The Appalachian mountains are the oldest mountain range in North America. The shifting of the American and the African tectonic plates resulted in a collision known as the Appalachian Orogeny, which forms a pointed wedge of sharp rock that extends as far north as modern-day New York and reaches down to modern-day Mississippi. Over the course of 270 million years, weather, wind, and ocean waves beat this wedge into the soft hills, tree-covered ridges, and swaths of biodiverse landscape we know today as Appalachia. In addition to being filled with wide arrays of resilient plants and animals, this region is also home to a lesser-known diversity—one that is often overshadowed by the narrative of Appalachia as a community of poor White mountaineers.
Early Settlement and the Second Kingdom
Appalachia is a small giant. Ecologically speaking, it contains the highest amount of endemic plant and animal species in North America. The collision that created the Appalachian mountain range placed so much pressure and heat on the rocks, that it transformed the organic matter that existed between the tectonic plates hundreds of millions of years ago (old bogs and dead animals) into a literal mountain of coal. This coal has powered the country for over a century. The geological diversity of the region from limestone and karst cave formations to deciduous forests and bubbling river ecosystems, present a number of habitat types for an even more diverse collection of vertebrate and invertebrate species.
Pre-colonization, the Cherokee called Appalachia home, often sharing the landscape with members of the Iroquois, Powhatan, and Shawnee peoples. As colonizers came through, claiming the landscape and forcing these tribes westward and stripping them of their homelands and regional foundations, they brought with them enslaved Africans whose traditions, music, and food meshed with Cherokee practices to form the backbone of modern-day Appalachian culture. In North Carolina’s Appalachian range, enslaved Africans spent their lives on small farms in the fertile mountain valleys of the region, introducing melons, okra, peanuts, yams, and medicinal herbs to the landscape.
In the Catoctin Mountains on the easternmost part of the Blueridge mountains in Northern Virginia, many enslaved Black people brought the much sought-after knowledge of ironworking from Africa, launching Appalachia into a base for the American iron industry. And perhaps one of the most famous contributions of African Americans to Appalachian culture is bluegrass music and the creation of the five-string banjo, thought to be inspired by West African hide-covered string instruments such as the ngoni and the xalam.