The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-01-11
THE SHY SANG DICCERS.
Curious Race in the West Virginia
Mountains.
Trom Ia - York Sun.


II read in the sun the other day" said
a New York dealer in roots, 'the item
from Wheeling about Meyer Horkemer
finding twenty-seven and half pounds
OF shot in shipment Of ginseng root he
had received, the discovery Of which
seemed to have surprised him That it
should have strikes me as being odd. for
the loading of ginseng root with shot 10
increase its weight and swell the amount
to be received for it is very old trick
of sang diggers, as every one who has
ever dealt with them ought to know. This
is especially true Of the sangers OF the
West Virginia mountains
Ginseng grows in all the rich upland
woods Of North America from Canada
10 the mountains Of the southern states,
but especially in the Ohio and Mississippi
valleys. 1t grows superabundantly in the
West Virginia mountains, and there the
professional sanger is found in ali his
uniqueness. The sang diggers of Mime
sofa, Pennsylvania, and other states are
usually farmers and their families, who
harvest this wild crop as an incidental,
though profitable. addition to their regu-
lar farm products, but in West Virginia
there are whole communities the jewellers
in which do no other work than digging
ginseng and have no other income than
the proceeds of the sale of the root. 1t
is probably hardly necessary to say that
these sangers are of d low order of HUI
manity. There are scattering. nomadic
tribes of them in other parts of the state,
but in the isolated counties of Green
briar, Webster, Pendeton and Nicholas,
a race of these people have a fixed habi-
tation. They are a people by themselves,
and a curious one. Their origin is I'M
IL, I
boy in Virginia. years before the war.
hearing the old negro mammies speak
almost in whispers of the mysterious
sangers OF the mountains. They We're
described as eIfish beings, who lUrked in
the Businesses, always on the watch for
fat negro babies, which they would carry
away - their inaccessible haunts, there
TO roast ana eat them. They also had
eagles that did their bidding, and when
it was not convenient for them to secure
a baby themselves they sent an eagle to
sWoop down and snatch a pickaninny
from where it might be sleeping in the
sun and bear it away to the sangers. The
eagles, too, always shared in the feast.
The tales the old slave women used TO
tell of the horrible things the sangers
had done and would do to bad boys and
girls kept my young blood in a state of
continuous chill, and kept me from many
bit of juvenile mischief. The sanger
Was Il most euEEludl bOES man. bh Jul
plantation, at least.
But the true Sanger Is far from being
the caVe-dwelling little demon of slave
day lore. Instead of subsisting on roast
pickaninny he is satisfied with fried bacon
and corn bread. Groundhog coon, and
'possum he INDUCES il occasionally, if ne
feels like going out and setting traps for
them There are deer and bear a plenty
in the mountains, but the Sanger is no
hunter. He does not take to gun, yet
shot is always among the supplies he or
ders in return for his ginseng. He is an
expert fisherman, though. and follows
the rare trout streams of his habitat with
great results. 1t is declared to be a fact,
but Of this have no personal knowledge,
although / have no doubt 1t is true. that
the young of owls and eagles, young
skunks, the rattlesnakes. are by no
means rarities in the Sanger's larder. And
vet. strange as it may seem. he looks
with horror upon frogs as food.
The Sangers of that Particular part of
West V irginia are of small stature, a five
footer being an average sized man.
They are tough, tireless, aud agile. They