The Appalachian Mountain range is the oldest in America These Mountains form the oldest mountain chain in North America. They stretch for 1,500 miles in Canada and the United States. Geologists estimate that the mountains are 480 million years old.

It forms one of the great floral provinces of the Earth. There are the trees that bear luxuriant bloom, such as serviceberry, redbud, hawthorn, tulip tree, dogwood, locust, sourwood, and many others. Among the numerous shrubs with particularly showy flowers are the rhododendron, azalea, and mountain laurel.

Beautiful trees that produce high quality lumber can be found throughout each area. But in general you will find that trees grown in the Northern region produce lumber with tighter grain patterns and deeper color compared to their equivalent from the Southern region.

Appalachians are very independent and very content with the places they live. They are very close to nature and have a deeply held belief in God. They are friendly, kind and helpful to one another, taking care of the needs of others. Appalachians also have a strong sense of what is right and what ought to be.

1930s. Author James Crissmman claims that reports from the 1930s indicate that residents of the Appalachian Mountains practised a form of ritualistic cannibalism, during which cannibals ate parts of their dead relatives in order to honour them.

Cannibalism has recently been both practised and fiercely condemned in several wars, especially in Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was still practised in Papua New Guinea as of 2012, for cultural reasons and in ritual as well as in war in various Melanesian tribes.

Many in the Donner Party refused to cannibalize at the cost of their lives. No cannibalism took place among the Donner Party members trapped by the lake until at least late February, after at least 13 people starved and died.

Appalachia (/ˌæpəˈlætʃə, -leɪtʃə, -leɪʃə/) is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York State to northern Alabama and Georgia.

Central Appalachians, for example, experience the most severe poverty, which is partially due to the area’s isolation from urban growth centers. The area’s rugged terrain and isolation from urban centers has also resulted in a distinct regional culture.

Over the generations, most individuals of the group called Melungeon were persons of mixed European and African descent, sometimes also with Native American ancestry, whose ancestors had been free in colonial Virginia.

The Region’s 25 million residents live in parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, and all of West Virginia.

Melungeons are descendants of people of mixed ethnic ancestry who, before the end of the eighteenth century, were discovered living in limited areas of what is now the southeastern United States, notably in the Appalachian Mountains near the point where Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina converge.

Numerous people of mixed race have lived in a section of Orangeburg County near Holly Hill called Crane Pond. The term “brass ankles” generally was applied to those of mixed ancestry. They often had a large majority of white ancestry and would have been considered legally white in early 19th-century society.

Similarly, the term “mulatto” – mulato in Spanish – commonly refers to a mixed-race ancestry that includes white European and black African roots. Across Latin America, these are the two terms most commonly used to describe people of mixed-race background.

The Cherokee Indians had many Native American villages spread out along the Tennessee River which runs through the Appalachian Mountains and owned territory that stretched from Virginia to the southeastern part of the United States.

Born around 1596, Pocahontas was the daughter of Wahunsenaca (also known as Powhatan), the powerful chief of the Powhatans, a Native American group that inhabited the Chesapeake Bay region.

Tribes and Bands of Kentucky

• Cherokee.
• Chickasaw.
• Delaware.
• Mosopelea.
• Shawnee.
• Wyandot.
• Yuchi.

land of tomorrow

31,335 Native Americans

Cherokee Indians are believed to have lived and hunted in what became Kentucky for hundreds of years before the first known white explorers made their way through the mountain passes. At Sycamore Shoals, the Cherokees signed a treaty that relinquished lands west of the Kentucky River to the land company.

Its name perhaps derives from an Iroquois word for “prairie.” By 1792, when Kentucky was admitted as the 15th state of the union—the first west of the Appalachian Mountains—it had drawn nearly 73,000 settlers.

Here’s an insider’s look at Kentucky’s incredible national parks.

• MAMMOTH CAVE NATIONAL PARK. David Fulmer.
• ABRAHAM LINCOLN BIRTHPLACE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK.
• BIG SOUTH FORK NATIONAL RIVER AND RECREATION AREA.
• CUMBERLAND GAP NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK.
• FORT DONELSON NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD.
• TRAIL OF TEARS NATIONAL HISTORIC TRAIL.