Mountaineers Are Always Free: Heritage, Dissent, and a West Virginia Icon

Abstract

The Mountaineer statue has stood on the main campus of West Virginia University (WVU) for most of my life. Like most West Virginians, I view the Mountaineer not simply as a college mascot, but as an emblem of our state and the Appalachian region. For this reason, I was thrilled with Rosemary V. Hathaway's book-length examination of the iconic mountaineer. Much more than a social history of WVU's mascot, Hathaway's impressive multi-method study draws upon archival, historical, and ethnographic methods to create a text that explores the social history of the idea of the mountaineer since the late eighteenth century.The book begins by examining the evolution of the various representations of people in Appalachia, then moves toward the more West Virginia/WVU-specific examples. Chapter 1 emphasizes that historic images of Appalachian people lack nuance and tend toward polar extremes: mountain people were either presented as either rural rubes or self-reliant frontiersmen. Hathaway masterfully traces the roots of Appalachian stereotypes and their evolution. Thus, the nineteenth-century lazy, violent, drunkards were variously identified as “squatters,” “crackers,” “white trash,” or “hillbillies.” These images contrasted with the more palatable “backwoodsman” and “frontiersman” embodied in the personas of men like Davy Crockett, before finally evolving to the image of the mountaineer we know today. This chapter comprehensively examines Appalachian imagery to date and should be required reading for any course in Appalachian studies and folklore.By the early 1900s, as industrial development and expansion of the coal industry displaced the frontier lifestyle, the idea of a frontiersman mountaineer was already fading into the past as a source of nostalgia. Timber and coal companies purchased and clear-cut virgin forests and other wide swaths of land, making the frontier way of life a thing of the past. Within this context, chapter 2 takes on the mountaineer imagery in the state of West Virginia and WVU more specifically, when the moniker “West Virginia University Mountaineers” was adopted in 1915.In this chapter, we see a conscious shaping of Appalachian and West Virginia identity. As the antithesis of “white trash,” the mountaineer embodied the idea that mountain whites were descendants of pure Anglo-Saxons. However, this idea of the mountaineer differed from popular images of the hillbilly, as manifested in music genres, comics, and film. Drawing on those images, WVU students adopted hillbilly imagery—wearing slouch hats, bib overalls, and toting jugs of moonshine. Nevertheless, when the university selected the official Mountaineer mascot and costume in 1934, it was the frontiersman wearing buckskins and a coonskin cap. Still, students continued to don hillbilly garb at official university events like homecoming competitions. As Hathaway notes, the hillbilly image represented to students more than an uncouth or uncivilized symbol, but rather functioned as a trickster figure in campus competitions and antics. It was not until the 1950s that the frontier ideal permanently replaced the hillbilly mountaineer, due largely to the revival of Davy Crockett as a popular culture hero. Here, Hathaway astutely points out that these images traded one type of popular culture icon (the Disney Davy Crockett) for another (the hillbilly).Chapter 3 considers the image of the Mountaineer at WVU during the 1960s—a time of cultural turmoil across campuses and the nation as Americans protested the conflict in Vietnam. Hathaway's deep exploration of student demonstrations and responses to Vietnam examines the long-forgotten history of student war protest on WVU's campus, including interviews with two Mountaineers from the 1960s, documenting their experiences at protests in response to the Kent State shootings. In addition to uncovering forgotten details about the campus in the Vietnam-era, the chapter notes the disarming of the Mountaineer in 1968 after a mascot accidently shot off his finger. From that point until 1980, when the university unveiled a new football stadium, the Mountaineer was allowed to carry but not fire their musket.It was not until 1990 that a woman represented the Mountaineer, and chapter 4 explores the underlying tensions of students and fans after this announcement. The selection of Natalie Tennant ushered in a new era that highlighted an unsavory response to a woman taking on the role. From the moment of her audition, Tennant was booed and told to “go back to the kitchen.” This was the 1990s, a time when strong women in leadership were reviled for taking on roles conventionally dominated by (typically white) men. In this respect, the response at WVU was mirrored in the nation's response to First Lady Hillary Clinton, who was called several names, including “feminazi,” for assuming a leadership role in her husband's administration. Hathaway's research demonstrates the strength and courage Tennant and her successor, Rebecca Durst (the second woman Mountaineer who served in 2009–2010), displayed, despite the sexist responses.Hathaway's approach to Tennent's and Durst's experiences is both nuanced and perceptive. She documents the lively student debates that took place on campus in response to women serving as the Mountaineer. Through letters to the editor of the WVU student newspaper (in 1990) and on Facebook (in 2009), students debated how opposing a woman Mountaineer harkened back to the ignorant hillbilly stereotype that West Virginians have worked to shed for decades. In contrasting the experiences of the two women, Tennant faced stronger opposition overall, but managed to charm her detractors, striking a balance between the perceived masculine role as a mountaineer (handy with the musket, able to lead a raucous cheer, doing push-ups after each touchdown) and her feminine appeal. Durst encountered less criticism, but was constantly sexualized by male fans as the “hot girl” and repeatedly asked to “take it off” or don a buckskin bikini. Hathaway argues that 20 years after the first woman mountaineer, fans could reconcile themselves to a woman in the role only so long as they could objectify her body.The book's fifth and final chapter examines WVU's “Mountaineers Go First” campaign to rebrand Mountaineer images as symbols of all members of the diverse university community. After several events threatened to damage the university's reputation—including nationally televised couch burnings, a drunken St. Patrick's Day YouTube special, and an alcohol poisoning that led to a student death—university administrators undertook a rebranding to “take our university back.” These events coincided with a resurgence of the hillbilly motif in television and in J. D. Vance's problematic memoir Hillbilly Elegy (2016).In addition to comprehensive signage around campus, the campaign included a stunning video that aired on national television during football and basketball games and was posted on the university's Facebook page. The spot uses strong visuals that represent the best that WVU can offer—education, community, and outdoor adventures, all undertaken by a diverse student body. In this context, Hathaway argues that WVU reconstituted the Mountaineer's body, moving away from the long-term image of a bearded white male and toward the actual students who make up the university's community.Mountaineers Are Always Free: Heritage, Dissent, and a West Virginia Icon is a valuable addition for Appalachian studies and folklore, and for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the social history of the mountaineer image. The book also offers an insightful analysis of the folk history of West Virginia University in the twentieth century, astutely analyzing the interpretation of university identity through the mascot from the perspectives of students and university administrators.