North Carolina Office of Archives and History

Southern Hunting in Black and White: Nature, History, and Ritual in a Carolina Communityby Stuart A. MarksReview by: Joe A. MobleyThe North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 69, No. 1 (JANUARY 1992), pp. 104-105Published by: North Carolina Office of Archives and HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23520857 .

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104 Book Reviews

the state. In light of the lack of a good county history, the notes, bibliography, and

appendixes that accompany Butchko's historical essay are thorough and helpful. Some

of the material consulted is not readily available in most libraries.

The author divides his historical narrative into manageable time periods; each one

is followed by sections on the surviving architectural styles of the period. The inter

twined narratives are supplemented with photographs, other illustrations, and maps.

Especially valuable are the photographs, which provide documentation on now

demolished structures of historic or architectural importance. Butchko has also taken

pains to document what may be viewed as typical and ordinary but in the future may not be considered so mundane. As he writes, "Development pressures from adjacent Suffolk [Virginia] are now being felt.. . the county will be vastly different in another

generation from what is known today." Indeed, his description of the county since 1930

reflects developments in much of northeastern North Carolina during that period. The architectural inventory, or catalog, begins with the county seat of Gatesville

and continues with the seven townships in alphabetical order. The towns and commu

nities of Eure, Roduco, Sunbury, Hobbsville, and Gates are nested within the appro

priate townships. The usual residential, commercial, religious, and community

buildings are included. Gates County has depended mainly upon an agrarian economy, and its farming landscape is preserved here—barns, dairies, detached kitchens, corn

cribs, tenant houses, potato (storage) houses, and privies, as well as the few surviving slave houses and even rarer "grave houses." Many of the photographs have been

carefully composed in an attempt to place the structures in their proper context of

outbuildings, trees, fences, and paths, as befits a survey of a rural county. Many reviewers have referred to published architectural surveys as "coffee table

books"; however, Forgotten Gates would be more at home upon a wicker tea table with a well-worn rocking chair on a shady porch overlooking a farm path. Some might view this work as a documentation of a part of North Carolina as it once was; others will see it as a refreshing reminder of what it still is—a county within a state that has a wide

variety of landscapes and architectural backgrounds.

Mary Hollis Barnes Division of Archives and History

Mary Hollis Barnes

Southern Hunting in Black and White: Nature, History, and Ritual in a Carolina Community. By Stuart A. Marks. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Illustrations, tables, preface,

acknowledgments, appendixes, notes, index. Pp. xviii, 327. $24-95, cloth.)

A reader seeking to understand the importance of hunting in the American South will be disappointed in Stuart A. Marks's Southern Hunting in Black and White: H ature,

History, and Ritual in a Carolina Community. In a book that was a good concept but that has been poorly researched and written, the author attempts to expound philosophically about the custom and ritual of hunting among southern men. Unfortunately, he has

very little to say. For his study (which required about fourteen years to produce and was aided by grants

from such prestigious organizations as the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation), Marks sets out to use Scotland County, North Carolina, as a representative sample of southern hunting custom. But he frequently goes afield by

THE NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL REVIEW

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Book Reviews 105

launching into discussions of events outside of the state and region or digressing into

subjects only peripherally pertaining to his topic. He does not always make clear when

he is writing about the entire South and when about just Scotland County, "a small

postage stamp of Southern landscape." Many of his statements are so obvious and trite

that they surely could have been eliminated from the text. For example, he profoundly declares: "Land has both legal and substantive boundaries. It can be bought, sold, or

lost depending on one's circumstances."

The author writes in an awkward style and attempts to give importance to insignifi cant or unrelated facts by dressing them in stilted, pretentious words and phrases. For

instance, in the "Pretext of Place" he proclaims: "The worlds of individuals and of social

experiences may be understood as human constructions, as domains of historically

developed categories and evaluations derived from a cultural reservoir of images and

texts." His prose also suffers from such grammatical and stylistic flaws as faulty syntax, mixed metaphors, and subject and verb disagreements. His book contains a significant number of misspellings and typographical errors.

Southern Hunting in Black and White is based primarily upon printed works, although some manuscript sources from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke

University, and the State Archives of North Carolina are cited. A number of the

statistical tables are taken directly from published census reports and from the popular

monthly magazine Wildlife in North Carolina. Others are compiled from information

given by respondents to questionnaires. Appendixes, also derived from the question naires, contain such revelations as the statement that among the men interviewed, 76

percent of blacks, 87 percent of Lumbee Indians, and 100 percent of whites believe that

"equality, hard work, improvement, and hope gain meaning through one's work."

Curiously, 47 percent, 60 percent, and 43 percent respectively agree that "hunting is

one of the few things you can do these days that will get you away from women."

In short, the book is simply a hodgepodge of vague social history and incongruous observations and anecdotes about hunting. Anyone genuinely interested in exploring the experience and psyche of the southern hunter will have to look elsewhere.

Joe A. Mobley Division of Archives and History

Joe A. Mobley

Inseparable Loyalty: A Biography of William Bull. By Géraldine M. Meroney. (Norcross, Ga.:

Harrison Company, 1991. Acknowledgments, author's note, notes, bibliographical essay,

index, genealogical chart. Pp. xii, 232. $34-95.)

With the advantages of landed wealth, a Leyden M.D., seemingly all-embracing

family connections, and his father's political experience, the younger Lieutenant

Governor William Bull also possessed an abiding love of "patria"—the people and

colony of South Carolina. He served them for more than four decades, until the full

fury of the storm of revolution swept over the land and severed what had been his

"inseparable loyalty" to colony and crown. Unwilling to exchange a proven constitution

for an unchecked Congress of doubtful durability, he ended his days a refugee in

England.

Despite the destruction of Bull's personal papers, Géraldine Meroney has gathered materials from public records and other collections and from a wide selection of works

VOLUME LX1X • NUMBER 1 • JANUARY 1992

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