Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
looked like white Negroes. They were simply white people with very dark skins. Their ap-
pearancewas,tosaytheleast,striking.Forthisreasontheyhavelongbeenoutcastsintheir
own county, consigned to shacks in the hills in an area called Snake Hollow. In Hancock
County, “Melungeon” is equivalent to “Nigger.” The valley people-who are themselves
generally poor and backward-regard the Melungeons as something strange and shameful,
and the Melungeons as a consequence keep to themselves, coming down from the moun-
tainsonlyatwidelyscatteredintervalstobuyprovisions.Theydon'tlikeoutsiders.Neither
do the valley people. Peter Dunn told me that he and the photographer who accompanied
him were given a reception that ranged from mild hostility to outright intimidation. It was
an uncomfortable assignment. A few months later a reporter from Time magazine was ac-
tually shot near Sneedville for asking too many questions.
So you can perhaps imagine the sense of foreboding that seeped over me as I drove up
Tennessee Highway 31 through a forgotten landscape of poor and scattered tobacco farms,
through the valley of the twisting Clinch River, en route to Sneedville. This was the sev-
enth poorest county in the nation and it looked it. Litter was adrift in the ditches and most
of the farmhouses were small and unadorned. In every driveway there stood a pickup truck
withagunrackinthebackwindow,andwheretherewerepeopleintheyardstheystopped
what they were doing to watch me as I passed. It was late afternoon, nearly dusk, when
I reached Sneedville. Outside the Hancock County Courthouse a group of teenagers were
perched on the fronts of pickup trucks, talking to each other, and they too stared at me as I
passed.Sneedvilleissofarfromanywhere,suchanimprobabledestination,thatastrangers
car attracts notice. There wasn't much to the town: the courthouse, a Baptist church, some
box houses, a gas station. The gas station was still open, so I pulled in. I didn't particularly
need gas, but I wasn't sure when I would find another station. The guy who came out to
pump the gas had an abundance of fleshy warts-a veritable crop-scattered across his face
like button mushrooms. He looked like a genetic experiment that had gone horribly wrong.
He didn't speak except to establish what kind of gas I wanted and he didn't remark on the
fact that I was from out of state. This was the first time on the trip that a gas station at-
tendant hadn't said in an engaging manner, “You're a long way from home, aren'tcha?” or
“What brings you all the way here from I-o-way?” or something like that. (I always told
them that Iwasonmywayeast tohave vital heart surgeryinthe hopethat they wouldgive
me extra Green Stamps.) I was very probably the first person from out of state this man
had seen all year, yet he appeared resolutely uninterested in what I was doing there. It was
odd.Isaidtohim-blurtedreally-“Excuseme,butdidn'tIreadsomewherethatsomepeople
called Melungeons live around here somewhere?”
He didn't answer. He just watched the pump counter spin. I thought he hadn't heard me, so
I said, “I say, excuse me, but didn't I hear that some people-”
