His reports were later turned into a feature-length documentary. He said, Sure, if its what you want to do, Nay Bug recalls. This resulted in the tragic Trail of Tears.. (Please see: The Straight Dope: Is there really a race of blue people?). NPR describes the stereotypical portrayal of Appalachians as "children in sepia-toned clothes with dirt-smeared faces. They are known for being of a genetic trait that led to the blood disorder methemoglobinemia, causing the skin to appear blue. Many Appalachians run a 2 1/2 times greater risk of having a child with neural-tubal defects, including anencephaly ("without a brain") and spina bifida ("open spine"). This gets worse over time, and the people of that remote Nova Scotian mountain range were no exception. His portraits of the mountain people, as he calls them, are intimate, direct and sometimes bleak. He is distantly related to Hobart Ison, an Appalachian who in 1967 fatally shot a filmmaker on his land, but Adams father was a supervisor for a natural gas company with contracts around the country, and his family often lived in cities, including New York and Miami. 29 People Who Experienced Buyer's Remorse 12,996. However, it is also true that many Appalachians have committed incest. Inbreeding had dropped 18% in the 1870s The people of Appalachia are stereotyped as the poor White minority, tending to fuse Appalachia into one community, one state, which would make Appalachia the third largest state in the nation due to population. This vision spread, and was picked up by the American Missionary Association (AMA). Vast financial empires have taken advantage of the myths of . Was it just the movie Deliverance that led people to believe that? Hall said that although deformities can be caused by a combination of poor prenatal care, environmental factors and maternal health, genetic deformities can be distinguished from other factors. Your Privacy Rights Shelby Lee Adams 1990 photograph of life in the eastern Kentucky mountains captured a poignant tradition. "When my high school was integrated, it was a struggle the first couple of years. (Its taking longer than we thought.) Weyls article, incidentally, appeared in Mankind Quarterly, which publishes a lot of research by the biology-is-destiny crowd. Their mission was formed from the ideals of Kentucky abolitionist John G. Fee---founder of Berea College---who developed the vision of the antislavery mountaineer. According to one paper (Jaber et al, Community Genetics, 1998), congenital malformations are 2.5 times more common among offspring of inbred couples than of unrelated parents. The people in the Appalachians today are still skilled artisans, musicians, writers, story tellers, industrial, and filled with family values. Mamaw died of emphysema in July 1990, when Nay Bug was 7. By senior year, I was . Watch footage of Golers being interviewed (shown in the video above), and you can easily see the mental deficiencies which permeated the family, and it doesnt take long before you realize the tragic effects of inbreeding. The story begins in a place called South Mountain in Nova Scotia, Canada. It isn't uncommon to see churches in old barns, homes, or even abandoned train cars. Several family members couldnt wrap their limited minds around the idea that theyd done something wrong and often couldnt comprehend the meaning of the word incest. Some believed that the Golers, due to their deficiencies, needed help, not years of punishment. The tale of these Appalachian "Avatars" first gained mainstream attention in 1975 after Benjamin "Benjy" Stacy was born with dark blue skin, ABC News reported. Whats more, the rate fell quickly after 1950 no doubt due to postwar prosperity, urbanization, and so on and by 1970 was no higher than youd likely find in the general population. The most comprehensive look Ive found is a 1980 paper (Night Comes to the Chromosomes [etc], Central Issues in Anthropology) by Robert Tincher, who at the time was a grad student at the University of Kentucky. To this day, some of the best mechanics, builders, and inventors live in Appalachia. This wasnt an ordinary case of rural inbreeding but rather was forcibly passed down from generation to generation. More information is available at her website: abigailtucker.com, 2023 Smithsonian Magazine Families in the region stick together and have many close relationships with those around them. His subjects appreciate his presents of canned hams and clothing at Christmastime and the occasional case of beer; they are also eager to see his photographs. Their ancestral line began six generations earlier with a French orphan, Martin Fugate, who settled in Eastern Kentucky. Snowden Leaks Recall Previous Domestic Spying. Those with Appalachian accents or who use Appalachian dialect are perceived to be less educated and less wealthy. The settlers were not looking to make large amounts of money or even try to make alliances; they simply wanted to live in a place they could make their own. After years of living with their enemy from the north, the Cherokee (people of a different speech, also known as cave people) created an alliance with the Chickasaw and fought to push the Shawnee out of their territory. Despite the fact that people still consider these folks to be uneducated, many know how to read and write, and even the early settlers valued learning; but they also valued being skilled craftsmen and being able to apply what they learn to their way of life. A court psychologist found many members of the Goler clan to be borderline mentally retarded, and some of them, even after their stays in prison, still didnt possess the intellectual capabilities to understand what theyd done wrongtheyd been locked up and had no idea why. Get the latest Travel & Culture stories in your inbox. Some of the strongest bonds exist in these parts, and despite years of development throughout America and even Appalachian communities, their history and traditions have survived. What are the real facts about. We dont get a lot of calls from Allentown, he said. Mountain people trace their roots to the Scottish people to whom Englands King James I gave Irish lands in an effort to allow two of England's biggest enemies to eliminate each other. Many of the convicted Golers got out of prison and returned to the impoverished conditions which ultimately caused the problem in the first place, with a complete lack of understanding of what was wrong or what needed to change. The 1972 film Deliverance is set and filmed in the Appalachian mountains of Georgia. Small instances across the counties, but nothing caused significant change. !Julian FrasierCarol Simmons SmithWilliam MartinRonald TirrachiaTracy BosierTabitha BucklesJoey SniderPam BroderickMadhu KolluSusan Burrows-RangelJames LaganKeith and Donna TimmonsGregory LewisEric PeckGeorge SawtoothWill SimmonsChris JurkowskiRob CrottsChristian WilliamsGhyontonda MotaDavid L. MullinsJoe SullivanAudrey WelchAngela SmithAndrew DeLongMatthew CoonSteve SurberWayne MaynardBrian SerwayJessica RodriguesGeorge McNairBill WhitworthMike AdamsShawn HannahBrad \u0026 Angela DavisMichael GeneckiKara Wyatt RasnakeJonathan GartlandKaren CaddleAndrew DisekerCarol WilderKimberly CarrDee Simmons AlbanBill SewardDaniel ArmstrongThanks to these wonderful donors!! Many is more accurate since the practice is legal, or legal under certain circumstances, in more than 20 states. To most of us, the mere mention of the word incest strikes us and stops us dead in our tracks. Due to Appalachia being known for their coal mining industry it makes it difficult for women to find well-paying jobs. The darkness he has sometimes seen in Appalachia only makes him want to look closer. Extreme Record Collecting: Confessions of an analog vinyl snob, A long, rambling blog post about my Nico obsession (+ some astonishing, seldom seen TV performances). [2] Today, South Mountain serves as a recreational place for hiking, camping, sports, and many other activities. A fiercely independent group, mountain people see this as one more way for the government to exert control over their lives. shuffling of DNA. Shane and Melody discuss the truth about the Appalachian stereotype of inbreeding as out in the spotlight most recently by the Soft White Underbelly series. She was always game to slice into the Fourth of July watermelon a few days early. In the 1880s and 1890s, writers such as Mary Noailles Murfree and John Fox Jr. traveled across Appalachia, looking for local color, and overstated the degree to which mountain populations lived in isolation. Thats me.. Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. Much of the action in Deliverance takes place along the fictional Cahulawassee River, generally thought to be based in large part on the Chattooga River, which forms a length of the hilly border between Georgia and South Carolina. Appalachian Culture Explained in 40 Facts. I dont want to give the impression in any way that The Hollow is a hicksploitation movieits not. For Appalachian people, inbreeding is a stereotype. [7] Everyone was glued to the trial, and nobody could take their eyes off of what was happening in this normally quiet section of Nova Scotia. Dating back to the early 1800s, an isolated family in eastern Kentucky - who can trace their roots back to a French orphan - started producing children who were blue. From approximately 1980, several of the children, on multiple occasions, tried to notify adults of the pain, torture, and sexual abuse they were enduring back in the wilderness of South Mountain at the hands of only partially competent adults whod been inbred for generations. For more than a century, these Appalachian families passed along an exceedingly rare genetic blood condition that turned their skin a disarming shade of blue. He doesnt mean to make fun of the poor people. They collected welfare checks and would sometimes work for nearby farms, but they were otherwise almost entirely removed from society. These people were strong, independent, and "frugal.". Research on intrafamilial marriage in such enclaves is slim. For the record, West Virginia has strict anti-incest laws. The term Redneck is often met with pride among mountain people. . So the Scots-Irish people headed west until they found a place that closely resembled the mountainous lands from which they came, the Appalachian Mountains. [9] Due to this, the economy stayed poor and struggled to allow the region to prosper. Most of these stereotypes come from things of the past. Eventually, English traders worked their way through the mountains, and developed a relationship with the Indians of the region; in order to secure the Carolinas as a colony. It's $10 a month and watchable on Apple and Android mobile apps, Roku TV, Apple TV and Amazon Fire. Right there with my Mamaw. What are the real facts about inbreeding in Appalachia?CHECK OUT OUR NEW MERCHANDISE AT:https://real-appalachia.creator-spring.comFollow us on Facebook at:https://m.facebook.com/RealAppalachia/Follow us on TikTok at:www.tiktok.com/@realappalachia Follow us on Instagram at:www.instagram.com/real_appalachiaFollow us on Twitter at:www.twitter.com/appalachianpro1Thanks to our patrons!! [2], While a general awareness of the Appalachia had existed, it was "discovered" by writers who helped form popularly accepted images of the region in the 1870s. 23 Ratings. While one of the most common stereotypes of the Appalachian people is that of the moonshiner, and it is true that many mountain families do support their families with the production and sale of homemade alcohol that is untaxed and illegal. In the recent indicators of national intelligence I can find eighth-grade math scores and what all southern Appalachian states arent conspicuously clustered at the bottom. And this process had gone on for 120 years. In 1721, the British signed a trade treaty with the Cherokee. Has anybody gotten electrocuted peeing on the third rail? The Fugates, a family living in the hills of West Virginia starting in the 19th century, were commonly known as the " Blue Fugates " [1] or the " Blue People of West Virginia ". Esther Renee Adams, "Mamaw," was laid to rest in her own home. Schools are institutional centers where our children not only learn the basics of math, science, and other academic subjects but also interact with one another and learn how to conduct themselves morally and within the greater societal framework. Explainer thanks Edwin Arnold of Appalachian State University, Anthony Harkins of Western Kentucky University, and David Hsiung of Juniata College. Its immediately repulsive to most human beings the world over, and its taboo status reflects this. Shelby Lee Adams. Mamaw could take the smart out of a wasp sting and hold her own in bubble-gum-blowing contests. Marriage. "People in Appalachia are more concerned about kinship than skin color," said Thompson. If you dont mind, therefore, well restructure your question along slightly more scientific lines: Is southern Appalachia characterized by an unusually high incidence of (a) inbreeding and (b) mental retardation and genetic defects, and if so, has (a) led to (b)? [6], The Scotch-Irish moved to the region, as well as the African-Americans who were set free from slavery. This raises the question: Whos to blame? Are the Ozarks in Appalachia? According to a 2011 study, Consanguineous Marriages, " the rate of near natal and childhood death increases if the child comes from a first cousin union, nearly doubling in certain countries." Investigations would reveal that the adults were sexually exploiting the children in the most horrifying of ways. 4. For 36 years, Adams has spent his summers in several rural Kentucky counties, watching children grow up, families flourish or fall apart and green mountains crumble after years of coal mining. Benjy Stacy was the latest child born in a long line of Fugates - the blue people of Kentucky - who had lived in the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky for the past 197 years. The rural neighborhoods of southern Appalachia are kin-based. Inbreeding is the mating of organisms closely related by ancestry. Terrifying. For over a hundred years, the Mundy family has lived at the house at the end of the roadeach generation more inbred than the last. This part of America has so much to offer, and should not be writ off as backwards way of living. Its not to make them look bad. I like to write about the dark and deranged, the macabre and true crime, history, philosophy, and other weird stuff. But it was the only woman who was arrested, Stella Goler, who really ran the show, as the Goler clan was set up much like a cult, not unlike that of Jim Jones. Before settlers arrived to the mountains, the Cherokee, ruled the land. This was almost wholly lost on the adults of the Goler clan, and it shows. Why is the missionary position called that? American Hollow (1999) [Full Movie] - YouTube 0:00 / 1:28:12 American Hollow (1999) [Full Movie] American Hollow 28.5K subscribers 5M views 8 years ago This film tells the tale of a. Soft White Underbelly update interview and portrait of the Whittaker family of Odd, West Virginia.Here's a link to a playlist of all Whittaker family videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBEIBBdgAOAog4POCAhq1PtqfCaJUtyoUHere's a link to a GoFundMe campaign to help the Whittaker family with living expenses and home improvements: https://gofund.me/d3bed217For ad-free, uncensored videos and plenty of exclusive content please subscribe to the Soft White Underbelly subscription channel. A coal-black teardrop was tattooed by the corner of her eye. Then one summer an uncle, a country doctor, introduced him to some of the most isolated mountain families. However, it is also true that many Appalachians have committed incest. But Emily Smith, deputy commissioner for the County Social Services Department, said the number of public assistance cases in the entire Hollow was probably not more than a couple of handfuls and has not grown in 15 years. "[11], The traditional Appalachian dialect and accent also comes with a slew of stereotypes and consequences for those who bear it. For years these people have struggled to keep traditions and history alive, and they continue to do so by celebrating their uniqueness and independence through skills passed down from past generations. The people of the Appalachians are unique, and no where else will one meet a more independent-spirited people. Terms of Use The Ozarks cover nearly 47,000 square miles (120,000 km 2), making it the most extensive highland region between the Appalachians and Rockies. The Appalachians are often victims of locational prejudice, where people often discriminate against due to their location and where they identify as home. Now, Jamie, I want you to look at something, she told her former husband. Some criticsincluding those featured in The True Meaning of Pictures, a 2002 documentary film about Adams worksay he exploits a region already saddled with stereotypes involving poverty and violence. Go back to the 19th century, and South Mountain was home to the Goler clan, poor mountain people who very rarely saw outsiders and mainly kept to themselves. Hes showing how hard it is for us to live., She had never seen Home Funeral until Adams visited last summer. Though united by the wide belief that the south + hill country = inbred degenerates, the Ozarks and the Chattooga are separated by roughly 500 miles, several states, and the Mississippi River. Staff writer Abigail Tucker also writes on mustangs in this issue. Ultimately, 13 of them would go to prison for their crimes. Inaccurate impressions about Appalachian people and culture, Discrimination against Appalachian individuals, Representations of Appalachians in popular culture. The past is supposed to be past. Chris is the first person in his family to graduate from high school; he has also taken courses in diesel mechanics at Hazard Community College. And when a man with a camera came and asked to take her picture, she said she wanted to lay a rose across her grandmothers chest. She stared at the photograph for a long time. When traveling to the Appalachian Mountains, these people brought with them a deep rooted since of family and traditions. One of the most infamous cases of incest revolves around a group of people from Canada known as the Goler clan, and they remain one of the weirdest and most horrifying examples of the practice in human history. Often it is in the form of parody. We use ads to keep our content free for you. The Goler clan remained so remote through the generations by supplementing themselves through the habits of the ancient and prehistoric humans, by fishing, hunting, and gathering nuts, fruits, and berries for subsistence. Get our free newsletter Amazing new updates! For no less than four long years, this went on as children tried to escape, trapped by family members who were abusing them and dismissed by adults who should have helped. Set in West Virginia, it features cannibalistic mountain men, horribly disfigured from generations of incest. The music has its roots in the Celtic music of Scotland and Ireland. After the appraisal "Community Action in Appalachia", the public started to view the region as underdeveloped and stuck in the past. Time to waffle. Most of us have never met or even seen someone like that. The father of the family would let people have sex with whichever of his children they wanted to in exchange for some material item, such as cigarettes or alcohol. The main group of settlers which migrated to the Appalachians were from Scot-Irish, English, and German descent. Faith is paramount to mountain people with more than 80 different varieties of Baptist and Pentecostal faiths found in Appalachia. However, defects may be more common than I let on. During the same time period, missionaries reported pervasive ignorance and poverty, with large families living together in ramshackle cabins. The Straight Dope: Is there really a race of blue people? The children were quite obviously (and thankfully) removed from the home and would be placed into the custody of the state, while the family didnt even understand what theyd done. Its true that, through the 19th century, transportation networks developed slowly in the rugged, westernmost portion of Virginia (incorporated as West Virginia in 1863). Country people love pictures, Adams says. As a result of these negative stereotypes, thousands of people from the Appalachian region face judgment and, intense scrutiny on a daily basis.[14]. A famous example is the blue Fugates, members of an inbred Kentucky hill clan who suffered from a rare genetic blood disorder that made their skin look blue. This is obscenely creepy, like a real life horror movie. Parks Lanier, Jr.Larry AllenRyan FarmerIris Lee UnderwoodVicki MurphyVirginia MartinAnne WagnerJim PeckAnonymousHeather LovaszPatti DibbleChristopher MooreMark P GholsonTeresa DaltonAJ WallaceJosh TaylorBarbara AwbreyWilliam MillsRobert MorganChris ColemanChelsea JacksonLogic MilkboneDana LynchRobert HillJerry MurphyYou can support our mission with a one-time PayPal donation to:appalachianproject16@gmail.comCash App to:$sssimmons1070or monthly by becoming a patron at:www.patreon.com/AppalachiaYou can send an email with any questions or comments to:appalachianproject16@gmail.comMy NEW mailing address is:208 Lavinia StreetBristol, VA 24201 Slate is published by The Slate Try a one week free trial at: https://www.softwhiteunderbelly.comHeres a link to audio only versions of SWU videos: https://asmrdb.fanlink.to/softwhiteunderbelly Half of me died, too, she says. In the mountains of eastern Kentucky, such "country wakes" could last for days. Incredibly, it wast until the mid-1980s, nearly a decade after this film was shot, that indoor plumbing came to Allentown, which is apparently roughly 1200 ft. long by 400 ft. wide and covered on three sides by dense forest, and it is said, a fence. I hope not, because the Ozarks and the setting of James Dickeys 1970 novel Deliverance, source of the 1972 movie, are two different places. The impact of Appalachia's people and culture is found in food and entertainment, industry and business, music and entertainment, literature, language, and history. Privacy Statement Heres where things get murky. These widespread, limiting views of Appalachia and its people began to develop in the post-Civil War;[1] Those who "discovered" Appalachia found it to be a very strange environment, and depicted its "otherness" in their writing. Inbreeding can have some pretty nasty effects on the offspring of such unions, especially over consecutive generations, and incest was a major part of the background of the Goler clan. [22], Within the region, discrimination against women is also a very big issue. When [critics] are taken out of their middle-class comfort zone, they are confronted with another persons humanity, he says. The Mundys. They decided to attack the Cherokee and sell them as slaves to the English, in 1692. Shane and Melody discuss the truth about the Appalachian stereotype of inbreeding as out in the spotlight most recently by the Soft White Underbelly series. Shawn Grim, 18, tries to fight his way out of his dysfunctional family in the mountains by becoming the high school football star of Appalachia, while sleeping in a truck. In a 1974 paper tactfully entitled The Geography of Stupidity in the U.S.A., researcher Nathaniel Weyl notes that the three states having the highest white failure rate on the Armed Forces Qualification Test in 1968 were Kentucky (14.8 percent), Tennessee (14.2 percent), and West Virginia (13.4 percent). Many saw Appalachian otherness as a problem that needed an explanation. 915,325 Views; 59 . Mountain people have their own dialect of English, and while it may seem unsophisticated, it is actually closer to its origins than the dialect most speak today. [1][2] One of the earliest groups involved were missionaries who aimed to save Appalachians and introduce them into mainstream Protestantism. By 1960's their descendants had isolated themselves in a remote hollow high in the mountains. You can find instructions here as to how. Only adopted cousins are allowed to marry, while in Vermont, Virginia, and many other states, first cousins can tie the knot. Within the shadows lie the depth and beauty of human beings, he says. marie, 2015 USA On Race. The group helped provide community centers throughout Appalachia, with hopes of allowing individuals to become more educated and view other, newer technologies created by society. When asked what the word incest means, one family member stopped and asked, Insects? completely baffled by the question. The eastern mountain people of Kentucky are called the Appalachians. In 1540, an expedition from Spain discovered these people along the Tennessee River. In the song Hotel California, what does colitas mean? [10], According to Professor Roberta M. Campbell of Miami University Hamilton, the "stereotype of the backward, barefoot, poor white hillbilly" is the most common stereotype of Appalachian people, but that the stereotype "obscures the realities of race and racism in Appalachia." Then, their big break finally came. The treaty established boundaries, eventually broken, between the British settlements and Cherokee. Do Black Musicians Need To Be More Socially Conscious? Bartering for goods and services is a common practice in Appalachia, and high unemployment is an issue in the area, so many resort to day labor just to feed their families. In the Appalachian Mountains rests a medical oddity so unusual that it at first seems a massive hoax. "[7] Once you do something nice for somebody youre accepted, he said, adding that he believes residents of the Hollow are slowly becoming more comfortable with outsiders. The rough look of those who live in the Appalachian region comes from times in the late 1800s when Appalachia was hit with a depression due to economic over expansion, decrease in money supply, and a stock crash. Boxing people in is easy. Walter Holbrook, Chris father and Mamaws son, takes a different view. I live right down the road from one such family. Doctors were so alarmed by . They even bragged about their sexual conquests with the children, a horrifying nightmare to anyone with common sensibilities and even the slightest hint of moral decency. [8] This twisted group not only partook in a practice that was hideously taught to the younger generations by the older, but their mental deficiencies got worse and worse as the inbreeding continued. In the wake of the documentary and the exposure of their grim living conditions, social workers began making tentative inroads with the Allentowners, but the attention was initially rebuffed by distrustful residents. Sources:http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13964/13964-h/13964-h.htm#strange http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=6865077 http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=hillbilly%20culture%3A%20the%20appalachian%20mountain%20folk&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CGEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwebpages.charter.net%2Fcorso%2Fpower%2Fhillbilly.doc&ei=rfiyT83aO8a26QHuwPHxDg&usg=AFQjCNF6oX256ofNfb1Q99Cf8FT4i0u_Tg http://alekhouse.hubpages.com/hub/Appalachian-Myth http://youtu.be/2PJ7qqnkVaI , one should not have to pay for interesting articles such as this.