Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Just because slaves were relatively few in number didn't mean they were treated humanely.
Some scholars believe that the treatment of Appalachian slaves was worse than on many Deep
South plantations, with accounts of much harsher physical abuse and families torn apart
more readily. Far too many scholars, one researcher wrote in frustration, “confront me with
the mythological construct” that Appalachian slaveholders were “small farmers who only kept
a couple of slaves to help their wives out in the kitchen.”
The farm's owner, ninety-two, told Kathy and Lisa that the slaves hadn't been allowed to
leave the farm. Some of the children, he said, had been sold. If that were the case, it was prob-
able that they walked in a coffle, bound together with ropes, a frequent sight in West Virginia
in those decades. Nearly one in three slave children in the upper South in 1820 was gone by
1860.
It was just after nine
A.M
., and the sun was glaring when Kathy started Strega loping down
the cow path. Strega's rear moved sideways due to her aging hips as she went toward the
pond, folding back like sable-colored origami. She moved along the outer edge of the pond,
not bothering to dip herself and not slowing until she hit the end. She held her nose low to
scoop scent. Nothing here. Nothing here. No reason to quarter or hesitate. Ten yards later,
she slowed and flipped back on herself in that distinctive way a scent-detection dog does
when it notes something relevant. She leaned over a drainage spot. I could see, tracing back
up, where the water percolated off the rocky hill and down into a dimpled spot at the bottom
before entering the pond. Strega paused there, sniffing, turning around several times, leaving,
then going back to it. She never looked at Kathy, who was standing back about a hundred
feet, silent, letting her work. Kathy is a noninterventionist handler. Strega left the drainage
and slowly worked up the hill toward its crest, using her good, deep nose. This is behavi-
or that experienced handlers and trainers have seen with dogs working toward victims, even
those who are not buried. The scent can percolate down the hill or toward water from a great
distance. Scent won't always be strongest right on top of a grave.
After more than 175 years, one shouldn't expect vegetation to be different above the bur-
ied, Kathy said. Nonetheless, at the top of the hill, a slightly concave area was filled with
purple and white clover and mats of shorter, greener grasses that seemed woven more tightly
than in other places on the hill. Strega stopped, turned in a tight circle several times, and
whuffed audibly. Then she sat and stared at Kathy.
And so it went for the next two hours. Renzo, Lisa Lepsch's massive black shepherd, found
a spot on the other side of the small hill. It wasn't concave, but it stretched out for fifteen
feet or so in a green streak across the top of the hill. He sniffed around the edges of the
space, walking slowly, then came into the middle of it and stood there looking at Lisa, who
chuckled. “He's good at defining things,” she said.
