A Somewhat Bogus History of the Peoples of the N. E. Georgia Mountains

Sometimes of an evening when “Dancing With The Stars” isn’t on and before the nightly Wrestling Roundup, folks in the North Georgia Mountains will gather out on the porch to have a chat and watch the moon rise.  Then some youngster might pop the Big Questions: “Where did we come from?” and “How did we get here?” and “What kind of truck did we drive to get here?”  These questions sometimes really confound their elders, since being an elder means you never want to sound totally ignorant.  So to help out some of my mountain-dwelling members of the A.A.R.P. (American Association of Real-Tired Persons) I offer this brief history of the peoples of North Georgia, and North East Georgia in particular.  Is this accurate?  Heck, no!  But since when has our children’s education been bothered with questions of accuracy?  Who do they think THEY are?  Why can’t they grow up with the same good ol’ lies that served their seniors so well?  The little darlings should just shut up and hang on our every word.  That’s the problem nowadays.  Everybody keeps insisting on the facts, when a good story just suffers from such details. 

The Mound Builders … our first earth movers

        As far back as anyone can imagine, people have lived in the Northeast Georgia mountains region, but our earliest residents didn’t bother to leave behind road signs or advertising, so we really have no idea who they were.  Apparently some of them spent a great deal of their free time making big piles of dirt, but we have no certain idea why.  They are now simply known as “The Mound Builders.”  They built their mounds near rivers, which was a smart thing to do in the days when “plumbing” meant a woman carrying a jug of water.  We don’t know if they built the mounds as funeral plots, treasure houses or as an early form of economic stimulus.  Take your pick.  What we do know is that a large number of our early ancestors put a great deal of time and effort into something that today carries no meaning whatsoever, which may be the way future generations view our fixation with football stadiums. 

            And that’s about all we know about the earliest people here: they made big piles of dirt, and they made arrowheads out of stone.  Whatever else they did, it was biodegradable, setting an early example of being earth-friendly.  Unfortunately, most folks since that time have ignored this example.

The Cherokees … never trust a white man bearing paperwork             

            Sometime in the distant past (we’re talking hundreds of years when we say “past”), a group of folks we now call “The Cherokees” moved into the neighborhood.  The Cherokees were much better organized than the Mound Builders, or at least it seems that way to us now, because the mound builders are all gone, but some Cherokees still remain.  The Cherokees developed what historians call trade routes, which the Cherokees themselves called “paths.”  Some of the Cherokees apparently liked traveling along these paths better than they liked chasing wild game through the forests, so they would take things from the mountains down to other tribes along the coast and swap* for seashells.  Then they would take these shells back to the mountains and trade them for food from Cherokee women, who would then use the shells as objects of adornment and as decoration around the tribe’s outhouses. 

               The Cherokees tried mightily to adapt to the coming of the palefaces, and they succeeded almost too well.  They built schools, established their own court system and even had a tribal newspaper.   Most moved into “white style” houses, gardened actively, and behaved rather better than many of the so-called “civilized” people around them; however, they made a Big Mistake, a mistake which modern folks have almost learned to avoid:  they trusted a politician.  Although the Cherokees had helped President Andrew Jackson in his military career before he became president, once in office Jackson succumbed to the “Gold Lobby” and ordered the Cherokees to leave their ancestral lands and move to Oklahoma, a state which most Americans considered a wasteland so distant and useless, they had no intention of ever visiting.  Out-of-sight-out-of-mind has continued as a problem solving technique of Americans to this very day.

(*We don’t really know if these early traders did much swapping in the sense we know it today.  They might have just walked out onto a beach and gathered seashells without trading anything, or they might have gone up to beach-dwelling Indians and hit them on the head, but historians like to use words such as “trade routes” and “economic development” instead of “walking” and “assault and battery”, but that’s historians for you.)

The Conquistadors … they came for the bling, but not to carry it.             

               Early Indian tribes lived to regret that their trade routes were so obvious, allowing Spanish conquistadors in the 16^th Century to travel inland from the coast and look for gold and treasure, which is something the 16^th Century Spanish were extremely good at doing.  To be fair to the Spaniards, they also brought along Christian priests, who wanted to save the souls of the people they met.  The early priests had to explain to the potential converts that their souls wouldn’t be saved until their physical bodies were unencumbered by gold and other treasures.   Failure to accept this doctrine would result in torture or a quick execution of the Native peoples, while acceptance of the Spaniards’ religion led to slavery and forced removal from their homes – not an easy choice to make.

            The natives of North Georgia were unlucky enough to be visited by one of the most notorious of the Spanish conquistadors.  Hernando de Soto had, according to Wikipedia, “gained fame as an excellent horseman, fighter, and tactician, but was notorious for the extreme brutality with which he wielded these gifts.”  Senor De Soto had been instrumental in the successful destruction of the Inca Empire in South America, as well as conquering significant portions of Central America.   Not content with the fame and fortune he had gained in the tropics, De Soto gained permission from the Spanish king to explore and conquer in North America as well, making him one of the most successful real estate “developers” of all time. 

            In 1540, De Soto left Florida and headed into Tennessee, Western North Carolina and Northern Georgia, before traveling through Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas.    As a true Spanish gentleman, when De Soto met the local inhabitants he immediately thought “slave laborers,” so as soon as the priests had saved the Indians’ souls, De Soto put their physical bodies to work carrying his expedition’s supplies.  Those Native Americans who objected to this arrangement could expect to be tortured and/or killed.  It was a system that worked well for the Spaniards until Senor De Soto reached a location somewhere near present day Arkansas, where he died of a fever.  Shortly before his death, the Chickasaw tribe had resisted a demand that they provide 200 men as porters by attacking the Spanish camp in the night and killing a goodly number of conquistadors.  This may have brought on De Soto’s fatal fever, since De Soto was not accustomed to being refused service by the locals.

            In the tradition of ignoring the bad habits of famous people, North Georgia’s Habersham County today has a monument to Hernando De Soto, consisting of a large boulder with an attached bronze plaque dedicated to the passing of De Soto’s expedition through the neighborhood.  Nobody pays much attention to it, and no one is positive that De Soto actually passed through Habersham County (a nit-picking detail, after all), but a monument is a difficult item to change, especially when it is attached to a very heavy boulder.     

            While De Soto discovered no gold or treasure or Fountains of Youth, his expedition is credited with leaving horses, pigs and fatal diseases in our region.  Those Indians who managed to survive the diseases could at least learn how to ride and eat barbecue, so De Soto’s visit wasn’t all bad news.

The Debt Avoiders … running away from British lenders 

            In 1732, an English gentleman named James Oglethorpe was granted a Royal Charter for the creation of a province in America.  British investors probably expected Oglethorpe to behave in the usual colonial manner (see above).  However, Sir James, at heart a philanthropist and social reformer in the best English tradition*, wanted to build a colony based on silk production, thereby employing a great many poor English persons in a useful and, hopefully, profitable trade.  And in those days there were a lot of poor English persons.             

            In 18^th Century England, falling behind with ones’ creditors would result in imprisonment until the debt was paid -- a method of debt resolution still highly popular with today’s bankers and credit card companies.  So the idea of traveling to a distant land to avoid going to jail was acceptable to certain Englishmen who had borrowed a bit too heavily for such things as major home improvements or an important horse race.  Quickly packing up their meager belongings, these debt-ridden folks joined Oglethorpe’s colonial expedition to Savannah, Georgia, where they learned to their dismay that Oglethorpe actually expected them to perform work as silk producers, a process involving the raising of mulberry trees, harvesting the cocoons of the silk moths and then, with nimble (that is, feminine) fingers, creating silk thread. 

            Silk was an extremely popular fiber in Europe in those days, but it was also extremely expensive since it had to come all the way from China.  So the idea of making silk in a British colony made perfect sense to Oglethorpe and his investors, who all believed this scheme would make them fabulously wealthy and at the same time, save the British credit industry.  Unfortunately, the English ladies in Oglethorpe’s new colony appeared to lack nimble fingers, while the menfolk weren’t too excited about raising mulberry trees or hanging around silk moths.  It was also very easy to break the employment contract with Oglethorpe and Co. by simply walking away into the wilderness.

            Some of these frustrated silk producers wandered as far as the Cherokee lands in Northern Georgia, where they promised the Cherokees that they would be much nicer neighbors than the Spaniards of earlier years.  The Cherokees should have known better than to trust these former Brits, but people all over the globe have been snookered by British settlers, who had very good manners, charming accents and the ability to steal large parcels of real estate.                

(“Best English Tradition”  means politely but without visible passion)

The Homely Miners … more fun than planting corn?

            The early British settlers got along rather well with their Cherokee neighbors, who had decided it was better to emulate rather than confront these strangers from the coastlands.  Within a short time, the British settlers had taught their Indian friends useful lessons: how to play cricket, how to dress in climate-inappropriate clothing and how to handle the mathematics of successful casino management.  

            But then tragedy struck when a settler discovered a large chunk of yellow metal known all over the world as a perfect material for making engagement rings.  This material called “gold” has amazing properties.  For instance, just by carrying a significant amount of gold nuggets, an ordinary, even rather ugly, male becomes incredibly attractive to the most beautiful of females.  So when gold was discovered in Northern Georgia, homely men from far places flocked to the hills only to discover that many of the best mining locations were located on lands containing Cherokee Indians, many of whom did not want their fields and forests decimated by unattractive gold seekers.   

            After most of the Cherokees were driven out of Georgia (see above), the homely miners had a free hand digging gold and looking for women to impress with the resulting nuggets, until one fateful day a terrible rumor swept through the mines.  That rumor condemned North Georgia to be a backwater of civilization for decades to come, and like most terrible rumors, it involved the West Coast.  The rumor spread that gold was much more plentiful in a place no one had ever heard of, a place known as “California.”  It is a testament to the incredible gullibility of mankind that the California Goldrush worked so well, and even today, there are those who believe that the whole thing was an early scheme of crafty real estate agents.  Whether the rumors were true or not, the result was that thousands of unattractive, love-starved miners left Georgia as quickly as they had come.

            Today nothing much remains of the gold mining days, except the gold plating on the roof of the Dahlonega courthouse and the scarcity of Cherokees in the hills of North Georgia.  Also, there are a few pictures in the back of some Georgia closets of ugly ancestors, but fortunately, most of them moved along to the West Coast.

 The Vacationers … are all of the children in the wagon?

               In the early days of the 19^th C. wealthy residents of Charleston and Savannah began to notice that they, along with their poor neighbors, were falling ill every summer, often with fatal results.  While they could have changed their living habits (for instance, the women might have lived longer if they didn’t have to wear yards and yards of fabric in order to stroll to the local convenience store), many of the wealthy coastal residents decided to try another method of disease prevention – heading for the hills.  This method of disease prevention had an added benefit when the wealthy residents returned to their cities in the Fall.  Non-vacationers had often succumbed to typhoid fever or malaria, so in that time-honored method of investment opportunities, those who survived profited from those who did not.  

            As these early mountain vacationers made their fortunes, they built many fine homes for themselves in the mountains as well as at the seaports.  Their favorite building materials in the mountains were the noble long leaf pines and majestic chestnut and oak trees.  While these amazing woods did provide excellent house-building materials, they also inspired some heroic house fires, since the average Victorian “cabin” was about 20,000 square feet, and they were only in use a few months of the year.  Today only a few old, stately manors remain.

            It has also been reported that many of these early vacationers were lawyers, and when these well-educated and shrewd legal experts began to interact with the early mountain folks, it wasn’t long before the hills were echoing with a new mountain man call: “I’ll sue!”  While this new call was considered a big improvement over the earlier call of “Shoot to kill!” it led to a continuing need for more and larger courthouses, a process which has continued until this very day.  The debate over whether this has improved the lives of mountain dwellers is ongoing. 

Liquid Dreamers … a toast to economic security                                                                            

               Early settlers in the mountains of Georgia noticed one thing pretty quickly: it was tough to grow very much in North Georgia.  The ground was rocky and the hills were steep, so the chances of have large, bountiful acres of agricultural land were slim.  What the settlers did have was a long tradition of creating alcohol from corn.  They also had a long tradition of avoiding governmental inspection of their creative activities, combined with a fierce desire to avoid sales taxes on their creations.   Since their “creation” was also known as “distilled alcohol”, the mountain dwellers developed a habit of hiding their distillery apparatus in lonely places, far from prying eyes and womenfolk, which may have been the beginnings of the first men’s clubs, but nobody wants to talk about that except sociologists. 

            Since the production of liquor (or “shine”) had to be kept secret, it was often done at night, by the light of the moon, hence those involved in the business of illegal liquor were called “guys-out-at-night.”  However, with an American genius for marketing, someone began calling illegal liquor “moonshine.”  This had a much more romantic sound than “grain alcohol”, so it wasn’t long before those involved in the production and distribution of distilled alcohol were known as “moonshiners.”  They were also known as “the-only-guys-with-cash,” which made them very notable figures throughout many  communities, although most folks chose to only mention the revenue stream, not the product.  This is particularly important even today since many locally prominent people used their moonshine money to establish themselves or their children as titans of local, legitimate businesses.  Even today, one only has to point at a local business when passing with an older community member to see if their eyes roll.  This is often an indication that moonshine floats somewhere in the roots of the family tree.

            Of course, there were moral dilemmas involved in the production of moonshine, and the greatest of these dilemmas was getting caught.  Oh sure, there were problems in the avoidance of taxes, but that was never considered much of a moral problem since tax avoidance has always seemed to be a sensible pattern of behavior.  However, there were problems in creating a liquid that was possibly toxic and certainly addictive, so the best way to deal with this particular moral dilemma was to sell the product to either (a) Yankees or (b) folks from Atlanta.  Since both of these peoples were considered outside the boundaries of normal decency, there was little or no outrage by local teetotalers or temperance advocates, and law enforcement could generally be relied upon not to interfere in such a profitable, community-based enterprise.   

The Chicken Kings … rounding up man’s feathered friends

               Most folks nowadays have forgotten the days when flocks of “free range” chickens roamed the hills of Northern Georgia.  Chicken ranchers would have to comb the forests and hills, rounding up enough chickens to make a flock in a process known as a “Feather Up.”  Once the flock was assembled, bands of “Chick-boys” would slowly move this bunch of semi-wild poultry down to the towns, where they could be loaded onto trains and sent along to the big chicken markets, wherever those were.  Obviously, this was not an efficient system for raising chickens as a commercial endeavor, and it may never have been tried more than once. 

            Then shortly after WWII, someone came up with the idea of raising chickens in large, long “chicken condos.”  The idea was that chickens could be rounded up much easier in a closed-in environment and raised in a scientific, and efficient, manner.  Soon, the “chicken condos” had to be replaced by the larger “chicken houses,” when it was discovered that chickens in condos spent too much time having parties and not enough time laying eggs.    

            A few poultry pioneers began to offer local farmers a “deal” whereby the farmer could raise chickens in large houses, and, in return, the farmer would receive the love and affection of several thousand chickens, who now had a roof over their heads.  It was a terrific idea, and eventually long chicken houses were parked behind thousands of North Georgia farmhouses, where they happily, and legally, produced income for farmers who had struggled for generations. 

The Half-Backers … out of the swamps and up to the mountains

               There came a day when a South Florida couple was sitting outside their retirement home, looking up at the clouds, and the lady turned to her spouse and said: “Sidney, do you see the horizon?” 

            And Sidney said, “Sure, Blanche.  It’s that boring line right in front of us.” 

            And Blanche said, “I sure would like to see a hill or something instead of that line.  Maybe we could go on up to the mountains for a visit.” 

            And they did.  Of course, the first mountains they saw were in the Northeast Georgia region, the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, the oldest mountains in the world, and then they said to each other: “How much does this view cost?” 

            The answer in the early days* was:  “Not very much!” 

            So Sidney and Blanche along with a whole lot of other Floridians who were tired of bathing in mosquito repellent and heat rash ointments decided to purchase a property “in the mountains,” only vaguely aware that they had moved half the distance back to their familial homes in New Jersey – Sidney and Blanche never did spend any money buying a national map.                               

*The “Early Days” in North Georgia real estate are the days before 1975, when the first river lot on the Chattooga was sold to someone with a Florida address on the title.

The Whole Truth  … where most of us really originated

               If you were ever to inspect a cemetery in England, or perhaps in Scotland or parts of Ireland, you would recognize a lot of the same names you would find in a North Georgia cemetery.  In fact, many locally prominent names are actually derived from town and city names in England, along with a smattering of German and Huguenot names from France.  Sometimes folks are descended from fascinating ancestors such as those mentioned above, but more likely, your family tree is made up of quiet, law-abiding, hardworking former immigrants who came to American shores within the last 200 years and then meandered around looking for a nice spot to call home and raise a family. 

            North Georgia forests and mountains are beautiful today, but if you could journey back in time before the old hardwood and heartpine forests were decimated by loggers, insects and diseases, you would have seen trees of gigantic proportions, along with clear, star-filled skies and, in the case of Tallulah Gorge, natural wonders of breathtaking splendor.  Fortunately, the ancestors of some of those early witnesses to the spectacular scenery are trying to not only preserve the beauty that is still here but also, where possible, return the lands and forests, and even the night skies, to the beauty their ancestors beheld.   Let us hope they succeed.