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I am aware of the variety of Appalachian culture, in the area I'm from there are three subcultures tied to three different periods of settlement and we still really don't mix because our extended families don't think much of each other. Perhaps herein lies the root of our difference of opinion. My flavor of Appalachian is from the Cumberland ridges of southeastern Tennessee and is blended with more native american than is usual. My euro-descended colonial ancestors separated themselves from organized colonial government in the late 1600s/early 1700s. They tended to be one-off misfits who were of mixed ethnicity and/or didn't match the majority ethnicity/culture of the areas they had previously been living in, they predated the first officially sanctioned wave of migration by 3-5 generations. Which is a long convoluted way of saying that when my ancestors came together as a group there was no unifying culture among them and they weren't into the culture they grew up in so they abandoned it with enthusiasm. It would make sense that the later waves of migration which were more ethnically homogeneous would preserve more of their ancestral culture.
Obviously a lot of this comes down to opinion and conversation etc... but I'd respond with two points:
1) There are many insular cultures around the world... Certainly there are some of those in what is now the US, but it's far from an exclusive thing to the US... already in our conversation you've narrowed it down from broadly Southern Appalachian to a very specific sub-culture of that and when you start to look at cultures at that scale around the world you find quite a few that are similarly insular, many insular for far longer (again I'd bring up the Ireland example where certain regions have been proven via DNA to be amazingly insular at a scale longer than Europeans were even in America)
2) There's probably not a way for me to say this and not come off insulting so I hope you believe me when I genuinely don't mean it offensively... Your genealogy and ancestry is your own, obviously you are open to talking about it since you are here and now so I talk openly myself in response.
The narrative you have given is not an uncommon narrative across a large portion of the South and the West. That's not mean I'm suggesting it isn't correct, but maybe it's more complex than that. How do you know that aspects of that culture, maybe that independence or other aspects weren't actually carry overs from pre-existing cultures that came before. What I hear is a story... a narrative, not a study of cultures and aspects that seem unique or not. Even then often the "unique" cultural aspects of a region are a result of a merging of other cultures.
To me cultures are like a food dishes... and in fact there is much study in following the evolving of cultures along their food lines which often can lead to the same conclusions as linguistics and DNA and other aspects. Spaghetti and meat sauce for example is not actually Italian, it is Italian-American however with roots in aspects brought over from Italy... the same can be seen in things like American BBQ which has ties in specific environments in the US but also has a heritage of spices and flavors that go beyond. Things, clutures, and people didn't come from nowhere, even people who fled a culture carry parts of it and cultures aren't just one thing, neither are they black and white... many cultures have a variety of grays and maybe some of those grays were folded into your specific brand of Appalachian.
I don't know if our ancestries overlap but I also have a lot of Cumberland ridge ancestry as well as surrounding and fairly remote regions... as well as mixed raced ancestry both Native American and African as well as likely tri-racial ancestry (similar to that in which Melungeons have).
I think Appalachian culture is British Isles ( Scottish/English/Welsh/Irish/) only that there looks and music have a link to our Isles, I didn't think Germanics and French did British rooted folk music) After British Isles I would say Red-Indian
... already in our conversation you've narrowed it down from broadly Southern Appalachian to a very specific sub-culture of that...
Um, no. Not really. I don't have intimate knowledge of Appalachia beyond the areas my family lives in but I was actually just trying to be inclusive by conceding that it's possible some of the families that my people don't associate with due to grievances that originated in the 19th century might still be carrying a torch for a country their ancestors abandoned a couple of hundred years ago. I don't know that any of them do. I've never seen anyone local wearing a (insert country here)-pride T-shirt or putting stickers on their car or flying foreign flags or anything like that.
The "story" of my ancestry as told to me by my elders went like this - we were always here, every once in a great while someone who wasn't from here married in, we didn't keep up with where they were from because they weren't from there anymore so it wasn't important. Everything else I know was pieced together through research. Sorry if my brief summary of decades of work was too story-ish for ya.
Um, no. Not really. I don't have intimate knowledge of Appalachia beyond the areas my family lives in but I was actually just trying to be inclusive by conceding that it's possible some of the families that my people don't associate with due to grievances that originated in the 19th century might still be carrying a torch for a country their ancestors abandoned a couple of hundred years ago. I don't know that any of them do. I've never seen anyone local wearing a (insert country here)-pride T-shirt or putting stickers on their car or flying foreign flags or anything like that.
The "story" of my ancestry as told to me by my elders went like this - we were always here, every once in a great while someone who wasn't from here married in, we didn't keep up with where they were from because they weren't from there anymore so it wasn't important. Everything else I know was pieced together through research. Sorry if my brief summary of decades of work was too story-ish for ya.
I'm sorry you're overselling it a bit. You don't have to wear shirts or stickers to contain remnants of parent cultures. If you don't identify cultural influences that were not thrown off or abandoned (as you put it) in Southern Appalachian culture then you either disagree with huge amounts of cultural studies and research done for a long time as well as self claimed cultures among many Appalachian cultures, or maybe you aren't familiar or haven't looked it up before?
Just a brief line of references though many books, articles, and research has been done for quite a while now on the topic. Many cite Scots-Irish has having a strong influence on Southern Appalachian cultures that persist to this day (and many from those regions even claim in many cases).
One of the most aspects of culture is language and dialect
Quote:
Southern mountain dialect (as the folk speech of Appalachia is called by linguists) is certainly archaic, but the general historical period it represents can be narrowed down to the days of the first Queen Elizabeth, and can be further particularized by saying that what is heard today is actually a sort of Scottish-flavored Elizabethan English. This is not to say that Chaucerian forms will not be heard in everyday use, and even an occasional Anglo-Saxon one as well.
When we remember that the first white settlers in what is today Appalachia were the so-called Scotch-Irish along with some Palatine Germans, there is small wonder that the language has a Scottish tinge; the remarkable thing is that the Germans seem to have influenced it so little. About the only locally used dialect word that can be ascribed to them is briggity. The Scots appear to have had it all their own way.
So either you disagree with this or as I was pointing out (and you seemed to disagree with) you must be talking about a very specific sub-culture that isn't represented by these strong Irish, Scottish, and English influences into their culture?
I don't think of myself as a mutt in any way, shape, or form. I am an American born to American parents who were in turn born to American parents and so on and so forth back to the Revolutionary War and beyond. When I travel overseas, my entire being screams American no matter how much I try to blend in. It's deeper than my skin color, the texture of my hair, the words I choose and the way I pronounce them, the foods I eat, and the music I enjoy. It's the very core of my identity. I am not a mutt.
I actually have my 23andme results coming within the next several days so I will soon know exactly how much of a mutt I am down to percentages.... can't wait.
It's hard when you don't know the whole lineage on your paternal side. I want to know what my genetic risk profile looks like. Also, what percentage of Neanderthal I am.
In NYC everyone has a foreign identity and demands to know what your nationality is or where you are from. I have a hard time convincing people that I'm just an American.
I've adopted "nativism" as an identity. We, the american blacks and whites that have ancestry in the U.S from before the revolution, are the natives.
I see it like this: 300 some odd years ago a new, unique ethnic group was created in the U.S from the combination of various different african ethnicities and called "black/negro". I'm not a "mutt", and I'm not from any other country. Our genesis was in the 17th century American South. We are the native black people of the U.S.
I get blank stares when I tell people this but I'm persistent.
Which, of course, is American history.
But perhaps recent arrivals lack a feel for this history?
I don't think of myself as a mutt in any way, shape, or form. I am an American born to American parents who were in turn born to American parents and so on and so forth back to the Revolutionary War and beyond. When I travel overseas, my entire being screams American no matter how much I try to blend in. It's deeper than my skin color, the texture of my hair, the words I choose and the way I pronounce them, the foods I eat, and the music I enjoy. It's the very core of my identity. I am not a mutt.
I find this very interesting.
I was born and raised in the U.S., and am now seventy-eight years old. (As for long-term ancestry in America, some of my ancestors were settlers in New Netherland colony before the English snatched it up. But they were just a remote curiosity and their descendants had migrated to Canada after the Revolution in any case.)
There was never a time in my life when "American" was the only thing at the core of my being. In the early years "Roman Catholic," and "Irish-American" were of equal weight. This was unusual where I came from or in the years of my childhood, these were your three basic identifications...birth in America, religion and ethnicity.
As time went on that core expanded to include other things, and lost some of the earlier ones.
From the early Eighties until I emigrated in 2000, "American" ceased to be a core part of my identity, and became something more on the order of an long-time cultural influence instead. That particular religion had ceased to be a part of my core identity as well, and became something on the order of a previous development influence.
In Europe my entire being evidently does not scream "American" either. I am asked if I am Canadian or Irish....and when the "truth" is revealed, "Uh...oh, you don't seem very American." And my usual and honest answer is, "Well, my passport is."
I mean, lets be real here. We all know that person. "Oh I am of Scottish, German, Irish, Russian, Iranian, Brazilian, Cherokee, Hopi, Welsh, and Korean descent". Well, first off, I doubt you are of all those things, but seriously, at what point do you stop saying you are (insert here) and just say "Well, I'm American/Canadian" or whatever you are.
I mean, generally speaking if you ask an Asian person what they are, they'll say something like "Japanese", "Japanese American" or even "Japanese/Thai descent". Meanwhile, us white people just pull out a damn pie chart. "Oh I'm 3.25% Sioux Indian". I'll just say it, I know for a fact a lot of people just make up or at least having nothing to backup some of their ethnic claims (especially when claiming to be part Native American.)
Looking at myself. I am a Canadian, living in America, my Dad's family is Irish, my mom's family is Austrian, Italian, and Danish, and prior to that who knows. I was always told that there is a Kawarthan Indian Princess in my lineage (which again, no real or tangible evidence backs that up).
When people ask me what I am, I just say I am Canadian American because I literally am (duel citizen of both countries). Despite being able to trace my family roots to County Kerry, Ireland, I don't claim to be Irish because I, nor my father, nor my grandparents, were born in Ireland. At what point do we just accept that our bloodlines are so mixed that we are mutts at this point, or simply, just American?
My mom has a family tree that goes back to the 1500s, so we know for sure what our lineage is. My maternal grandfather was ethnic German but that branch of the family came to the US by way of Cuba. My maternal grandmother was Anglo-American and Norwegian. My paternal grandfather was Greek. My paternal grandmother was what used to be called Levantine. She was born in Smyna, what is now Izmir, in Turkey.
That means that technically, I am Greek, Turkish, Anglo White, German, Norwegian, and Cuban. My heritage is pretty well documented because of my moms penchant for genealogy. For all intents and purposes, I say that I am Greek when asked about ethnicity because my surname is Greek. When I am abroad I simply say American.
I always just say "American" when asked, unless the person asking is actually referring to genealogy, then I'll list all my known bloodlines, including Cherokee, sure. At the same time, I don't "claim" to be Irish, Scottish, Cherokee, German, etc. Isn't that what most people do? I would think people interested in genealogy might give you the whole list, but most other people don't.
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