Bill and Alice Hart Collection – UNC Asheville Archives

This is the second in a series of articles highlighting materials in the Bill and Alice Hart Collection, which the Harts donated to UNC Asheville’s Special Collections. This article highlights works documenting the Cherokee Nation.

Bill and Alice Hart’s Collection of the history and culture of Western North Carolina includes extensive works on the Cherokees, who have lived in this part of the world longer than any other humans. The Cherokee trace their roots in Western North Carolina to approximately 8000 b.c.e., and controlled about 40,000 square miles of territory in Southern Appalachia prior to the arrival of Europeans. Understanding the relationship of humans to the natural world in Southern Appalachia requires an understanding of Cherokee history and culture, and it is in this context that Bill and Alice Hart built an extensive collection of materials on the Cherokee.

The following is a selection of the Cherokee materials in the Hart Collection.

Early History of the Cherokees

Emmet Starr’s Early History of the Cherokees: Embracing Aboriginal Customs, Religion, Laws, Folk Lore, and Civilization, was published in 1917, and considered a landmark historical account of the Cherokee nation. Starr establishes his credentials in the book’s Preface: “I am a Cherokee, born in Going Snake District, Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory, on December 12, 1870.” Starr spent over 15 years researching this history, and the volume includes extensive use of primary sources. This first edition, self-published by Starr, is relatively rare.

Land of the North Carolina Cherokees

Published in 1970, Fred B. Bauer’s Land of the North Carolina Cherokees is a concise (70 page) history of legal issues concerning the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and their struggles to maintain their constitution and land rights in the Qualla Boundary. Bauer was a former Vice Chief of the Eastern Band, and was an outspoken advocate for Cherokee rights to their land during the development of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Formal Opening of the Chief John Ross House – offical program

John Ross served in leadership roles for the Cherokee Nation from 1819 to his death in 1866. Ross was President of the Ntional Committee of the Cherokee Nation from 1819 to 1827, the year that the Cherokee Nation adopted its Constitution. In 1827 he was Assitant Principal Chief, and in 1828 was elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. He was relected as Principal Chief and held the position until his death in 1866.

The John Ross House in Rossville, Georgia, was built in 1797 by John Ross’s grandfather John McDonald. The house was restored 1963, and this program documents the Formal Opening ceremonies, which included a stick-ball game, archery, crafts, and dancing.

Formal Opening of the Chief John Ross House, May 29, 1963.

33rd Annual Cherokee Indian Fair program, October 1950

The Cherokee Indian Fair provided members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians an opportunity to exhibit “the products of their fields, forests, and farms, their cook stoves and preserving kettles, their needles and looms, all the best of their wood craft, metal work, and pottery; in fact any products of their minds and hands in which the can take pride.” The program is illed with photographs and details about the wide range of items being exhibited and sold, including fruits, vegetables, canned goods, baked goods, clothing, plants, flowers, and crafts.

Program - 33rd Annual Cherokee Indian Fair, 1950 — Program – 33rd Annual Cherokee Indian Fair, 1950

Cherokee Fair & Festival: A History thru 1978

This 1978 pamphlet edited by Mary Ulmore Chiltoskey provides more depth and historical information about the Cherokee Indian Fair. It cites 18th century European descriptions of Cherokee harvest festivals in such historical narratives as John Lawson’s History of Carolina and William Bartram’s Travels of William Bartram, then adds contemporary Cherokee accounts of the Fair’s growth and development.

The Hart Collection includes documents and resources about Cherokee law, as well as nineteenth century congressional papers documenting Cherokee attempts to have treaty promises fulfilled. These include the Constitution and Laws of the Cherokee Nation, Published by Authority of the National Council, 1875, and Congressional documents such as the US House of Representatives Bureau of Indian Affairs report “Cherokee Indians in North Carolina” from 1848, the U.S. Senate document “complaints of treaty violations by US, delivered by Cherokee delegation of Will P. Ross, W.S. Coodey, and John Drew, March 15, 1849,” and the U.S. Senate document “Committee on Indian Affairs, report on accounting balance owed the Cherokee nation by the US according to 1846 treaty terms.”

A small but representative sample of other Cherokee resources in the Hart Collection includes Art of the Cherokee : Prehistory to the Present by Susan C. Power, Cherokees of the Old South: a People in Transition by Henry Thompson Malone, The Shadow of Sequoyah: Social Documents of the Cherokees, 1862-1964, Cherokee Legends and the Trail of Tears from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Cherokee Cavaliers: Forty Years of Cherokee History as told in the Correspondence of the Ridge-Watie-Boudinot family, as well as numerous issues of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and North Carolina Archaeology.

One of the most important works in the collection is a first edition of The Cherokee Physician, Or Indian Guide to Health, as Given by Richard Foreman, a Cherokee Doctor. Originally published in Asheville in 1849, this book merits its own blog post. We will feature a special guest discussing The Cherokee Physician in a future blog post. Stay tuned!

For more information about these materials, please watch this video of Bill Hart discussing the Cherokee resources in the Hart Collection. This was recorded in the Hart’s private library prior to transferring the collection to UNC Asheville, but we have retained the original order that the Harts used to organize their collection.

The Bill and Alice Hart Collection is open to all, and we encourage you to contact Special Collections to make an appointment to spend time with this marvelous collection. Please contact us at speccoll@unca.edu to make an appointment. We look forward to seeing you soon!

– Gene Hyde and Ashley Whittle

This is the first in a series of articles highlighting materials in the Bill and Alice Hart Collection, which the Harts recently donated to UNC Asheville’s Special Collections. This article highlights works related to one of Bill and Alice Hart’s favorite pastimes: hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains.

In the introduction to his 2009 book, 3000 Miles in the Great Smokies, Bill Hart described the importance of boyhood family camping trips in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Initially introduced to day hikes by his father, he became an avid hiking and camping enthusiast. The more he hiked in the Smokies, the more curious he became about not only the actual trails he traversed, but also the history and culture of the people who had lived there:

As the frequency of my walks in the Smokies increased, each visit began to take on a different meaning. I could not pass flowers and shrubs without having questions about their identities. Remains of old homesteads, outlines of old fields and rustic cemeteries led to wonderment about patterns of settlement and early life in the Smokies. Old roads, faint paths and abandoned rail grades caused me to wonder where they led and what secrets they held. Mountain peaks and place names bespoke of people and events in the past. In an effort to gain a layman’s knowledge about the Smokies, I began to read about the history, flora, fauna, lore, and music of the area and satisfied some of my curiosity.

The cover of Bill Hart's 3000 Miles in the Great Smokies. — The cover of Bill Hart’s 3000 Miles in the Great Smokies.

Indeed, Bill’s effort to gain a “layman’s knowledge” of the Smokies was a factor in he and his wife Alice curating and creating a massive personal library for over 50 years, one that scholars sought out and that is now at UNC Asheville. This post, the first of many, will focus on the Smokies hiking content in the Bill and Alice Hart Collection, and further posts will continue to highlight the wide variety of materials in this extensive collection.

Smoky Mountains Hiking Club Handbooks

The Smoky Mountains Hiking Club (SMHC) was founded in 1924, two years before the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. By 1926 the SMHC began to publish an annual Handbook which listed group hikes and other SMHC events during each year. The Bill and Alice Hart Collection contains nearly ninety copies of the SMHC Handbook dating from the first one in 1926 through 2018 – a nearly complete set with just a few years missing.

Each volume of the SMHC Handbook is a guide to SMHC hikes and events. Included are a schedule of hikes throughout the year with descriptions of each hike and the group leader (or leaders) for each hike, other scheduled club events such as fish fries, educational lectures, short essays by club members about hiking and the outdoors, general guides and insights into various places in the Park, photographs, maps, and information about the club’s members and leaders. The articles and hike descriptions in the handbooks portray a strong sense of camaraderie among the members, a shared sense of stewardship about the trails and the park, and often a wry sense of humor, as seen in the captions for these photos of a bear and a boomer (a red squirrel) from the 1939 Handbook:

A page from the 1939 Handbook of the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club.

The Smoky Mountains Hiking Club remained active and continued to lead hikes and host group activities even during World War II. This entry from the 20th Anniversary edition of the Handbook in 1944 discusses not only wartime rationing but also shows a regular feature in each issue of the Handbook – the club’s Code of Ethics:

From the 1944 20th anniversary issue of the Handbook of the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club addressing war time rationing.

Guide to the Great Smokies

Several of the many gems in the Hart Collection are the 1933 Guide to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the 1935 revised edition of the Guide, both written by George McCoy and George Masa. And while the 1935 edition no longer lists Masa as a co-author, his photographs still grace the pages of this small and highly informative volume.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park guide from 1933. Photographer George Masa was a co-author and contributed photographs.

Welcome page from the 1933 Guide to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Note the reference to George Masa in the text.

Hiking Trails of the Smokies

Due to his considerable experience hiking the Smokies, Bill Hart was asked to contribute some trail descriptions to Hiking Trails of the Smokies, published in 1994 by the Great Smoky Mountains Natural History Association. Bill described about 60 miles of trails in the book, and this link goes to his description of the Beech Gap Trail (please click on link to open the narrative). In addition to describing the hike itself, Bill’s narrative places the trail in historical context. He describes Ira McGee’s mill and the railroad lines that were extended into this section of the Smokies in 1915 for logging, and also notes that the Civilian Conservation Corps had a camp in 1934-41 where Round Bottom Creek flows into Straight Fork, near the Beech Gap Trail. The hike is not merely a hike on a lovely Smokies trail, it’s also a trip through the past.

To watch a video of Bill Hart discussing these works and other materials from the Great Smokies part of the Hart Collection, please click on this link. This was recorded in the Hart’s private library prior to transferring the collection to UNC Asheville, but we have retained the original order that the Harts used to organize their collection.

– Gene Hyde and Ashley Whittle

Category: Bill and Alice Hart Collection

Cherokee Resources – Selections from the Bill and Alice Hart Collection

Hiking in the Smokies – Selections from the Bill and Alice Hart Collection