Weekly Courier Journal
4-22-1889
Odd Bits of Character Found
amid the
Hills of Eastern Kentucky
Some Scraps of Conversation
That Show
Their Peculiar Style of Talk
A Tribe of Indians Which
Continues
to Flourish In Floyd County
GATHERING
IN THE 'SHINERS
(Bill Cole - Cherokee Indian Chief)
Excerpted;
Hazard, Perry County April 15
--
..."Revenue officers are in
great disrepute with all of them and the
children are taught to run at
the sight of a 'potcutter' and thus the
older folks are often given
warning by the screams of the youngsters
at the sight of a strange
man. The children are as wild as rabbits
and can scramble over
hillsides faster than men can go over them on
horseback and hence they
often get by the revenue officers where a man
would be stopped with a shot.
Near the line between Floyd
and Magoffin county, signs of a still
caused a search to be made
back into the hills. When a quarter of a
mile up a ravine a lot of
yellow-faced children suddenly appeared
under the horses' legs and
with shrill squalls of terror sped off to
a tiny cabin perched on a big
rock.
A woman with a very yellow
face came to the door and after piling her
youngsters into a box sardine
-style informed us that she was Bet -
the great-granddaughter of
old Bill Cole,
the aged
Cherokee Indian
chief who died on the same
hill ten years before. Cole the head of a
tribe of half-breeds and
about a hundred and fifty of his people
still live on the same ridge.
He was 110 years old when he died and
his grave is on the highest
spur of the mountain where his house
still stands. The Indians
drink moonshine but have not yet begun to
make it and no still was
found on old Bill's great-granddaughter's
farm.''