A Place Called Wolf Creek Indian Village Part 1

This post is long overdue. I was realizing that before I started delving into the actual history of what I had learned about Native Americans in our area, I need to tell the story of Wolf Creek Indian village. It is from this place that I dearly love, having a job there I dearly loved, (that heartbroken I had to quit because of my illnesses), that my "scant" knowledge learned about the first people in Bland County and in Appalachia springs from.

This will be a multi-part post. I have much to say about Wolf Creek Indian Village. The story of this village is just a small part of the history of the Native Americans in Southwest Virginia itself. But I can tell you that through this little village, which now has a museum dedicated to it, so much has been learned even if it is just a tiny part of the vast THOUSANDS of years of history of the people who first inhabited this continent yet to be explored.

Photos from the Department of Historic Resources Collections
This is the field in 1970 before the excavation.

Wolf Creek Indian Village and Museum is based on an actual archeology site. The village was discovered and known about long before the interstate was built. Especially by a man named Brown Johnston owned the farm on which it was found. When he would plow the field where the village was located, artifacts would make their way to the surface and turn up. It is said he once found pieces of bone and skull and that's when he mostly stopped plowing and started using the field only as a hay field or permanent pasture.

In 1967, the state had already began the project of constructing Interstate 77 through the mountains of our area. They had plans to construct two tunnels through the mountains and a long four lane highway through Bland County, thus we are known as the land between the tunnels. We like to say we were so isolated it took two tunnels to reach us!

A local resident named Wayne Richardson had an avid interest in Native American history and was an artifact hunter. The Brown Johnston farm was one spot that he thought was a village site. He had found periwinkle beads, shell artifacts, deer bone tools, and pottery shards. This knowledge with the story of human bones found suggested to him it was more than just a hunting camp.

The plan for the interstate called for rerouting Wolf Creek right through the archaeology site field. Wayne Richardson contacted Howard MacCord, who was the acting quasi state archaeologist (Department of Historic Resources as we know now was not quite formed)  and informed him that the road would be destroying what he thought was a village site with human burials.

You have to realize this is before NAGPRA had some teeth. It is before any laws or considerations or sensitivity were taken for constructing through Native American burial sites.  It took an uprising of Native Americans to get those laws through. But in the late 1960's the best anyone could do was to try to divert the construction or at least have them research and document the site.  Archaeology is basically the telling of history by what is found in the ground and tries to reconstruct that history.

We in Appalachia have lost so much history. In Appalachia, many of the old European home places are where Natives once lived. In this mountainous region, Native Americans settled on the best, most fertile ground with nearby water sources. Europeans recognized these places also and so the best places were then settled on top of by Europeans.

Another site in Bland County called the Newberry-Tate site is a prime example of that. A home was built during early European immigration and placed in the middle of a site that archaeologist believe was inhabited and re-inhabited by Native Americans for about 3000 years.

Wolf Creek's Brown Johnston site was unique in many ways. First of all it was the first state sanctioned archeology site in Bland County. It's number is 44-BD-1, which stands for 44, the state number, BD is Bland County and 1....first site ever recorded officially in Bland County. Being the first site attests to the outcry by locals to try to save it.  Most of the time not much attention was being paid to these sites in the mountains by the state. More attention was paid to places around Jamestown or the coastal sites.

It took men like Wayne Richardson and E.E. Jones and a few others constantly pushing to save and document these Native American historical sites in Southwest Virginia before they were destroyed.  I think the number of sites documented by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources in Bland County today is over 50.

E.E. Jones and Howard MacCord performed a test dig and found a large fire pit. The main pit represented in the recreated village today. The state was not going to divert their plans to re-route the creek to put the interstate through. It was cheaper to re-route the creek than to build another bridge. They gave Howard MacCord just 30 days to perform an archaeological dig and remove any burials.

By today's standards what he had to do to save what he could was appalling in archeology methodology. He had to work at a feverish pace. He had to employ a road grader to remove the top layers of soil to save time. I have heard stories from those who participated who said by the end of the dig, they worked in the dark with their car head lights pointed toward the site to try to save as much as they could from the highway bulldozers.

But even with all the faults of the methodology what they saved was short of a miracle and what emerged about the village was remarkable. First of all they mapped an entire village site which is VERY rare in these mountains. No European house or barn or road had been built in the middle of it before this dig. Secondly, it was determined to be an agricultural farming village, that included trade items such as sea shell gorgets.

The artifacts found, with the size of the village, with carbon dating, suggests the village consisting of about 100 people existed for 5 to 10 years between 1490 AD and 1530 AD.  44BD1, with other sites in the area, kind of blows away the uninhabited wilderness concept of Appalachia was just a hunting ground for the Native Americans. Later research expounds and explains that further which also explains a bit clearer the later history of the area and how things unfolded as they did.

In part two I will talk about how I came to be at Wolf Creek Indian Village, the reconstruction and the valuable lessons I see the village teaches us today. 

Sources: Archaeological Society of Virginia June 1971 Quarterly Bulletin - Brown Johnston Site by H.A. MacCord, Sr.

Photos are from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources Collection on 44BD1 - Brown Johnston site.

Wolf Creek Indian Village and Museum

A Place Called Wolf Creek Indian Village Part 2

A Place Called Wolf Creek Indian Village Part 3

A Place Called Wolf Creek Indian Village Part 4

West Virginia Coon Hunters String Band - Grand Daddy at The Bristol Sessions

In Search of Grand Dad's Music

View from the North Side of Big Walker Mountain

My grandfather, Wesley "Bane" Boyles was born August 5th, 1905 in a house on the north side of Walker's Mountain in Bland County, Virginia, just over the Smyth County line. Being one of seven children, he was the son of Geneva "Alice" Waddell Boyles and Alfred "Doc" Boyles. The family roots ran deep in the Appalachian Mountains since the late 1700's. His ancestors hailed from Western North Carolina to Southern West Virginia.

According to oral tradition, his father "Doc" Boyles played the fiddle and Bane at the age of three or four begged to be taught to play. His father thought him too young but his mother relented and allowed him to play his father's fiddle while his father was at work. His oldest sister said he was sawing out tunes by the age of six.

His mother related the story to his daughter Lena and said, "he always played the songs so fast in those days." One day she asked him why he was playing so fast and Bane told her he had to learn to play as many tunes as he could before his father got home.

Bane's father, Doc Boyles, in those days, worked for the Groseclose family (the very ones who began the Future Farmers of America Organization) at their store and on the Groseclose farm just outside of Ceres in Bland County, Virginia.

Bane, his brothers and sisters helped the family eke out a subsistence living on the small farm they were living way up on Walker's mountain. Bane Boyles always joked where he lived as a boy the mountains were so steep, his brothers and sisters were born with one leg shorter than the other, the cows had two legs shorter and when you planted potatoes, when it was time to harvest, you just had to dig a hole at the bottom of the hill and they would roll out.

The whole family was musical. According to his sister, my great Aunt Mable, the children all attended a church at Nebo called Zion Methodist Church just across the Smyth Co. line with their mother and her family.(There are five generations of family buried in that church cemetery including Grand daddy Bane.) All sang in the choir.

But Bane Boyles was a little different from the rest of the family. Music was his passion. By the time Bane Boyles was a teenager he had learned how to play all the old mountain reels and how to call a square dance. He was called on to play many a barn dance, or family get togethers in the area.

In the 1920s the family moved to Bluefield, West Virginia. Bane worked odd jobs and continued to play music at barn dances, bars anywhere he could but in a larger area around Bluefield. In August of 1927, he was playing with a band that called themselves the "West Virginia Coon Hunters'.  They all seem to live around the Rogers Street area of Bluefield at that time.


West Virginia Coon Hunters 1927, Standing Left to Right Fred Belcher, Clyde Meadows, Jim Brown, Vernal Vest Seated Left to Right: Dutch Stewart, Wesley "Bane" Boyles, Regal Mooney, Fred Pendleton, Joe Stephens. Image Courtesy of  Birthplace of Country Music: Gift of Denise Smith

Front row L to R Bane's sisters Marie, Mable and Annie
Back row his brother Tom and Bane. Not pictured is brother Brown.

I never really knew about his history with the West Virginia Coon Hunters. He never talked about it. We had always heard that Grand Daddy Bane had recorded a record but none of the family realized it was at the now infamous Bristol Sessions, in Bristol Tennessee. In 2002, my Great Aunt Marie, Bane's baby sister, came by the house for a visit. She was leaving her husband and moving to Las Vegas. A bit odd especially since she was pushing 80 years old but Aunt Marie and all the women in our family always were of a very independent mind.

On her way she wanted to drop off a large box of family photos for me. In the box was the picture of the West Virginia Coon Hunters. She just said it was a band that my grandfather had played in. It was a neat photo but I was more interested in the pictures of my great, great, great grandparents just after the Civil War. Talk about a boon to the family history project!

About a year later I was in the doctors office at the clinic and picked up a magazine called Golden Seal about West Virginia history. In it was an article entitled, "On the Trail of a Lost String Band: The West Virginia Coon Hunters" by John Lilly.

I opened the pages and lo and behold was a copy of the picture I had with even more pictures of my grand father with the band and the story of the West Virginia Coon Hunters.

They were looking for information on this band that played at the Bristol Sessions. They had his name as "Bone" Broyles because they could not make out the hand writing on the back of their copy of the photos. The actual record misspelled his name as W.B. Bayles.

I was at the clinic because I had chronic back problems from an old injury, but I was so excited that the Doctor was having a hard time getting out of me what was wrong. I was more interested in knowing if I could have this copy of this magazine!! They let me have it for my health's sake!

I knew absolutely nothing of the Bristol sessions but soon a little research found they are called the sessions that gave birth to country music. Grand dad and the West Virginia Coon Hunters recorded the same day as Jimmy Rodgers. They recorded two songs, Your Blue Eyes Make Me Crazy, and Greasy String. I was amazed I had never heard of grand dad at the Bristol Sessions nor how it was the beginning of the Carter Family and others. Being in tourism I had known about the Virginia Tourism The Crooked Road initiative honoring the music of our area but they took the route south through Galax and missed our neck of the woods. They recently added Big Walker Lookout to the trail....at least grand pap was born on that mountain.

String Band music had become popular in the 1920's. It was different from traditional music in that guitar was added, maybe a mandolin and it had a sort of bluesy quality to it.

Ralph Peer of Victor Records placed an ad in local papers stating they were looking for new talent. He was amazed at the response of the mountain folks coming out of the mountains down to Bristol, Tennessee to record. The Bristol Sessions it is said changed country music history.

Wesley Bane Boyles and Band Norfolk Naval Air Station
Officers Club Image Courtesy of Birthplace of Country
Music: Gift of Denise Smith

West Virginia Coon Hunter's playing of "Your Blue Eyes make me Crazy" is said to be the forerunner of artists such as Bill Monroe and others. Later for a brief time, Grand Daddy even played with Bill Monroe. So my grandfather and the West Virginia Coon Hunter's were there at the very beginning!

Made me wish I could have gone back in time and learned to play the mandolin he tried so hard to teach me. He did teach me a song or two and I am now working on trying to get his versions of a couple of songs recorded because they are not like other versions I've heard. His version of Copper Kettle does not sound like Joan Baez nor Bob Dylan's. Mainly they changed the dialect from the mountain version.

Shortly after recording at the Bristol Sessions Bane was caught transporting and manufacturing illegal liquor and sent to prison thus ending any chances he had of a recording career. The band West Virginia Coon Hunters went on to record several albums and existed for many more years. In those days you had to be pretty clean cut to be in the record business or at least it had to be hidden well. For the family moonshine tales click here.

Before he was arrested, Bane Boyles had fell in love with Stewart Burress daughter, my grandmother Hazel. He left her pregnant and not married when he went to prison. My mother Lena was born in 1929. Hazel, Bane and baby Lena were living with Stewart and grandma Mae in the 1930 Census and all three going by the name Boyles. But Bane Boyles did not marry my grandmother Hazel until 1931.

My mother was in her 40's when she learned the truth when she had to have a copy of her birth certificate. She was so upset she actually rounded her parents up and marched them both before a notary to get the name corrected on her birth certificate.

After prison Bane Boyles did his best to settle down in Bluefield. He learned several trades; he was a barber for a time, an electrical worker and a car mechanic. He just couldn't give up being a rambler playing music and it caused a lot of friction in his marriage with Hazel.

It was said he would work a job long enough to get enough money to hit the road to play music in another town. The marriage suffered between Hazel and Bane because he would travel to every opportunity to play his music, dropping everything, often leaving Hazel with six kids, little money, bill collectors and no word of where he'd left to. As my mother Lena said, "My daddy was a scoundrel, but he could play a damn good fiddle."

Lena Boyles, Wesley Bane Boyles, Jimmy Boyles (banjo) Bill Boyles
Image Courtesy of Birthplace of Country Music :Gift of Denise Smith

Lena was taught to play a guitar and her brother Bill to play the banjo and guitar and her little brother Jimmy was added. It was a time when it was the most settled she said she had ever seen her dad. He taught his children to play so he could take them with him at the area barn dances to help to support the family with his music. It didn't work out very well. The children revolted because of the late nights and not a lot of money really coming to them or the family.

Hazel and Bane separated in the 1960s. They never divorced. Bane continued to play music where ever he could. He was invited many times to play at the local radio stations in and around Bluefield WV with various local acts.

My favorite memory of my grandfather Bane was when my dad was in the military and every vacation we would head "Up Home" from where ever we were stationed to visit with mountain relatives. It is one of my first memories of my grandfather. I was 5 or 6 years old. Grand Daddy Bane was living in Ada, WV. My mother and father took me with them to visit.

The house was just a two-room shack with a porch up on a steep bank. Dad parked the car at the bottom of the hill because it had rained and you could hardly walk to the house much less drive to it. We slipped and slid walking up the hill as I heard the sweetest fiddle music I'd ever heard in my life accompanied by a guitar and a mandolin. When we got to the house I could see my grandfather through the screen door standing playing his fiddle. He always dressed very neatly and he was in a pair of dress pants with a white shirt and shoes so clean and shiny they sparkled.

I just thought he looked so out of place in this mountain shack on a muddy hillside. We stayed most of the night into the wee hours of the morning. Momma picked up the guitar and my daddy even joined in with his harmonica. Everyone picked and played all night, saying things like "Do you remember this one?" or "Have you heard this one?" and someone would begin the tune and the others just joined in.

I still remember jars of moonshine sitting on the kitchen table too. They passed round and round just like the music. I fell asleep on his bed on top of everyone's coats listening to that sweet mountain music as a lullaby.

Grand daddy Bane continued to play his music to his dying day. I remember all us relatives in his later years, taking turns to drive him to every fiddler's convention in the area and just dropping him off. Galax, Roncevert, Lebanon, he'd hit them all if we would drive him. He tell us not to worry he'd find a way home and he always did. Might be a week or three later but he would show back up.

I am still looking for some cassette tapes he told me he was making before I married and moved away. His goal was to record every song he knew on this little cassette player he'd bought at a pawnshop. The last time I visited him in a one-room apartment in Bluefield WV he had boxes of these tapes. No one in the family seems to know what happened to them. I pray they are still out there somewhere.

Bane Boyles died in the Spring of 1975. Grand Daddy Bane told my mother he was so afraid he would be found dead alone in his apartment. I remember she said she prayed with him that the good Lord not allow that to happen. He didn't. Instead Granddaddy Bane died on a creek bank, on a beautiful April day, sitting in a lawn chair fishing with one of his best, long time friends at Grose's Bottom in Bland county.

It was one of his favorite spots to fish. He sat in his chair and his friend thought he was asleep when his line went to bobbing. His friend called out to him but he didn't respond. His friend reeled the fish in and said he caught the biggest fish he'd ever seen come out of Wolf Creek. But Wesley Bane Boyles was dead and didn't get to see it.

Now his fiddle playing is being heard the world over on the Bristol Session series along with such greats as Jimmy Rodgers and Mother Maybelle Carter. He didn't get to see that either but at least I can set the record straight that he with others, were a part of something so big and in his part helped to influence so many and give birth to country music.West Virginia Coon Hunters Greasy String  And Blue Eyes Make Me Crazy

I would love to hear from the other members families and their stories. Also any comments are welcomed.

The Fatigue of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

In dealing with any illness it is the symptoms that make it worse. In this blog, coming up on July 4th, 2013, I have about 9 drafts of articles and each one I have quite a bit of material for. With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, (what they ended up giving me as a diagnosis when I didn't recover from the virus's I had), and heart problems, the worst part is having the energy to put together those ideas while being so tired.  When you are tired the brain fog takes over and so I have to work when my mind is not as tired or the articles won't make sense. Even to me.

I went to my doctor's this week and his frustration is the same as mine. There is no cause for Fibromyalgia nor CFS and thus no cure. All he can do is treat symptoms and those can change on a daily basis. What is the connection to the two diseases or to tick diseases? I was diagnosis with Fibro years ago and laughed at it. I thought it was more my working 2 jobs, while going to school full time with 2 kids and a disabled husband as the cause of aches and tiredness. Worked for years with it before developing full blown Chronic Fatigue Syndrome two years ago.

But research on these illnesses are coming out. Some hope comes through in articles like this: Cause for Fibromyalgia mystery solved. Vascular... imagine that as a possible cause. We have hope that one day the causes and cures will be found. In the meantime I juggle symptoms while trying to live some kind of a normal life.

So I thought I'd list some of the articles I'm working on. My last one...thank goodness I had been working on for a while. Ya'll tell me if this blog gets too disjointed and doesn't make sense. Be my editors so to speak.
Articles In Process:

Jenny Wiley story - Jenny Wiley was a woman who was captured by Indians in 1789 in Bland County, Virginia and taken to Kentucky. Quite a famous case in our area. I was working on that research when I became ill. I am still working on it but writing as I go. It will take a while to get that post up because there are some loose ends and it depends on my brain as to whether what I find makes sense but I am getting there. What I'm learning so far is the official story is a bit flawed and I have to verify those flaws.

Ned Sizemore Clan- You are Native but You Can't Claim That Tribe -  Many folks in my area are kin to Ned Sizemore who was a Native American out of North Carolina. His family applied to claim on several different rolls for benefits and recognition. Each one was quite odd in that none of the commissioners denied they were Native, they just denied them rights of each tribe they said they belong to. A new Melungeon DNA project proves their Native blood line. I'm working on that article to discuss the problems with Native American Appalachian Ancestry and trying to have a connection or recognize that. This one may be two articles. I am toying with that.

Search for Grand Dad's Music. This is the story of my Grandfather Wesley Bane Boyles who was a member of the West Virginia Coon Hunters. A band that played at the infamous Bristol sessions in 1927. The Birth of Country Music. This one is about finished and will be posted first. Mainly because I wrote most of it for the family years ago.

Moonshine Beneath the Pale Moon Light-  Story of moonshiners in my family gathered from news articles and oral history.  I'm trying to record the song Copper Kettle (kind of the family anthem) the way my grandfather taught me. But the old mountain dulcimer won't stay in tune. And these days I sound like a bathtub baritone, great sounding under water!!

Outhouse Stories- Build it Down Wind of the House, Boys -  This one is a further take on the outhouse in Appalachia. With stories gathered from family and friends of their experiences with having to use an outhouse.

Places in our area. Different events places I visit. Have a couple of those in the works. Have to promote our AREA!!

And many, many more.  But I am tired this week. The illness is beating me up pretty good. So I will quit for now. Some have asked why I don't write a book....well I am doing that too... a novel...began years ago.

But I don't know what the future holds. This illness has thrown me for a loop.  It is more important for me if we are going to dispel the myths about Appalachia than Appalachian people are going to have to tell their stories. This is just my family and mine. There are so many good Appalachian bloggers. I really enjoy +Dave Tabler blog, +Gary Holbrook website and Granny Sue the storyteller and antique hunter. Please spread the word and subscribe to all of us. And if you have one about Appalachia let me know. I want to do a list on the side bar to promote that too. Blessings to all.

Taking A Different Path

OK, so it's been a while since I have posted a thing on this blog.  Not that I have many readers. It's my own personal thang!  I have been much to busy outside of my personal sphere, i.e. work, to keep up with this blog.  That is getting ready to change. Sometimes in life you can choose to change things or life happens and it changes for you.  I love my job, obviously but it has been getting more stressful as the years roll on. I've been there 12 years now and have had about 6 new bosses in the last 4 of those 12 years. The job is not stressful. It's hard outdoor/indoor physical labor, is mentally and socially challenging but so rewarding. Not monetarily mind you, as it barely pays the bills. I'd be making more at probably McDonald's. No, I think more stress  arrives in the usual business/office politics than the work ever did. 

Now I also have to face it...I'm not a spring chicken anymore but I like to pretend I am. The last 5 years I have pushed ever harder and worked really long hours for Wolf Creek Indian Village & Museum, in many many capacities, (I learned how to redesign a website, not great but it's there!) because to me it is personal. It is to tell the story of Native Americans in Appalachia. Of a time lost and a people forgotten and the Virginia Indians who are still here. My own people. This to me for 12 years has been worth my time, effort and energy even at the detriment of my pocketbook and health.   Well today a doctor informed me I have leaky heart valves and I need to change my ways. They can fix it but it will be a journey.

I don't know what this new life will look like, but I think I will use this blog to chart the journey.  I've been off work a few days and it's not been a vacation. I don't get those anymore and haven't in 3 years!  I return tomorrow and start anew. There are a few physical things I can't do any longer I know. They were hard before and now I know why!

I want to pick up the research again that is so desperately needed about American Indians in our area. Finish these projects I have. I just made the cutest pair of moccasins for a baby! I think I will post the how to's on line next blog. Share also about the people I know and people I've met through Wolf Creek. It's time .....Time to take a different path!! Stay tuned!!