The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1892-12-01

'aSc@tSA been guilty. OF every
variety of crime. The
band IS at once accu5er, judge, ana execu-
toner. No plea in defense is allowed. and the
charge is as likely to rest upon difference IN
social, political. even religious opinion, as TO
be based upon the commission OF actual feiohy.
South of this in The Smoky and Cumberland
Mountains, White Cap means an illicit distii-
ler or smuggler of contraband spirits, and IS,
in fact. applied generally TO the many refugees
from Justice who take shelter in the Businesses
of those ranges.
With regard to the Aforementioned division,
they have, in all sections where their usurped
authority was exercised, uniformly exempli-
fed the truth of Burke's famous aphorism that
"a mob has no heart" If he had added that
it was equally devoid of all those qualities by
which deliberate and consequently rational
conduct is superinduced, the fact would not
have been overstated. 1t is impossible to ex-
aggerate the intolerable character VI those ac-
counls of forced exile cruel. personal punish
ment and violent death that one hears related
as if they were disagreeahle but at the same
time natural incidents of the social state
The surprising part of this matter is that
such aggressions against life, liberty, and the
inherent rights of humanity have not pro-
voked natural feelings of desperate revenge
which would have made the annals OF these
regions more dark and bloody than they al
ready are. This must inevitably have been
the case if those communities in which such
occurrences were possible had developed any
realizing sense of their enormity.
Public sentiment, however tolerates or ap-
proves in many instances of the modes OF ad-
mnistration. To give a perfectly authentic
illustration, it is not probable that in place
where, as actually happened last year, the
daughters and daughters-in-law of well-to' do
and respectable citizen could entice girl
whom he had just married into the woods, and
fhera l,er tn he Qd N
DANCED their Inheritance, would produce men
who possessed any very advanced ideas OF
equity.
1t is satisfactory to know that five Of the
husbands and brothers of these furies were
shot within week after this crime had been
perpetrated, but SO far as information gathered
upon the spot went. it not the act itself
which excited controversy. but irreconcilable
differences of opinion concerning the manner in
which the tactiy admitted right OF the strong
est had been exercised
In comparison with White Caps as regulators
of public morals, those Of them who are moon
lighters escaped eonvicts persons of whom
Sberfs and their Deputies are in search on ac-
count of various offenses, and also those natural
outcasts of society who gravitate towards this
kind of companionSlIip may commonly be re-
garded with some liberation, if not COM
placency.
1t is true that they occasionally kill ReVe-
nue. officer or Constable. and very frequently
kill each other, bnt the former is held to he an
act of selfdeense. and tie latter is looked upon
as a matter of course; besides this. nobody is so
unreasonable as to object to these latter casual
ties. except, perhaps. some particular friend or
relative of the deceased, in which case he COM
m only relieves his mind by shooting the offend
ing party.
During the progress Of q scientific eXplora-
tion of the highlands stretching between south
vaa aud q n
West Virginia the writer lived almost entirely
in tho struggling hamlet and isolated cabins of
the mountaineers, and although warned by the
lowlanders against them, on the ground that
them there people haven't no respect for no.
body" and would most likely ''lay him out"
the event proved far otherwise, and no sober
man interfered Or made trouble at any time.
Upon the other hand. it must be confessed
that the inhabitants of these regions were. for
the most part, in state closely approx mating
to semi barbarism. They lived and thought.
aud acted very much in the style of the Middle
Age, and constantly said and did things which,
although familiar enough among foreign peO-
Piles, were altogether strange as transpirng
among our ow-countrymen, or as uttered in
our own language.
These hunters, trappers, and fishermen,
whose focks aud herds wander during most of
the year almost at will among the wooded
nights, and whose agriculture is of the poorest,
are assailed by snperstitions of the most var-
GUS origin. Whatever was original, but has
now become eGcte among the several races of
the plains. assembled the mountains and yet
survives in wild and -incongruous forms Of dis.
torted fancy. Within the wide domain of these
solictudes
IAN army of phantoms vast and wan
Beieaguers the human soul.'
The savage devices Of the negro to propitiate
the devil, and those ancient forms of Obi. by
which sick ness and death are induced, exist
side by side with the magic of medieval Europe
- charms, phlters, eXorcisms, amuiets, the
doctrine of signatures in nature, filth phar
macy, stellar influences, and the transference
of diopatnic or contagious ailments.
Mingled with this offspring OF misconstruc-
ton and false inference is the world old ghost
| theory Of savagery ywhere-Greek iycan
thrOpy, or the transformation of human beings
into beasts, the animal sacrifices Of the early
Celts omens unearthly interferences for good
or evil in the affairs of life tho perpetual
potency of malign powers of darkness. and an
unfaltering faith in the personality of inexpli-
cable manifestations of physical force.
There was a total eclipse Of the moon last
Autumn, and it occasioned nearly as much con-
sternalion as it could have done upon the
banks of the Congo. People congregated in
the cabins to keep each other in countenance,
aud while the earths shadow encroached upon
the lunar disk men and women warned the
writer not to provoke the demons of the night
by going without They sat around hearth
| heaped high with blazing logs, and in accounts
OF conviction which did not fail to make them
impressive they related experiences which one
would have to go far to equal in this age.
One told of the bleeding phantom horse of
the Smoky Noun t;iins, of the white spectral
stag of the Seqnatchie, and of the headess bull
and black and deadly dog of the Chatata. An
other related that riding late by deserted
house where cruel murder had been com.
mitted he saw the fiery Jock muh- thorn
hover upon the margin of a stream in front;
that his horse, sweating and trembling with
terror. had been rened back by Invisible
hands, and that, as shaking off in his despera-
ton the overpowing presence which had
palsied him, and calling on God for aid, he
dashed forward nlo the water, a shrek burst
upon his ear that wonld haunt him to his last
hour. t.
Still another said that his brother, watching
late in mill where the neighbors had placed
an old witch whose etigy had been shot with n
silver bullet, and was, therefore, herself des.
perately wounded he3 was disturbed in the
~ "A VAfaran