Chapter 14 Exercises: The

Chapter 14 Exercises: The "Discovery" of Appalachia

Exercise 1: Primary Source Analysis — The Local Color Writers

Read the following excerpts and answer the questions below.

Source A — Will Wallace Harney, "A Strange Land and Peculiar People," Lippincott's Magazine, 1873:

"The natives of this region are characterized by marked peculiarities of the social state... They are close to nature; and so close that they are to the higher possibilities of their being as unconscious as are the trees around them."

Source B — John Fox Jr., The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, 1908 (opening passage):

"The mountain boy opened his eyes in the gathering dawn and for an instant lay still, listening. Even before he was fully awake he knew he was alone. The place where the old man slept was empty and the coals of the fire burned low... Outside he could hear the tinkle of a cowbell in the gray mists."

Source C — Mary Noailles Murfree, In the Tennessee Mountains, 1884:

"The wild528 ravines and chasms of the Great Smoky Mountains are the home of a half-forgotten people... cut off from the world by the barrier of their own ignorance, they live and die in the narrow limits of their natal ridges."

a) What assumptions about mountain people does each writer reveal? Identify specific words and phrases that carry those assumptions.

b) Harney compares mountain people to trees — "unconscious" of their "higher possibilities." What does this comparison accomplish rhetorically? How does it position the writer (and reader) in relation to the mountain people being described?

c) Fox's passage is fiction, not journalism. Does the fictional framing change the effect on the reader? Is fiction more or less effective than journalism at shaping perceptions of a real place and its real inhabitants?

d) All three writers were outsiders to the communities they described. How might a mountain-born writer of the same era have described the same communities differently? What details might they have included that these writers omitted?

Exercise 2: Deconstructing Frost's "Our Contemporary Ancestors"

Read the following excerpts from William Goodell Frost's 1899 essay "Our Contemporary Ancestors" in The Atlantic Monthly (available in digitized form through HathiTrust or the Internet Archive):

"There is a considerable area in the South and in the border states which is as truly 'benighted' as any foreign mission field."

"The mountain people of the South are our contemporary ancestors. They are living in conditions identical with those of the colonial frontier."

"In a broad way one may say that these mountain regions are the back yards of the Eastern states, partly abandoned, partly overlooked."

a) Frost calls mountain people "our contemporary ancestors." Who is the "our" in this phrase? Whose ancestors does Frost claim they are, and who is excluded from this framing?

b) Frost compares the mountain region to "a foreign mission field." What does this comparison imply about the relationship between the mountains and the rest of America? What kind of intervention does it justify?

c) The "back yards" metaphor is particularly revealing. What does it mean to call a populated region a "back yard"? Who lives in a "back yard" in this metaphor, and who lives in the "house"?

d) Frost wrote this essay specifically to raise money for Berea College. How does the fundraising purpose shape the argument? Would a more accurate description of mountain communities have been more or less effective for fundraising?

e) Write a two-paragraph "counter-essay" that describes the same mountain communities Frost was writing about but from the perspective of a mountain-born educator. What would that person emphasize? What would they downplay? What would they ask for?

Exercise 3: Analyzing the Outsider Gaze in Photography

Find three to five historical photographs of Appalachian communities from the 1890s–1920s. Good sources include:

The Hindman Settlement School Digital Collection (Berea College)
The Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections
The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Digital collections at the University of Kentucky, West Virginia University, or Appalachian State University

a) For each photograph, answer: Who is depicted? What setting is shown? What condition are the subjects in (clothing, health, surroundings)? What is the overall impression the photograph creates?

b) Now consider what is NOT in the photographs. What aspects of community life are absent? Are there prosperous families, well-maintained homes, commercial establishments, or community events depicted? If not, why might the photographers (or the archives) have selected these particular images over others?

c) Choose one photograph and write two captions for it: - Caption A: Written as a settlement school fundraiser might have written it in 1910 — emphasizing need, poverty, and the urgency of outside help. - Caption B: Written by a descendant of the people in the photograph — emphasizing what the image does and does not represent about their community.

d) Reflect on the concept of selective documentation discussed in the chapter. How does the selection of photographs shape the historical record? What responsibilities do archivists, museums, and textbook publishers have in how they use historical images of marginalized communities?

e) Consider a modern parallel. Social media, news photography, and documentary filmmaking continue to shape how the outside world sees Appalachia. Find a recent photograph or image series (from a news article, documentary, or social media account) that depicts an Appalachian community. Apply the same analytical questions: What is shown? What is omitted? Who made the image, for what audience, and with what assumptions? Has anything fundamentally changed about the outsider gaze since the 1890s, or do the same dynamics persist in new media forms?

Exercise 4: The Settlement School Debate

This exercise asks you to engage with the most difficult question the settlement school movement raises: Can genuine help and cultural colonization occur simultaneously?

Organize a structured debate (in class or in writing) on the following resolution:

Resolved: The settlement school movement did more harm than good to the communities it served.

For the resolution (settlement schools did more harm): Argue that the schools imposed outside cultural norms, undermined local knowledge and self-confidence, created dependency on outside institutions, and reinforced the stereotype of mountain deficiency that has been used to justify exploitation. Use evidence from the chapter about language suppression, cultural deficit assumptions, and the fundraising narrative.

Against the resolution (settlement schools did more good): Argue that the schools provided education, healthcare, and economic opportunity to communities that desperately needed them, that the practical benefits outweighed the cultural costs, and that the alternative — no schools at all — would have left mountain children with even fewer options. Use evidence about literacy, health outcomes, and the career trajectories of settlement school alumni.

After the debate: Write a one-page reflection that moves beyond the binary of "help" vs. "harm." Is it possible to acknowledge both the genuine benefits and the genuine damage of the settlement school movement? What framework allows you to hold both truths at the same time? Consider how this debate applies to modern charitable and nonprofit interventions in Appalachia — or in any community where outside organizations provide services while also carrying assumptions about the communities they serve.

Henry Shapiro argued that "Appalachia" was not a region that was discovered but a concept that was created — put on America's mind by specific people, for specific purposes.

a) List the four intellectual moves that Shapiro identified in the construction of "Appalachia" as a concept: 1. Establishing that mountain people were different 2. Transforming that difference into a problem 3. Creating institutions to address the problem 4. Sustaining the concept across generations

For each move, identify a specific example from this chapter that illustrates it.

b) Shapiro argued that the construction of "Appalachia" served interests outside the region. Whose interests were served by each of the following aspects of the construction? - The image of mountain people as backward and in need of help - The definition of mountain problems as cultural rather than economic - The creation of institutions (settlement schools, mission organizations) to address the "problem"

c) Apply Shapiro's framework to a modern example. Choose one recent media representation of Appalachia (a news article, documentary, television show, or book) and analyze it using Shapiro's four moves. Is the modern representation still operating within the framework Shapiro described?

d) Is it possible to write about Appalachian problems — poverty, health disparities, educational challenges — without falling into the pattern Shapiro describes? What would a non-stereotyping, non-patronizing account of real Appalachian challenges look like? Write a 300-word example.

Exercise 6: From Frost to Weller to Vance — The Culture of Poverty Lineage

This exercise traces a specific intellectual lineage across more than a century.

a) Summarize, in one sentence each, the core argument of: - William Goodell Frost's "Our Contemporary Ancestors" (1899) - Jack Weller's Yesterday's People (1965) - J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

b) What do these three arguments share? What explanatory structure do they have in common?

c) Each of these works was enormously popular with audiences outside Appalachia. What does that popularity tell you about the appeal of the "cultural deficiency" explanation for poverty?

d) For each of the three works, identify an alternative explanation for the conditions described — an explanation that focuses on structural factors (economic exploitation, political neglect, institutional failure) rather than cultural characteristics.

e) Why do structural explanations tend to be less popular than cultural explanations? What are the political implications of accepting a structural explanation for Appalachian poverty versus a cultural one?

Exercise 7: The Community History Portfolio — "Discovery" in Your County

Return to the county you selected for your Community History Portfolio.

a) Search for evidence that your county was "discovered" by outsiders during the 1870s–1920s period. Check the following sources: - Digitized magazine archives (HathiTrust, Internet Archive, Making of America) for articles mentioning your county - Local historical society records for documentation of visiting writers, photographers, or reformers - Settlement school or mission school records (if any such institutions operated in the county)

b) If you find evidence of outside "discovery," analyze it: Who came? What did they write or produce? What assumptions did they carry? How did their representations compare to the local reality as documented in county records?

c) If you do not find evidence of direct "discovery" during this period, consider why. Was the county too remote even for the "discoverers"? Too urban or too prosperous to fit the narrative? Too far from the literary travel routes?

d) Research whether the label "Appalachian" was applied to your county during this period. When did the label first appear in outside descriptions of the county? Did local people use the term? How has the label shaped the county's identity and its relationship with the rest of the state and nation?

e) Write a 750-word section for your portfolio titled "The 'Discovery' and Its Legacy" that synthesizes your findings.