Mai as the a is called
in hair or after.) Mai came, and the saints and hobgoblins! The witch
of Endor calling dead Saul from sepulchral darkness would have calked
her ears and fled forever at the sight of this living, breathing
Malungeon witch. Shakespeare would have shrieked in agony and chucked
his own weird sisters where neither “thunder, lightning nor rain” would
ever have found them more. Even poor tipsy, turvy Tam O’Shanter would
have drawn up his gray mare and forgotten to fly before this, mightier
than Meg Merrilles herself. She was small, scant, raw-boned,
sharp-ankled (barefoot), short frock literally hanging from the knee in
rags. A dark jacket with great yellow patches on either breast, sleeves
torn away above the elbow, black hair burnt to an unfashionable auburn
long ago, and a cob-pipe stem wedged between the toothless gums. A
flock of children came in her wake, and full one dozen more (indeed, I
am telling the unvarnished truth) came from bush and brake. I never saw
as many, seventeen by actual count, and two missing “count o’bein’
dead.”
Mrs. Gorvins was silent until
I spoke to one of the children, and then, let me tell you something, I
never saw an uglier human creature, or one more gross-looking and
unattractive, and I never saw a gentler, sweeter, truer mother. She
called up her children--little brown fellows, bearing the unmistakable
mark of the Indian, all but one, a little white-headed boy with blue
eyes and dimpled chin, who seemed as much out of place among them as a
lily in a dungeon. One was Maggieleny (Magdalena), and one was
Ichabvady (Ichabod), and one was Archivale (Archibald). Another was Kat
(Kathleen), another Hahny (Hannah), and the baby--names giving out, as
the mother told me, she “had jes’ been plumb erbliged ter name one over
twict,” and so the baby was called Katty (Kathleen). They lived on corn
bread and honey, coffee without cream or sugar, and found life full and
glad and satisfactory.
I could run on forever
telling you of these queer, queer people, who are a part of us, have a
voice in our politics and a right to our consideration. They are a blot
on the state. They are ignorant of the very letters of the alphabet,
and defiant (or worse, ignorant) of the very first principles of
morality and cleanliness. It is no sensational picture I have drawn; it
is hard truth, hard to believe and hard to understand. They are within
five miles of one of the prettiest county seats in Tennessee. In
politics they are republican to a man, but sell their votes for 50
cents and consider themselves well paid. They are great “charmers” and
“herb doctors.” I have a string of “blood beads” I bought of an old
squaw, who assured me they would heal all “ailmint o’ the blood.” They
are totally unlike the native Tennessee mountaineer, unlike him in
every way. The mountaineer is liberal, trustful and open. The Malungeon
wants pay (not much, but something) for the slightest favor. He is
curious and suspicious and given to lying and stealing, things unknown
among the native mountaineers.
I must tell you of a sermon I
heard down in Black Water swamp. I do not know what the text was, but
the preacher, a half-breed, was telling of the danger of riches. He
told them of Mr. Vanderbilt, “the riches man et uver trod of God
a-mighty’s yearth,” he said. And then he told how, when he came to die
he called his wife and asked her to sing “Come, Ye Sinners.” He drew
his point: the rich man wanted the beggar’s song sung over him. And he
lamented that it was “tu late, tu late” for Mr. Vanderbilt. He died and
went to torment, “an’ where uz all his money?” I took it upon myself to
tell him where a good slice of it was. I could not call myself a
Tennessean and sit by and hear Mr. Vanderbilt slandered, and right here
in Tennessee, too, preached right into hell by the people his wealth
was given to bless. So when the service was over I went to the preacher
and I said: “Brother, you are doing the memory of Mr. Vanderbilt a
great wrong. He was a good man, if a rich one, and Tennessee is
indebted to him for the grandest school she has.” He looked at me a
minute, and then he said: “He uz a Christian?” “Yes,” I said, “and had
a Christian wife.” His face brightened, “Waal,” he said, “I air glad to
know that; I’ll tell ‘em so nex’ time I preach.” I hope he did. WILL
ALLEN
