Mr. and Mrs. Mack Hannah, Little Cataloochee, Haywood County, North Carolina
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Mr. Mack Hannah, from Little Cataloochee in Haywood County, North Carolina, was 81 years old when recorded in 1939. He had two or three years of formal education and worked as a farmer.
Mrs. Mack Hannah was 73 years old when recorded in 1939 and was from Little Cataloochee in Haywood County, North Carolina. She had four or fice years of formal education and was a farm housewife.
[transcription copyright Michael Montgomery and Paul Reed, 2017]
Mack Hannah:
And he was scared of a bear, and uh uh he was fond of bees, and he, he uh got this, he got Robert to talking with him, and, and Robert talked awhile and found out that uh John was scared of his bees, uh was good to bees, but he was scared of the bear, and he went out to uh, he said he wo- would go out there and look, he went out to our back farm, and he, he found a, a place out there, bee gum around, it was behind the other Hick?? boys, and he took a bear skin with him, and when he got down there with the bear skin, why he, he found out that uh Johnny was a-coming, and he got hisself in good shape to where he wanted to get and stay at, and, and he scared the boy, he put that bear skin on, and he got so he could get, could uh hiding and get out of the way till the boy passed, the boy passed, and he made a fuss and uh and Johnny, when he made a, when he, Robert made the fuss, Johnny looked back and saw Robert with the bear skin over him, wrapped up in the bear skin, and he thought that he would uh, it would, it was a bear coming, and so he broke to run, he run a little piece, and he, he hollered like a dog, barked like a dog, tried to scare the bear away, and he only made it a little worse, he hollered, and the bear sort of made us a ugly fuss, and finally he hollered pretty loud to try to scare the bear away, and Johnny and uh the bear, it made another little pass toward him, m- moved out six or eight feet towards him, made a ugly fuss, and he started down the hill and was xx down there, it was right steep, but was uh steep enough to run good, and so Johnny run to the fence and jumped the fence and never, n- never knocked a rail off and about a eight rail of fence, and he run on down the hill, they said he’s running as fast as a feist could run or a good dog would run, and he got down there and looked back, and uh he saw the bear passing through a little higher up, and he, and Johnny ...
and Johnny run down the hill a-aiming to go to his uncle’s, and he raised that alarm so a- a-running, and he made so much fuss that it scared the people, they run out of their house and looked, and they saw that Johnny was scared, and he was, he wasn’t just a-running a little, they said he was trying to fly, and they said he was a-stepping on the ground so hard that he went in shoe-mouth deep in the ground, and he, and he got on down there and tried to get his uncle to go with him back, and he wouldn’t go back, and they, he lay down there and rested till he got a little better, and he got up and walked off, and Robert was uh so well tickled, he was lying up there laughing in a sink hole, that’s about all.
Mrs. Mack Hannah:
Johnny, after he come down, he laid down his bee bonnet and his uh things, he was a little xx and he thought he’d go to spring and get him a drink, and he got his water and set and come back out and thought he’d take him a smoke, and a little branch backed above him, and he looked around and he saw the bear and said he barked and barked and it wouldn’t move and took to a-rearing up, like it was coming towards him, and he said he hit down the road, down the hill, and jumped the fence and lost his shoe heel and run on to the house, and he wanted the folks to go on back and help him, and they told him it was nothing but the boys with a bear skin, but he said no, he said that it wasn’t that, he said he saw its feet, he knowed it was a bear, and so he rested a little and come on back home and found out it was the boys just a-scaring him.
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[VERY SCRATCHY, BREAK, THEN STARTED OVER, HIGH PITCH, SAME VOICE AS PRECEDING]
The Big Bend is noted for its crime and whiskey, the people there was kind hearted, was no Christian mothers and fathers to raise the children, they grew up in ignorance, my stepson taught the first school that was ever taught down there in a little log house, and he was so scared that he slept with his gun under his head at night, and the children he said was very anxious to learn, he says they was almost grown, some that didn’t know their letters when he started in, and uh later on, hit was several years before they had another school, and for the last while, why, they was a woman went in there, and she taught two schools and said the men, women, and children packed the lumber out to build a house, and she had a Sunday School and said they was very anxious to go, said there’s grown children there that never has been in a churchhouse till they come up here, and some of them, some of the Hicks family, and there’s been from twenty to twenty-five murdered people there, just they was ignorant, raised up in ignorance, no Sunday School, no church nor nothing, nor no one to lead them on right, in the right way, but the old folks, they have nearly all dead, and what ain’t, most of them has left there, and the young folks has left that place, it’s a terrible place, bad place.
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Brown, he lived, used to live on down in the Big Bend, he married Ona PRON Oney Hicks, and they separated, and he’d been off at work, him and Mims White, they came back through there, and the Brown boys and uh, and that Ona Hicks, Ona Brown, she was, they was at a still a-making whiskey just then, and the boys started on through up this way, and I suppose they was nearly drunk, they came on up to where they call the resting log, and the boys laid down there, and I don’t know whether they were asleep or not, anyways they was lying and resting, and Oney/Ona found out they was there, and she went back and told the boys that Scott and Mims was up there, they’d better go and see about them, and they went on back up there, and one of the McGaha boys shot Mims White and killed him, and the other one took the gun and killed Scott with his barrel, gun barrel, and then they pulled his shoes off and robbed him, they suppose, his shoes was gone, and the boy was found with them, a-wearing them, and they come along, some of them, on up there, and the boys lay there that was shot and knocked in the head till next morning, and they passed by again and said Scott was still a-breathing, and they shot his teeth out, shot him right in the mouth, then they ...
[SLOWER SPEED]
boys passed back by where the dead boys was lying, and they drug them out just a, a few steps from the trail and throwed them in a sink hole and covered them up with a leaves and stuff, and they killed the dog and throwed it out there to keep the people from finding them, smelling them, said they wasn’t covered good, and later on they missed the boys and they couldn’t hear of them and got to hunting for them, and they was uh, they think they was at Waynesville, Waynesville, they got him to go down and try to find out from them folks about hit, and he, he picked it out of them, and he took those off and he took them to jail, and they went and found the boys and took them off, what they could find of them, and took them to Waynesville and uh buried them, and they put the boys in the pen a lifetime for the murder, they owned up to it, didn’t they, just picked it out of them.
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I moved our family, moved to Forneys Creek when I was about five years old, I remember, well, my grandfather, he was tending a little mill down about a quarter from home, and my grandmother and, and one of my little cousins and I were at home, and they come, we h- heard some dogs a-coming, and we looked out and we saw a deer, it was a five-slag buck, he’s coming down that mountain and they’s five little hounds after him, and he got to, it was a-making for the creek, and he got out to the fence, he had to jump over the fence before he could get to the creek, and my dogs jerked him back, and my grandmother, she grabbed the ax, the pole ax, and she went and hit it one lick, and hit tore loose from her, from the dogs, and run her right in the yard around the smoke house twicet, and we run in the house, it scared us, and we run in the house and shut the door, and it took back for the creek, made for the creek again, and it couldn’t make it over the fence, they jerked him down again, and she grabbed the ax or had the ax, and she took it and went and hit it that time with the edge of the ax, and she killed it, and grandfather, he, he heared the racket and he come, but the deer was so, so near dead it couldn’t get up, and so she, she finished it up.
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Oh, yes, I don’t xx, I just know the tune to that and a few words [sings], she called herself Dee Monroe, and she, the fifes begin to beat, and the drum begin to beat and the fifes begin to blow, and Pretty Polly marched away, and after the battle was over, why she searched around, you know, and she found Jack, and she picked him up and carried him into the inn, and I don’t know, I just know a little of it about, I, something though that, that officer said to her, said her cheeks was too red and rosy, her fingers was too neat and slim and her cheeks was too red and rosy for to face a cannon ball, but she marched away anyway, she went on, she called herself Dee Monroe.