Page 19 - Tree Line - North Carolina Forestry Association - Fourth Quarter 2024

© HARPER’S WEEKLY. TURPENTINE INDUSTRY SUBJECT
COLLECTION 3, FOLDER FP3T957I42. CREDIT:
MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS IMAGE COLLECTION, WILSON
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS LIBRARY, UNCCHAPEL HILL.
While dippers collected sap, a second
group of workers called “chippers,” or
“hackers,” refreshed the wounds by
chipping a new incision in the bark with a
special ax. Sap only flowed through fresh
scars, so this job ensured a continuous
stream. Once the gum crystalized,
chippers would return every seven to 10
days to add a new chip a mere half-inch
higher than the last. As Frederick Law
Olmsted stated, the chippings “scarified”
the trees, leaving rows of gashes up
and down the trunks. The scars on the
trees mirrored those on the backs of the
enslaved workers, creating a cruel and
violent irony. These trees were referred
to as “cat-faced” because of the pattern of
angled slashes resembling cat whiskers.
Some of these cat-faced trees can be found
on longleaf preserve sites with old-growth
trees, like The Nature Conservancy’s
Green Swamp in Brunswick County.
“While environmental destruction fueled slavery’s
expansion, no environment could long survive intensive
slave labor. The scars manifested in different ways,
but the land too fell victim to the slave owner’s lash.”
– David Silkenat
A Changed Landscape
As stated by writer and historian David
Silkenat, “Between 1665 and 1865, the
environment fundamentally shaped
American slavery, and slavery remade
the Southern landscape,” which can be
seen because “the environmental effects
of enslaved labor cascaded through the
ecosystem.” The lives of the enslaved
Africans in the forest and the tragedy of the
longleaf pine were intricately intertwined
and, in some ways, even mirrored each other,
an idea explored more deeply in J.D. Ho’s
narrative The Tree with a Thousand Faces.
The downfall of the longleaf pine came not
only from the destruction and clearing of the
land but also from the inability to recover.
After the boxing to collect resin, most
longleaf pine trees were cut down and used
for lumber. However, property owners
left some behind without management,
and these boxed trees were susceptible to
many issues. The worst was when trees
experienced something called “dry face,”
which happened when resin dripped
through the bark of the boxed tree,
permanently stopping gum flow. Sam Davis
expands on this in his article The Legacy of
Longleaf Pine. This condition was worsened
by insects such as the Ips beetle, black
turpentine beetle, and turpentine borer,
which attacked the trees to lay their eggs.
Water decay, fire, drought, and even
wind were dangers to these vulnerable
trees. Longleaf bark protects the tree from
fire, but chipped-away bark makes exposed
trunks highly flammable. Scarified
trees would explode from the intense
temperatures fueled by dry wood and
highly flammable dried sap. Without the
bark, fire, which was once the longleaf’s
main survival technique, would lead to its
demise. The land felt the effects of slavery
and the cruelty of the planters’ touch.
In understanding the past of enslaved
Blacks in the longleaf pine forests, we
can better grasp the importance of
conservation, especially in the role of
minorities in conservation today. Even
though the forests once expanded the use
of slavery, The Nature Conservancy in
their restoration efforts shifts the role of
the forests from their troublesome past
to a more positive role in protecting the
climate. And while doing so, they must
remember to uplift the stories and the
voices of those from various perspectives.
Turpentine industry living conditions
Living Conditions
Enslaved workers lived in small camps
deep in the woods. They stayed seasonally
only for a few years, following the ebb and
flow of the timber season. The housing
in the lumber camps was extremely
rudimentary; many lumbermen slept in
shanties made from fallen timber, another
example of how interwoven the lives of
the enslaved people and the trees were.
An observer in 1809 described these
shanties as “barely wide enough for five
or six men to lie in, closely packed side
by side — their heads to the back wall,
and their feet stretched to the open front,
close by a fire kept up through the night…
the roof is sloping, to shed the rain, and
where highest, not above four feet from
the floor…the [wood] shavings…make
a bed for the laborers.” This description
aligns with archaeological findings from a
workers’ camp at the Neale plantation from
the mid-18th century.
“There is such a diversity of experiences that must be
remembered to be willing stewards of the land that
belongs to all, and to create a focus on diversity
in the conservation community. For in the pursuit of
light, one cannot dismiss the darkness.”
– Emmy Dasanaike
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emmy Dasanaike was an intern for The Nature
Conservancy in 2023. She is an honors scholar at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, studying
public policy and data science.
SOURCES: Adams, Natalie P. “A Pattern of Living: A View of the African American Slave Experience in the Pine Forests of the Lower Cape Fear.” Essay. In Another’s Country:
Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on Cultural Interactions in the Southern Colonies. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002. | Outland, Robert B. “Slavery,
Work, and the Geography of the North Carolina Naval Stores Industry, 1835-1860.” The Journal of Southern History 62, no. 1 (1996): 27–56. | Silkenat, David. Scars on the
Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2022.
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