Blow the tannery whistle: Scarecrows in the rain
This one is for my old friends, living and dead, in Cherokee. Here’s to you, Trigger Young, Woody Sneed, Bill Young, Darlene Whitetree, Homer Burgess, Wanda Lee Burgess, Darlene Bradley, Ralph Henry, Jean Holt, Ethelene Conseen, Johnson Catoaster, Johnson Lee Owle, Eddie Swimmer Wilber Paul and a hundred others.
In the late 1970s, the Cherokee tribal government found itself caught up in a major disagreement with the Tennessee Valley Authority which had announced plans to build a major dam on the Little Tennessee that would flood the Tellico Plains.
Traditionally, the Tellico Plains had great significance since the Cherokees felt that this region was once the sacred burial ground of the Cherokees. Even though the majority of the Cherokees had lost their ties with Tellico, the Cherokee spiritual leaders still returned to this sacred land to visit the graves of ancestors and to renew their religious beliefs.
The Cherokee government suddenly found itself “befriended” by other organizations that opposed the flooding of Tellico for other reasons: religious, environmental, economic, etc. Ambassadors arrived from the University of Tennessee’s Archaeology Department, the Fort Loudon Historical Association, Trout Unlimited.
There were invitations to visit and eventually the Cherokee Tribal Council responded. Since I was employed by the Eastern Band, I think I can say that although there was considerable response from the Cherokee people, it was not necessarily reflected in the tribal government where the primary interest was, what was TVA going to give the Cherokees in terms of “recompense?”
So it was that on a bright, spring day in 1979, I found myself part of a “delegation” that was visiting Tellico at the invitation of the archaeology department that was busy excavating in Tellico and was distressed that the TVA project would deny themselves access to hundreds of ancient graves.
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At that time, the Principal Chief of the Cherokees was John Crowe who despised the archaeology department because they were desecrating the graves of his ancestors.
When we arrived at Tellico, I got my first visual shock. Every tree had been cut and the very earth had been stripped away in preparation for the flooding. The TVA was a powerful agency and it had the backing of the federal government, so it was accustomed to doing what it pleased.
Once we got out of the car, John Crowe immediately walked to one of the open graves. Crowe was a small man with a falsetto voice and his friendly approach often took people by surprise.
The temperature in Tellico was 110, and most of the workers were blackened by the sun as they toiled with tools that looked like they were meant for a beauty salon. In the bottom of the grave was the remains of a human who had died some 500 years ago, and the young man who was working there was painstakingly removing what appeared to be teeth.
Not much was left of this skeleton, and one of the workers told me that the acidity of the soil had destroyed most of the beings and frequently, they had been reduced to teeth, ribs and some jewelry, that being a necklace or a ring of copper or bone.
John Crowe bent to look at the young man in the grave. “Good morning, young man,” said Crowe, extending his hand and speaking in his high tenor. The young man stared at John, looked at the car that had the Cherokee seal on the door, and scrambled out of the grave to shake John’s hand.
“Where you from?” John spoke in his tenor mountain twang.
“Falls Church, Virginia,” said the young man.
“You look Episcopalian,” said John.
The young man blushed. “Yessir.”
“Your people been living there long?”
“Over 300 years.”
John is impressed.
“All your ancestors buried up there?”
“Yessir.”
“Tell me, young sir,” said John, in a deceptive whisper, “would you take it amiss if I went up there and dug up your grandfather?” The young man looked around for help.
“That poor soul down there,” said John, pointing into the grave, “he might be my grandfather.” He surveyed the steaming land around him. “And all of these graves might be my ancestors.”
“No, actually, we are finding pre-Cherokee graves,” the young man said.
“How you know that?”
“Some are buried differently.”
“How so?”
”Some are buried ... sitting up.”
“So the Cherokees lie down, and these other people sit up? Okay,” John said. He turned away, then turned back. “Falls Church, you said?”
“Yessir.”
A young woman, also blackened by the sun, approached John and said, “Chief Crowe, we have arranged for you and your group to eat at a nearby farm that is noted for good food.”
“Are these people losing their farm to TVA?”
The young woman fidgeted, then said “Yes sir.”
“Strange world.” said John. “Stranger each day.”
On our way to the farm, I saw a sign that said, “More Power to the Scarecrows.”
I asked the archaeology student that accompanied us for an explanation.
“That is a protest group,” he said. “They have been burning maintenance sheds, slashing tires, pouring sugar in the gas tanks of TVA vehicles and generally causing trouble.”
“Who are they?” John asked.
“Malcontents, trouble makers.”
“Anti-TVA?”
“Yessir.”
“Seems like I heard a song ... Mellencamp?” I said.
“Very popular around here,” said the archaeology student.
“Rain on the scarecrows, blood on the plow,” I sang, but I stopped when Chief Crowe gave me an angry look.
Gary Carden is one of Southern Appalachia’s most revered literary figures and has won a number of significant awards for his books and plays over the years, including the Book of the Year Award from the Appalachian Writers Association in 2001, the Brown Hudson Award for Folklore in 2006 and the North Carolina Arts Council Award for Literature in 2012. His most recent book, “Stories I lived to tell,” is available at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva or online through uncpress.org.
