What an important work this is! The editors started by producing an annotated bibliography, Terra Incognita: An Annotated Bibliography of the Great Smoky Mountains, 1544-1934, published by UT Press in 2013. In the meantime they have read and pondered their selections and have come up with what they consider the most significant accounts of the Smokies before the National Park was established. The earliest is Alexander Longe’s “A Small Postscript on the Ways and Maners of the Indians called Charikees” (1725). Only three are by natives: Wayne Williams’ “After Bruin in the Great Smokies” (1923), Samuel Hunnicutt’s excerpt from his Twenty Years of Hunting and Fishing in the Great Smoky Mountains (1926) and John W. Oliver’s “From Cades Cove to Indian Gap.” (1931). On each topic, the readings are arranged in chronological order, and the topics range from the Cherokees to the Civil War to fiction to Moonshine to Bear Hunting to Natural History to Tourism to Education to Religion to History to Culture to Exploration. All three editor are current or retired academic librarians.
Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2019. 447 pages. Trade paperback.