THE TEXAN APPALACHIA

Abstract

A distinctive culture developed in the Appalachian South by the early 1800's, typified mainly by a preservation of archaic traits, including the persistence of a frontier way of life. The bearers of this culture spread to the Ozark-Ouachita area of Missouri and Arkansas in the first half of the nineteenth century. The present paper is a documentation of a second major transplantation of the southern mountaineer—to the hills of central Texas. Evidence of a migration from Appalachia and Ozarkia to the Texas hills in the 1845–1880 period is presented. This movement of people was guided at least in part by environmental perception, for the southern mountaineers sought lands in Texas similar to those they left behind and applied to the physical features of their new home the same descriptive place-names used in the Ozarks and Appalachians. Various characteristics of the economy, standard of living, folkways, cultural landscape, and educational levels in the Texas hill area are reminiscent of the highland South. The best interpretation of these similarities is to regard the hillsmen of Texas as hitherto ignored southwestern representatives of the southern mountaineer culture.