Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

Western Carolina University (3) View all
  • Great Smoky Mountains - A Park for America (89)
  • Picturing Appalachia (77)
  • Travel Western North Carolina (7)
  • Canton Champion Fibre Company (0)
  • Cherokee Traditions (0)
  • Civil War in Southern Appalachia (0)
  • Craft Revival (0)
  • Highlights from Western Carolina University (0)
  • Horace Kephart (0)
  • Journeys Through Jackson (0)
  • LGBTQ Archive of Jackson County (0)
  • Oral Histories of Western North Carolina (0)
  • Stories of Mountain Folk (0)
  • Western Carolina University Fine Art Museum Vitreograph Collection (0)
  • Western Carolina University Herbarium (0)
  • Western Carolina University: Making Memories (0)
  • Western Carolina University Publications (0)
  • Western Carolina University Restricted Electronic Theses and Dissertations (0)
  • Western North Carolina Regional Maps (0)
  • World War II in Southern Appalachia (0)
University of North Carolina Asheville (0) View all
  • Faces of Asheville (0)
  • Forestry in Western North Carolina (0)
  • Grove Park Inn Photograph Collection (0)
  • Isaiah Rice Photograph Collection (0)
  • Morse Family Chimney Rock Park Collection (0)
  • Picturing Asheville and Western North Carolina (0)
  • Kephart, Horace, 1862-1931 (3)
  • Masa, George, 1881-1933 (48)
  • North Carolina Park Commission (1)
  • Allanstand Cottage Industries (0)
  • Appalachian National Park Association (0)
  • Bennett, Kelly, 1890-1974 (0)
  • Berry, Walter (0)
  • Brasstown Carvers (0)
  • Cain, Doreyl Ammons (0)
  • Carver, George Washington, 1864?-1943 (0)
  • Cathey, Joseph, 1803-1874 (0)
  • Champion Fibre Company (0)
  • Champion Paper and Fibre Company (0)
  • Cherokee Indian Fair Association (0)
  • Cherokee Language Program (0)
  • Crittenden, Lorraine (0)
  • Crowe, Amanda (0)
  • Edmonston, Thomas Benton, 1842-1907 (0)
  • Ensley, A. L. (Abraham Lincoln), 1865-1948 (0)
  • Fromer, Irving Rhodes, 1913-1994 (0)
  • George Butz (BFS 1907) (0)
  • Goodrich, Frances Louisa (0)
  • Grant, George Alexander, 1891-1964 (0)
  • Heard, Marian Gladys (0)
  • Kephart, Calvin, 1883-1969 (0)
  • Kephart, Laura, 1862-1954 (0)
  • Laney, Gideon Thomas, 1889-1976 (0)
  • McElhinney, William Julian, 1896-1953 (0)
  • Niggli, Josephina, 1910-1983 (0)
  • Osborne, Kezia Stradley (0)
  • Owens, Samuel Robert, 1918-1995 (0)
  • Penland Weavers and Potters (0)
  • Rhodes, Judy (0)
  • Roberts, Vivienne (0)
  • Roth, Albert, 1890-1974 (0)
  • Schenck, Carl Alwin, 1868-1955 (0)
  • Sherrill's Photography Studio (0)
  • Smith, Edward Clark (0)
  • Southern Highland Handicraft Guild (0)
  • Southern Highlanders, Inc. (0)
  • Stalcup, Jesse Bryson (0)
  • Stearns, I. K. (0)
  • Thompson, James Edward, 1880-1976 (0)
  • United States. Indian Arts and Crafts Board (0)
  • USFS (0)
  • Vance, Zebulon Baird, 1830-1894 (0)
  • Weaver, Zebulon, 1872-1948 (0)
  • Western Carolina College (0)
  • Western Carolina Teachers College (0)
  • Western Carolina University (0)
  • Western Carolina University. Mountain Heritage Center (0)
  • Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892 (0)
  • Wilburn, Hiram Coleman, 1880-1967 (0)
  • Williams, Isadora (0)
  • George Masa Collection (173)
  • A.L. Ensley Collection (0)
  • Appalachian Industrial School Records (0)
  • Appalachian National Park Association Records (0)
  • Axley-Meroney Collection (0)
  • Bayard Wootten Photograph Collection (0)
  • Bethel Rural Community Organization Collection (0)
  • Blumer Collection (0)
  • C.W. Slagle Collection (0)
  • Canton Area Historical Museum (0)
  • Carlos C. Campbell Collection (0)
  • Cataloochee History Project (0)
  • Cherokee Studies Collection (0)
  • Daisy Dame Photograph Album (0)
  • Daniel Boone VI Collection (0)
  • Doris Ulmann Photograph Collection (0)
  • Elizabeth H. Lasley Collection (0)
  • Elizabeth Woolworth Szold Fleharty Collection (0)
  • Frank Fry Collection (0)
  • Gideon Laney Collection (0)
  • Hazel Scarborough Collection (0)
  • Hiram C. Wilburn Papers (0)
  • Historic Photographs Collection (0)
  • Horace Kephart Collection (0)
  • Humbard Collection (0)
  • Hunter and Weaver Families Collection (0)
  • I. D. Blumenthal Collection (0)
  • Isadora Williams Collection (0)
  • Jesse Bryson Stalcup Collection (0)
  • Jim Thompson Collection (0)
  • John B. Battle Collection (0)
  • John C. Campbell Folk School Records (0)
  • John Parris Collection (0)
  • Judaculla Rock project (0)
  • Kelly Bennett Collection (0)
  • Love Family Papers (0)
  • Major Wiley Parris Civil War Letters (0)
  • Map Collection (0)
  • McFee-Misemer Civil War Letters (0)
  • Mountain Heritage Center Collection (0)
  • Norburn - Robertson - Thomson Families Collection (0)
  • Pauline Hood Collection (0)
  • Pre-Guild Collection (0)
  • Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual Collection (0)
  • R.A. Romanes Collection (0)
  • Rosser H. Taylor Collection (0)
  • Samuel Robert Owens Collection (0)
  • Sara Madison Collection (0)
  • Sherrill Studio Photo Collection (0)
  • Smoky Mountains Hiking Club Collection (0)
  • Stories of Mountain Folk - Radio Programs (0)
  • The Reporter, Western Carolina University (0)
  • Venoy and Elizabeth Reed Collection (0)
  • WCU Gender and Sexuality Oral History Project (0)
  • WCU Mountain Heritage Center Oral Histories (0)
  • WCU Oral History Collection - Mountain People, Mountain Lives (0)
  • WCU Students Newspapers Collection (0)
  • Western North Carolina Tomorrow Black Oral History Project (0)
  • William Williams Stringfield Collection (0)
  • Zebulon Weaver Collection (0)
  • Appalachian Trail (3)
  • Great Smoky Mountains National Park (N.C. and Tenn.) (3)
  • Maps (7)
  • North Carolina -- Maps (1)
  • Postcards (1)
  • Sports (1)
  • African Americans (0)
  • Artisans (0)
  • Cherokee art (0)
  • Cherokee artists -- North Carolina (0)
  • Cherokee language (0)
  • Cherokee pottery (0)
  • Cherokee women (0)
  • Church buildings (0)
  • Civilian Conservation Corps (U.S.) (0)
  • College student newspapers and periodicals (0)
  • Dams (0)
  • Dance (0)
  • Education (0)
  • Floods (0)
  • Folk music (0)
  • Forced removal, 1813-1903 (0)
  • Forest conservation (0)
  • Forests and forestry (0)
  • Gender nonconformity (0)
  • Hunting (0)
  • Landscape photography (0)
  • Logging (0)
  • Mines and mineral resources (0)
  • Paper industry (0)
  • Pottery (0)
  • Railroad trains (0)
  • Rural electrification -- North Carolina, Western (0)
  • School integration -- Southern States (0)
  • Segregation -- North Carolina, Western (0)
  • Slavery (0)
  • Storytelling (0)
  • Waterfalls -- Great Smoky Mountains (N.C. and Tenn.) (0)
  • Weaving -- Appalachian Region, Southern (0)
  • Wood-carving -- Appalachian Region, Southern (0)
  • World War, 1939-1945 (0)

Kephart's address before Bryson City Women's Club

  • wcu_great_smoky_mtns-10439.jpg
1 / 6
Item
  • 39 he following address was de_ red before the Women's Club, Bryson 'Qity, N. C, May 7, 1929.) If there had be:n airplanes in the time of Coinmbus, ar:d the dijcoverej? of America had sent scouts flying cut over the land from Labrador to the Gu_i of Mexico, they would have eeen little else than a vast forest spreading wt...ward from the Atlantic Ocein to the prairies of Illinois and the great plains beyond the Mississippi. Two million square miles of east_ fern Ame.ica was a sylvan wic_dernees. To those flying _over that immensity of tree_tops, the only noticeable breaks in the forest would have been the glinting curves cf rivers, the mirror_sheet,!!: cf lakes, the green expense of wild marshes, and, at rare intervals, come small clearii gs where Indians had their villages and cornfields. in all that continental scope there was no road. The rivers were tne el ief routes cf travel, and on their the canoes of the Indians left no traces. Back in the boundless woods there ran only narrow foot_paths, first made by the buffaloes and then utilized by the red men as trading routes or war paths. Forest Primeval Such was the forest primeval, where in all the ages no tree had been felled by man, save by laborious hadrinr with stone axes and the action of fire. It was something very different from the second_growth weeds wLh which we nowadays are familiar. Secnd_ growth is low, squat, branching out a short distance from the ground; whereas in that .original forest the trees towered to a hundred, a hundred and fifty, a hundred and eighty feet, and their trunks rose in smooth columns, sixty or eighty feet to the first limb. In the gloom of the ancient woods there was a marvelous undergrowth of shade_loving shrubs and vines, herbs and wild_flowers, mosses and ferns and fungi, the like of which now is never seen, in full luxuriance, save in those rare sanctuaries where a /remnant of the primal forest is still preserved. S Our Last Frontier It is fitting _that a sketch cf the history of Swain County should open with appreciation of the superb forest that once covered all of it. We have here the richest surviving example of what the continental fores'! _.vas; and it is finis precious heritage] • that has set the Great Smoky Moun_ ! tains apart as a unique legi_sn, chrsM M" _fe#jfc«»*" en out of all eastern America for a nation? 1 park. There are other mountains, other trout streams, other gorges and wate.falls and scenic vistas; but there is no other fcrest so loble in years and so rich in variety >f species as this rescued tract in the jmokiee. And as we h;.ve here the last noteworthy survival of ancient Appala_ :hian flora, so, too, by a happy coincidence, v/e have_ here some of the racist interesting survivals of pioneer ruman life.' The last of iho eastern .inlder. i is is a'so our _aet frontier. No one hitherto s'eetas to have railed attention to tne font that our Counties west of the Balsam Mountains, and adjoining parts of east Tennessee and nerU Georgia, were the last territory taken over by the United States prior to the Mexican War. Florida had been acquired, our national boundary had been pushed westward to the Rocky Mountains, and the Stars and Stripes was flying over Astoria, Oregon, before this singularly isolated region of ours had entered the United States. The land now occupied by Swain, Jackson, Transylvania and Mac:n counties was acquired by treaty be_ :wve_en the United Stages a..d the Cherokee Nation on February 27, 1819. That of Cherokee, Clay and Graham counties was seized end taken oyer by the United States in 1835_38. Prior, to 1835; the Cherokee Nation had been recognized by ouf Federal Government as an independent and sovereign Power, with which we made treaties, as with Fiance or Great Britain or any other foreign lation. Therefore, up to 1819, tne present Swain County was foreign soil to the whites. The Cherokees So our history is interwoven with ■that of the Cherokees. If« is a ia_ oiantic story, abounding in episode as thrilling_ as any in tne annals tf shite and Indian relations on tdis continent. The Cherokees are a Singular tri e Their language is quite differen' from that of any other tribe in the South, and they are of distinct stock, being related to the Iroquois of New_ Fork and Canada. According to Cherokee tradition f. ey were originally a northern trine. occupying the region of the upper Ohio River. Their enemies, the Deia wares, confirm this. Eventually the Cherokees were outnumbered and driven southward by the combined forces of the Delawares and the lr:_ quois. They then spread over the __?fc: W_
Object