In the Southern Appalachians, ecological and cultural history have been closely intertwined. Therefore, in order to more effectively document environmental change in the southern mountains, environmental historians must also investigate the two centuries of human history that preceded the eighteenth century frontier. Often celebrated for its unique natural history, the region isalso home to an equally unique cultural history. For more than 800 years humans have lived in permanent settlements among the mountains of Southern Appalachia. Of course, habitation of the mountain region began as early as 10,000 years ago when Woodland Indians first began roaming the upland forest. Largely nomadic, Woodland Indian tribes were relatively small in numbers, so their impact on the overall forest landscape was minimal. Evidence of their former settlements abounds, however. Freshly plowed fields continue to yield ancient spear and arrow points, signifying that small clans of hunters and gatherers had once called the mountain region home. The later Mississippians, Cherokees, and even Spanish, all made important contributions to the environmental history of the Southern Appalachians. The Europeans settlers did not inhabit an empty and unspoiled wilderness; rather, they reoccupied lands made vacant by two centuries of disease, famine, warfare, and natural resource extraction.

The mountains have also shaped the people and culture of the regionand continue to do so today. An environmental history of the Southern Appalachians allowsus not only to seethe full impact of human settlement on the mountain landscape, but also to document the role environmental forces in shaping human actions.

• First Peoples
• Cherokee Mountains
• Frontier Landscapes
• Mining the Mountains
• First Forests

In recent decades, a growing number of scholars havetried to understand howthe natural world influences human history. These individuals, representing a number of different academic fields, have studied nature and natural history, as well as humanity's role in transforming the natural world. The most visible of these scholars belong to a discipline known as environmental history, which rejects the commonly held assumption that human history is exempt from natural constraints. Environmental history deals with the role and place of nature in human life.

The first peoples to inhabit the Southern Appalachians in permanent settlements were the Mississippians. From 900 to 1200 A.D., Mississippian civilization developed into a network of state-like chiefdoms that reigned over the entire mountain region. What anthropologist generally call the Late Mississippian period began around A.D. 1200, with the introduction of eastern Flint corn and the common pole bean into Mississippian agriculture.

At the time of first Spanish contact in 1540, the Mississippians were already well established along the regions major rivers and tributaries. Populations of Mississippians werelargest along the slower moving streams of the southernmost river valleys. The population of Coosa township, a major Mississippian villageon the Coosawattee River near Cartersville, Georgia, probably peaked out at about 4,000 residents. Most Mississippian settlements in the mountain region were smaller, containing somewhere between 500 and 1,000 individuals (Davis 1993).

Mississippians inhabiting the Southern Appalachians made their settlements along the floodplains of meander-belt river bottoms. Villages were established at these sites not only because of the availability of easily tilled soils, but also because of their proximity to a wide range of plant and animal life (Odum 1975).In the floodplain ecosystem, Mississippians were able to utilize a variety of protein-rich fish and waterfowl species. The proximity to water also provided a route for dugout canoes, which they regularly used to transport food and other goods to distant villages upstream and downstream.

The environment of the alluvial river bottom gave the Mississippians important access to one of their most important natural resources: river cane. River cane, a bamboo like reed that once grew abundantly in the Southern Appalachians, was used for tools, arrow shafts, basketry, and dwellings. Throughout the mountains, Mississippian craftsmen constructed circular or rectangular homes by first placing small saplings, several inches apart, firmly into the ground. The framework was then stabilized by weaving additional saplings horizontally across the structure. Finally, the walls were covered with a thick cane lathing and then covered with a tempered clay made of mud and crushed freshwater clamshells.

Perhaps unique to Mississippians village sites are the large earthen platform mounds that were centrally located above the towns main plaza. The Mississippians directed almost all their public activity toward the structure built atop these mounds, a sacred temple that also served as the residence of the principal ruler. Because the sun also played such an important role in the religious beliefs of the Mississippians, almost all temple mounds and the structures atop them faced east towards the rising sun (Davis 2000).

Not only did the environment of the mountains help to shape the Mississippians religious beliefs and practices, the mountain ecosystem also influenced their daily activities. Recent archaeological and historical evidence has given us new and important evidence concerning the use of the local environment by these fascinating native peoples. As villages increased in size and social complexity, additional clearing of land for settlement and cultivation became necessary in order to keep pace with the demands of a growing population. It is also likely that the Mississippians used fire to control the growth of underbrush around villages, a land-use practice that provided additional habitat for important dietary staples for the Mississippians, including white-tailed deer, wild turkey, and bobwhite quail (Cridlebaugh 1984).

In addition to hunting large and small mammals in the near and distant forest, Mississippians also fished local streams and rivers. Freshwater fish, mussels, turtles, and migratory waterfowl were important to their subsistence base. Fish were caught using a variety of ingeniously designed traps, the largest and most productive being the V-shaped weir dam that was commonly built across streams and rivers.

The American freshwater eel, a fish that may weigh as much as seven pounds and grow to 40 inches in length, was no doubt a frequent visitor to the fish traps of the Mississippians. Before the construction of hydroelectric dams, there were fewer obstacles to block the route of these migratory fish. Prior to the20th century, eels were fairly common as far upstream as the headwaters of the Caney Fork River atop the Cumberland Plateau, the Clinch River of southwestern Virginia, and the Chattooga River in northeast Georgia (Tennessee Wildlife 1937).

Mississippians also made use of the abundant freshwater mussel. They preferred Unios or Quahogs, large mollusks that commonly reach 6 inches in length. For the Mississippians, the freshwater mussels had a number of important uses: not only were they a readily available source or protein, they were also the source of the important prestige good---the pearl. The Indians also made opulent "mother-of-pearl" neck, ear and body ornaments, and cylindrical beads for necklaces from the iridescent mantles of freshwater mollusks (Davis 2000).

In the Southern Appalachians, Mississippians utilized an entire range of plant and animal life.They organized their lives according tonatures seasonal rhythms. Early spring was the time for preparing garden plots and larger outfields. In late spring, large numbers of wild mulberries and wild strawberries were gathered. Midsummer signaled the ripening of berries: the ceremonial harvest of green corn, beans, squash, and the seeds of the semi-domesticated sunflower. Early fall was reserved for the gathering of late corn andthe storing of hickory nuts and walnuts. After the first frost, the Mississippians carried large quantities of chestnuts and persimmons out of the surrounding forest. In late fall and early winter, the hunting of game and the gathering of firewood for winter use intensified, ending a subsistence cycle that would start anew the following spring. Each season brought a new harvest, a new task to be performed.

Expansive stands of river cane were seen by early travelers in the mountains.Some wereseveral hundred yards wide and several miles long. River cane was used in almost every aspect of Mississippian and Cherokee material culture and required annual harvests of tens of thousands of stalks. It is likely that Native Americans set periodic fires along mountain riverbottoms to encouragedcane growth (Davis 2000).

River cane along Cumberland
River. Whitely County, Kentucky

River cane normally propagates itself via protected underground shoots, so the periodic burning of the mature stalks causes the plant to spread quickly, choking out other competing vegetation. Aided by the release of phosphorous, potash, and other essential nutrients from the accumulating ashes, river cane would have dominated riparian bottomlands in the Southern Appalachians, growing to remarkable heights and widths. F.A. Sondley reported that canebrakes along the French Broad River in North Carolina once extended for many miles (Sondley 1930). James Adair once observed a herd of150 horses in a single Blue Ridge canebrake (Davis 1993).

The most conspicuous change to come about as a result of early frontier settlement and trade on the mountain landscape was the loss of the regions many canebrakes. River cane was extremely valuable as a livestock food source, since very few native grasses could survive year-round in the shaded understory of the upland forest. In fact, James Adair observed places in the Cherokee country where the perennial reed was no longer growing abundantly as early as the 1750s (Adair 1775). As late as 1816, Major John Norton reported seeing lush stands of the reed in the extreme southern end of the region, where the cane enabled the Cherokees to raise cattle with less effort (Klink and Talman,1979).

By the early20th century, most of the great canebrakes had vanishedfrom the Southern Appalachians and along with them numerous species dependent upon the plant, including the threatened swamp rabbit. This once dominant ecosystem regime is now found only in a small portion of our bottomland forests,but there are some local efforts to restore canebrakes on public and private lands.

The invasion of Appalachia by the Spanish in the 16th century greatly influenced the social and cultural transformation of the Cherokee Indians, the Native Americans most often associated with the Southern Appalachians. As carriers of fatal epidemic diseases, De Soto and other Spanish explorers who visited the region during the16th century were directly responsible for the decline and eventual demise of the Mississippians. According to one estimate, for every 20 Native Americans present in the southern Appalachians at the time of De Sotos entry into the mountain region, only one survived. Within a century after Spanish contact, the Mississippians formerly known as "Pisgah" had been transformed into a culture group known as "Qualla"--the ancestral peoples of the present day Cherokees (Dickens 1976, Hudson 1997).

For most of the17th century, the Qualla Cherokees continued many of the subsistence practices of their Mississippian ancestors, including corn growing and clay-and-mud building construction. Sometime during the early17th century, bands of these Indians began migrating westward across the Blue Ridge Mountains and, a century later, there were permanent Cherokee settlements in the mountains of North Carolina and north Georgia, and along the fertile river valleys of east Tennessee (Mooney 1900).

By 1700 about 4,500 Cherokee families, or approximately 30,000 individuals lived in four main geographic areas of the Southern Appalachians. What historians refer to as the "Lower Towns" were located along the Chattooga and Keeowee rivers near the border of Georgia and South Carolina. To the north, in western North Carolina, were the "Middle Towns," a group of villages scattered along the upper tributaries of the Little Tennessee River. The "Valley Towns" were south and west of the Middle towns, along the upper Has and Knightly rivers. The "Overhill Towns," in what today is Tennessee, were west of the Great Smoky Mountains along the floodplain of the Tellico, Little Tennessee and Hiwassee Rivers. Kituah, a middle town near present-day Bryson City, North Carolina, was the "mother town" of the Cherokees; its tribal leaders supposedly reigned over all Cherokee towns and villages (Finger 1984).

Cherokee Mountains

Like their Mississippian ancestors, the Cherokees knew the Southern Appalachians well. In spring, they collected dozens of herbs from the forest floor.In summer, they picked blackberries and blueberries; and in autumn they gathered hickory nuts, walnuts, butternuts, acorns, and chestnuts. The men routinely caught fish, crayfish and freshwater mussels from nearby rivers. The women raised communal gardens of beans, melons, and squash. Corn was their primary staple: by the early 1700s, Cherokees grew at least three different varieties of maize. They also depended heavily on river cane, which women wove into intricate baskets used to gather and store the annual harvest (Davis 2000).

Fire was likely used by Cherokees to encourage the growth of river cane or to clear corn fields, and the practice certainly made visible changes to the mountain landscape. The earliest ethno-historical documentation of burning in the region was recorded in 1756 by John de Brahm. He remarked in passing how the Cherokees replenished the soil by "phlogiston," or the annual burning of cultivated fields. In November 1799, Abraham Steiner and Christian de Schweinitz recorded burning at Great Tellico in southwestern Tennessee after seeing Cherokee women and children setting fire to the grass in the woods. The pair also noted the existence of "a large open meadow, a beautiful plain," that they believed was the result of past burnings by Cherokees or perhaps their "cultural ancestors"--the Mississippians (Williams 1928, p. 478).

Without question, the Southern Appalachians played a significant role in shaping the subsistence economy of the Cherokees. The mountain woodlandswere an ideal ecosystem for deer, elk, and buffalo as well as rabbits, squirrels, turkeys, and beaver. These animals were not only important food sources; they also provided pelts for clothing, blankets, and leather goods. Black bear, a common mammal of the mountain environment, was second only to white-tailed deer in the Cherokees diet.

Although they did not build permanent dwellings on the highest ridges, the mountains of the Southern Appalachians were the acknowledged cornerstone of Cherokee existence. As early as the mid-18th century, white settlers commonly referred to the hills and peaks of the Blue Ridge as the "Cherokee Mountains." The Cherokees frequently traveled mountain paths to trade, hunt, or conduct warfare, and the mountains themselves were incorporated into their religious cosmology. The mountains were home and spiritual center to the Cherokees (Davis 2000).

Because of widespread Cherokee occupation, the Southern Appalachians remained an obstacle to permanent frontier settlement until well into the18th century. But neither the lofty mountain peaks nor the Cherokees could stop white traders and trappers fromentering the region from the newly founded settlements on the east coast. Europeans from the Carolinas and Virginia sought trade with the Cherokees as early as the 1670s, exchanging tools, knives, glass beads, cloth, and axes, for animal skins and pelts (McLoughlin 1986).

By 1716, regular trade was occurring between Cherokees and Europeans. The Cherokees had become fascinated by manufactured goods, and their desire for guns and metal tools encouraged additional traders to settle in the region. Hunting and trapping for deer and beaver soon became a preoccupation of Cherokee men, who believed that European weapons might give them an advantage over neighboring tribes (Davis 1993).

After three decades of intense hunting and trapping, game in the mountain region became increasingly scarce. By 1760, buffalo and elk, the largest and most valuable animals of the Southern Appalachians, began to disappear entirely from the forests. Bear and deer populations also suffered greatly, not only due to indiscriminate hunting practices, but also because of the increasing number of open-range hogs and cattle, which competed with these animals for mast (Bays 1991).

Prior to European contact, Cherokee subsistence culture had been largely congruent with the southern mountain environment. Agriculture, hunting, and food gathering practices certainly changed during the period of occupation, but those changes were usually guided by a set of cultural values embeeded in nature.  For Cherokees, cultural stability depended to a very large extent upon their longstanding adaptation and attunement to the natural world.  After 1760, environmental change became irreversible. By the end of the19th century, a majority of Cherokees had made the transformation from a hunting, gathering, and farming society, to one almost entirely dependent on European goods and alliances.

European settlement of the Southern Appalachians began as early as 1745. Long hunters cleared the first overland routes into the region, and the fur traders and settlers followed afterward. By 1788 more than25,000 individuals had settled the upper reaches of the Tennessee Valley and thousands more had settled the Cumberland Plateau and eastern foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. By 1790,80,000 residents were scattered across the mountain region. Many came as a result of federal land grants awarded to Revolutionary War soldiers or their widows. Most were of Scots-Irish, English, or German descent, and many were originally from North Carolina, South Carolina or middle Georgia (Rossiter 1967).

Mossy Creek Farmstead, 1842,
Jefferson County Tennesse

By 1840, the entire Southern Appalachianswas occupied by white settlers.The land of the former Cherokee Nation wassettled immediately after the Gold Rush and ensuing Land Lotteries. The majority of these first occupants of the southern Appalachians initially owned 160 to 320 acres.Many were able to purchase adjoining land lots for as little as $2 dollars. The best land along the main watercourses was settled first and immediately put under cultivation. However, most of the property was left forested--as much as three-fourths according to federal census records. Major crops included corn, oats, rye and wheat, but minor crops like sweet and Irish potatoes, peas, beans, flax, tobacco and sorghum molasses were also commonly grown in the mountains (Davis 1997).

The climate and soil of the Southern Appalachians made growing southern cash crops like tobacco and cotton difficult, relegating them to a position of relative insignificance in the agriculture economy. Faithfully committed to animal husbandry, mountain farmers raised hogs, sheep, horses, mules, oxen, and numerous beef cattle. Of less economic importance, but still acutely vital to the household economy, were the kitchen gardens, milk cows, and poultry yards--each responsibilities of mountain women, and all influential in shaping mountain life and culture.

In the Southern Appalachians, Scots-Irish immigrants settled in clusters of farmsteads patterned after their native Ulster villages or clachans. In Ulster, clachans were comprised of a number of small homesteads situated around a communally worked area of farmland. Nearest the dwellings was an infield, an area of cropland generally cultivated in staple crops such as oats, wheat, turnips, and barley. Beyond the infield lay the outfield, which was slightly poorer land reserved for wheat or oats.The outfieldwas allowed to periodically lay fallow and revert back to pasture. Beyond the outfield lay unclaimed wasteland, a grazing commons reserved exclusively for herds of cattle and sheep (Jordan and Kaups 1989, Otto 1989).

The topography of the Southern Appalachians allowed for almost the direct transference of the field, fallow, and forest agriculture system of Scotland and northern Ireland. In the New World, the Scots-Irish continued planting small vegetable gardens adjoining the house just as they had in the Old World. The New World equivalent of outfields were located farther from the house; these were cleared of timber and then annually planted with corn and wheat. The vast woodlands surrounding the mountain settlement were viewed as a communal grazing area in which livestock were free to range. In many respects, the practice or ranging cattle in the common woods mirrored the practice of transhumance, the traditional grazing system of 18th-century Ireland and Scotland (Evans 1966).

Transhumance, as practiced in the British Isles, involved the annual burning of the moorlandsin winter, so that livestock could graze on the regenerated forage that resulted in the spring, summer, and fall. When frost killed moorland grasses, owners collected herds, retained breeding animals, and sold surplus stock to professional drovers.

Similarly, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, cattle and sheep were grazed during the summer on ridges and mountaintops, far away from settlement croplands. Before ascending the mountains each year, Southern Appalachian herdsmen burned mountaintop pastures in late fall or early spring to encourage new growth. Most mountain cattlemen accompanied their livestock during the summer, often living in crude dwellings constructed solely for that purpose. As they had in Britain, southern mountain herdsmen often used salt to keep cattle and sheep from straying too far or to move them from pasture to pasture. In the fall, the herds were then taken down the mountains and sold to overland drovers, who took the livestock to regional markets in Asheville, Knoxville, Lexington, or Charleston (Davis 1997).

Thegrowth of livestock herding in the Southern Appalachians was due to the existence of a favorable ecological niche, which included the availability of mast open range and grazing commons The widespread prevalence of the Scots-Irish herding system in the region alsosuggests that many of the Southern Appalachian "balds"--treeless mountaintop fields--were created largely by human disturbance. Once an ecological mystery, the presence of mountaintop balds can be largely attributed to the once common agricultural practice (Gersmehl 1970).

The proliferation of hogs and cattle throughout the mountainshad environmental consequences. Across the uplands, particularly in areas going through natural secession or recovering from timber cutting, grazing livestock suppressed the growth of young saplings and herbaceous plants. Over time, particularly in areas receiving heavy livestock use,grazing createdpark-likestands withconsiderable distances between standing trees. In many of the disturbed areas, exotic species, such as privet, multifloral rose and mullein, rapidly replaced native vegetation. In areas receiving the heaviest use, cattle herdingcompacted the soils, reduced its productivityandincreased surface runoff. Cattle hooves exert on average of 24 pounds of pressure per square inch and thereforealter soil structure anddamage organic material in both wet and dry soils (Johnson 1952).

Crop production interested mountain men the most during the frontier period, and thus occupied most of their time around the homestead. A successful agriculturalist needed large grain supplies to feed his many horses, hogs, cattle, and poultry. Because it served as food to both livestock and humans, Indian corn, as it was then called, remained the principal mountain crop. Corn growing also took a substantial amount of land,but very few farmers tilled more than20 acres for that purpose. On average, corn production took up only about one-tenth of the farmers acreage, but that figure varied from community to community (Davis 2000).

Corn was a primary foodstuff, boiled or roasted in late summer. Corn was also ground into meal and made into whiskey; its husks and leaves were woven into hats, dolls, mops, and chair bottoms. Corn cobs served as primitive toilet paper, fire starters, bowls for tobacco pipes, and hog and cattle fodder. The harvesting of corn also greatly influenced social relations, bringing neighbors together for annual fall cornshuckings.

Corn shuckings or "frolics, as they were sometimes called, were ritual celebrations--yearly events in which community members assisted neighbors in the gathering and preparation of the corn harvest. On the day of the event, the ears of corn were gathered in the fields, loaded onto a wagon, and brought to the site of the cornshucking. There the corn was unloaded, stacked, and arranged into equal piles upon the ground. Participants, which included men, women, and children, divided up into teams and worked enthusiastically to shuck their piles of corn before the other teams. Song, dance, drinking, and speech-making often accompanied the corn frolics, which generally ended with the eating of a large meal prepared and served by the women (Owsley 1949).

The typical mountain farmer also grewa variety of other grains and vegetables, including wheat, rye, beans, barley, peas, beans, squash and pumpkins. Sorghum and buckwheat were also planted extensively by the19th century mountaineer. Farmers in the Southern Appalachians cultivated far more of these two grains than did farmersin the Deep South,for here such crops were forgone for the exclusive production of cotton and corn. In many ways, mountain agriculture resembled northern agriculture in that it placed much more emphasis on crop diversity as well as the production of home-manufactured goods like wool, butter, beeswax, and honey (Inscoe 1989).

The spread offarm fields and orchardsacross the mountains significantlyaltered theenvironment. More farms meant more improved land, more free-ranging cattle and hogs in the surrounding countryside--and fewer old-growth forests. Within decades, the largest farmsteads wereexperiencing soilerosion and loss of fertility. By the eve of the Civil War, crops yields had decreased dramatically enough in some areas that growers were forced to abandon their farms entirely. Soon sedge grasses and exotic weeds were flourishing in bottomlands that had for decades yielded50 bushels of corn to the acre.

Despite these changes, a significant amount of land in the regionwas untouched by human settlement. For areas that might have missed the axe and the plow, the Civil War brought additional environmental changes, accomplishing in a half-decade what had taken a half-century elsewhere. After the end of the War, recovery in the Southern Appalachians was slow. The uplands of Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina had sent more soldiers into battle than any other southern region and many did not return home. Farming suffered greatly, with notable reductions in improved acreage and crop production. Pines, sweetgum, and sassafras invaded untended fields, where corn and wheat once grew. Cash was scarce and political revenge frequent. Into this social and economic vacuum entered a new wave of mining entrepreneurs, land speculators, and northern industrialists who had an eye for profit.

Although their importance to mountain agriculture has been grossly underestimated in the historical literature, sheep were second only to hogs in actual numbers in the Southern Appalachians (Davis 2000). The gradual decline of wolves and mountain lions,and the clearing of woodlands for pasture and grasslands made the mountain environs ideal for these animals.

Salting Sheep, 1900

An English cultural tradition, sheep herding was practiced on a fairly important scale throughout the region by 1850.Sheep were raised primarilyfor wool, usedin fabrics and coverlets,but lamb and muttonwere also eaten by a few mountain residents.Many mountain families avoided eating muttonfollowing a centuries-old prejudice originating with the Scots-Irish (Smith 1842).

During the 1850s, most of the sheep raised in the southern mountains were of Merino or Saxony stock. Common but improved breeds produced3 pounds of wool per animal. Prior to that time sheep raising was far from scientific, with most herders showing only a modicum of interest in owning purebred varieties. Nevertheless, improved breeds existed among the more serious herdsmen, including Leicester, Southdown, Cotswold, and Bakewell breeds. On the eve of the Civil War, mountain farmers were fast becoming known as exceptional shepherds, especially in northeastern Georgia. On just 267 farmsteads, Rabun County herdsmen kept a total of 7,824 sheep, for an astounding average of29 animals per farmstead (Davis 2003).

Most wool remained on the mountain farmstead, where it was carded, spun, and dyed before being made into homespun blankets and clothing. As more and more looms made their way into mountain communities, dyeing and weaving flourished among women, becoming in some areas, a small cottage industry. Carding mills also sprung up in many areas, giving those who could afford it the option of exchanging freshly sheared wool for finished and dyed yarn. In fact, wool was "gold and silver" to many mountain merchants, who used it as a currency when purchasing their own wares for the village store (Arnow 1984).

For the majority of mountain women, knowledge of local flora and fauna and their various chemical properties was essential to the art of weaving. Native plants, routinely gathered from surrounding fields and woodlands, were the principal mordants and coloring agents used to dye their yarns and fabrics. Pokeweed berries created rose dyes, staghorn sumac or bloodroot produced red ones, wild indigo or blue ash producedblue dyes, and walnut hulls produced browns or tans. The palette of the experienced dyer was virtually unlimited. With the help of various tree barks and flowers, every imaginable hue was produced.

The "age of homespun," as the period between 1840 and 1880 has sometimes been called, was almost entirely dependent upon sheep raising. Sheep were invaluable to the mountain homestead, especially to women, who generally oversaw the feeding and shearing of the animals (Merchant 1989). The great value of sheep to the individual farm family is indicated by the amount of prime pastureland set aside for their exclusive use. Sheep also required shelter, fencing, and hay for extended periods and, like cattle, needed frequent salting to survive.

By 1900 sheep raising was in rapid decline across the Southern Appalachians, and just three decades later, only 46,000 farms in the entire region reported raising even one of the animals (Davis 2003).

Land speculation, initiated by northern mining industrialists and timber barons, escalated to new heights in the Southern Appalachians after the Civil War. By the early 1870s, politicians, businessmen, and prominent journalists were promoting the mountain region as a New South Mecca, encouraging northern capitalists to exploit the mountains remaining mineral and timber reserves. Acquisitions by these capitalistsincluded land held previously for speculation, tax-delinquent properties, and mountain lands that local owners believed too hilly to cultivate. These latter properties were generally acquired by skilled land agents, who convinced owners to sell their unused farmland for as little as a dollar per acre, or in few cases, a single hog rifle or shotgun (Eller 1982).

By the mid-1880s, after railroad lines had fully penetrated the mountain interior, much of the southern Appalachians had become the domain of a dozen or so large timber companies, owned almost exclusively by northern or foreign investors. Backed by teams of sawyers, locomotives, railroad lines, and steam-powered sawmills, these industrial loggers soon began removing the biggest and oldest trees from the mountain forests. Virtually no stand of timber was off-limits, including trees old enough to have witnessed the passing of Hernando de Soto in 1540. The timber boom that resulted lasted more than40 years, leaving a legacy of environmental change that is still visible today (Davis 2000).

With the influx of timber and mining companies in the region, speculation on mountain lands affected land pricesand forced many to pay off property taxes that in some communities had gone uncollected since the Civil War. Farmers failing to show proof of ownership could be driven off their land, sometimes at gunpoint by the local sheriff. Removed from their ancestral homes, mountaineers and their families ironically found refuge in the many lumber camps that were increasingly dominating the mountain economy after 1900. These lumber camps provided shelter for the average mountaineer, but seldom paid more than a subsistence wage, which was more often than not dispersed in scripredeemable only at the company store (Eller 1982, Davis 1997).

Forest deadenings, 1900

The environmental effects of large-scale timbering in the mountains were immediately felt. Erosion, fires, and flooding increased significantly, damaging prime cropland along streams and destroying wildlife habitat. As early as 1892, Gifford Pinchot, who had accepted the important task of introducing sustainable forestry practices to the Blue Ridge mountains of north Georgia and western North Carolina, wrote that "if forest management is successful in producing profit off this burned, slashed, and over grazed forest, it will do so on almost any land in this part of the country" (Goodwin nd., p. 1).

The increasing environmental destruction was due not only to the mere cutting of trees but also to the use of new and more technologically efficient logging methods. With the coming of railroads to the remoter sections of the Southern Appalachians, it was no longer necessary for logging operations to be confined to the vicinities of large streams. Narrow-gauge railroads, then called "dummy lines," could now be laid along the contours of steep hillsides once thought inaccessible byloggers (Brown2000).

Alongdummy lines, logs of all sizes could be "skidded" by cable across steep mountain slopes to awaiting railroad cars. The end result was, in effect, a "clearcut," since the skidded logs destroyed everything in their path. The skid trails that remained as a result of these logging activities created such severe erosion that the cut-over landscape often took decades to heal. Accompanying the severe erosion were widespread forest fires, which further denuded mountain slopes and hillsides. No doubt some of the fires were started by local herders, who continued to burn the woods to promote the growth of new browse for cattle and sheep. Many of the fires, however, were the direct result of careless lumbermen who routinely left behind large piles of brush and downed tree tops at logging sites or by wood-fired locomotives that spewed sparks out their great smokestacks (Holmes 1911).

The most controversial and widely debated topics surrounding early industrial logging in the mountainswere soil erosion and flooding. By the early 1880s there wasa consensus among observers that standing timber played an important role in preventing excessive water runoff and the loss of fertile topsoil, especially after heavy rains. By 1900 there could be little doubt that "injudicious lumbering and forest fires" caused widespread loss of forest topsoil, which served as a natural sponge for water during heavy rains. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt, who placed the destruction of our Southern Appalachian forests squarely on the shoulders of the logging industry, stated that "the preservation of the mountain forests should no longer be left to the caprice of private capital." (Roosevelt 1901, p. 34).

Tragic floods in West Virginia and Kentucky in 1907stimulated action by the FederalGovernment. After hearing considerable testimony from engineers, industryrepresentatives and conservationists, Congress finally passed the Weeks Act on March 1, 1911, officially authorizing the federal purchase of "forested, cut-over, or denuded lands with the watersheds of navigable streams..." (U.S. Department of Agriculture 1911, p. 1021). Among the first attempted land acquisitions in the Southern Appalachians--indeed the entire United States--were lands in north Georgia, an area that had received considerable attention from Gifford Pinchot and others involved in the forest preservation movement (U.S. Department of Agriculture 1983).

According to government records, one of the first acquisitions in the Southern Appalachians was a 31,000 acre tract sold to the newly created National Forest Service Reservation Commission by the Gennett Brothers of the Gennett Land and Lumber Company of Atlanta, Georgia. The Gennett purchase, was, in fact, the first tract in theUnited Statesto receive formal approval for purchase by the federal agency. The 31,000 acre purchase--which included land in Fannin, Union, Lumpkin, and Gilmer Counties--was officially acquired August 29, 1912 (U.S. Department of Agriculture 1983).

One well-documentedUSDA Forest Service history of the southern mountains, Mountaineers and Rangers, found that the largest tracts were purchased "almost without exception from lumber companies and investment concerns." Of the earlier acquisitions, the report found that "nearly 30 percent of the lands bought in the first five years in north Georgia and western North Carolina were "virgin timber."By law, tracts were located almost exclusively near the headwaters of navigable streams. However, the well-documented report concluded that the majority of the acquired lands, especially in later years, "had been cleared, misused, or at least selectively culled"(Davis 2000, p. 173; U.S. Department of Agriculture 1983, p. 25).

As Forest Service purchase units took shape, boundaries became more formal and individual National Forests were officially declared. In 1916, the Pisgah National Forest, the first in the entire mountain region, was proclaimed. In 1920, four more National Forest boundaries were drawn: the Boone in North Carolina, the Nantahala in North Carolina, northern Georgia, and South Carolina; the Cherokee in Tennessee; and the Unaka in upper east Tennessee, North Carolina, and southwest Virginia. The Chattahoochee and the Sumter National Forests were officially proclaimed in 1936 and the Cumberland in 1937. Of these, only seven remain in the region, as boundaries were eventually redrawn and names officially changed. These national forests now comprise more than 5 million acres, making the USDA Forest Service the largest single landowner in the Southern Appalachians (Davis 2000).

Industrial logging also impacted local residents by seemingly reducing populations of many native plants and animals that mountain families had long depended upon. Indeed, numerous testimonies from mountain residents provide evidence that white-tailed deer, turkeys, black bears and other important game animals significantly decline in number after peak periods of timber operations. Ginseng, goldenseal, mayapple, galax, and other plants seasonally traded at the mountain store for supplies or cash, also saw marked decreases in abundance (Davis 2000).

For many years,mountaineers cut trees or substantially altered forest ecology. Before the advent of full-scale industrial logging, local farmers cut select trees for their own use or for extra cash. Trees might be taken to the numerous local water-driven sash sawmills. However, these mills were able to produce only 2,000 board feet per day, greatly limiting the scale of timber production (Morgan 1988).

The economic and social costs of commercial logging can be inferred from population shifts early in the 20th century. The population of Union County, Georgia, for example, declined as much as 18 percent between 1900 and 1910. In nearby Rabun County, population dropped 12 percent. One local historian attributed the loss to the sale of farms along with their timber by numerous families in the outlying districts of the county (Ritchie 1959).

Asparents found it more and more difficult to acquire new land for their sons and daughters, or to maintain a modicum of productivity on their own lands, they often sold off portions of their property to pay local taxes or they might lease it to younger tenants who would sharecrop the land. By 1910 the average farm size in the mountains had dropped to less than 100 acres. This trend continued for several decades; by 1930 the average farm size in the southern mountains was less than80 acres (U.S. Department of Agriculture 1983).

By the eve of the Second World War, industrial logging and land speculation, along with newly established fence laws and the creation of vast federal forest preserves, had greatly narrowed the range of subsistence possibilities for mountaineer families. On those lands,mountain farmers had not only herded cattle, they also had gathered chestnuts, picked berries, hunted, fished, and dug ginseng and other medicinal plants. To the mountaineers of Southern Appalachia, the surrounding forest was a living matrix of plants, animals--and shared memories.

In the past, when humans and the environment came together in the southern mountains, each influenced the other. In the southern Appalachians, natural history and human history are inexorably intertwined.

Ginseng, a valuable commodity on the global market since the mid-18th century, grew abundantly in the rich deciduous forests of the Southern Appalachians, especially on north facing slopes above 1,500 feet. The Cherokees,like the Chinese who readily purchased the root, believed it to have important medicinal qualities. In fact, ginseng was used by the Cherokees as a general tonic and treatment for a variety of ailments, including headaches, menstrual problems, andinfections.

American ginseng

Although the trading of the root initially got off to a slow start, ginseng became by far the most important plant of the mountain forest. In the mid-1740s ginseng was still bringing a relatively small price in the markets of Charleston and Williamsburg, partly because the Indians did not dry the root according to strict Chinese standards. In fact, a trader living in North Carolina sadly told Georgian James Adair that he could not sell it for more than "one shilling sterling a pound, though his people brought it from the Alegany and Apalache mountains, two hundred miles..." (Fries 1968, p. 57) Adair, convinced of its importance to the region, wondered if some "public spirited gentleman" might inform the regions inhabitants about "how to preserve the ginseng, so as to give it a proper colour; for could we once effect that, it must become a valuable branch of trade" (Fries 1968, p. 57).

Ginseng did not become a significant commodity in the Southern Appalachians until the 1750s, after the Chinese begin to lose faith in Canadian suppliers. The Chinese turned to southern markets in order to fill the void, and the Cherokees immediately took advantage of the situation. In the interim, white traders, or the Cherokees themselves, had received instruction about proper methods of gathering and drying the root. As English merchants were soon shipping ginseng acquired from Cherokees living in the mountains of Southern Appalachia halfway around the world. By the end of the18th century, ginseng was so scarce in the Blue Ridge that John Drayton, the governor of South Carolina, commented that "ginseng had been so much sought by the Cherokee Indians for trade, that at this time it is by no means so plenty as it used to be in this state" (Davis 1997, p. 43).

In much of southern Appalachia, ginseng was gathered from the late18th century by settlers who must have learned of the plants medicinal properties from Cherokees. The Cherokee believed the plant to be a sentient being: on digging it, they dropped a single seed of the plant in the ground as repayment "to the plant spirit." Even though most white settlers used it sparingly because of its market value, ginseng was reputed to cure anything from a cough to a boil to an internal disorder (Dykeman 1955). In the north Georgia mountains, settlers generally boiled two or three roots in a pint of water, which was givento children as cure for colic (Wigginton,1972).

Ginseng digging remains an important pasttime for local residents and represents a regional cash-crop today valued at more than$10 million. One commercial firm in the region collects more than 13,000 pounds of ginseng annually (Davis 1999).

See: Medicinal plant use in the Southern Appalachians

Medicinal plants have been used in the Southern Appalachians since prehistoric times, but historical accounts document Native American use of medicinal plantsin the early18th century. American ginseng, a valuable commodity on the world market since the early-18th century, grew abundantly in the rich deciduous forests of the Southern Appalachians, particularly on north-facing slopes above 1,500 feet. Ginseng was used by the Cherokees for a variety of ailments, including headaches, "weakness of the womb and nervous infections," and as a general tonic. (Mooney 1900).

Seneca Snakeroot, another common plant of the Southern Appalachians, was also gathered by the Cherokees, who believed it to be an excellent remedy for snakebite. The Peterson Field Guide to Medicinal Plants (Foster and Duke 1990) states that "American Indians used it as an emetic, expectorant, cathartic, diuretic, antispasmodic, sweat inducer, menses regulator; also for cols, cough and croup..." Snakeroot was purchased in great quantities by English and French apothecaries, and like ginseng, became a significant trade item during the18th century. The Moravians of North Carolina, who settled on the eastern border of the Appalachian frontier, reported that Indians routinely helped gather hundreds of pounds of the plant, which they later shipped to European merchants (Fries 1968).

As in the case of ginseng and snakeroot, Cherokees shared much of their knowledge about the mountain environment with the trapper, trader, and later, mountain settler. Even after their forced removal in 1838, the remaining Cherokees of the Qualla Boundary and Snowbird Mountains in North Carolina stayed in close communication with white mountain communities. Without question, their close contact with whites facilitated exchanges in ecological knowledge between the two groups, and helped to later shape southern mountain culture. In fact, upon their first arrival to the region, European settlers adopted many Cherokee ways: some out of sheer necessity, others simply due to their practical utility. In the mountains of North Carolina and southwest Virginia, for example, ginseng was gathered from the18th century forward by settlers who must have learned of the plants medicinal properties from Cherokees (Davis 1993).

Among other native plants, both Cherokees and white mountain settlers gathered wild leeks or ramps from late fall to early spring, and their abundance in the mountains helped to convince whites of their value as an important food source. Like the Cherokees, the settlers transplanted ramps near their homes to flourish in a semi-cultivated state. Pokeweed, referred to on the frontier as "Cherokee sallet," became another green regularly eaten by frontiersmen. The fruits of the pokeweed, sometimes believed to be poisonous by contemporary mountaineers, was believed to have important medicinal properties as well. The young shoots of the Green-headed coneflower or sochan were also eaten by the Cherokees as well as used for a variety of medicinal purposes. "Sochan," an actual corruption of the Cherokee word for the plant, was cooked and consumed by mountain settlers, as were a number of other native plants (Hamel and Chiltoskey 1975).

The influence of the Cherokees on medicinal plant use in the mountains is without question. Not only did they educate settlers to the medicinal properties of native plants, they also facilitated the mountaineers participation in the trade and sale of these plants to extra-local markets. Root and plant digging in the mountain region has provided an important source of income to mountaineer farmers since at least the early19th century. The War Between the States actually increased the cultivation and digging of many native plants by mountaineers. One of the first crude-drug houses in North Carolina was established in Lincolnton during the height of the conflict (Davis 1999).

After the War, the "crude-drug" industry, as it was then called, became concentrated in the Southern Appalachians, particularly in Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and Kentucky. By the end of the19th century, the enterprise was fast becoming an important source of supplemental income for individuals who were otherwise living on subsistence agriculture. By the turn of the century, the collection of plants for medicinal uses became important enough that the United States Department of Agriculture developed the Bureau of Plant Industries around 1903. The Bureau of Plant Industries produced numerous publications describing in detail leaves, roots, barks, and weeds used in medicine. These publications were designed to be guides and reference books for farmers, drug collectors, druggists, students, or others who might be interested in the collection of medicinal flora (Lane, n.d., p. 5).

Although medicinal plants were also collected in the wild in the mountains, many were cultivated as supplemental agricultural crops. The Bureau of Plant Industries publication, "American Medicinal Plants of Commercial Importance" gave specific instructionsfor collecting and preparing of plant material for the crude-drug market. The bulletin emphasizedthe economic importance of collecting medicinal plants for crude-drug market. It reported thatsome plants were commonly sold in quantities ranging from "a few tons to50 tons." To ensure potency and quality, many of the larger firms claimed adherence to provisions found in the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906, one of the very first American laws designed to regulate the marketing and distribution of medicinal herbs (Lane n.d.).

Another early publication of the Bureau discusses the popular herb goldenseal, which it began seriously investigating in the spring of 1899. The publication includes a2 1/2page description of the plant showing diagrams of both the first and second seasons growth and the rhizome that is medically important. The section on collection and preparation is characteristically detailed. Interestingly, it is clear from the description that the individuals cultivating and/or collecting these plant materials were quite knowledgeable about their product and about the importance of protecting and preserving it for future generations. The Bureau of Plant Industries provided additional relevant and useful information about cultivating the plant, illustrating detailed construction drawings of drying sheds and elaborate lathe-work designed to provide artificial shade for commercially grown plants (Bureau of Plant Industries 1899).

By the end of the first decade of the20th century, the Southern Appalachians had attracted numerous medicinal plant buyers; many soon opened processing facilities and collection points for growers and gatherers. One suchfirm was S.B. Penick & Companywhich had offices in Asheville and Boone, North Carolina, and St. Louis, Missouri. Penick contracted with small farmers and local businessmen to collect medicinal plants ranging from bloodroot to wild sarsaparilla. These businessmen often operated community stores and would purchase materials from individuals in the community to satisfy market demands. A few decades later, Penick contracted withthe C.R. Graybeal Companyin Roan Mountain, Tennessee. Graybeal provided one J.P. Morgan with a truckto drive around backcountry roadsand collect materials from isolated farmers (Davis 1999).

By the late 1920s, Penick was a major supplier of crude drugs to the world market, a market that was now largely dependent upon the Southern Appalachian region. In fact in a company price list and manual published in 1929, Penick claimed that in "the Piedmont District" [read: Southern Appalachia], eighty-five percent of all American Drugs were gathered and prepared for the drug market, and that Asheville, N.C., was the center of the collection market (Price 1960). A close competitor to Penick was the Wilcox Drug Company, established in Boone, North Carolina, in 1900 by General Grant Wilcox. According to company records, the Wilcox firm purchased roots, herbs, and barks from across the entire Southern Appalachian region, with most sales "carried out through New York brokers" (Penick and Company 1919).

The extensive collecting activities of such firms and individuals may well have contributed to the decline of many medicinal plants in the mountains, several of which are presently listed as endangered or threatened species. Dr. Edward Price, who in the 1960s published an important article on the geography of botanical drugs in the Southern Appalachians, claimed that these collection centers greatly encouraged the depletion of the forests.For example, one firm collected some 13,000 pounds of ginseng in a single year (Price 1960). By the late 1960s, most of the major crude-drug houses established in the mountains earlier in the century had moved to other regions of the United States, leaving only the Blue Ridge Drug Companyin West Jefferson, the S.S. Penick Company in Asheville, and the Wilcox Drug Company in Boone. Although smaller collectors in the mountains continued to trade regularly in medicinal plants, their work became much more seasonal. Nevertheless it provided an important, albeit supplemental, income for mountain families (Davis 1999).

Despite the declinethe Southern Appalachians remain an importance source for numerous commercial botanicals.The southern mountains continue tosatisfy a considerable portion of the worlddemand for goldenseal and ginseng. Numerous other species are still widely collected in the mountain region, including Black Cohosh, Mayapple, Boneset, Seneca snake-root, Indian Pinkroot, and Witch-hazel. Wilcox Natural Products, the regions largest botanical supplier, currently buys more than50 plantspecies from local collectors, processing them at their current headquarters in Boone, North Carolina. Two smaller, though no less important buyers are Morgan Herbs and Metals, of Roan Mountain, Tennessee, and White Brothers Fur and Ginseng, of North Georgia, which also buys considerable amounts of native plants for herbal products and pharmaceuticals (Davis 1999).

Of native mountain plants, goldenseal certainly remains one of Wilcoxs most important species, as indicated by the companys current website address: www.goldenseal.com. Although a federally protected plant, native goldenseal is still collected in Southern Appalachia in considerable quantities, especially in West Virginia and Kentucky where one finds ideal habitat for the plant. According to one source, more than 300,00 pounds of goldensealare annually collected in North America, with only 20,000 pounds coming from cultivated sources (Wanzer 1999). Wilcox Natural Products is currently responsible for nearly half of all cultivated goldenseal in the United States. Goldenseal, an endangered species in the United States, is protected internationally by the Washington Convention on International Trade in Endangered species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).