Free High Mountains Rising by Richard A. Straw Page B

the late 1920s and early 1930s, the first modern folk festivals were created in western North Carolina, eastern Kentucky, and southwestern Virginia. The early fieldwork and public festivals all confirmed the belief that southern Appalachia’s folklife was uniquely composed of ancient traditions of British and Celtic origins.
    Although Child ballads and storytelling are a significant part of Appalachia’s folklife, the exclusive emphasis on English and Scotch-Irish traditions obscures the contribution of many other cultural groups. People from continental Europe, most notably those of German ethnicity, followed the same migration routes into the Southern mountains. The German influence is found in log construction, the Appalachian dulcimer, weaving patterns, and quite possibly the Jack tale.
    Even before a variety of settlers of European descent arrived, a rich culture was already present. The Southern mountains have supported human habitation for millennia, and a variety of Native American groups made this region home. However, by the time of European contact, the Cherokee dominated most of the Appalachian region from Kentucky to Georgia. Cherokeefolkways are still a vital part of Appalachian folklife, and the Cherokee have influenced the region’s Anglo-American traditions, particularly in areas of folk medicine, dance, and basketry. Other native groups have also made a mark on local folk traditions. For example, the Catawba Indians strongly influenced the pottery made by the Cherokee in the twentieth century.
    African Americans have also had a profound influence on Appalachian folklife, even though they represent a smaller proportion of the population in the mountains than elsewhere in the South. In the eighteenth century, escaped slaves took refuge in Cherokee territory (and some Cherokee were themselves slaveholders), so that in some areas of Appalachia, people of African descent lived in the mountains before permanent white settlement. The impact of African American influence is seen in two traditions that are often seen as quintessential parts of Appalachian folklife: banjo playing and clogging.
    Another quintessential part of the regional folk tradition, the Appalachian log cabin, is an excellent example of the mixing of a variety of cultural traditions. Probably the first people to build log dwellings in the Southern mountains were Cherokee. Although the building technique was not native to them, they adapted the log house in the eighteenth century from European settlers further east. By the time of the Cherokee removal of the 1830s, the Cherokee were building dwellings similar to those of the European American pioneers.
    Had the early white settlers in southern Appalachia been exclusively of British or Irish descent, the log house would not have become the norm. Horizontal log construction was unknown in Ireland and the British Isles and was rare in the early English colonies. Settlers from Sweden, Finland, and the regions that are now Germany brought log construction to the mid-Atlantic colonies, and it was probably the interaction of people of Germanic descent with people from England and Northern Ireland that created the American log cabin. German house types are found in Pennsylvania and the Valley of Virginia but are not common in most of the Southern mountains. Here the small houses most often resemble in size and layout, if not construction, dwellings found in England and Northern Ireland.
    Log homes also tell us much about social life in the Southern mountains and the persistence of tradition. The small, single-unit log house could be expanded by placing two equal-size rooms on either side of a massive log chimney (saddlebag), putting the two rooms side by side with chimneys on the end (double-pen), or putting an open breezeway between the two rooms (dogtrot). Oral tradition tells us that until the early twentieth century, the additional room was thought of as a parlor. Although the larger house