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Introduction and Part One: Folk Tales, John and the Frog, Witness of the Johnstown Flood in Heaven 15 [Mules and Men] [1935] Zora Neale Hurston Among the students of Franz Boas (see Selection 9), Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) became the most highly esteemed anthropologist of color. Hurston was born and raised in the all-black community of Eatonville, Florida. From an early age, she knew that she wanted to be a writer. She left Eatonville early and, after a series of menial jobs, ended up in New York City, where she became part of the literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. At Columbia University, she met Boas, who encouraged her to pursue the study of southern black folklore, which, because of her own life experiences, he felt she could do with authority and flair. Torn between her aspirations to be a writer (her early novels Jonah’s Gourd Vine [1934] and Their Eyes Were Watching God [1937] were well received) and an anthropologist, encouraged by Boas, she returned to Eatonville to collect the folktales of her youth. The result was her book Mules and Men (1935), from which this selection is taken. Mules and Men, for which Boas wrote a foreword, is divided into two parts, the first part comprising folktales and the second part comprising accounts of hoodoo, a system of folk magic imported from Africa and practiced by African-American slaves. In this selection, Hurston describes her reappearance in Eatonville in a flashy Chevrolet automobile. She immediately ingratiates herself with former friends, who share familiar stories and invite her to accompany them to house parties and gatherings. The selection features two folktales that surfaced from these interactions, “John and dis Frog” and “Heaven from Johnstown,” both told in the vernacular language that became Hurston’s trademark ethnographic style. Readers of this selection will sample Hurston’s autoethographic approach to fieldwork, in which she embeds herself within her subject matter. During her lifetime, anthropologists were reluctant to embrace this approach, which was truly ahead of its time, but later, after Hurston’s death, when theoretical fashions in anthropology had changed, they praised it and began to include Hurston, posthumously, in the canon of Boasian luminaries. Key Words: Eatonville, folklore, Heaven from Johnstown, John and dis Frog, Negro, spy-glass of anthropology, store porch, toe-party, woofing Introduction I was glad when somebody told me, “You may go and collect Negro folklore.” In a way it would not be a new experience for me. When I pitched headforemost into the world I landed in the crib of negroism. From the earliest rocking of my cradle, I had known about the capers Brer Rabbit is apt to cut and what the Squinch Owl says from the house top. But it was fitting me like a tight chemise. I couldn’t see it for wearing it. It was only when I was off in college, away from my native surroundings, that I could see myself like somebody else and stand off and look at my garment. Then I had to have the spy-glass of Anthropology to look through at that. Dr. [Franz] Boas asked me where I wanted to work and I said, “Florida,” and gave, as my big rea- son, that “Florida is a place that draws people – white people from all over the world, and Negroes from every Southern state surely and some from the North and West.” So I knew that it was possible for me to get a cross section of the Negro South in the one state. And then I realized that I was new myself, so it looked sensible for me to choose familiar ground. First place I aimed to stop to collect material was Eatonville, Florida. And now, I’m going to tell you why I decided to go to my native village first. I didn’t go back there so that the home folks could make admiration over me because I had been up North to college and come back with a diploma and a Chevrolet. I knew they were not going to pay either one of these items too much mind. I was just Lucy Hurston’s daughter, Zora, and even if I had – to use one of our down-home expressions – had a Kaiser baby,1 and that’s something that hasn’t been done in this Country yet, I’d still be just Zora to the neighbors. If I had exalted myself to impress the town, somebody would have sent me word in a match-box that I had been up North there and had rubbed the hair off of my head against some college wall, and then come back there with a lot of form and fashion and outside show to the world. But they’d stand flat-footed and tell me that they didn’t have me, neither my sham- polish, to study ’bout. And that would have been that. I hurried back to Eatonville because I knew that the town was full of material and that I could get it without hurt, harm or danger. As early as I could remember it was the habit of the men folks particu- larly to gather on the store porch of evenings and swap stories. Even the women folks would stop and break a breath with them at times. As a child when I was sent down to Joe Clarke’s store, I’d drag out my leaving as long as possible in order to hear more. Folklore is not as easy to collect as it sounds. The best source is where there are the least outside influences and these people, being usually under- privileged, are the shyest. They are most reluctant at times to reveal that which the soul lives by. And the Negro, in spite of his open-faced laughter, his seem- ing acquiescence, is particularly evasive. You see we are a polite people and we do not say to our ques- tioner, “Get out of here!” We smile and tell him or her something that satisfies the white person because, knowing so little about us, he doesn’t know what he is missing. The Indian resists curiosity by a stony silence. The Negro offers a feather-bed resistance. That is, we let the probe enter, but it never comes out. It gets smothered under a lot of laughter and pleasantries. The theory behind our tactics: “The white man is always trying to know into somebody else’s business. All right, I’ll set something outside the door of my mind for him to play with and handle. He can read my writing but he sho’ can’t read my mind. I’ll put this play toy in his hand, and he will seize it and go away. Then I’ll say my say and sing my song.” I knew that even I was going to have some hin- drance among strangers. But here in Eatonville I knew everybody was going to help me. So below Palatka I began to feel eager to be there and I kicked the little Chevrolet right along. I thought about the tales I had heard as a child. How even the Bible was made over to suit our vivid imagina- tion. How the devil always outsmarted God and how that over-noble hero Jack or John – not John Henry, who occupies the same place in Negro folk-lore that Casey Jones does in white lore and if anything is more recent – outsmarted the devil. Brer Fox, Brer Deer, Brer ’Gator, Brer Dawg, Brer Rabbit, Ole Massa and his wife were walking the earth like natural men way back in the days when God himself was on the ground and men could talk with him. Way back there before God weighed up the dirt to make the mountains. When I was rounding Lily Lake I was remembering how God had made the world and the elements and people. He made souls for people, but he didn’t give them out because he said: “Folks ain’t ready for souls yet. De clay ain’t dry. It’s de strongest thing Ah ever made. Don’t aim to waste none thru loose cracks. And then men got to grow strong enough to stand it. De way things is now, if Ah give it out it would tear them shackly bodies to pieces. Bimeby, Ah give it out.” So folks went round thousands of years without no souls. All de time de soul-piece, it was setting ’round covered up wid God’s loose raiment. Every now and then de wind would blow and hist up de cover and then de ele- ments would be full of lightning and de winds would talk. So people told one ’nother that God was talking in de mountains. De white man passed by it way off and he looked but he wouldn’t go close enough to touch. De Indian and de Negro, they tipped by cautious too, and all of ’em seen de light of diamonds when de winds shook de cover, and de wind dat passed over it sung songs. De Jew come past and heard de song from de soulpiece then he kept on passin’ and all of a sudden he grabbed up de soul-piece and hid it under his clothes, and run off down de road. It burnt him and tore him and throwed him down and lifted him up and toted him across de mountain and he tried to break loose but he couldn’t do it. He kept on hollerin’ for help but de rest of ’em run hid ’way from him. Way after while they come out of holes and cor- ners and picked up little chips and pieces that fell back on de ground. So God mixed it up wid feelings and give it out to ’em. ’Way after while when He ketch dat Jew, He’s goin’ to ’vide things up more ekal’. So I rounded Park Lake and came speeding down the straight stretch into Eatonville, the city of five lakes, three croquet courts, three hundred brown skins, three hundred good swimmers, plenty guavas, two schools, and no jail-house. Before I enter the township, I wish to make acknowledgments to Mrs. R. Osgood Mason of New York City. She backed my falling in a hearty way, in a spiritual way, and in addition, financed the whole expedition in the manner of the Great Soul that she is. The world’s most gallant woman.