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The Pine Hills Community Scholar Program
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A Taste of Pine Hills Traditions is the Pine Hills Culture Program's first traveling exhibit. The exhibit was created around fieldwork by community scholars and graduate students in our 1996 Piney Woods Community Scholars Program field school. It consists of nine burlap-covered, painted panels that are hinged together to create a free-standing exhibit. Almost all of the images (color and black-and-white photographs) and quotes are drawn from documentation by field school participants. A listening station lets visitors hear excerpts of oral histories and traditional music. The exhibit opened at the Woods Art Gallery on the University of Southern Mississippi Campus in January of 1997, and then traveled to nine libraries in south Mississippi before returning to Hattiesburg for permanent installation at the Walthall Center. It can be viewed by individuals or groups by appointment. For more information, please contact Carolyn Ware at the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. Below are text panels from A Taste of Pine Hills Traditions.
Folklife is traditional knowledge, skills, stories, and ways of doing things that are handed down from one generation to the next, by word of mouth or by example. Members of a particular group--whether ethnic, regional, religious, or occupational--share a unique culture through their folk traditions. Mississippi is often divided into four cultural regions: the Delta, the Hills, Piney Woods (or Pine Hills), and the Gulf Coast. Southern Mississippi's Pine Hills area includes all or part of thirty-two counties. These regions of the state refer not just to geographic areas, but to distinctive cultural areas. Throughout the years, the Pine Hills region has been home to many different groups: Choctaw, Anglo-Scots-Irish, African-Americans, and (in smaller numbers) Greeks, Lebanese, Syrians, and Jews. All of these cultural groups have maintained a number of their own traditions that distinguish them from other ethnic groups in the area. But people who live in the Pine Hills also share many customs that are characteristic of this area. This shared culture is called regional folklife and helps to make everyday life here unique. A Taste of Pine Hills Traditions spotlights the living folk traditions of our state's Pine Hills region. Some are shared by most people living in the area and will be very familiar to you from your own family, church, or community. Others are particular to a certain cultural group here. All contribute to the rich and vital heritage of the Pine Hills.
The Pine Hills Community Scholars Program A Taste of Pine Hills Traditions is a traveling exhibit that features some of the many folk traditions important in south Mississippi's Pine Hills, a little-documented region. It is based on fieldwork done for the Pine Hills Community Scholars Project, a program intended to help communities document and preserve their cultural traditions. This project was the first initiative of the Pine Hills Culture Program, part of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage at The University of Southern Mississippi. During the summer of 1996, twenty-two community scholars from south Mississippi and five graduate students attended training sessions in folklife documentation. Each chose a type or genre of folklife to research. Topics included a range of traditions, from crafts and storytelling to foodways, gardening and traditional occupations. The scholars conducted interviews and photographed folk artists who carry on these traditions. Almost all photographs included in this exhibit are the work of community scholars and students; quotations and text panels are drawn from their interviews with traditional artists. The exhibit is not meant to be a comprehensive view of Pine Hills culture. Instead, it offers a wide-ranging look at the vitality of this regional culture, viewed from the perspectives of community members and artists themselves. As it travels to ten sites in the region before returning to Hattiesburg in November 1997, the exhibit will continue to evolve. We welcome your suggestions and contributions. Community scholars, graduate students and faculty members who participated in the Pine Hills Community Scholars folklife documentation project are listed below. We thank all of them for their excellent work.
Folk or vernacular architecture is a term used for traditional structures designed and built by people with no formal training in architecture. Folk housing is usually localized; it varies from one region to the next, depending on the climate, materials available, and needs and esthetics of the people building and using it. Piney Woods vernacular architecture includes houses, barns and other outbuildings, churches, and camp meeting buildings. In Mississippi's Pine Hills, log houses and barns were most common during the 19th century. Wood, especially native longleaf pine, was easily accessible, and peeled logs were used for building houses and barns. The "dogtrot" or "double-pen" style of house is the most typical folk housing style for the region, but shotgun houses are also common. Then most typical barn type is the transverse-crib barn, usually featuring what is called an A-roof. Folk architecture in the Lottown Road in rural Covington County was one focus of this documentary project. The older houses in this neighborhood are typical of Pine Hills vernacular architecture. Long-time resident Barbara Lott describes her grandmother's Lottown Road house: The house was made out of heart pine, it had never been painted. It had a front porch that went all the way across the house. The shape of the house was sort of like a box .... The gables faced the road.... The porch stuck a little high off the ground, and there were tall pine trees down in front of the house, by the road, and there were tall pine trees all around, and oak trees--big ones--and there was wisteria growing up into one of the pine trees.... To me, it was beautiful, and it was thick woods all around. Folk housing reflects ingenuity and a readiness to recycle available materials. For instance, some families like the Conways used mobile logging camp cars as temporary housing while they built more permanent structures. According to Bruce Conway, the car could house eight individuals if bunks were installed. Some non-folk house styles have helped shape the look of the pine hills region. The popular Queen Anne style, for instance, influenced many turn-of-the-century builders in the Pine Hills. Many examples can be seen in historic neighborhoods of Brookhaven, Hattiesburg, and other southern Mississippi towns and cities. Homes, churches and schools are significant not just because of their architecture, but because they serve as centers for family and community living. One such example is Hattiesburg's Sacred Heart Catholic Church and its school. The church and school both reflected and played a role in shaping the historic neighborhood district's community life.
What do catfish farming, barbecue, fish fries, cornbread, canning preserves, dinner on the ground, muscadine wine, and fried green tomatoes have in common? All are familiar examples of traditional Pine Hills foodways. But the region's traditional foodways also include such lesser-known examples as the hominy that Choctaws hand grind, using mortar and pestle. Foodways are food-related cultural traditions. These include not only the kinds of food customarily eaten, but traditional means of cultivating, preparing and preserving food, and the events during which food is shared. Folk medicine, too, can include a range of practices. In the Pine Hills area, traditional medicine usually means home remedies such as teas and poultices made from local plants or animal products. Most of these remedies are widely known and used, learned from a parent or grandparent. But folk medicine also includes more specialized kinds of knowledge like that used by midwives assisting in childbirth. And for some people, prayer plays an important role in healing. In the past, people in the Pine Hills treated many illnesses with home remedies. Although doctors are now common, many people still prefer to use folk remedies for certain ailments. Even those who rarely use folk cures today remember many that were used by their families. For this project, members of several Pine Hills communities were interviewed about their traditional healing practices. One remedy mentioned by all is pine top tea, brewed from pine straw and used to treat colds. Others common cures include hog hoof tea for chest colds, and a cough syrup of red onions and sugar. Salt meat is applied to burns and spiderwebs to cuts; a mixture of kerosene and sugar is used for colds; teas of sassafras root are brewed to clean the system; and the marrow from hog jawbones was once used to treat mumps. Sometimes garlic and other ingredients are worn in bags around neck, or copper bracelets around the wrist. Some medicinal plants are grown in people's gardens, but others must be collected in the wild. Several people remarked that certain plants are not as readily available today as they once were. We just used to go out there and pick the weeds because they were growing all around us. You don't see them now because people have plowed up and dug up everything. You don't see the weeds and things like you used to. People done dug those things up and let everybody put it in a jar. Now you have to buy it and pay more money for it. We used to just go out there and pick it up and make our own medicines.... God gave us everything right there. But the people tore it down. And really what we did was hurt ourselves.
The Pine Hills region has a rich heritage of religious and secular music, and is home to many talented musicians who carry on these musical traditions. Old-time country fiddling, blues, bluegrass music, and both African-American and Anglo-American gospel music are all traditional to the area. Gospel music ranges from the old style of shape note (or sacred harp) singing still heard in some rural congregations, to traditional a capella gospel quartets and--more recently--contemporary gospel groups accompanied by drums, guitars, keyboards and other instruments. In some counties, singing conventions continue to meet, passing along the tradition of shape note singing. One focus of this project was Anglo-American fiddling styles, particularly old-time country and bluegrass. Seasoned fiddlers like Jack Youngblood and Ross Beckham still perform music much like that once heard at house dances. Young and older musicians alike help to keep the more recent tradition of bluegrass music vital, and bluegrass festivals draw crowds on weekends during the spring, summer and fall. Unaccompanied ballad singing is still practiced by some Pine Hills residents, although it is less common than it once was. Beulah D. Neal of Lawrence County can still sing from memory a sad story-song she learned as a girl, about a train carrying a crying infant and its mother's coffin. This song reflects the many ways that railroads have played an important part in people's lives over the years. Storytelling is a time-honored Southern tradition. Barber Rayford Bowen of Smith County entertains customers and other visitors to his barbershop with comic anecdotes about his relatives, hunting stories, and local legends about heroic law enforcers. There are many kinds of traditional stories, both fictional and true: tall tales or lies; legends about famous feuds or well- known figures like Newt Knight; and jokes and humorous stories, among many other kinds. Some stories are made up by the teller; some are learned from other storytellers and passed on through oral tradition. Anecdotes about local life in the past-- about dinners on the ground and hog killings, or about the integration of public schools--are another form of storytelling. For this project, two community scholars gathered a wealth of information about life in Pearl River County in the past through their interviews with longtime residents.
Folk crafts are handed down from one member of a community to another, by example or through informal instruction. Usually folk crafts are made from natural materials that are abundant locally. A number of craft traditions are practiced in the Pine Hills region. Domestic crafts, or household crafts, are made for work and play around the home. Some of the most common domestic crafts in this area are quilting, crochet, woodcarving, and white oak basketmaking. Quilting is an important skill among both African-American and Anglo-American women. Once primarily functional, quilts are now valued as works of art. Family or group quilting is less common today than in the past, but some women's church groups and senior citizens' centers have quilting groups or guilds. Women frequently prefer either piecing or quilting, which are very different processes. Elaine Carter, for example, makes beautifully pieced "fancy" quilts but particularly enjoys quilting. For one quilted pattern of concentric circles, she used plates of various sizes as patterns. Basketmaking is culturally important among the region's Choctaw residents. Swamp cane is gathered, split into strips, dyed and then woven into baskets of remarkable beauty. Although most Choctaw women learn to make baskets as girls from their mothers or older relatives, a couple of women from the Bogue Homa Choctaw Reservation who were interviewed for this project began making baskets as adults. Some, like Berdie Steve, experiment with unconventional shapes for their baskets. Among Choctaw men, making the sticks used for stickball is an important cultural tradition. Occupational crafts or farm crafts are still part of rural Pine Hills folklife, although they are less common than they once were. Making ox yokes, cornshuck mule collars, and bullwhips; blacksmithing; and making chair seats from cowhide were once practical skills for farmers or ox team drivers; today some individuals still maintain these craft traditions. Bruce Conway says that "everything on my father's [oxen] team was handcrafted except for the chain." Bruce learned to craft ox yokes and to blacksmith from observing Ed Fairley, an African American blacksmith. He can construct seven different sized ox yokes from memory. "You select wood which is not knotted, and straight, and at least five foot long. I'll cut it and take it to a sawmill and have them square it, and then I draw it out and cut it out from memory," he says.
Historically, the most common traditional occupations in the Pine Hills have been logging, railroad work, and farming or herding. Over the years, each of these occupations has changed to some degree. Agriculture--especially herding--has always been an important aspect of traditional life in the Pine Hills. Hogs were the most common livestock in the 19th century, and many families raised sheep. The native cattle known as "Piney Woods scrubs" or "woods cows" were especially suited to thrive in the region's piney terrain. On the rural southern farmstead, these cattle were milked, slaughtered for beef and hide, or driven to markets for sale. Some were "broke" to become an ox that could plow a garden or pull a wagon; oxen were the most common work animal on the farm. Oxen were also widely used for logging, and ox team driving was for many years an important traditional skill. Between the 1920s and 1950s, Reverend I.O. Anderson's father, Vic Anderson, owned nearly 130 to 150 oxen that he rented out. Vic provided yokes and chains, but the renter was responsible for feeding and maintenance of the oxen, and "If a horn was broken it was twenty dollars extra, an eye out was an extra fifty dollars," Rev. Anderson remembers. According to those interviewed and other sources, nearly fifty percent of the ox drivers in South Mississippi were African-American. Oxen began to be replaced by mules and horses and eventually by mechanized equipment, and the folk occupation of ox driving began to disappear in the region. A few families in the region still maintain oxen, and "yoked-up" Piney Woods cows are still displayed at regional festivals. Ox drivers claim that the Piney Woods variety is disappearing along with ox team driving. The histories of the railroad and timber industries have been closely related in southern Mississippi. For many years, transportation of Mississippi's longleaf pine timber depended on waterways. The completion of major rail lines such as the Illinois Central Railroad and the Gulf Island and Ship Railroad helped Mississippi's forest industries to expand. Steam-powered circular sawmills were built along railroad lines, and lumber was transported to these mills along narrow-gauge tracks called "dummy lines." The timber industry today bears little resemblance to the days of dummy lines and oxen pulling logs through the forest. At lumber companies like the Rutland Lumber Company in Collins, the work is increasingly technical and mechanized. Trucks, forklifts, cranes and bandsaws have replaced the oxen, mules, log carts, and circular saws of the past century. The Rutland Lumber Company began operation in 1956 as a "peckerwood sawmill," dealing in low-grade pine lumber. Now this family-owned operation is in its third generation, producing hardwood lumber that is marketed internationally as well as domestically. Today's operation focuses on the production of FAS grade hardwood that is used in fine furniture. The mill employs over 90 workers representing white, black, and Mexican ethnic groups. In the next century, it is predicted that an operation like Rutland will employ fewer than a fifth as many workers, as computer-controlled innovations lead to more efficient production. Several individuals who maintain the tradition of breaking and driving oxen (along with related skills such as yoke making) were interviewed. All of the ox team drivers arranged their teams in a similar way. The oxen need to be "matched" or "paired with a companion," they say. The rear pair were often the largest and strongest. Bruce Conway says, "You put your big steers on the tongue of a wagon because they have to hold that wagon downhill and the bigger they are the better they are.... Normally you put your smaller ones in the front because they're faster, but it depends on which pair you've got trained well enough to be in the front. They're the lead. Wherever they go the rest of them are going to follow. If they are pretty well receptive in learning, fast and smart and listen, they make the best leads."
Drive down any road in the Pine Hills region at almost any time of the year, and you will see gardens. Vegetable gardens, flower gardens, backyard gardens, and gardens that stretch for acres. Step into someone's yard and garden, and you will see both continuity of tradition and creative adaptability. Everyone interviewed for this project traced their gardening practices to former generations. Each of the cultural groups that has settled here has contributed knowledge not only about how to work the land, but also about plant species. Traditional gardeners know how to make the most of space. They adapt their gardens to the land; if the land curves, the garden curves, and if the land slopes, the garden slopes. But an understanding of the land goes further than contour and space. A gardener must know what to plant where, when and how. Knowledge about techniques, what to plant, when to plant and how to plant it, when to pick, and how to preserve is learned from other gardeners. This continuity of practice is an important part of the traditional nature of gardening. Thelma Smith, like many others who were interviewed, says, "We always try to follow the signs the elder people gave us" in gardening. In the past, gardening played a large part in farm families' subsistence. Today, most people have access to produce markets, where they can sometimes buy produce more cheaply than they can grow it. But gardening remains important in many people's lives. An underlying ethic of work and a strong sense of community comes through many of the gardeners' reflections on their gardens. Robert Lee Abrams says, "Whatever makes in the garden, I try to share with somebody before I use it myself." Similarly, Thelma Smith says, "I'm out there quiet, I love being in the garden because that's just a good time for meditation, you know just get out early in the morning while the wind is blowing everything is quiet and peaceful and I'm just thinking while I'm gathering these peas and beans and whatever, who else would enjoy some of this. I never go to my garden to gather anything unless I make sure that I give somebody something out of that garden." And Nancy Hall adds, "There's been years when I couldn't get out to my garden, and those were sad times. When it comes spring, you might think, 'Well I'm not going to have a garden this year,' you know at the end of the garden season, you might think that. But after the winter and when the spring comes and it warms up you cannot help it, you start looking for seed, you start looking for plants, wanting to get out there and put something in the earth."
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