North Carolina

The Valley of Humility

If you’ve never had the distinct pleasure of visiting the region known as North Carolina, you might be forgiven for assuming that it is just another Southern state, populated with backwoods folk and no one to pay any mind to. Officially founded in 1663 via Royal Charter to eight Lords Proprietors under the restored King Charles II (after having been settled and explored at various points in the preceding centuries), this land was properly in the domain of the Injuns — and some particularly fierce ones, no doubt. Occupied by no fewer than thirty-four different tribes, all with competing zones of influence and three varieties of language, the land seemed determined to fight off any attempts by the adventuring Europeans to put a foothold in this tract of untamed wilderness.

Many of our dear readers will be aware of the Lost Colony, wherein some of the first settlers to the New World were never found after Sir Walter Raleigh was delayed at several points from replenishing the storehouses of the colony. Though we know not what befell our explorers, it can be best inferred that the various tribes in the region had something to do regarding their demise. Over the course of North Carolina’s history, the Red Man would continue to be a thorn in the side of the Carolinian, namely during the Tuscarora War, Yamassee and Cheraw Wars, French and Indian War, and the Cherokee War throughout the eighteenth century. All that blood spilled, all those innocents slaughtered, is enough to give this place the air of a graveyard. Our coastline is not known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic” for no reason, alongside such terrifying locales as the Cape of Fear, known as such for as long as there’s been honorable folks down this way. Truly, this area is a valley of humility between two mountains of conceit, though this is not meant as any disrespect toward her sister and cousin respectively. To take a few lines from the anthem of my Old North State:

Though she envies not others their merited glory,
Say, whose name stands the foremost in Liberty’s story!
Though too true to herself e’er to crouch to oppression,
Who can yield to just rule more loyal submission?

Plain and artless her sons, but whose doors open faster
At the knock of a stranger, or the tale of disaster?
How like to the rudeness of their dear native mountains,
With rich ore in their bosoms and life in their fountains.

And her daughters, the Queen of the Forest resembling—
So graceful, so constant, yet to gentlest breath trembling;
And true lightwood at heart, let the match be applied them,
How they kindle and flame! Oh! none know but who’ve tried them.

Then let all who love us, love the land that we live in
(As happy a region on this side of Heaven),
Where Plenty and Freedom, Love and Peace smile before us,
Raise aloud, raise together, the heart-thrilling chorus!

​All that being said, this enchanted woodland is not meant to be trifled with, and this can be best exemplified by some of her folklore, taken from the aforementioned Injun tribes that we interacted with from time immemorial. In the safety of your homes, I will share with you a terrifying tale, one that makes you grateful for your amenities of the modern era. This is the tale of the Wampus Cat. Properly pronounced as “Wom-puss,” this is an old Cherokee legend of a beautiful woman whose strong husband often left with the other hunters to get their food for the day. Each time before their trek, the men would gather round and beg forgiveness from their gods for the lives they were about to take, and also beseech these deities for acumen whilst on the prowl. The women of the tribe were not permitted to view this ceremony, and try as she might, this beautiful Cherokee maiden could not make her husband reveal these arcane and mystical secrets. She eventually resolved to do so of her own accord, donning a cougar skin from her home and hiding behind a rock so as to catch a glimpse of the ceremony. However, curiosity got the best of this girl, and she crept closer with each magical line, wanting to see and hear more, and more, and more until she was discovered by the head warlock, who saw through the disguise and had her dragged into the magic circle at the center of their gathering. The sorcerer cast a binding curse on the woman, fusing her with the cougar skin and making her a hybrid chimera of both. She was cast out of their tribe, never to enjoy companionship again.

​The Wampus Cat has a strange howl, a series of cries and barks that sound painful and heart-wrenching and soul-crushing all at once. She terrorizes property, steals and maims livestock, even lashes out at the wayward hunter who might remind her of her beloved and the excruciating existence that she now endures... She prowls the swamps and the backcountry, all the way from the forests around Hatteras and the old King’s Road leading into Virginia, and the into the Appalachians.

​She made a resurgence around the 1950s, when the Beast of Bladenboro killed dogs, chickens, goats, and other farm animals before local hunters were said to have killed it after tracking the beast for several days. Though this was likely not the end for the Wampus Cat, this did calm many people, because that they had at least gotten rid of the threat for the time being. But just because magic is dead in the Home Country does not mean that magic is dead on these shores. We live in such an age where myth is realer than history, and brother, there’s myths all around.