Chapter 2: Canebrake

 


https://explorekyhistory.ky.gov/files/show/1997



      "If I was a snake I'd have bit you," blurts old Benny to a lithe young woman hacking her way towards him in the noonday sun finally cutting through the fog on the upper reaches of Reed Branch.  

"So sorry," she blurts while stumbling back and dropping the blade from her right hand and a bundle of thick stems from under her left arm. 

"Cane's free for the taking down on Cow Creek," he offers, scrambling to gather up the brown stalks. 

"Tis our first harvest this side of the ridge in many a year," she explains, wiping a sweaty brow on the sleeve of her plain linen dress.



     Benjamin Reed had selected these particular three-hundred acres as his land grant from the vast Preston holdings in the mountains of western Virginia and Kentucky partly because of the thick canebrakes. Dried stalks of the native bamboo plentiful along waterways were used for roofing and fencing, and the leaves were delectable forage for bison, elk, and deer, not to mention the horses and cows he and Charity planned to husband. 

     The native Americans of the region also valued the stands of Arundinaria gigantia for arrow and spear making. As with other grasslands, the canebrakes were often shared by different tribes as a hunting resource, and larger patches were burned every few years to remove shrubs and trees that were less fire resistant. 

     The Kentucky canebrakes disappeared quickly with European settlement. Overgrazing was common initially, and failure to recognize the importance of controlled burns allowed field crops of corn and sorghum to spread into the bottom lands. Within a generation the canebrake ecosystem was mostly gone.


 

    "Well take these and a few more from here," Benny concedes, reaching her the shoots she had already cut. "Get the rest down below."

"Much obliged," answers the tall teenager while squatting to retrieve the cane knife from the chaff. "I'll get ma back yonder."

"What's your mother's name, young lady?" the old man queries, stretching his tall frame by standing on tiptoe to attempt and fail to peer over the grass tops. "I'm Benjamin Reed from this here branch."

"We're Sizemores from over at Licking Station," she declares, giving him a tentative smile and pointing her blade over the hill to the east. "Ma's Sally and pa back over the ridge is Goldenhawk."

It's when she turns to look back through the vertical bars of bamboo that Benny notices a long black braid trailing down her back and glistening in the last rays of Indian summer.


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