Part 9

Quickly and clearly they see through any veneer of democracy the stranger may assume, to conceal an assumption of superiority. Yet for the stranger on the roadside, in answer to the halloo at their gate, the mountaineers are willing to go out of their way to do a favor, and they will cheerfully share such food and comforts as they may have, with any man. But they give their confidence only in proportion to demonstrations of manhood and genuineness, and as humanists they are not in a hurry. If there is an aura of caste, the distinctions must be created by those who have come as strangers into the mountains and not by the mountaineer.

They know they are not ignorant, except as everyone is ignorant who lacks contact with new customs and changes in world progress. They are fully cognizant of their lack of that knowledge which "comes only out of a book." But whatever their educational shortcomings, no one has ever laid at their door the charge of stupidity.

Raised in nature's school they are masters of its non-elective course. They know by the arc the baying hounds make the size of the circle the fox will take and where to intercept him. They can tell by the distance up the mountain's side where the dogs are running whether the fox is red or gray. They know by the sound a rock makes as it is dropped into the stream the depth of the ford. They have even a classical finish to their woodland schooling and they find a pleasure in noting that the bullfrog sits with his back to the water as the moon rises and faces it as the moon sets.

They know the signs of changing weather that will affect their crops. The tints of the clouds that float above them convey a meaning. There are cause and effect in the wind that continues in one direction. They watch the actions of wild animals and fowls, and they are wise enough to attribute to beast and bird an intuitive protective sense superior to their own. They note when the moss has grown heavier on the north side of the tree.

The steadiness of their poise and their silence in the presence of strangers is not due to moroseness or the absence of active thought. They have learned in the woods, if they are to be successful in their hunts, to be personally as unobtrusive as possible, often to remain motionless, and all the while to watch and listen alertly. Whenever they can be of real assistance, no one can more quickly or more generously respond.

They have their own standard of values in personal intercourse, and they can wait patiently and in impressive silence. They are always willing for someone else to hold the spotlight on their rural stage.

About themselves they are naturally taciturn, and public and unfriendly criticism has been proved to be a hazardous diversion. If the thought and comment of the stranger upon the mountaineer could be compared with the keen and often humorous analysis of the stranger the score would be found in surprizing frequency on the side of the calm and silent mountaineer.

They give but little heed to the clothes a man wears but look clear-eyed at the man within the clothes. They have no criticism for the way a man says his say, so he has something to say. A noted college professor, himself a mountain boy, maintains:

"I would rather hear a boy say 'I seed' when he had really seen something, than to hear a boy say 'I saw' when he had not seen it."

Old Coonrod Pile lived in the valley until his life spanned from the days when it was a hunting-ground of the Indians to the time when he can be remembered by some of the men and women now living in Pall Mall, who knew him as the most influential man of his time in the section, the owner of the river-bottom farm land, vast acres of hardwood timber, a general store and a flour mill worked by his slaves--a man grown to such enormous size and weight that in his last days he went about his farm and to oversee his workers in a two-wheeled cart pulled by oxen.

Those of the valley who now remember him were children when he died, for he was born on March 16, 1766, and his death occurred on October 14, 1849.

He saw his valley home changed from a part of the State of Franklin to a part of the State of Kentucky, then to Tennessee, and the abstracts to the deeds for land he owned show that Pall Mall was first in Granger county, later in Overton and finally in Fentress county as the State of Tennessee developed. Pall Mall is but seven miles from the Kentucky line, and for many years Coonrod thought he had taken up his residence within the Kentucky border.

Settlers of those days in leaving the Carolinas and Virginia traveled usually due west in search for a new home. It was this belief that he had settled in Kentucky that has led many to the opinion that Coonrod's former home was in Virginia. Others, without more definite knowledge for foundation, maintain that as he settled in Tennessee he had lived in North Carolina. The written word was rarely used and the stories of the earlier days in the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf" are tradition.

In a newly settled territory a man's birthplace and antecedents are facts immaterial to the community's welfare and many incidents historical in nature concerning Old Coonrod have been lost in the waste-basket of forgetfulness and no one now at Pall Mall has "heard tell of jes' where he come from." Yet some readily say that he came from "over yonder," and they point back across the mountains toward North Carolina.

In the first map of Tennessee, made by Daniel Smith, there is a dip in the northern boundary of the state line where Fentress county is located. But this was found to be an error of survey and later corrected. The surveyors of those days were men of courtesy and accommodation, for in the establishment of the Tennessee-Virginia line they surveyed around the southern boundary of the farm of a hospitable host and left his lands in Virginia because the old fellow maintained he had never had any health except in the mountains of Virginia.

That Coonrod was of English descent there seems scarcely room for doubt, and "Pile," or "Pyle" and "Pall Mall" stand as mute testimony. And "York" too is a component part of old England.

I was never able to learn why the village was given its unique name and there is no tradition that associates it with the noted street in London, though even to-day Pall Mall in Fentress county is but a single road. I asked a white-haired mountaineer how long the place had been known as Pall Mall. With a memory-reviving shake of his head that ended in a convinced nod, his answer was, "quite a-whit."

And that is the nearest I ever came to accuracy.

But seeing his reply did not contain the information wanted he looked at me thoughtfully and said:

"Hit's jes' like 'Old Crow!' Every morning for eighty-two years I ha' looked up at the rocks o' that mountain 'en they h'aint changed a-bit."

The government records show that Pall Mall was made a post-office on April 3, 1832.

Old Coonrod was a man of Big Business for his time; one of force of character who dominated his community and who "sized his man" by standards that were peculiarly his own.

A man would come to him to buy a "poke" of corn or flour, or for a favor. To the surprize of the stranger the favor might be over-granted or the corn given without cost; or, upon the other hand, he would be bruskly dismissed without the least effort at explanation. Unknown to the stranger the condition of his "britches" had probably given him his credit rating with Old Coonrod, for he held that patches upon the front of trousers, if the seat were whole, were decorations of honor, showing the man had torn them doing something, going forward. But, if the front of the trousers were good and the seat of them patched, no dealings of any nature were to be had with the dictator of the valley, for to Old Coonrod it meant the man "was like a rabbit; he could not stop without sitting down."

But the residents of the valley, many of them Methodists, claim this estimate works a hardship upon members of their faith for a good Methodist could wear the knees out at prayer and the seat out in "backsliding."

Old Coonrod's trading with the Indians was a series of successes. He is known to have had their confidence and friendship, and he was arbitrator between them and his neighbors whenever disputes arose.

Fentress county lying on the western slope of the Cumberlands was part of the great hunting-grounds of the Shawnees, Cherokees, Creeks, Chickamaugas, Chickasaws, and even the Iroquois of New York. The basin of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, that part now Tennessee and Kentucky, was claimed by each of these tribes as its own, not as home but as a hunting-ground, and when bands of hunters of rival tribes met in the territory each fought the other as an invader, and their battles gave to Kentucky its Indian name, meaning in the Indian tongue the "Dark and Bloody Ground."

But Old Coonrod kept pace with all of them and prospered from their friendship, and an Indian trail turned and led close to where he lived. The last of the Indians passed through the valley in 1842.

As Old Coonrod prospered he bought land and slaves, and was a large owner of both in his day. He was a cautious and judicious purchaser of realty. The court records show that at some time or other he was the owner of the most desirable parts of Fentress county. He held title to the land upon which Jamestown, the county seat, now stands, which is the "Obedstown" of Mark Twain's "Gilded Age." He owned "Rock Castle," a tract of hardwood timber that is enclosed by mountains and can be reached by but one passageway, a place that became famous during the Civil War. He bought and sold much of the county's best farming-land along Yellow Creek.