Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1884-1886, 1886-07-28
CHARACTERS OF EAST TENNESSEE.
The Hull Tribe" En- Route for the
West-MoOnshine Whisky-Dark WAYS.

The Hull Tribe'' En- Route for the
West-Moonshine whisky-Dark Ways.
went in the smoking car after boarding
the train and saw the hull tribe" 1t COM
prised men, women and children. They
were taking advantage of the low passenger
rates to 60 west and locate They were the
lowest type of east Tennessee humanity,
and l wondered by what means they had
scraped together and saved enough to en-
able them to 60 on so long journey. Most
OF them were young men, and the tender
portion consisted of two women and four
children. The women had on striped calico
bonnets, dresses of the same material and
color and were chewing the ends of sticks,
which at intervals they dipped in small tin
boxes filled with snuff. Some of the men
looked too much lost to sit down: others had
recovered their equilibrium and were eating
huge slices of pork carved from whole hams
and pieces of corn dodger broken from the
loaves with which their soiled muslin "pokes'
were filed
At the little villages most of the male
population we're congregated about the de-
pot and on the porches of the stores facing
the track. An atmosphere Of general lack
OF incentive and aim to accomplish any thing
pervaded all these groups, that is, if the ap-
pearance of each individual member was the
portrait of the inner man. | do not exag-
gerate, but speak from actual count, that
on an average four out of every five men at
these stations had his hands in his pockets
and from which, evidently, they were sell
dom drawn. 1t was not a cold day. One
fat, red-cheeked, good-natured man, who
had his hands otherwise occupied, and his
pockets, too, was a character worthy of
Porte Crayon's pencil l had never seen
one like him outside of Tennessee or western
North Carolina. He had on blue overalls
stuffed in low boots; a SLOUGH hat set on the
back Of his head, revealing fully his round,
red face; blue and white checkered shirt
exposed by his unbuttoned sack coat out Of
the outside pockets Of which latter pro
truded the long necks of two suspicious look
ing bottles lie had enough of tie product
Of the still about him to make one think he
was in 'cahoots" with some of the moon
sinners of the Smokes, but he himself could
not have been taken for one of that class.
A great deal OF this pure product finds
its way into the villages on this side and
across the mountains, but so secrUtly is its
manufacture carried on that there are few
persons outside the Brotherhood Of Block
aders who over saw the smoke of still fire,
or much less the bark covered, shelving
roof, the mud-plastered furnace, the barrel
and its worm, the array of jugs of all sizes
and descriptions, the dippers made of
gourds, and the coatless, long haired, home
spun clad and lean-visaged mountaineers,
who work by the light of the moon. l might
tell you how empty jugs, with silver COINS
under their corn-cob shoppers, are by their
owners set at night in designate places be-
hind rail fences or under farmhouse win
dows, to be taken charge of again by them
in the morning well filed, but minus the
money; of how horses grazing in pastures
adjoining dwellings are at night bridlei by
the go between" and used by him to carry
him and his two jugs in bag to the still
in the laurel labyrinth few miles distant;
of how even at the still the go between's"
money is dropped on the ground at the sug-
gestion that 'chestnuts fall to the ground"
so that no one knoweth who picked up the
payment for the 'moonshine and all this
that there be no witnesses in court to swear
away the liberty Of him who makes or sells
the unlawful article.-Cor. San Francisco
Chronicle