Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia

On route to Jolo, Covington points out that he is retracing the historical route the snakehandlers’ ancestors would have taken in their descent down the coast to Alabama. Appalachian immigrants who arrived from North Britain and Ireland in the mid-1700s were discriminated against along the coast of North America by the Quakers, for their differences in religion, social status, manner of dress, and temperament. Quakers encouraged them to move to the western frontier, rather than welcoming them into their own communities—tempting them with the promise of temperate climates, plentiful water, and places for pasture once land was cleared in places such as the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. These border regions would have felt a lot more like home to these Britons. However, what they did not tell the poor immigrants was that they would need to cross the difficult terrain of the Appalachian Mountains in order to reach the inland valleys. As a result, many Britons who set off for these promised lands ended up remaining in the mountains, by necessity or force, re-creating the spirit of the “tight-knit warrior clans” (92) they were accustomed to favoring in their homelands.

In this way, historian David Hackett Fischer explains that the culture that developed in the Appalachians stayed more similar to the character of life along the border between Scotland and England: “The Scotch-Irish had brought few material possessions with them, but they did bring their feuds, their language, and their love of music, strong drink, and sexual adventure” (86). Fear of outsiders and hostility toward established religions—i.e. using the term “People of the New Light” to distance themselves from Calvinism’s rigidity—also motivated the settlers to stay in the mountains where they were “poor but self-sufficient” (87). After generations lived in the hills in relative isolation, they found that a secularized, industrialized society had built up around them, and when they tried to assimilate to it through mining and factory work, it almost broke them.

Not only do the mountains serve as a physical barrier in the text, they must also be spiritually surmounted in order for the narrator to grow and move on from his rose-colored expectations of serpent handling. Covington also uses mountain imagery, or more generally, natural vistas, as a backdrop to his more speculative passages. This excuses him to wax lyrically on a topic as he gazes out to the horizon while standing outside of a snake-holding sermon, taking in fresh air while everyone inside attempts to take on spirits.