Focus goes from trail to history vs. heritage

Fannon was among speakers at A Boone Gathering on March 11 at the Wilkes Heritage Museum in Wilkesboro, organized by the N.C. Daniel Boone Heritage Trail. Also during the event, Daniel Boone descendant Robert Crum presented written evidence showing that Boone and his siblings lived with their parents, Squire and Sarah Boone, on land that includes what now is Boone Cave Park on the Yadkin River in Davidson County. Lee Crook spoke about the park’s history.

Fannon said that unlike Crum’s experience with Boone Cave Park, he found no evidence of buffalo trails in Watauga or nearby when he searched through historical written accounts and records of Watauga and counties it was part of before it was created in 1849.

The Boone native said he found a detailed description of remains of a buffalo trail in Watauga in 1976, written by Boone resident Clyde C. Miller as part of Watauga’s observance of the nation’s bicentennial. Miller described the trail’s route in northern Watauga, using statements of many residents living nearby he interviewed and mentioned.

Miller identified people living near the buffalo trail as far back as the late 1700s in his narrative on the route from Wilkes County into Watauga at Deep Gap and westward through the Brownwood, Castle Ford, Green Valley and Meat Camp sections, Rich Mountain Gap and Zionville before entering Tennessee and going on to Trade, Tenn.

Fannon found a map of the route identified by Miller in a 1976 issue of the Watauga Democrat. He didn’t question the veracity of Miller’s information, but said it was based on oral history gathered in 1976 and this wasn’t enough for a master’s thesis. Fannon had already invested substantial time on this theme and was becoming frustrated about his lack of progress. Prospects for Fannon’s master’s thesis topic worsened when he realized the route of a group of Moravians seeking land in 1752 crossed the buffalo trail route identified by Miller. Bishop Spangenberg led the Moravians and recorded their route in his diary.

Fannon said the account in the diary indicated that they camped on land now part of the Boone Golf Course and followed the South Fork of the New River, including a section described in the diary as curving in all directions of a compass. Fannon said they should have reached the buffalo trail if it existed soon after passing this horseshoe-shaped section of river. He said Spangenberg likely would have mentioned finding the buffalo trail in his diary because it would have provided them the path out of the mountains they were seeking. They went in this eastward direction, reaching Lewis Fork Creek in what now is Wilkes and following it to the Yadkin River. No trail is mentioned.

Spangenberg wrote in his diary that the land they passed through in what now is Watauga was “frequented by buffalo, whose tracks are everywhere, and can often be followed with profit. Frequently, however, a man cannot travel them, for they go through thick and thin, through morass and deep water, and up and down banks so steep that a man could fall down but neither ride nor walk!” There are other written references to buffalo in North Carolina in the 1600s and 1700s. Fannon conferred with his thesis advisor and determined, “What we are looking at now is the distinction of history vs. heritage.” He said heritage is the story, often based on oral history, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t exist.

“History is what we can demonstrate to exist.” This became the theme of his master’s thesis. “I eventually came to the conclusion that a lot of these great stories have basis in fact, but until you do the research and do the history, you’re kind of flying blind.”

Fannon said he believes there was a buffalo trail in Watauga, but not as often represented. “Probably the route was in use as a game trail on and off maybe for a few thousand years, but not heavily used.” He said it possibly was the trail to where buffalo were hunted in Kentucky or other states.

He added, “I also found that a lot of research has been done on buffalo. They were in North Carolina, but they had just started to migrate cross the mountains” in the mid-1700s. “Then, Europeans came with firearms and ran buffalo back across the mountains” to Kentucky. He said there are a few accounts of buffalo being hunted in North Carolina, “but there weren’t many” of the animals. “We didn’t have big herds of buffalo.” There likely would have been buffalo herds here if Europeans had arrived about 500 years later, he added. “The native Americans hadn’t developed the technology to really hunt something that big here.” He said native Americans bows on the East Coast were adequate for deer but not buffalo. He said lack of buffalo in Cherokee mythology shows they weren’t well established in this region. Local place names with buffalo and elk likely resulted from it being unusual to see one of the animals instead of large numbers of them being present.

Fannon teaches a course titled “Geography of North Carolina in the Colonial Period” in the first year seminar program at Appalachian. In addition to his Master’s Degree from Appalachian, he has a Doctorate Degree in physical geography from UNC-Greensboro and a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Wake Forest University. Fannon is a former riverkeeper for the Yadkin River.