Where There Are Mountains: An Environmental History of the Southern Appalachians

353 Pages·2000·20.37 MB·English

by  Donald Edward Davis

Where There Are Mountains
Where There
AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
DONALD EDWARD DAVIS
Are Mountains
Are Mountains OF THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS
The University of Georgia Press \ Athens and London
Paperback edition, 2005
© 2000 by The University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
All rights reserved
Designed by Kathi Dailey Morgan
Set in 10.5 on 14 New Caledonia by G & S Typesetters
Printed and bound by Maple-Vail
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence
and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for
Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
Printed in the United States of America
09 08 07 06 05 P 5 4 3 2 1
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover
edition of this book as follows:
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Davis, Donald Edward.
Where there are mountains : an environmental history of
the southern Appalachians / Donald Edward Davis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8203-2125-7 (alk. paper)
1. Human ecology — Appachachian Region, Southern — History.
2. Nature — Effect of human beings on — Appalachian Region,
Southern — History. I. Title.
GF504.A5D38 2000
304.2'0975 — dc21 99-23869
ISBN 0-8203-2494-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
ISBN for this electronic edition: 978-0-8203-4021-0
For my grandmother Janie Ross Davis
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CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
1 Apalatchi: Naming the Mountains 1
2 Mississippia: Native Appalachia 9
3 Apalachee: Spanish Appalachia 35
4 Kituah: Cherokee Appalachia 57
5 Southwestern Mountains: Frontier Appalachia 91
6 Alleghenia: Antebellum Appalachia 123
7 Appalachia: Making the Modern Landscape 161
0 Conclusion: Nature, Culture, History 199
Notes 215
Bibliography 251
Index 311
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PREFACE
M
8 HEN was four years old my mother left me alone for a short
time in the backyard, where I somehow discovered a book of
matches. Within minutes, I had set fire to an adjoining field, and within an
hour, firemen and three fire trucks as well as several bulldozer crews were
attempting to put out the blaze. Fortunately, the fire was quickly contained
after burning only two or three acres of pasture and woodland.
The year after the fire, hundreds of trees sprouted in the burned-over
field, and as I grew older, those seedlings slowly matured into a small
woods. By the time I entered college in the late 1970s, the recovering
forests surrounding my childhood home were giving way to factories, sub-
divisions, and strip-development malls. Within a few years, the drone of
highway traffic had replaced the once frequent song of the meadowlark
and whippoorwill. Gone too were the flocks of evening grosbeaks and ce-
dar waxwings that annually visited our rural community. By the late 1980s,
there was little recognizable about my boyhood home.
In part as a result of these environmental changes, I embarked on a
personal and intellectual journey that continues to this day. In the summer
of 1984, after completing four years of undergraduate training in religious
studies, I began working with environmental activist Jeremy Rifkin at the
Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, D.C., doing research that
ultimately led to the publication of his Biosphere Politics, a book about
humanity's changing relationship with the natural world. A year later, I
enrolled in a master s program at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont,
where I had the privilege of studying with the internationally renowned
ix