Oconaluftee: The History of a Smoky Mountain Valley by Elizabeth Giddens (review)

Reviewed by: Oconaluftee: The History of a Smoky Mountain Valley by Elizabeth Giddens F. Evan Nooe Oconaluftee: The History of a Smoky Mountain Valley. By Elizabeth Giddens. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2023. Pp. xvi, 287. Paper, $25.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-7341-7; cloth, $99.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-7340-0.) In Oconaluftee: The History of a Smoky Mountain Valley, professor of English and professional writing Elizabeth Giddens narrates the long history of the Oconaluftee River Valley in the mountains of western North Carolina. She describes the valley as emblematic of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, stating that "everything that happened in the park's history happened here, one way or another" (p. 3). Giddens positions her account of the valley in contrast to the 1922 assertion by journalist Horace Kephart that it was an unspoiled and uninhabited Eden prior to the late nineteenth century. Giddens articulates that, while the valley was historically remote, its occupants were never isolated. Oconaluftee's location, Giddens points out, placed its residents within transformational events across time, and depictions of white families as self-sufficient yeoman farmers were primarily a nostalgic romanticization. [End Page 400] In a sweeping account, Giddens covers the history of the valley to the mid-twentieth century. The book is structured chronologically over thirteen chapters prefaced by the author's personal observations and reminiscences of various excursions in the national park. Giddens begins by paralleling Cherokee legends of the valley's formation with geological investigations. She addresses the valley's precontact past in the first two chapters and condenses Oconaluftee's colonial-era history into a single chapter. Much of the text considers the valley's nineteenth-century history and focuses on the settler experience, but it intertwines the period's transformational impact on Cherokee and Black residents. The final chapters address the expansion of commercial logging, the displacement of Oconaluftee's residents, and the formation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The history of the Oconaluftee Valley offers an opportunity to examine the triracial dynamics of the Appalachian South and the changes taking place within and between white, Black, and Native communities. Giddens's premise that remote locations such as Oconaluftee were never isolated settlements has been previously demonstrated by multiple generations of historians. She narrates intersecting episodes between local and regional or national events but largely leverages derivative interpretations rather than offering novel perspectives. For example, chapter 3, on Cherokee towns during the colonial era, is buoyed by the work of historical archaeologist Lance Greene, even including the same block quotations from historical documents found in his earlier work. Later, sections on post–Civil War commercial development miss an opportunity to address connections to New South boosterism in southern Appalachia. Additionally, Giddens does not engage with the expanding scholarship on settler colonialism in the South or with tourism studies. When utilizing historical records, Giddens takes an observational approach, leaving avenues unexplored and perpetuating bias from source material. In one example, Giddens reproduces the minutes of a council meeting by the Wolf Town Cherokees in 1859 that allude to a prohibition on interracial marriage between Cherokee and Black residents. However, the document is presented without analysis. In another example, the author perpetuates the biases of late-nineteenth-century ethnographer James Mooney, arguing that the Cherokees were vulnerable to an 1893 influenza epidemic because, in Giddens's words, they "were prone to consumption and of small stature" (p. 181). Giddens is at her best in painting vivid pictures of the landscape, describing environmental transformations, and eliciting a sentimental investment in Oconaluftee through her own reminiscences. The book has the potential to entertain popular audiences, particularly tourists visiting western North Carolina. Academic audiences, especially historians and Native studies scholars, will find utilizing Oconaluftee less compelling. Giddens's observational approach to the history of the valley results in a monograph detached from current scholarly trends and does not offer new interpretations of its source material. [End Page 401] F.