Mrs. Zilphie Sutton, Chestnut Branch, North Carolina
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Zilphie Sutton was 70 years old when recorded in 1939 and was living in Big Creek, Haywood County, North Carolina.
[transcripption copyrigh Michael Montgomery and Paul Reed, 2017][S = Jim Sutton; I = Interviewer Joseph Hall]
S: Well, we'd just treat it the best we can, we could use teas of all kinds and make tea for them [=people having a fever] and sweat them.
I: Uh what, what kinds of teas would you use?
S: Boneset tea and feverweed tea and this here beadwood bark, make hit for tea, poke bark, they make hit for tea, for a bowel complaint.
I: Uh what ki-, what, what would you use to feed a rising?
S: Well they’s, you can put fat meat on a rising, or you can get uh fernan?? bark, fernan bark, nan bark, and make a poultice, put it on it, and they was a weed that they call wild indigo, you can take hit, and hit’ll stop blood poisoning, take the roots and beat it up, put sweet milk in it, and put it on it and it’ll draw it white and cure it up.
I: Uh, what would you use to treat the worms?
S: Well they was a kind of weed that they call gurglymock seed.
I: What kind of a seed or weed was that?
S: Gurglymock seed, gurglymock seed, it’s, some of it grows here.
I: About here or in the mountains?
S: Here.
I: Yeah?
S: Yeah, yes.
I: And what is the good stomach medicine?
S: Well that’s, I couldn’t hardly tell you how that would be, it, they’s a whole lot of stuff that I ain’t used to for stomach troubles.
I: How would you feed your stomach off?
S: Well you’d take some kind of pills [H: Are you ...], well take this here uh, aw I've forgot the name of it, I’ll think uh, I don’t, I’ve forgot the name of it.
I: Indian physic tea?
S: Yes, Indian physic tea, it’s good.
I: Uh what was a good way to feed a toothache that you use?
S: Pull it out.
I: What’s another way?
S: Well sometimes a body puts burnt alum in it, sometimes you put uh, soda in it, the best toothache medicine I ever had was to pull it out.
I: Uh did you ever hear of a method of curing a toothache in which you put a hole in a tree?
S: Yeah.
I: What uh, how would you do that?
S: Well they bore a hole in a tree and uh stop it up with a plug, make a, like a bottle stopper or something or other, and drive it in there.
I: Uh wou- would you have to say anything in front of that hole?
S: No, I never did.
I: Uh what was a good cure for the croup and the tizzy?
S: Well sometimes it’s uh, you can drink a little xx.
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[NOTE: THE RECORDING IS INTERRUPTED HERE WITH LAST PART OF THE STEVE WOODY RECORDING]
S: Well, I don’t know hardly how, just all sorts of little things that a body gives to them that helps them, I don’t know whether it can be cured or not.
I: So it can’t be cured sometimes, can it?
S: Sometimes it can’t be cured.
I: Uh there’s one way uh of curing the croup or the tizik one by taking a sourwood switch, how would they do that?
S: Well, I, I sort of hate to tell you, but I can, it’s foolishness, I have cured it, get you a sourwood switch and then have it a-standing up at the door and measure your stick, and if the young one grows, why, hit’ll cure it.
I: Uh you lay the sourwood switch above the door?
S: Yes sir.
I: Talk just a little louder.
S: Yes sir.
I: Could you talk a little louder, Missus Sutton? uh how would you cure uh pneumonia fever?
S: Well, you asked that question, I don’t know, I can’t tell ye.
I: Did you make any poultices with fried onions?
S: Yeah, we’d make poultices with fried onions and grease with pneumonia salve and loosen it [=the congestion] up thataway.
I: Well, where would you get this pneumonia salve?
S: Out of the store, a bottle.
I: Missus Sutton, you used to uh be a granny woman, didn’t you?
S: Yes sir.
I: About how many babies did you catch?
S: Well, the best that I remember, the last that I had any count of, it was a hundred and sixty.
I: A hundred and sixty?
S: Yes sir.
I: And where did you, where did you uh practice uh your work?
S: I just practiced myself.
I: Uh whereabouts, what town, what county?
S: I, well I catched them in Middlesboro, and I catched them Cumberland Gap, and I catched them at uh this place out here, Sunburst, Tennessee, I had a hundred and sixty marked down before I quit, I marked that many down, but I catched more after that, I don’t remember it.
I: How long has it been since you’ve caught babies?
S: Well, it’s been something like about three year, I guess, I quit.
I: Could you tell us a little bit about uh when you were a girl, Missus Sutton, like what you had to do for a living and how you helped your family?
S: Yes sir, I washed it out, worked it out by hard day’s work, twenty-five cents a day, work all day for twenty-five cents, raised my family, raised seven children.
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[INTERRUPTION BY STEVE WOODY INTERVIEW]
S: My family and about being, just stories or anything like that?
I: No, uh you were telling me how you split rails.
S: Oh yes, yes, I’ve split rails a many a day and carried them on my hip, and my hip would be so sore I couldn’t hardly get my dress on, had stakes, built fence, stocked hog corn, pulled fodder, and I’ve cut tops, and I’ve uh picked up chestnuts and sold them, dried fruit, sold them to get stuff with.
I: Where were you born, Missus Sutton?
S: I was borned up here at the foot of the Chestnut Mountain, in Tennessee.
I: Uh could you just tell us a little bit about weaving?
S: Yes sir, I’ve wove many a day, made cloth.
I: Uh what kind of cloth is uh li- linsey cloth?
S: Well hit’s wool, card it and spin it and weave it, that’s linsey cloth.
I: Uh when you're dyeing cloth, how do you do it?
S: Well, you go to the store and buy what they called indigo and put it in a pot and boil it and color your thread, and then you weave it.
I: Did you ever use uh any kind of bark for dyeing?
S: Yes sir, we uh we'd ge- get uh walnut bark and sometimes beadwood bark and dye it, copperas, we’d get copperas and dye it, any kind of color we wanted, why that’s the kind of color we’d get, dye it, boil it up, make a ooze out of it, and color your thread, and then we’d weave it.
I: Have you uh batted much cotton in your time?
S: Yes sir, I bat all my cotton and quilt my quilts, I’ve card, you have to card it.
I: How much of uh cotton could you bat in a day?
S: Enough to stuff a quilt.
I: Enough to stuff a quilt?
S: Yes sir.
I: Uh could you tell us a little, a bit about that dynamite explosion up there in Big Creek?
S: No sir, I can’t do nothing like that, my boy could, but I can’t.
I: I think your uh son was there at the time, wasn’t he?
S: I don’t know whether he was right there or not, but he was pretty close.
I: Hmm.
S: We lived out there, no, I can’t tell you nothing about that, I don’t know.
I: Umm, how did you uh keep insects out of the country when you were, when you were younger?
S: Used to be we didn’t have nothing like that, no beetles, beetles nor nothing to eat the beans up, we never, we didn’t never have nothing like that, we could plant a patch of beans and they’d just grow up and be green, plenty of them.
I: Why is that, why is that do you suppose that they have so many insects now?
S: Well, I couldn’t tell you that.
I: Uh did the people in times back have a practice of burning off the ground?
S: Yes sir, we never had no stuff to destroy our stuff till we got, till they wouldn’t burn the woods off, after they let the woods grow up, why these here bugs, one thing another come in and destroyed all of our beans, we can’t raise no beans here.
I: Why is it the people burned off the uh, the ground in the, in the woods, was that to keep the ins-, to keep the insects away?
S: Yes sir, to keep the woods open till you could get about through them, in my growing up.
I: Were there many uh wild animals in that country up there around Chestnut Branch?
S: ... any, yes sir, plenty.
I: What were the, what were the different animals that you saw up there?
S: Well, I never saw none but the bear, but I hear ...