Moonshine Feuds & Malungeons

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Hancock County - Moonshine, Feuds & Malungeons

ACTUAL MANNERS AND WAYS OF THE MEN AND WOMEN

From The New York Sun - November 29th 1891

Contrast Between the Facts and the Stories of Novelists -- Dwelling, Food, and Dress -- The Use and the Flavor of Mountain Dew -- The Law Breaking Malungeons.

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Will Allen stayed with the Goins family in 1890


                   

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SNEEDVILLE, Nov. 26. -- It has been known that the great westward tide of civilization, setting from the seacoast for over a century, has split into many streams against the densest and most impassable part of the Appalachian system. The result has been that in the mountain fastnesses of Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee primitive forms of civilization have remained in many places, while in other places there has been a long step backward toward barbarism. The railroads which opened up these parts to the world have gone far toward changing them. The former type of the mountaineer, with his hatred for strangers, his passionate love of the freedom of license and his disregard for human life, has disappeared from these lines of travel. Only in the far valleys and on the mountains overlooking the almost unbroken wilderness does the type still persist.

These mountaineers have of late years got much attention from writers of romances. And these writers of romances, being for the most part persons of surprising talent, have got much credit for realistic writing of fiction. Their use of the dialect, their portrayal of mountain life and character have been regarded as faithfully natural and lifelike. This esteem has, however not been shared by those who are familiar with the mountains and the mountaineers for many years. East Tennesseeans who have hunted through the mountains and have lived in mountain cabins for weeks and months say that the romancers have taken wide liberties with the dialect and with the people themselves to make a better story.

It may be said in the beginning that the mountaineers of whom this article speaks are not at all like the persons of the mountain romance. There are no beautiful women with wide eyes and minds full of idealizing. There are no men of especial comeliness. Love is passion pure and simple. Hatred is neither stagy nor poetic, but hard, fierce and sordid. The family relations are commonplace where they are not brutal. In fact, there are no materials for Sunday school romances. Hands are hard, calloused and freckled. Faces are dull, obstinate and generally marked by dissipation and toil. Feet, both male and female, are of generous proportions. In form the men are long and lean and poorly jointed, but full of muscles and sinews, while the women are big of calf and wide of hip and guiltless of corset bound waists - the proportions of mothers or hardy sons. Life is exceedingly matter of fact, as devoid of imagination as the splendid sunsets and the vast stretches of landscape are suggestive. The materials for the romancer, for the mooner of sentimentalities, and of false and unhuman sexual and social relations are not here.

This however, far from detracting from interest in these people, adds to it immeasurably. Human nature here is on the surface, acting and speaking, the former more out of all proportion than the latter as naturally and as frankly as the most ardent lover of plain speech could desire. The mountaineers are hospitable, or else they turn away the traveler at the point of a gun. They grasp the hand or they meet the outstretched hand with the knife blade. They have clear and strong ideas of right and wrong as the mountains reveal them. They detest the machinery of law and permit each man to be the arbiter and avenger of his own wrongs. Their women are as virtuous as could be expected, and often virtuous beyond expectation. Both men and women are rough, uncouth, brave, freedom loving, haters of innovation of government, good clothing, and the life of cities.

To a dweller upon Manhattan Island, the people of these mountain districts seem hardly real. It is not easy to understand, without experience, a region where all men go forth armed, where murders are of almost daily occurrence, and where the law never attempted to assert its authority. The man of the city goes forth to hunt once a year, and then takes a gun or so and handles it with a fair degree of skill at best. Yet, only a day and a night's journey from New York one will find men who carry a gun as a city man carries an umbrella or cane, who can use it an incredible distance with the skill and accuracy that a good billiard player shows with his cue. These men go forth to seek the beast and birds of the forests sometimes, but the real use of the gun or pistol is in attack upon or defense against the bearer's fellow-beings of the same community. Every man is prepared for war at an instant's notice, and no man hesitates to take a life if he believes it necessary.

When such a state of affairs is described, one would at once infer that such people would be exceedingly uncomfortable to visit. Yet the fact is that the life and property of a stranger are as safe in the wilds of the mountains as in Central Park. A milder, more hospitable set of people would be hard to find. their faces are gentle, their voices pleasant and ever cordial. If they see that the stranger comes in simplicity and good faith they will do anything for him. It is only where their rights are concerned and by rights must be understood most sensitive and delicate distinctions unknown in the jostling crowds of cities- that they show ferocity. Any one whose incredulity is aroused by the gentle and harmless exterior of the mountaineers has but to learn their past history or to see a mountain disturbance to believe all that has been said of these people and more than has been said of these people and more than is generally credited to them.

It is the purpose of this article to speak of one small county of East Tennessee which is a fair type of the wild mountain region. In this county no white man has ever been hanged. Yet, since the war no less than 150 men have been shot down in the most deliberate fashion. Within the past year 10 murders have been committed and no adequate punishment has been or ever will be given to the murderers. There is no man above 16 years of age who does not own one or more weapons- Winchesters, Spencers, Colts and the like.  Most of those men seldom go abroad without being well armed. The glistening barrel of the gun and the lump made by the pocket pistol are such common sights that they cease to attract attention. This county, though one of the smallest in the state, is about the worst. Its history would read like the history of an Italian principality in the Middle Ages.

I

Toward the northeastern corner of Tennessee is Hancock County, a small triangle upon the map, and crossed by several high mountain ranges. It lies just over the border line from Virginia, with the Cumberland Mountains upon the northwest and the Great Smoky Mountains in full view to the east and south. There are no railroads in this county, and until the few last years there were rare arrivals or departures. The nearest railroad point even now is 20 miles away, across mountain roads that are difficult in rainy weather and impassible in winter. At all seasons of the year the scenery from the tops of Newman's Range, on Powell's Mountain is unsurpassed, even by the views in the heart of the Great Smoky Range. There are the Cumberland Mountains on one side and the towering and mist veiled Great Smoky Mountains on the other. Between lie smaller ranges covered by a sea of forests. In the spring, summer and autumn not a house is to be seen, only here and there thin and lazy columns of smoke to tell where the lonely cabins are hidden. The skies, the sunsets, the moonlight nights are serene, soft and beautiful.

The county-seat is a hamlet called Sneedville, a half-hearted scattering of little frame houses in a sort of basin formed by a curve in Newman's Ridge, which lies to the south and southwest. There are perhaps 150 people in Sneedville and its only brick building is a court-house, which looks extravagant, splendid and lonesome by contrast with the surroundings. Part of this court-house is given over to a jail, which is seldom inhabited. The floor of the cell room is bolted a chain. When they have an especially dangerous prisoner this chain is fastened about his leg and bolted so that it can be removed by filing only.

When a murder is committed in Hancock county the jailer or sheriff at once sets out to arrest the murderer. sometimes he has no difficulty. At other times he has to assemble an armed force. Pitched battles have been not infrequent. When the murderer is arrested peaceably he is released on bail, although murder is not a bailable offense. But the judge reasons that a bond will hold a man in Hancock county when a jail would not. This method of reasoning is the reslut of experience. Hardly one of the 30 or 40 houses in Sneedville is without a dozen or more bullets embedded in its log or board walls. And any inhabitant will tell you the history of each set of bullet marks - a bloody, ferocious history that sounds strange to a foreigner.

To the south of Newman's Range lies Powell's Mountain, which is really a range of about the same length as Newman's Range, to which it is parallel. Between Newman's Range and Powell's Mountain is the narrow valley of the Blackwater Creek, with bits of farming land, like market gardens in size, though not in fertility. On Newman's Range and Powell's Mountain and the rough lands thereabouts, live most of the people of Hancock county- mountaineers, who live partly by hunting, partly by the natural products of the bushes and trees, and partly by a rude and not very productive farming. There are many hogs, a few cattle, a few horse. In seed time ancient and exasperating plows tear up the ungracious soil in languid way. In harvest time the few straggling sheaves or ears are carefully got together. Pork, apple butter, blackberries in jam, preserves and jelly, apples buried and kept all winter, potatoes, beans and carrots and onions and beets in season, corn bread and sorghum at all times are the means of sustaining life. For pork they have a love that is almost veneration. They hold it to be the most nourishing, strengthening and pleasant kind of meat. every mountaineer has a small patch of sorghum, and also a machine for making it into the most abominable molasses that it has ever been the misfortune of the writer to taste. Sorghum is sugar, cream, milk, butter and seasoning. Then come corn bread, which they call “husky" thus admitting the apparent and unpleasant imperfections of home grinding.

Before these three staples come whisky. Without it mountain life would not be what it is. A lover of good whisky would object to the use of that name in connection with what these mountaineers drink. But the mountaineers themselves speak scornfully of the stuff they get when they make rare visits to the larger towns. They prefer this oily horror that smells like coal oil and tastes like a concentrated essence of brimstone. They drink it in great quantities, and before each meal a tin cup full of it is passed from father to son, daughter, grandson, child, and mother. They say that it opens the stomach up for food. To one not used to it, it seems to be opening the stomach to the winds of heaven. And in this frightful stuff lies the real secret of those mountain feuds that begin in sullen and morbid brooding, and end in corpses riddled with bullets.

The most respectable houses in Hancock county are in Sneedville. The mountain cabins are desolate and dreary and open to the weather. Not long ago the writer sat in a cabin on the side of Newman's Range. As the cabin was far up the mountain side a cold wind blew around and through it. There were two rooms and a loft. One room was used as a kitchen, the other room and loft for all other household purposes. Nineteen persons, 12 of whom were the children of the heads of the household, slept under that small, crazy roof. Men and women slept in the same room, not to speak of several wretched dogs which had fought with the human beings for food at the table an hour or so before.

There had been a general drunk and a dance after supper, for which the men and women had sunk exhausted or stupefied into bed. The door was wide open. The kitchen door not being upon hinges had been set aside when supper began. There were great clinks between the logs of the walls and a cold wind blew through the house. The writer could look out over the dark red embers of the back log and through the chimney wall to the great moon lit valley two miles away. He could look up through the floor of the loft, through the roof of cloudless mountain sky. Outside there was a profound stillness, broken by no sound, silent as though the world had suddenly paused breathless. Inside, there arose at intervals snorts and snores and moaning breaths from the sleepers, the mountaineer leading and the women joining in feebly but effectually. at times this sound of humanity at rest rose to a fearful loudness. Again there would be a pause which let the death like silence of the mountains penetrate the room. As this mountaineer had once read a book upon the diseases of the horse and had a library of one book - a school physiology - he bore the title of "Doc." He was a simple, foolish person, handy with a gun.

There are no saloons in this county. Each man keeps his jug or bottle and gets it refilled at the distillery. Moonshine whisky is scarce now, the government having at last convinced the mountaineers that the licensed still is the safest and best. But these licensed stills are wild and rough, and have the warlike appearance of the old moonshine stills. Just now there are perhaps a dozen of them in Hancock county. There was a time when a revenue collector could stand on Powell's Mountain and see in the valley and hollows below him the smoke of a score of illicit stills, safe from him because the trees made it impossible to mark the places whence the smoke came, and also because the guns of the mountaineers made the discovery almost assuredly fatal.

     





                              
                                          

II

From time to time the chief point for the producing of corn whisky has moved from one part of the country to another. It has been noticed that the riots, feuds and murders follow the stills. Wherever the most corn whisky is used, there the most violence occurs; and it is not strange that such whisky should put men into moods where life seems of trifling value. A feud generally starts from some trivial incident of a drunken brawl. The aggrieved person keeps drinking, falls to brooding, then tells his friends that he proposes to kill so and so. The threatened man hears of it, arms himself more carefully, and makes threats in return. The two men meet, and there is a fight or a murder. Friends and relatives take it up, and soon the whole mountain region is ringing with shots and the leaves are spotted with blood. The feud sometimes dies out for a while but soon begins to rage again, until wounds, deaths and funerals are distributed far and wide. Sometimes it is one branch of a family against another, more often one family against a rival family.

Aside from the feuds there are isolated murders which sometimes go no further than one or two deaths. Again they may be the foundation of quarrels and fights innumerable. Wherever a man has taken another man's life, he never leaves his home unprepared for an avenging relation of the murdered man. He is cautious about walking into no matter how friendly a crowd of the dead man's relations. He does not stand near a window unless he is sure that no one can draw a bead on him from its outlook. All the men in this region wear top pockets. They form convenient bolsters for short barreled pistols, and may lead to a false sense of security in the minds of foes. The knife is not so much in use as formerly. It gives an unfair advantage to strength and is less deadly. the pistol and the gun are the favorite weapons. The pistol may be carried in the top pocket. If too long in the barrel, it is slung in a holster suspended from a strap about the shoulders. Another favorite place for carrying it is in the waistband of the trousers just over the stomach and concealed by the waistcoat pulled down over it. the inside coat or waistcoat pocket has many friends. The gun is carried across the pommel of the saddle when riding, across the knees when driving or sitting, over the right forearm, barrel pointing forward and down when walking about. At home it stands in a corner near the chair of the owner or else just over the door on the inside. Some households in Hancock county can muster 10 guns, not to speak of knives, pistols and axes. The women often join in the fray, but the men never attack them, however great the provocation. Indeed, unless there is special distress the women take to the woods at the first attack upon the house and lie hidden there until the time comes for looking to the wounded.

Women learn to take death philosophically in this region. There are scores of widows and orphans. In the cities the father is the breadwinner, and his loss means hardships, sufferings and toil. Therefore, grief at death in cities is keen and pressing. In these mountain wilds one member of the family is as much a provider as another. A death means one less to help, and grief, therefore, is not so long enduring. Even where it is keen it does not express itself in shrieks and tears. It is silent and sullen. There are consoling thoughts that the death will be soon and properly avenged. The men do not avenge murder, however, so often through grief for the murdered as through the force of the mountain custom, which says that a murder is a stain until the murderer is killed.

III

The first inhabitants of Hancock county, or, to be accurate, of what is now called Hancock county, were the strangest, most mysterious people that have ever settled any part of this country since its discovery. They are still there in greater numbers than ever before, and in as great mystery. These people are called Malungeons. They are a revengeful race, part white, part Indians, part negro. The negro strain is not spread thorough the whole race, as are the Indian and Caucasian strains, but is confined to a few families.  These Malungeons are tall, broad, powerful people, with straight black hair, swarthy complexions, small eyes, high cheek-bones, big noses, and wide, flat mouths. They look more like Indians than like white men. They are proud of their Indian blood, and will kill any man who comes calling them negroes. They came from North Carolina early in this century and could not then explain how they originated. Of course, there are many stories, but none seems to be satisfactory. In 1834 an attempt was made to bar them from voting, because of the alleged negro blood. They carried the matter into the courts, and the man who was the test plaintiff proved that he was Indian and Portuguese, and had no negro blood in his veins. After this the matter was dropped and the Malungeons were allowed to vote.

It is from these Malungeons that the feud spirit came. They were cunning, malicious, implacable, murderous. They were the original makers of illicit corn whisky. They taught the art and the hatred of government taxes to all the mountain people of this region. They were the first to fight the revenue officers and the last to give up open defiance. When they came they settled on the slope of Newman's Ridge, in the Blackwater Creek Valley, and on the opposite slope of Powell's Mountain. They kept to themselves for many years, and had no intermarriages with the other settlers until the last 20 or 25 years. they all had arms; they fought among themselves, and resisted to the death outside interference. A decade or so before the Civil War they were making moonshine whisky in the dark hollow of Powell's Mountain; they were carrying on bitter feuds, and were setting a most vicious example to the early white settlers, who by their very coming to such a shut-in part of the world rapidly lost touch with civilization.

Of these Malungeons there were originally three families- the Gibsons, the Mullens, and the Collinses. Early in the history of this race a great feud arose between the Gibsons and the Collinses. Old Buck Gibson and Old Vardy Collins put their heads together and made a great plot. Gibson fixed Vardy with soot or paint so that he looked like a genuine negro. Then they went up into Virginia, Gibson offering Vardy for sale. He soon found a purchaser. As Vardy was a finely-built, strong man, Gibson got $1,100 for him. Of this $500 was in cash and the balance in a team, a wagon and store goods.

With a few farewell words of praise for his fine negro, Gibson set out southward. In a day or two Vardy made his escape, washed himself, and fled fast and successfully on the trail of Gibson. There was pursuit, but Vardy was not recognized or else was not overtaken. When he got back to Powell's Mountain he found Gibson in the full enjoyment of the proceeds of the trick. Vardy called on him for a division of the spoils. Gibson flatly refused, after putting him off several times. This began a bushwhacking war between the two families, which kept up, with intervals of peace, until the breaking out of the Civil War. Sometimes the Collins tribe and the Gibson tribe joined hands against common foe, the revenue officers. But these breathing spells only gave further foment to a hatred which was kept alive at all times by the rivalry between moonshine stills. The Civil War put an end to feuds for so long that new causes had to spring up before a properly conducted feud could be again set on foot. But the Malungeons had laid the foundations with their illicit stills and their family hatreds. And the Civil War gave every one down that way a taste of fighting. The result of these things has been the 150 and more murders, each of which has something peculiarly tragic to distinguish it from the others.

IV

Soon after the close of the Civil War the state of affairs in Hancock county attracted the attention of the Internal Revenue Department. There were about 1,500 voters in the county, representing a population of six or seven times that number of persons. Most of the people were law-abiding and quiet; but those who lived in and around the two mountain ranges which have been mentioned several times were disorderly, riotous and busily engaged in the distillation of moonshine whisky. These objectionable people were the Malungeons, the whites who had intermarried with them and the relatives of these whites. In all gorges, the hollows, the thickets, along Blackwater Creek were moonshine stills. Great rivalry existed between these stills, and sharp and often fatal encounters between proprietors and their henchmen were of daily occurrence. Before the revenue officers had time to do much more than count the columns of smoke rising from the green bosom of the mountain and valley, war had broken out and the moonshiners were at work destroying each other.

In that region there lived two desperate families of whites, the Rheas and the Rainses. There were Sam Rhea and his sons, Doll, Andy and Lee, and Big Bud Rains. They had become moonshiners and they set about driving the original moonshiners, the Malungeons out of the business. They first attacked the Mullens, who were soon reinforced by a good part of the tribe of Collins. The Rains-Rhea gang was armed with Spencer rifles of a heavy caliber, each rifle having eight shots. Each member of the gang also carried two big army pistols strapped to his waist. They not only carried on their feud against the Malungeons, but also successfully resisted the revenue officers.

Not a day passed without a battle and the people of Sneedville were soon accustomed to hearing the cracking of rifles and pistols, yells and curses up the mountainside or over in the Blackwater Valley. The Malungeons are said to have got much the worse of this feud. They lost so many in killed and disabled that for a time the Rains-Rhea gang had everything its own way. They took advantage of their success to make themselves feared and hated in all Hancock county. The end of this feud was a pitched battle in the streets of Sneedville. Nearly 100 men were killed and wounded. The houses were filled with bullet holes, and not until late in the afternoon did the Rains-Rhea gang withdraw, beaten and suppressed for the time.

A few years after that the Rheas and the Rains family had a quarrel over politics. Rhea had decided that he would carry an election that was to be held at Mulberry Gap. Big Bud Rains heard what he proposed to do and prepared to go and see that Rhea should get left. The Rheas were there in full force and outnumbered the Rains faction two to one. The Rheas fell upon the Malungeon contingent of the Rains faction and disarmed them. Big Bud Rains was in a grocery store some distance from the scene of the fight. He heard of it, and also that the Rheas were coming at the same time. When Andy Rhea, pistol in hand, stepped upon the porch of the store. Bud Rains drew a dragoon pistol, aimed it and fired full at him. The bullet ploughed across his chest and shattered the bone of his left arm and nearly tore it off. With a yell Rhea sprung at Rains, who caught him in his arms. Rhea threw his right hand, holding the pistol, over Rains's shoulder and fired it into his back. Rains dropped with a curse and died in a short time. Rhea was taken home and was not out for two months. When he did reappear his left arm was gone. Instead of being tamed by these happenings, he became more desperate than before. He and his brothers were reinforced by a certain William Fugate, known as "Bad Bill" He was nearly six feet and a half in height splendidly built and handsome, after a desperado fashion. His favorite pastime, after murder, was to ride at full tilt around a tree, with the reins in his teeth and a revolver in each hand, firing rapidly. He could put a belt around the tree every time. He had killed eight men when he joined the Rheas. With Bad Bill came Joe Epperson and Lum Coleman. They rode about killing or shooting down the friends of the Rains family. Some they whipped nearly to death. Others they invited out of their houses and shot down and riddled, shouting and cursing the while.
After this gang had terrorized Sneedville several times the Sheriff got together a force of twenty men. armed to the teeth, and went down to Rhea's house, seven miles below Sneedville. to arrest him and his brothers. When the offices arrived they found the Rheas all assembled and ready for a fight Their women and the little children had hid in the woods. There was a clearing all around the house. After some consultation the officers decided to cross this clearing on the run and storm the house. The first advance was met with a terrific volley which killed or wounded five of the attacking party. The officers started to retreat. The desperados were so elated that they leaped from the house into the clearing and again opened fire. The officers rallied and for three hours the fight raged, now in the clearing and again from behind trees and rocks. Andy Rhea was shot forty eight times before loss of blood forced him to drop to the ground. "Bad Bill" Fugate stood out after all the rest were down. He had a revolver in each hand and his aim was unpleasantly excellent, even though he was staggering about with red froth on his lips. A big ball from a Spencer rifle finally ended him. When the last shot had been fired both parties were absolutely disabled. The most desperate of the gang had fallen.

V

For a good many years after this the murder were isolated cases, with no more than two or three in a family killed. Four years ago, however, another feud broke out, and is still going on, although a lack of able bodied males in the two families has caused a recent temporary cessation of hostilities. This is the Green-Jones feud, which, next to the Sutton-Barndard feud is the worst that has ever caused deaths in Hancock county. Richard Green and Asa Jones were neighbors and friends. One day, about four years ago, Green saw that his hogs were limping and bleeding. He went along the mountain to find out the cause and came upon Asa Jones' son Jim stoning and dogging his hogs. "Bill! stop that thar!" yelled Green. "That ain't now way to do my hawgs!" "Keep yer hawgs to hum" said young Jones.

Green fell to cursing and then to thrashing the boy, who yelled so loudly that old Asa came. Asa separated them and took up the quarrel. He ordered Green to go home. As Green was unarmed he went away sulkily, swearing that he would have revenge. A few days afterward Green and his wife were walking along the mountain road. Green had his three month's old baby in his arms. They met up with Jim Jones driving home in a wagon. As soon as Green got within range he drew a pistol from his pocket and holding the baby in his left arm opened fire upon Jones. Three of his five shots entered Jones' body, but he managed to keep his seat until he got home. He was carried into the house and died a few days afterward.

Old Asa Jones was furious at this, and, getting together his relatives, he declared war against Green and all his tribe. They lay in wait one afternoon behind some rocks at a point where they knew Green came by with his two brothers. The first shot from the rocks warned the three Greens, and they jumped for the trees. The two parties fired at each other until dark. Richard Green was shot through the clothing. His brother James was so badly wounded in the arm that it had to be cut off. Both sides were now prepared, and for a month or two there were ambuscades and bloodshed almost every day. One morning the Jones crowd, 18 strong, got about the house of Richard Green before daylight. They surrounded it on all sides and got ready to make a battle. At daylight the besiegers raised a great shout, and the battle began. The outsiders fired and charged, the garrison was not slow in answering and repelling. One of the bravest of the garrison was little Jimmie Green, 13 years old. He not only helped his mother and sisters load the guns, but shot once or twice himself.

He was just handing his father a reloaded Spencer when a great ball from a Winchester crashed between the logs of the house and passed through his heart. The ball went clear through the body and flattened against the chimney stones. "Hurry up that gun, Jimmy!" said his father, looking around. The boy's eyes were wide open and glassy. His mouth opened and shut, his little brown hand was held hard against his breast. He fell with a crash, the gun sliding across his body. "Mother!" called Green, "they've killed your Jimmy!" and he caught up the gun to speed his grief against his enemies.

After four hours' fighting the Jones crowd was so badly crippled that it was forced to withdraw. The slightly wounded carried those who could not move. This feud is still on, and will be raging as soon as enough Greens and Joneses can be got together to make a fight. But the Sutton-Barnard feud is the most exciting and also the most brutal of any in the history of this county. Henry Sutton was formerly a revenue officer, but settled down a few years ago to the manufacture of whisky. He had three pretty daughters, who formed a sort of inside set in Sneedville society. Christmas, 1889, these girls got permission of their father to give a dance at the distillery. The result was a combination dance and spree such as Hancock county society had not had the pleasure of attending in years. The men got exceedingly drunk. Some of them amused themselves with a boar hunt, in which half a dozen of Henry Sutton's hogs were stabbed.

The morning after the dance Sutton found the bodies strewn about the yard of his distillery. He at once decided that Big John Barnard and his brothers had done the work. He was led to this belief by the fact that the Barnards, although outwardly friendly, were known to be ready at any time to open a feud. Henry Sutton's father had got drunk one day, and, quarreling with Capt. Hence Barnard, had killed him with the pole of an axe. When an officer tried to arrest the elder Sutton he had resisted so threateningly that the officer had been compelled to kill him. But the Barnards felt that unless one of them killed a Sutton the grudge would not be wiped out.

So Henry Sutton decided that Big John Barnard and his four brothers were the slayers of his hogs. He sent the Barnards word that there was going to be trouble, and a day or two later ran out into the road with a pistol, which he aimed at a man whom he mistook in the dusk for Big John. A few days after New Year's 1889, Big John and his four brothers hid themselves behind some felled trees about a mile from Sutton's distillery. They had not waited more than an hour before they espied Henry Sutton and his gauger at the distillery coming up the road. Sutton had a Winchester across the pommel of his saddle. As the two riders got opposite the logs five shots rang out. Sutton's horse jumped; Sutton rolled from the saddle to the road. As he lay there the five Barnards leaped forth and riddled the body with bullets.
The gauger clapped spurs to his horse and fled. The Barnards were arrested, and, Sutton's family being influential, a conviction and sentence of death were got against the five. After haggling about the matter for over a year all five were pardoned by Governor Taylor. They returned home and began to make trouble. Henry Sutton had left a widow, two grown sons, Tilman and Hence, and the three pretty daughters mentioned before. Tilman Sutton had married a daughter of Big Bud Rains, and had one child. Sutton was disposed to let the matter of his father's death pass for the time. But Big John Barnard said that he intended to wipe the male line of Suttons from the face of the earth. And every time he met Tilman Sutton he would stare at him in a fixed, threatening and annoying way. Tilman Sutton stood this silently for over a year, nor did he pay any attention to the threats of Big John and his brothers.

One Sunday last September there was a meeting in the Baptist Church, eight miles from Sneedville. All the mountain people went, the young men riding horseback beside their sweethearts. Tilman Sutton, his brother Hence and his brother in law Mac Rains were riding along together. Big John Barnard and his best girl came up behind them. Big John burst into a loud, jeering laugh, and made some remark about Tilman Sutton. As Big John rode by, Tilman Sutton turned in his saddle and stared him fiercely in the face. "By G----," said he, "this has got to stop!" Big John continued his laughter and rode on. Sutton's face flushed. He drew his pistol, spurred his horse and, when he was close enough to fire without endangering the girl, he put three shots into Big John's back.

This was near the meeting house and many people were soon close at hand. Big John's head fell forward upon his horse's head for a moment. Then he recovered himself and drew his pistol, jumped to the ground and braced himself for a fight. His sweetheart reined up her frightened horse and remained to 'see the fun.' Meanwhile Big John's cousin, Shad Barnard, who was behind the Suttons, spurred forward, and, drawing his pistol, shot Tilman Sutton in the back before he had lowered his revolver from shooting Big John. Tilman Sutton rolled from his horse to the road, lifted himself, staggered, tried to lift his pistol to an aim, then fell against a tree, his head rolling from side to side. Big John aimed at him and fired four times.
"Look out, John!" said his sweetheart "Here comes Mac Rains!" But she spoke to late. Before John could turn Rains had avenged his brother in law. He fired into Big John four times. John was just standing over Sutton, who had fallen, and was firing into his head. When Rains shot he fell upon Sutton's body. By this time other men rushed in, the women got around the two dead bodies, and the feud was suspended.

There is in Sneedville a little girl whose ancestors for three generations one side and for two generations on the other had died by feud violence. She is the little daughter of Tilman Sutton, who married a daughter of Big Bud Rains. Her father, Tilman Sutton; her grandfather, Henry Sutton, and his father, Sam Sutton, her mother's father, Bud Rains, and his father before him, all died violent deaths. This is only one instance in a score of Hancock county families a similar state of affair may be found, while there is hardly a family of note that has not lost one or more of its members by violence.

Then, aside from these feuds, are the murders which follow the stills about the country—the murders which arise from long years of disregard for human life. For instance, a lot of men were waylaying an enemy of one of them. They got tired of waiting for him. An inoffensive person came jogging by the old church where they were concealed. One of the waiters fired at the man and killed him. As he rolled from his horse and lay writhing upon the ground, one of the party said to the murderer: "What fur did ye do that?" "Jes to see him drop," laughed the murderer. The sentence of death was commuted to imprisonment for life, and his friends have hope of his pardon.

A short time ago Jep Wolf, his little boy and Wiley Carpenter were riding along astride of one horse. Mack Bray, who had quarreled with Wolf a few hours before in Sneedville, came up behind, aimed his gun and fired. The first bullet killed Wolf, the second went through the little boy's body and killed Carpenter. The little boy got well. Bray is not as yet punished, and as he is of the Rhea family, may get off altogether.

They say that the peaceful part of Hancock county's  people - and they now include the formerly boisterous Malungeons - are getting tired of this everlasting murdering, and that there will be some lynching before long. But the feud spirit is so strong and the corn whisky so bad that those who talk peace now may be in the thick of a feud tomorrow.

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Moonshine

Harrison Gibson was the son of Dotson and Mary Gibson lived in Clay and Sturgeon Co., Jackson Co., Kentucky.  His daughter Mary Jane married to William Madden and Hannah married to Joseph Stamper.


August 29, 1897

Deputy U.S. Marshal Drake passed through the city yesterday having in charge Harrison Gibson charged with illicit manufacture of whisky who is being taken to Louisville.  Drake claim the prisoner was operating a moonshine still in his back yard of his home in Jackson county.




April 4, 1898

WHOLE FAMILY IN JAIL

HAVE MADE 50,000 GALLONS OF MOONSHINE WHISKEY.

Federal Officials Are Not Strangers To Harrison Gibson and His Sons

Harrison Gibson and his three sons, Jack, Brownlow and Hanney, probably four of the most notorious moonshiners in Kentucky, are serving sentennces in the county jail.  Confined in the same section of cells are Joe Stamper and William Madden, sons in law of Gibson.  Fleming Gibson, a fourth son, was recently released from jail after serving a sentence for violating the internal revenue laws, and Henry Gibson another member of the notorious family, was arrested not long ago in Jackson County for moonshining but was released.

Harrison estimates that he and his five sons have made no less than 50,000 gallons of whiskey, on which not a cent of revenue was ever paid to the Government. He further computes that he and his family have realized between $40,000 and $50,000 from the distillation of the whiskey.

The seat of operations of the Gibson family is in Jackson and Clay counties.  Harrison Gibson says he has been arrested so many times for moonshining that he could not say exactly how many times he has been tried before the Federal Commissioners and in the United States Court.  Jack, Brownlow and Hanney have served about six terms each, while "Flinney" and Henry have escaped without being arrested more than two or three times.

Joe Stamper and William Madden, who married two of Gibson's daughter, are both expert moonshiners and are regarded as dangerous men.  Their wives are also skilled in the art of making "doublin and disposing of the whisky and help to baffle the Federal authorities. When seen in his cell at the jail yesterday afternoon, Harrison Gibson said:

     "Yaas, I think I am the real king of the Kentucky 'shiners. I am night on to sixty years old and I have been making the stuff ever since I was a boy of thirteen years old.  I have made enough of it to float that battleship that blowed up. I hev  had lots of scraps with the marshals, but I can say one thing, I hev got my first time to shoot one of 'em.  I hev shot at 'em, though, but some way tother the bullets never hit right.


"Now, I brought them boys up," continued the old man, "to make whisky. When Jack was but nine years old I took him to the still with me.  Within three days that boy understood the biz thoroughly and could make 'doublins' to fare you well.  When he was eleven year old he was as good a shiner as his pa, and the Marshals arrested him and took him to jail.  I made the other boys learn, too.  Brownlow, Hanney, Flinney and Henry was right up to stuff before they were fifteen years old and could turn out gallons of the stuff without me even goin' around to see how they was gettin' along. My gals took their medicine, too.  I made 'em all learn.  What's the use of havin' children, any way, if you can use 'em?   My old woman understands shining just as well as I.  All my sons are rasin' children, and I'm going to see that they all follow the business of their grandpap or know the reason why.  We'll all be out again soon, and we'll make enough corn juice to flood Kentucky.  If we don't make it, they arrest us anyhow."

Tiry and Tiry Gibson

This Cherokee application of Jeff Gibson shows his father as TIRAH Gibson and mother is SALLY Coker

Here is the ORPHAN JEFFERSON GIBSON living with his GRANDPARENTS BRYSON AND FANNIE IN FLOYD COUNTY 1850

 Here Jeff Gibson says his MOTHER DIED IN 1844 so she  CANNOT  be POLLY who is living after 1850 - he says he only had ONE SISTER and reports HIS GRANDPARENTS AS BRYSON AND FANNIE. Therefore the Tiry who married POLLY Coker is NOT son of Bryson and Fannie as Bryson surely would not have had TWO SONS NAMED TIRY.

  

 This is death certificate of HARRISON Gibson whose father was TIRY Gibson and mother POLLY Coker.  Note in the 1880 census below ALVIS  is the BROTHER OF HARRISON  --  since Alvis was born after Tiry died they are brothers by their MOTHER - POLLY Coker Gibson.

  

1840 Census  Note; John Rains - his father Henry Rains - John Turner and Henry Gibson and Tyre Gibson at the bottom. Tyre is apparently newly married to Polly Coker, no children.  These three made depositions to the pension application for Thomas Coker [see below] 

 1850 Census -  Note #273 is JOHN RAINS AND #276 IS  HENRY GIBSON the Mary is probably POLLY COKER widow of Henry’s son, TIRY GIBSON.

I believe the Harry H is Harrison, son of Polly, John is probably the brother to Harrison mentioned in news article as Henderson’s brother.

1860  Census - This is Widow Polly Coker Gibson with Green and  Henderson  - the last three, Sally, Nelson and Polly are RAINS, children of John Rains.  Green and Henderson are born after Tiry died, he is not on the 1850 census. 

The 1870 census shows that Polly Coker Gibson [Ranes] has married James Hazelwood.  It would seem someone in that household told the census taker that Green, Henderson and Alvis’ father was a RANES   and I believe that Alvis Gibson’s DNA does match the Ranes family.

And here in 1880 census we have HARRISON Gibson living with his BROTHER ALVIS and next door to his mother POLLY COKER GIBSON [RANES] HAZELWOOD [and Alvis]

AND LASTLY HERE IS THOMAS COKER PENSION APPLICATION WITH HENRY RAINS, FATHER OF JOHN RAINS, AND HENRY GIBSON AS WITNESS TO THE APPLICATION.

Thomas Coker Pension Application

https://revwarapps.org/s30957.pdf

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The Cherokee Collins

Calloway Collins - His grandad was a full blooded Cherokee

"Calloway himself is a king, a royal good fellow, who seated upon a great stump that marks the fate of a giant beech that grow precisely in the center of the site selected by the Indian lot his shed, or hallway, would entertain me by the hour with is songs and banjo pickings and stories of his grandfather. The man's very instincts are Indian." Will Allen Dromgoole 1890

From the best I can tell Calloway is the son of Millum and Ann Collins, grandson of Jordan and Abigail Collins and great grandson of 'Old' Benjamin Collins. 'Old' Benjamin appears to have came from the part of Orange County North Carolina that became Caswell County in 1778. He appears to be related to the Collins around Big Reed Island, Giles Co., Virginia, also from Caswell County.

There are several links below of some records I have found that may relate to this line of Cherokee Collins. 

THE LAST OF THE MALUNGEONS

By Will Allen Dromgoole

A Stentorian voice was making merry with the echoes among the crags of the isolated old summit known as Newman's Ridge.

Isolated indeed is the Ridge; and perilous enough to the traveller who, by virtue of accident or duty, ventures upon the territory of the Ridgemanites, or Malungeons, that strange and lawless clan, the most unconquerable that ever infested the State of Tennessee. Ten years ago he would have been called a hero, or else a fool, who ventured into the "lawless destrict." The county conceded, without remonstrance, so much of Hancock County sans taxes sans interference in any way whatsoever, to the Malungeons.

But times are changing, changing; albeit slowly. There is a schoolhouse over in the Black Water Swamps, and a half-finished meetinghouse down on Big Sycamore Creek. The negroes, to be sure, built both houses, thinking to settle themselves permanently among the hills where life is easy and labor light. But they were driven away by the Malungeons before they had worshipped half a year in their house. Driven away because of the social - association that sprang up between the younger people of both colors. The older ones would not have it: the Malungeons were Indians, they claimed, descendants of those Cherokees who, refusing to follow the banished tribes to the reservation, still inhabit an isolated peak of the Great Smokies. This handful had sought the Ridge — and had lived alone, neither giving nor asking quarter, until the darker race of negroes settled on Black Water Creek, the treacherous stream that feeds the swamp at the base of the Ridge.

The negroes formed themselves into a settlement across the Virginia line. A few have wandered back of late years since the old bloods are gone, and worship Sunday afternoons in their old, still unfinished meeting-house with the Malungeons. Nobody offers resistance now, unless it be the owner of the stentorian voice, who having of late become a convert, as they said, to "ligyion," occupied the pulpit now and then, singing the same song, in the same clarion tones, that he sang as he trudged home in the dewy evening from the still under the echoing crags.

He was very tall and straight, with hawk-like eye, and long, coarse hair that fell about his well-shapen shoulders with that careless abandon which characterizes the free child of the forest. He wore neither shoes nor stockings, and his trousers were rolled back above the strong, well formed knee, showing the dusky skin which marked him of a race other than white or black.

Indian: the grandson of a chief, and the son of a full-blooded Cherokee. Such he claimed, and the most dubious would have yielded the point when, entering a small clearing near the bluffs edge, he mounted an overhanging rock and bent his sharp, penetrating gaze down upon the valley below, warm with the October sunset. No lynx-eyed warrior ever scanned the white man's country with more earnest thoroughness than did he that mist-mellowed, far-away valley of the Clinch.

Indeed he might have been a warrior, some exiled chief, so kingly was his bearing, watching from his isolated height the movements of his white foes. What is he 1 Who is he? And what means it, that strange, Indian-like presence, in all its savage freedom of dress and manner, treading with fearless abandon the old Tennessee forest in this, the good year of our Lord, eighteen hundred and ninety! Study him a moment! His hawk-like eye sweeps the valley from mountain to mountain, the long, winding river, with slumbrous, sluggish flow, passes under the searching gaze. Empty, both field and flood. Wait! Ah, the Indian leaves no uninspected avenue. He drops upon his belly, lays his ear to the cooling earth, moist now with the caressing mist. A moment of absorbing silence, intense straining of the sensitive ear, then to his feet again; again he turns into the hidden trail, and takes up the song at precisely the point at which he left off singing a moment before—

"Some cruerl foe ha' laid me low,
On the col' groun' ter suffer,
Stay brother, stay, an' lay m' away,
An' write meh wife er letter."

The song comes to an abrupt stop; and again he puts his ear to the earth.

It was only his mother's voice he had heard; he was nearing the cabin upon the bluff; his voice had reached the little group gathered about the rude fireplace near the spring where they were preparing the evening meal.

"Hit air King," said his mother, when the song floated up to her from the crags. "He air singin' 's if ther' wanno still ter forty mile roun'. He ull git tuk yit ef he ain't mo' minful o' his music. Times ain't what they useter wuz."

"Shucks! ther' air n no dange' ter King. Folkes air all too busy long o' ter railroa' a-comin', ter be a-layin fur stills en' sech."

"Sin* I berlieve in Jesus Chris'
Meh sin air a* furgivin."

The singer drew nearer the group at the fire. There were his two brothers and their wives and their children, a goodly gang. And there was his mother, a toothless old crone with the same sharp eyes and raven hair that were common to the Malungeons. She, too, was barefoot, as were the others. And her short dress, hanging a trifle below the knee, allowing the firelight to play upon the strong old limbs, gave her a grotesque appearance thoroughly in keeping with her surroundings.

Leaning against a tree was a tall, lithe young man, a visitor, also barefoot, and bearing the unmistakable mark of the Malungeons.

The fireplace was simply a careful placing of rocks, convenient alike to the spring half-hidden in a jungle of sassafras and chinquapin bushes, and the cabin some hundred yards farther back.

The blaze from the fire leaped up right royally into the arms of the gray mists, waving a crimson banner of defiance to the sun almost ready to drop behind the farther peaks beyond the valley.

It illumined with real splendor the open space between the spring and cabin, over which stood an arbor of dry twigs, old leaves, and remnants of cast-aside garments. The ground underneath was sleek with wear, for the arbor was indeed a part of the house itself, and had been used as such for generations back.

Summer days the family gathered there to smoke and dream; dream away the long, purposeless hours. At night, indeed, it made as comfortable bed as the Malungeon cared to rest upon. Within the cabin, to be sure, there were heaps of sweet old leaves, long fallen, which made good sleeping, and filled, perhaps, this sleeper's dreams with the drowsy odors of the autumn forest. But for the strong-limbed distiller whom the women called King,— he chose the solid earth and his blanket, as his grandfather and his father had done before him, under the tottering old arbor.

Just now, a rude table stood in the midst of the clearing, and dusky forms were passing to and fro from fire to table as the old squaw dished up the smoking rabbit, and removed the corn-pones from the clay oven among the rocks. A coffee-pot set to boil on one of the red-hot stones was sending out delicious odors. All hands were busy with the supper, but all stopped at the approach of King, and one of the women addressed herself to the visitor leaning against the tree. She was answering some question he had put:

"I dunno," she said. "King hev got a heaps o' erligyion lately. I misdoubts but he ull gin up ther fiddle sholy. Hear that!"

"Sin' I berlieve in Jesus Chris'
Meh sin air all furgivin."

The singer passed through the midst of them into the cabin beyond. He had noted the presence of the visitor, but had not thought it necessary to extend further greeting than a welcoming nod.

When he emerged from the cabin he carried a piggin, a cedarn piggin, which he proceeded to arrange beneath the bung of a large barrel, ostensibly a water-barrel, only half-concealed in an angle of rocks about the spring. He slowly drew forth the stopper of red corn-cob, and the yellow liquid bounded with a kind of jubilant gurgle into the cedarn vessel. When it was full, brimful, he replaced the stopper and deposited the piggin in the centre of the table.

It was then the old woman announced that supper was "a-coolin'," and invited the assembly to " draw up."' "Come on, King," she called, "come on, Clydie," the other son's wife, and " come on, Calloway."

"Come on, Calloway," said King, "an' give us ther news from Black Water Swamps. How's ole Mam Mullins, an' the res'?"

"Po'ly, po'ly," said the visitor. "Mam Mullins sey she cayrn stay here long nohow, 'case she sey all the charmer folks air dead, 'septin them ets got erligyion. She sey erligyion an' charm don't go tergether."

The dark face of the Malungeon grew stern. He had felt some pride in being "a charmer" for the afflicted and the bewitched — but his religion — well, he was not prepared to give that up; he had only just begun to learn to feel at home in it. Still, it was good to be a healer; his grandfather, old Jordan Collins, had been a healer too, — a healer and a chief; a full-blooded Cherokee chief. No doubt about that: it was on the records.

He sighed; he was given to melancholy, this strange, silent, eagleeyed, soft-voiced man, who was neither white nor black, and against whom the heel of the law was forever set.

He sighed.

"Air she much po'ly?" he asked, slowly.

"Right much. But I wair not come fur her. I wair come fur ther gals. They-uns wants ter come ter yore house ternight fur ter dance. They allows it air a long time sin' they had a frolic 'case ther ain' nobody ter play ther fiddle, sin' Jording died, an' yer own pappy wair tuk, an' you-uns got erligyion." .

"Erligyion!"

The dusky faces about the table were full of interest; they were always interested when King spoke: "Der ligyion hender pleasure? Didn' David play an' Sauler sing? Tell ther gals ter come on. King ull play fur 'em. King ull coax a chune out'n er ther ole chief's fiddle. Tell 'em ter come. Tell 'em erligyion don't stop ther fiddle. King air a fiddler, ez ole Jording wair afore him."

He half rose from his seat, and waved his large, strong hand toward the upper heights, dark with the purplish forests in whose mysterious depths the old Cherokee — Jordan — had been sleeping for fifty years. A Cherokee! Such he claimed, and none have yet successfully denied the claim; which seemed, indeed, to have descended to those dusky representatives seated about the rude board with the glaring firelight playing upon their faces and bare, brown limbs. But to King, more than to any, did the resemblance cling. A king indeed he might have been, as he stood before his people and proclaimed his royal independence — calling upon the ancient dead, long ago a part of the ancient forest — to attest his royalty.

The visitor smiled.

"Thankee, King," he said. "I'll go er tell 'em, King."

"Wait!"

The moonshiner reached for the gourd swung to a sharp stub driven into a convenient tree.

"Dring somethin' erfore yer go."

He plunged the gourd into the brimming piggin; the amber liquor bubbled and gurgled and ran over the brim of the pail in a stream of dazzling richness, which seemed to have caught the sparkle of the Malungeon's dark eyes and danced for very jubilance.

The guest drained the gourd to the last fiery drop.

"Thankee, King." He laid the gourd back upon the table. "I'll go fur ther gals, King. Goo'-bye, King."

The Malungeon waved his hand, but his lips were closed. The frown had not left his brow. When his guest had departed, he turned from his untasted supper and strode off toward the clinging, shadowy cedars under whose drooping boughs his Cherokee ancestors were sleeping.

With the coming of night upon the mountain the air grew chill, so that when the table had been cleared away to make room for the dancers, the old Malungeon woman left the coffee-pot, freshly filled, to simmer upon the hot rocks of the fireplace. Coffee is no stranger to the Malungeons, but is, next to the,ir illicit brandy, the most dearly prized of all luxuries. So the old woman set the pot " ter keep" for the revellers, who might drink it from the same gourd which did service for the stronger beverage.

King, occupying a chair that had been elevated to the table, was industriously screwing up the old fiddle. There were but two strings, and it boasted neither bow nor bridge. A bow was a small matter to the sober-faced Malungeon. His strong index-finger was quite enough bow for him. As for bridge, an old piece of cob kept the strings pretty fairly in place. He was somewhat out of practice, and as he played softly, as if tuning his soul, fingers and fiddle to harmony before the arrival of the revellers, he presented, indeed, a strangely melancholy and majestic picture. His long, dark hair sprinkled with gray, hung about his face, solemn and sombre, yet more sad than sombre, and lay in glossy masses upon his breast. His body drooped forward, as if weary, and even the brownish-red hands hunting among the strings of the dead chief's fiddle for the chords of the dead chief's music, had a kind of indolent listlessness in their movements.

Yet the keen eyes never once lost fire, and were seldom removed from that dark cedar forest towering behind the cabin where the old Cherokee patriots were buried.

All was in readiness; the women had replenished the fire; the long, gaunt flame-arms reached upward toward the purple plumes of cedar that waved triumphantly, forever, beyond their searing touch. Beyond the mountain, the mist-mellowed harvest-moon was tenderly flooding the slumbrous valley below, as she sailed westward in a mantle of amber, fringed with roseate kisses of madder and pale pink.

The musician ceased playing: the fiddle lay across his knee. Now and then his hand strayed among the mellow old strings, but only to , caress them. His thoughts were far away among the days when old Jordan Collins had fiddled for the young people on Newman's Ridge and Black Water Swamp. Old Jordan was an Indian, "Soft Soul" they called him, and he had been respected by the whites. No man had ever dared call old Jordan a negro: he was a Cherokee, feared and respected as a Cherokee.

But the present generation, the handful left to fight revenue and railroads, — the Malungeon's face darkened; a heavy scowl contracted his brow.

"They air some mixed," he admitted in an unspoken whisper. "They hadn't orter er done it, but who wair ther' ter hender? Ther chiefs air all dead. Ther white man's door wair shut: ther Malungeon knocked ter ther door a' ther black man. It wair opened. They-uns mixed some, an' it wair the las' o' ther Malungeon. He wair then ther nigger. 'The nigger,' ther white man allowed. Jording druv 'em off once, then weuns druv 'em. But it wair too late: they-uns mixed some, then Malungeon an' then nigger. Ther nigger wair ther curse ter ther Malungeon."

He frowned heavily: his proud old heart was sore, sore because of the fatal blood-taint which must forever cling to the handful who still called themselves descendants of the Cherokees.

"They wair lonesome," he continued his melancholy musings, "an' they knocked ter ther' black man's door. It ruint 'em; mint 'em. I nev' knocked. Jording Collins' gran'son hev knocked ter no man's door. He air at home in his blanket und' ther stars."

Dusky forms were flitting here and there in the firelight. Each one paid his or her respects with scrupulous nicety to the figure upon the table. He arose and stood, his full magnificent height, the old fiddle held against his breast, and received their greetings.

"Howdye, King?"

"How air yer, King?"

"How do, King?"

He waved his hand; it spoke enough of welcome to the hurrying throng bent more upon a frolic than a welcome. All save one: a small, frail young negress, clearly not one of the red-brown tribe gathered under the arbor. Yet she seemed at home among them, and none spoke her unkindly, as she pressed forward to give her host greeting. Unconsciously she waited until the restless eagle-eye should fall upon her.

"How air ye, King?" she asked lingeringly, while her dark eyes,soft with a great tenderness, rested upon the Malungeon's calm, melancholy face.

""How air ye, King?"

"Howdye; howdye all. Yer's all welcome." The Malungeon's dark eye had caught the girl's loitering look and had quickly passed on over the assembling dancers. "All air welcome, an' all he'p yese'ves ter coffee. The pot air down 'fc ther fi'e, set ter het. Ther liquor air in ther piggin onter ther water-she'f. Ther water air in ther sprin'-branch yon side er ther fireplace. He'p yerse'ves — he'p yerse'ves, all."

He dropped back upon the chair, and the revellers understood they were welcome to all that Malungeon hospitality could offer.

"We will, King."

"A' right, King."

"Thankee, King."

The responses were many and musical; for no voice is sweeter than the bell-tones of the Malungeon woman, and none more quaintly melodious than the soft, lazy drawl of the men.

It was late when the dance began, for they had come one, two, and three miles, those dark-skinned women with their sparkling eyes and glossy locks, and their short, bare feet that sped over the hidden trails with the swiftness indeed of the Cherokee, the ancient son of the forest.

In spite of the long walk they had taken, the little brown feet were soon impatiently beating the hard earth in a quaint, half-dance, half swing time to the fiddle.

"Play louder, King."

The musician's eye followed the dancers a moment as they moved here and there in what they called the "six-hand reel," — only a moment, — and his gaze fell back upon old Jordan's fiddle. He had caught the eye of the young negress fixed upon him, as her lithe, nimble figure moved among the dancers. It was a pleading, melancholy look, yet full of a mute, unspoken passion. He merely glanced at her, swinging gracefully in and out the complicated "six-hander," twisting her little body as a pretty serpent might, swinging, swaying to and fro> this side and that, to the music; in exquisite time, as totally unlike the half-savage leaping of the untrained Malungeon as melancholy to madness. Lightly! lightly! the dark eyes closed dreamily, as if the dancer were drinking in delicious melody. Suddenly she began to croon a kind of accompaniment to the twanging melody —

"Um-m-m! Oom, oo-m!"

One by one the others fell back to listen and admire, until only the light form of the negress was left, still keeping that exquisite time —

"Um-m-m! Oom-oo-m!"

Simultaneously the assembly burst into applause. Only upon the melancholy face of the musician was there no show of approval. A dark scowl furrowed his brow.

"She'd ortent be here," he whispered to himself. "In the time o' Jording she udn't a dared. An' this air Jording's fiddle. She'd ortent. They'd ortent ter mix. They ull all be niggers alike bimeby, ef they mixes. They ortent. She'd ortent be here."

"Play louder, King." —" Stan' up, King." — " Fetch er taller cheer fur King." — " Fetch er barr'l fur King." — " Ther't air." — " Lif him up." — " Git up, King." — " Shove him up. Now, King, play loud, so's we kin heear."

And very like a king he looked, upon his rude, improvised throne. A king: the last of the kings indeed; the last full-blooded male representative of that strange, unclaimed clan — the Malungeons. A chief! such he felt himself for one brief, transitory moment. And these were his people, this handful, which the wanton vagaries of fancy multiplied to myriad millions. His eye kindled, his full chest rose and fell, while the old sparkle danced in his eye, and the proud flush sprang to his dusky cheek.

"Play louder, King."

The form of the young black woman danced to his throne, and mistaking his rapt interest for applause, lifted her dark face upward to his and smiled. The light, the rapture, the triumph vanished instantly from the strong features; the old melancholy indifference returned. An angry pang shot through his heart. The negress — the curse, the downfall of the Malungeons. Here and there among the revellers his quick eye could single out with exact certainty the traces of the blood of his black brother. And was he to play for her! Where was old Jordan's blood that had thus stooped to make music for the negress' • "Sing, King! Sing Jording's song."

"Yes, King. Sing yer gran'dad's song — Ole Jording's song."

 We ull hear mo' better ef yer ull sing, King."

The fiddle did not trouble itself to follow the voice. With his hand he still twanged the old dance-melody, while the strong, stern, quiverless voice broke into the quaint, rhymeless hymn that he sung at the meeting-house, at the graveyard above the newly-dead, or in the echoing forest as he tramped home at noon or at midnight from the still.

"Stay, brother Green, do come ter me,
Fur I nir shot en bleeding,
An' I mus' die, no mo' ter see
Meh wife en meh deah chilring."

The dance began again with new vigor, as the odd, wrangling discord gained strength. Only the young negress, after vainly endeavoring to time her step to one air, either that of the voice or the fiddle, quietly stepped aside from the dancers, and stood leaning against a leafless wahoo-tree, watching with puzzled expression the flying figures under the arbor. After a while she leaned her head back against the tree, and a dreamy smile parted her lips, as with half-closed eyes she watched the grave, handsome face of the fiddler.

King's brow cleared when he saw the girl leave the dancers. He bent his face nearer the old fiddle — Jordan's fiddle — as if to catch the very spirit that had thrilled the proud heart of his Indian ancestor. When he lifted his head, a smile played about the stern, thin lips, and he kept his eye fixed upon the forest — the cedar-girdled forest where " Jording" was sleeping.

"Meh lillul chilring I loves 'em so." —

His mother, smoking and nodding on the cabin doorstep, began to

rock to and fro, and finally joined her shrill, cracked voice with King's

in song:

"0 cud I once mo' see 'em,
An' gi' thum ther las' fai'well word,
Tell we shall meet in Heavin."

One by one the dancers caught up the refrain:
"Tell we shall meet in Heavin."

Over and over again the fiddler sang the favored stanza, and again the dusky dancers chimed in on the last line. The dance was at its height: only the young negress, growing weary'with looking on, was nodding, after the manner of her race, over the fire down by the spring among the chinquapin-bushes.

Suddenly a wild shriek rang out above the creaking of the fiddle and the wailing music of the singers. The festivities came to a sudden stop, as the negress, bounding into the midst of the throng and shoving the dancers aside with her arms, sprang upon the table where King sat upon his throne.

"Something in ther brush," she panted, pointing with her left hand to the chinquapin-thicket, while with her right she seized the fiddle as if to wrench it from his hold. "Somethin's ther' — it laffed; in a whisper; it did laff. It air a— ghost."

There was a moment's startled silence — then the musician pushed aside the dark hand clasping his proud old ancestor's riddle. But repeated visits to the piggin had tended to excite unusual courage in the breast of the dancers.

"Yer wair dreamin', Mandy," said one of them. "I see yer nod meh own se'f."

"I wair wake, I tell ye,"' she insisted, earnestly. "An' it laffed. Oh, it did! it did, King. It laffed ever' time yer sung. It laffed a ghost laff. An'it air come fur you, King — God A'mighty! it air come ter fetch you erway, King."

She reeled forward like a drunken women; dropped upon her knees and clasped his bare, brown limbs — encircled them with her arms — her strong, protecting arms, and tried to draw him down from his elevated place in full range of the "ghost" skulking in the chinquapin thicket. All the superstition of her race was upon her while she pleaded with him to "come down — out o' the light — the firelight — and the witch light of the new moon."

He became angry under her clasp and the smiling faces turned upon him, where the dancers, with good-humored indifference, were watching and listening until the music should begin again.

"Ger long 'ith yer," he said, " ther air no moon; it air gone long go. Ger long, an' don't bender Jording's fiddle."

He dropped his chin again upon the beloved old instrument; and then when the chorus rose again, led by him, so cruelly contemptuous of her warning, the girl threw her arms above her head — that old, old gesture of helpless agony, and springing from the table, plunged into the forest, down the narrow, shadow-girt trail leading to her cabin —

"Tell we shall meet in Heavin."

The song followed her as she ran, like a dusky spirit, through the echoing gloom. King's voice rose above all the rest —

"Tell we shall meet in Heavin."

It had a farewell ring in it somehow, and she stuffed her fingers into her ears and ran on — on — until she stood at her mother's door. Softly she lifted the latch.

"Tell we shall meet in Heavin."

She crept to her pallet and drew the covers over her head to shut out the sound of the chorus, floating down the mountain in the arms of the midnight wind. But she could not shut out the nameless fear, the uncomprehended awe that possessed her.

At last she fell asleep, to awake again with a start. It was near daybreak and she sat up, cold and breathless, to listen —

"Tell we shall meet in Heavin."

It was a man's voice; those beloved tones could belong to but one throat. She listened, holding her heart —

"Tell we shall meet " —

Suddenly, silence ; unconsciously she finished the strain: "in Heavin." Then with a low cry she dropped back among the bed-clothes with that stifled agony of superstitious despair tearing at heart and lip.

"O, King, King!' Tell we shall meet in Heavin.'"

The dancers wearied at last. The fiddler's throat was husky beyond the power of the piggin to relieve. The king was forced to ask surcease.

"Goo'-night, King."

"Hit air a goo' chune, King."

"An' yer sings it like yer gran'dad, King; yer sings like .lording."

"Goo'-night, King."

"Goo'-bye."

"Goo'-bye! Goo'-bye, King. Goo'-bye, goo'-bye, goo'-bye."

And as the last dusky dancer disappeared, the double refrain came back to him, seated alone upon his throne.

"Goo'-bye, King " —

"Tell we shall meet in Heavin.''

They seemed to jingle somehow and form one refrain, so perfectly were the ideas connected.

"Goo'-bye, King, tell we shall meet in Heavin."

He came down from his throne and went into the cabin and hung the precious fiddle in its place above the low door. His mother and sisters were asleep in their bed of leaves. His brothers were stretched full length upon the earth floor; all were sleeping heavily, heavily. He felt for his blanket swung across the drooping rafters, and went outside again. As he stepped again into the fading fire-glow, something dark flitted before him for an instant. A loitering Malungeon perhaps, was his thought, who had fallen asleep and been left behind. Or else he was sneaking back for a last pull at the cedarn piggin. Or perhaps it was only a cedar branch, waved by the gentle night-wind, nodding goodnight to the stars. And then, it might have been — a ghost.

"I 'ud like ter know what it wair et skairt ther n*** ," he said, remembering for the first time her warning. "I allowed et I see er spark o' fire in ther graveyard once, afore they-uns all kem. But it went out, an' I allowed it wair unly witch-fire," meaning the phosphorescent light which appears upon decaying vegetation. Suddenly it occurred to him that he was thirsty, and he resolved to have a cup of hot, sugarless coffee before rolling into his blanket for the little night that remained. He went down to the fire by the spring and taking the pot from the warm stones shook it, and lifting the lid peeped in. Only grounds. He went over to the spring and poured three gourds-full of water upon the smoking grounds and set the pot back upon a bed of trembling red coals.

His pipe ought to be somewhere near about, for the family lived at the spring even more than in the leaky old cabin. Ah! there it was, swung in the hollow of a dead wahoo-tree. His rifle was there, too. There was another up at the cabin, and still another at the still. And all loaded, in case of danger to the Malungeon distiller. He filled his pipe and seated himself over against a stone to wait for his coffee. He made a noble picture, sitting there between the gray gloom of the new day and the melancholy shades of the fleeing night. His red limbs were crossed with careless grace ; his strong neck, from which he had thrown back the light shirt when the heat of exertion became too great, showed large and magnificent in the half-glow of the dying fire. His red bosom, bare and broad, might have shamed the gladiator trained for the arena. A noble picture! A picture of splendid strength and unspent power. A picture of loyal devotion, and right royal determination which refused to abandon the old habits, customs, and lore of his people. He had helped to keep the while law-makers at bay; he had helped to push all forms of trespassing "progress" back when it had attempted to invade the Ridge. He would always do so. He had lived like an Indian, he would die like one. And all he asked was to be buried like one at last.

The coffee hummed and sputtered a merry accompaniment to his thoughts. Suddenly he started, and bent his ear, his quick ear ever on the alert. Something was coming up the trail — softly, rapidly. He reached for his rifle, then calmly laid it back again against the wahoo. The approaching feet were bare — the comer was a Malungeon. A woman, he knew by the soft, slight patter.

A moment, and she emerged from the shadows of the wood — a lissome young creature, panting and breathless.

"Mam Mullins wancher, King," she said. "Wancher quick. She air er dyin', King."

He arose, and threw his blanket across his shoulder. He was accustomed to those midnight summons, and never thought of refusal. Still, ke must have his coffee. While lie prepared to pour it into the gourd, the girl talked on.

"She air charmed," she said. "Mam Mullins air charmed. Firs' she air col', then hot, hurnin'. Ole Ria air ther' with her hlood-beads. And Calloway air ther' with his conjure-thread. But Mam Mullins air er dyin'."

King paused in the process of pouring the coffee. He lifted the lid and turned the contents of the gourd back into the pot. He understood that form of "conjure " thoroughly.

"Ger long," he said to the girl. And a moment more he was following in her wake down the trail, the warm coffee-pot concealed in the folds of his blanket.

When he approached the cabin where the sick woman waited his coming, the sound of mourning came to him. The Malungeons were performing their customary service of respect for the dying.

He pushed the door back, and entered. The room was filled with women, sitting about upon the earth-floor with heads covered, slowly rocking to and fro and crooning a kind of half-hymn in time with their swaying bodies. Upon a bed of leaves lay an old copper-skinned crone battling with the " charm" that was upon her. Close to the foot of the bed, or pallet, an old Malungeon "conjure-man," or "witch," was sitting, slowly winding a ball of greasy yarn. Near him, a shrivelled old crone was stringing a handful of dingy beads — " blood-beads " — of green and yellow glass, whose healing power was well established among the Malungeons.

When King entered, the conjurer moved aside to make room.

"Howdye, King? The charm air failed, King. An'ole Kia's beadsair failed, too. Come in, an' try yer han\ King."

"Yeas, come in, King."

The sick woman caught the name.

"Howdye, King? I'm er dyin' now, King."

He offered no consolation, attempted no cheering words of hope. He merely stepped to the bed-side, and felt the sufferer's pulse. It was bounding with the fever that sent the hot blood coursing through all her veins. Then he turned to the mourners, still wailing their funeral hymn.

"Heish !" he commanded, and they were instantly silent. His commands were numerous: to one he handed the coffee-pot with instructions to "het it red-hot."

"A' right, King." They recognized a master in the strong, able presence. He took a flask from his bosom, and, pouring the contents into the water-gourd near by, put it to the woman's lips.

"Dring," he said.

A' right, King."

The coffee, hot and penetrating, was then offered, and another swallow from the flask.

"Dring it," he said; "dring ull o' it."

"Yeas, King. A'right."'

When the hot stuff began to penetrate the old limbs, and the warm moisture stood upon the wrinkled brow, he gave the patient still more of the wild-cat liquor, and watched to see the eyes begin to droop.

"Sing, King. Sing yer gran'dad's song," said the sick woman, sleepily.

As she dozed off into a quiet stupor, the Malungeon's voice slowly closed the refrain with which old Jordan before him had exorcised the demons of unrest:

"Tell we shall meet in Heavin."

Day was breaking when he set out again through the forest toward his own cabin. He still wore his blanket, and his face wore the old melancholy pain which had grown a part of him since he had begun to see the end of his people.

His great heart was full — full of their misery: the misery of annihilation, which they alas! were blind to. The mists were drifting, leaving free and clear the bold brow of the Ridge. His spirits seemed suddenly to bound upward too, clear of the mists and clouds. His soul's eye saw beyond the dusky depths and rested upon the heights, the fairer heights of faith. He broke into song, the old song of Jordan and his father:

"O end I once mo' see 'em —
An' gi' thum ther Ins' fai'well word,
Tell we shall meet —"

There was a sharp crack of a rifle in the thicket, a sudden break in the music, and the song passed on to a cabin in the gulch where a woman, a negress, finished the strain —

"In Heavin."

And she, too, passed it on, a farewell anthem, to the portals of eternity.

Wrapped in his blanket, his dead face turned to meet the rising sun, one hand holding his gray winding-sheet, his lips still parted with the broken song: so she found him in the early morning; so she found him lying there across the path. Into her dark face had crept a wild fear, as with a shriek of agony she threw herself upon his breast:

"King! Oh, King!"

And the proud heart offered no resistance now. As if, in death, it matters aught whether the arms that clasp be white or black!

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