Who are the Ozarkians

Few realize the diversity of people who live in the Ozarks, America’s Middle Mountains, or “Big Hills”.

Native Americans, Spanish, French, German and many more such as the Amish have moved into these Big Hills, but few have brought the influence or placed their stamp upon the land as have the Scotch-Irish. The Scotch-Irish better known in some circles as the Ulster Scots, they brought their cultures of thrift and self sufficiency to the region, and are the people most associated with it. Their music, dances, and stories are what make the Ozarkians what they are.

Ozarkians more often identify with each other, even across state lines, than they do with the rest of their states at large--who have historically treated their Ozark neighbors as "poor relations" or orphaned children. While there are a few references to "the Missouri Ozarks" or "the Arkansas Ozarks," and even, rarely, the "the Illinois Ozarks" or "Oklahoma Ozarks," usually by the respective states' tourism departments, more often one hears simply, "the Ozarks."

Our strong regional identity, coupled with the fact that Ozarkians have more in common with each other than they do with other Missourians or Arkansans, has led some to suggest, there should be a separate state of Ozarkia. One favorite Ozarks writer, the late Dan Saults, said of his imagined state, "... a gentle peace seeps out of the rocky soil at twilight, like mist rising from a float stream." And, said Clay Anderson, publisher of The Ozarks Mountaineer and a recognized spokesman for the region, "...there are many of us who--if there were only a peaceful and practical way--would fervently work for statehood for the Ozarks."

His caution is often mistaken for unfriendliness. Even the hill man's "poverty" has been misinterpreted. In the 1930s, when the New Deal agencies brought in "relief commodities," Ozarkers discovered such new foods as grapefruit and oranges. But, for the first time for many, they learned that they were poor. Townsend Godsey, a noted long-time historian and photographer of the vanishing Ozarks, has written, "Perhaps a minimum concern about money and material things is why life is good in the hills...."

Others would argue that the condition known as a depression in urban America had become a way of life for the Ozarkers. Often the poverty perceived by urbanites and newcomers is, to a large degree, the manifestation of inborn determination to be as nearly self-sufficient as possible and, therefore, independent of the prevailing economic winds.

While the people were neither ignorant nor backward, they did face the hardships of living in a remote area where rugged terrain made education, socialization, and travel difficult and "civilization" relatively late in coming. As recently as the early 1950s, many of the more isolated hilly regions were still awaiting electricity. Telephones and paved highways came only thirty years ago to others. Most county roads are still unpaved, for there is scarcely any need for pavement when one drives directly on the bedrock.

Today's teenagers think nothing of making a hundred-mile drive to ultra-progressive shopping malls, where they fit right in with others their age, then returning home to a more conservative way of life. And, importantly, more and more of them are finding ways to remain in the hills, though many are forced to leave to find work or to pursue careers for which there is no demand at home.

But among those who have left the Ozarks, even a half-century or more ago, there appears to be a universal longing for "home." Many who abandoned the area during the Depression still subscribe to regional publications and newspapers from their old communities. Their letters, full of yearning and homesickness, are published frequently on editorial pages.

Among "newcomers," those people who have chosen to live in the Ozarks, there are a great many intelligent, talented, creative, people--artisans and artists, writers, weavers, sculptors, musicians, educators--most of whom could live anywhere they choose and came here from the "advantaged" cities they were glad to leave behind. Those who were born here and have had the good sense to stay--even if they take the Ozarks for granted--love it nonetheless. They look out on the rest of the world with a sort of bemused amazement, serenely confident that their so-called hillbilly lifestyle is the only sane way to live.

Far from a disadvantage, the modern perception of the Ozarks as a refuge from the present, as a place where the old-time values and advantages of rural living are nurtured, has created a new awareness of--and interest in--the region. Private developments such as Silver Dollar City, a theme park near Branson, Missouri, and governmental entities like the Ozark Folk Center, a cultural time capsule where history lives and works near Mountain View, Arkansas, capitalize on the public's yearning for the slower olden days forever vanished except from the Ozarks and a few other "backward" folk regions.

Today the mythical comic-strip image is promoted by tourist-baiters and indulged by tongue-in-cheek "hillbillies" who are "stupid" enough to set up a stand by the side of the road and sell rocks to the tourists. Though they may laugh all the way to the bank, such good-natured acceptance--for profit or otherwise--is not likely to be duplicated by any other ethnic group anywhere in the world.