Customer Reviews

Our Southern Highlanders: A Narrative of Adventure in the Southern Appalachians and a Study of Life Among the Mountaineers

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Kephart shows the Southern Appalachian Mountaineers as they were, and in some cases, still are. Warts and all. A fair, truthfull account of his experiences while living among us, as well as the historical background for the area. It should be remembered that the book was first published in 1913 and revised in 1922, and while it is not an accurate picture of the mountains of today, if you would understand Appalachia, read this book.

Kephart's engaging, entertaining style does a terrific job of bringing realism to a heavily stereotyped people; his approach is balanced, illustrating the people's good and not-so-good characteristics with anecdotes (some hilarious) and facts. He provides historical and topological frameworks for the character of mountain people. He lived a bare-bones existence among them for several years and so his narrative is richer--and truer--than that of a drop-in-ask-get-out historian's. The book provides a realistic basis for understanding people of today's mountains, where personal background is often still important.

I love Appalachia history and would rate this as my favorite book on the subject. I hated to see the book end!

Kephart delivers the facts as they really were while avoiding any hints of "documentary reading". The story gives many real life events and the reader feels almost as if he's having a conversation with Kephart. A very vivid look into Appalachian life as it really was in the early 1900s.

Our Southern Highlanders by Horace Kephart gave me a new perspective on people who live in the mountains of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Though some of Mr. Kephart's views on ethnic groups are clearly out of step with modern sensibility, his depiction of the settlers of our mountain regions gives readers an insightful view of these proud Americans. Furthermore, Mr. Kephart is not pedantic or boring in giving his depictions of mountain folk; but, instructs readers through amusing tales and descriptions.

Kephart is an amazing color writer, and his talents show through in this book. He describes an outsider's view of the southern mountaineer, and portrays a beautiful, rugged land. I have read this book 3 times, and each time I am taken back to southern Appalachia at the turn of the 20th century.

I believe that the author, Horace Kephart, gave a very vivid and true descripiton of life in the western part of North Carolina in the Great Smokies during the early 1900's. I live in Asheville, NC and was raised here, as was my ancestors as far as I can remember or have been told. My grandmother and great grandmother often told stories of their childhoods living next to laurel thickets and getting their water from the springs. The mountains here are so beautiful and haunting and Mr. Kephart apparently found this as he says in one section of his book "the richness of the Great Smoky Forest has been the wonder and the admiration of everyone who has traversed it". This book was a pleasure to read and would recommend it highly.

My family moved to Western NC in 1880 (Same county as Cold Mountain is located), and we've been there farming ever since. Still I didn't think that being raised in modern Appalachia really made me different. When I went to college I learned differently. I found that my problem solving, opinion, and accent were different than even students who grew up in the foothills, or whose parents weren't from the mountains.

Appalachia truly is it's own culture. And Kephart does a great job of explaining it. The dialet section was great, and in some cases I found my self thinking 'There's another way to say that?' because I just assumed my way of saying it was correct. Distrust and of the law and government runs deep in Appalachia. Independent nature, hospitality, and family bonds too. He shows it well, flaws and all.

I really recommend this book to anyone interested in history, sociology, and Appalachia. Writing this review has made me want to read it all over again.

I was really happy to be able to get a copy of Our Southern Higlanders for my library. I had read it via books.google.com but it is so good I wanted one for the shelf.

The new edition is easy to read, the pictures are adequate reproductions, and the forward really adds to the book

In the second chapter of his work, "Our Southern Highlanders: a Narrative of Adventure in the Southern Appalachians and a Study of Life among the Mountaineers" (1913, 1922), Horace Kephart wrote of some of the forces which had impelled him to leave his materially comfortable earlier life to live in primitive conditions in the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina. Kephart wrote:

"When I went south into the mountains I was seeking a Back of Beyond. This for more reasons than one. With an inborn taste for the wild and romantic, I yearned for a strange land and a people that had the charm of originality. Again, I had a passion for early American history; and, in Far Appalachia, it seemed that I might realize the past in the present, seeing with my own eyes what life must have been to my pioneer ancestors a century or two ago. Besides, I wanted to enjoy a free life in the open air, the thrill of exploring new ground, the joys of the chase, and the man's game of matching my woodcraft against the forces of nature, with no help from servants or hired guides."

Kephart (1862 - 1931) sought the "Back of Beyond" to begin a new life. Born in Pennsylvania, educated at Yale, and trained as a librarian, Kephart had enjoyed a distinguished career as a scholar of the American West at the St. Louis Mercantile, Library. With the pressure of his job, an impending separation from his wife and six children, and increased problems with drinking, Kephart left his position and his family in 1903. He also suffered a nervous breakdown. In 1904, after a stay with his parents, Kephart moved alone to a small abandoned cabin in the Tennessee Mountains, which he describes as "far up under the lee of those Smoky Mountains that I had learned so little about. On the edge of this settlement, scant two miles from the post-office of Medlin, there was a copper mine, long disused on account of litigation, and I got permission to occupy one of its abandoned cabins." Kephart lived in the mountains and among mountaineers for three years. He continued to explore the mountains and study their people through the publication of both editions of "Our Southern Highlanders" and beyond.

As the first quotation above shows, Kephart was looking for a simple life free of the pressures of consumerism and career that he had encountered in St. Louis. His was a romantic quest. He sought independence, and self-sufficiency. He sought to be neither the servant nor the master of any other person. He wanted a life which included wildness and danger, as opposed to the conformity that he found in city life. He wanted to life with a minimum of material possessions and to enjoy nature, the woods, and the hunt. In many respects, Kephart's quest was part of what became a traditional American vision that started with Henry David Thoreau and his "Walden". But Kephart also wanted to get to know and write about the Appalachian mountain people he found. In many respects, Kephart's study of the mountaineers mirrored the qualities that Kephart came to admire and the way of life that Kephart tried to find for himself. As I have suggested, Kephart intended his book to be read in this manner.

"Our Southern Highlanders" is a passionate, personal portrayal of a people Kephart believed that their fellow Americans had long neglected and little understood. He portrays the rugged existence of isolated mountaineers in clearings eking out a subsistence living from farming with little knowledge, in most cases, of the world beyond their hollows. The traits Kephart emphasizes throughout in the mountaineers is their independence, freedom, and ability to make do with little.

It is a romantic study, but Kephart insisted that it was also an accurate one. In the Preface to the Revised edition he wrote: "No one book can give a complete survey of mountain life in all its aspects. Much must be left out. I have chosen to write about those features that seemed to me most picturesque. The narrative is to be taken literally. There is not a line of fiction or exaggeration in it".

In detailed chapters, Kephart portrays the geography and topography of the Great Smoky Mountains. Some of the chapters describe his own experiences, such as camping and hunting expeditions, in remote dangerous parts of the highlands, while others describe the history of the mountain people, their farming, family life, and dialect. The business of moonshining gets a great deal of attention, from the perspective of the mountaineers themselves. Kephart emphasizes the violent character of the region, with its lengthy history of blood feuds, tolerance of murder, and attempts to minimize the impact of the judicial system. While critical of the mountaineers in many ways, Kephart obviously loves them and their cherished independence. He makes the reader care about them as well.

Kephart's book has been criticized. He exaggerated the degree of isolation of his mountaineers. He tended to focus on the most back country part of the population and minimized the farmers in the lower regions who had prospered and adopted many of the traits of rural Americans elsewhere. Much of the criticism may be accurate, but I believe it misses the point. The book offers a romantic vision of a people with an undeniably distinct and harsh way of life. It celebrates the diversity of American experience in the portrayal of a group of people who were, and proudly so, outside the mainstream. The book is better read as a highly personal, insightful work than is a work of rigorous scholarship. It combines a picture of the particularized life of the mountaineers with Kephart's own ideals together with longstanding aspects of the American dream of independence and freedom. "Our Southern Highlanders" is a moving and classic American book.

Robin Friedman