The Real History of Hill Folk and the Hillbilly Image

NOTE: This article was originally published elsewhere, but my copyright obligation there has been fulfilled and since it is one of my favorite articles – I’ve posted it here.  If it looks familiar to some of you; you may have seen it before. 

Hillbillies in Popular Fiction

When people encounter the term “Hillbilly” they often think of characters such as Snuffy Smith. Hillbillies are often characterized as shiftless, lazy, shine-running, hicks who live in such isolation they’re out of step with the world. A lot of this impression comes from popular cartoon strips.

Although the Appalachian mountain people had been living in these mountains since the 1700’s, it wasn’t until the early-to-mid 1930s that they become popular in American entertainment. In comic strips, Joe Palooka did an extended sequence about a mountain man named Big Leviticus in 1933; and in ’34 the author of that sequence, Al Capp, started his most famous work, Li’l Abner. And Billy DeBeck was heavily researching Appalachian culture in preparation of introducing a new character to his Barney Google strip – and a major change in the direction of his work: Snuffy Smith.[1]

The origins of the term “hillbilly” are obscure. According to Anthony Harkins in Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon , the term first appeared in print in a 1900 New York Journal article, with the definition: “a Hill-Billie is a free and untrammeled white citizen of Alabama, who lives in the hills, has no means to speak of, dresses as he can, talks as he pleases, drinks whiskey when he gets it, and fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him.”

Harkins believes the most credible theory of the term’s origin is that it derives from the linkage of two older Scottish expressions, “hill-folk” and “billie” which was a synonym for “fellow”, similar to “guy” or “bloke”.[2]

Meet the Real Hillbillies

I’ve lived among the mountain folk of East Tennessee for almost ten years, and while here I’ve read many histories and watched films and documentaries made on the area. The one I recommend most is The History Channel’s Hillbilly: The Real Story, produced by Moore Huntley Productions and hosted by Billy Ray Cyrus. It gives a complete picture of mountain people, where they came from, how their culture developed, why they believe and live as they do and who they have become over the centuries.

Billy Ray journeys into the hollers and runs of Appalachia to discover the proud legacy of the region’s mountain folk. Watch it and you will learn how hillbillies, long misunderstood as isolated and backward, actually have a 300-year history of achievement that has contributed significantly to our national identity.

The Roots of Hill Folk

The original ancestors of the people who would settle this region were Lowland Scotts who, due to the poor economic conditions in Scotland at the time, were eager to make the relatively short distance move across the twelve mile North Channel between Scotland and the northeastern Irish coast. This migration, estimated to include well over 100,000 Scottish Protestants, mainly took place during the 90-year period from 1607-1697.

The migration had been planned and encouraged by the first man to rule over both Scotland and England; he was James I of England and James VI of Scotland. King James, a wily and pragmatic monarch, brought the Protestants to “His Majesty’s Plantation of Ulster” to form a buffer zone and strengthen royal control of the North of Ireland from the native Irish Roman Catholic population, who were generally hostile to English rule.

But the Scotts were unwelcome in Ireland and hostilities there eventually forced many of these Scotch-Irish to make the much longer journey to The New World: America.

Eschewing the settled and “civilized” East Coast and traveling on through the sparsely populated farm lands these settlers pushed into the virgin country of the Appalachian Mountains. The climate and topography of the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains reminded them of home, and they set about taming the land.

It was a hard life. There were no roads and no supply posts. What they would need to clear land, build homes and start farms, they had to bring with them by pack animal and wagon. Whatever they found they needed but didn’t have, they made from what was at hand. And the Native Americans living in the region were not happy about so many settlers coming in and changing the face of their hunting grounds.

But they persevered and settled the region. They retained their ancestral social structure of tightly knit family structures that band together for mutual aid and protection called clans. These Scotch-Irish were short on temper and long on memory, frictions between clans often erupted into feuds that lasted for decades, even for generations. Some lasted so long the combatants forgot what it was they were fighting about, they just knew there was a feud between them and so they fought.

Hillbillies and the Industrial Age

In time, Eastern industrialists decided to establish railroads through the Appalachians to tap into the rich coal fields of Virginia. Later still the Tennessee Valley Authority was established to build hydro-electric dams that would supply electricity to the power-hungry East. The documentary does a good job of chronicling the hardships and sacrifices that the mountain men made as they joined the labor forces that accomplished these feats, and the contributions they made to the future course of our young country.

These technological advances did little, however, to change the lives of these clumps of mountain folk sequestered away in the nurturing folds of the mountains.

The Truth about Moonshine

The knowledge and ability to make whiskey and other spirits was something the original settlers brought over with them from Ireland and passed down through the generations. At first these spirits were brewed in small quantity for local consumption, just as they grew their own food, made their own soap, wove their own cloth, and tanned their own leather for shoes.

As civilization followed them into the mountains and established cities, the mountain folk found that their home brewed liquor had a market in these towns. And, since brewing their corn crop into whiskey made it much easier to transport over the rough terrain than were cartloads of grain and brought a higher price than did the grain itself, it only made sense to pursue that endeavor.

The problems started when the government wanted the mountain men to pay high taxes on their product. They refused. That brought the Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms (ATF) agents into the process. The onset of Prohibition only made the situation worse – and the demand for their product higher. By this time it had become a generations-old way of life for many of the mountain families.

In the classic 1958 film Thunder Road, the main character, Lucas Doolin, makes the statement; “Ever since I was a kid I’ve always known there was something not quite right about the ‘shine business, but it’s what my daddy did, and his daddy before him, and his daddy before him, and his before him for hundreds of years.”

Today moonshine is still being produced in these mountains, and it’s available if you know where to get it. A few have gone “legit” making a proper business of it and paying the government taxes, most notably legendary shine runner turned NASCAR driver Junior Johnson and country music super star Hank Williams Jr.

But moonshine isn’t the ATF’s big concern in this region any more; more heinous businesses have proven to be far more profitable: narcotics!

Music of the Mountains

Traditional Appalachian music is based primarily on Anglo Celtic folk ballads and instrumental dance tunes.  The ballads were almost always sung unaccompanied, and usually by women as they fulfilled their roles as keepers of the family’ cultural heritage and to rise above dreary monotonous work.

Another great influence was that of the African-spiritual.  The slaves brought a distinct tradition of group singing during work and worship, usually lead by one person with a call and response action from a group. The percussion of the African music began to change the rhythms of Appalachian singing and dancing.

The instrumental tradition of the Appalachians started as Anglo Celtic dance tunes and eventually was reshaped by local needs, African rhythms, and changes in instrumentation.  The fiddle was at first the main instrument, often alone, as a piano would have been too expensive to purchase and impossible to transport over the mountains.  Originally the tonal and stylistic qualities of the fiddle mirrored those of the ballad.  The ‘reel’ is generally thought to have originated in the Scottish highlands in the mid-eighteenth century.  In the 1740s, Neil Gow, a Scottish fiddler, is credited with developing the powerful and rhythmic short bow sawstroke technique that eventually became the foundation of Appalachian mountain fiddling.

Irish immigration also added its own flavor.  The sound of the pipes and their drones added a double-stop approach where two strings are usually played together.

All through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries this music remained truly ‘folk’.  Singing was used for personal and group enjoyment and continuation of historical narrative.  Instruments were used for dances and contests.

Because travel was difficult, contact between regions was limited.  But the late nineteenth century industrialization demanded mobility, and recorded sound in the 1920s brought popular music to the mountains.  Mail order and mass production made instruments more accessible.  Radio stations started barn dances with live performances of local talent, and styles began to cross over.

Below are some examples of mountain music and its evolution.

On a Personal Note

My wife and I moved from the bustling metropolis of St Louis Missouri to 5 acres of wooded land on a foot hill of the Great Smoky Mountains in the Cherokee National Forest in 1991. We built a home among mountain folk whose families have lived in these mountains for 300 years.

At first we found these modern day ‘hillbillies’ to be mistrustful of outsiders, stubborn, hot tempered and resistant to change – especially change just for change’s sake. But once you get to know them, and they you, they are hospitable, warm, kindhearted and exceedingly generous even when they have very little. We feel very much at home here and are grateful for the friends we’ve made.

In the time we’ve lived here we have witnessed an increasing influx of people from other areas, drawn here (like us) by the breathtaking beauty of these mountains, mild climate and the laid-back, slow pace of life found here. It’s disturbing that although most came to escape the harried and regimented lifestyles of their former homes, they seem bent on bringing that with them. They insist on transforming this area’s culture into what they have always known. For some time now the original families have been succumbing to the temptation of big money offered by land developers who buy up ancestral homelands, slice them up into plots, clear away much of the forest and build dozens and dozens of expensive homes on them.

As the original mountain folk sell out and move away or die off, their culture; a fascinating component of American heritage, dies with them. I am grateful that documentaries like Hillbilly: The Real Story and books by local authors like Catherine Marshall, author of Christie and Wilma Dykeman who wrote The French Broad (1955), The Tall Woman (1962), The Far Family (1966), and Return the Innocent Earth (1973) have helped to chronicle the people and the lifestyles of those who settled these mountains.

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