Americanizing the Ozarks

Abstract

Chapter 3 charts the massive wave of Anglo-American settlement that populated the region between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. The majority of these settlers came from Appalachia and the greater Upland South – from places like East and Middle Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, and western and Piedmont North Carolina – and brought with them folkways that blended European customs and Native American practices. This chapter questions the popular notion of the Ozarks as a haven for the Scots-Irish and suggests instead the ethnic diversity that lay behind white settlement in the region. In addition, chapter 3 chronicles the views of early travelers in the Ozarks and the seeds of the backwoods image that would come to characterize the region.