As Halloween approaches, the Fort Smith Museum of History is embracing the spirit of the season with a deep dive into Ozark folklore. On Thursday, Oct. 9, cultural anthropologist and seventh-generation Ozark native Justin Minor will lead Ozark “Mountain Witchcraft Anthropology of the Supernatural.” It's an exploration of the region's folk remedies, superstitions, and backwoods witchery.
The evening program reveals how the early settlers of the Ozarks combined European traditions and local beliefs to create a distinctive culture of folk magic. In an interview with Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis, Minor explains there's actually a good bit of information available on Ozark folk magic, but it all comes from primarily one source.
Minor: Which is Vance Randolph, our very, very famous folklorist of the Ozarks. It's in his book that he originally had titled as Ozark Superstitions, but the reprint is now Ozark Magic and Folklore. It is actually a pretty dense book, and packed full of how folk magic was practiced in the Ozarks. But that is the primary source that we have. Anything other than that is kind of hard to come by and ferret out.
Travis: So what have you learned that isn't in- or maybe that is in- that Vance Randolph book? Is there anything that you've uncovered in your studies that has surprised you?
Minor: Absolutely. Actually there is. I'm super excited about this. As I went through his work and was really researching it again through that lens of anthropology- which is essentially just looking at human culture, how people do things, how they order their lives- I started noticing there were some really weird words in there. I was like, “What the heck are these words?” They're called conjure words or power words.
So I thought. I have something that Vance did not have: the internet. So I started just googling those words to see if it was some language. It turns out most of them are not. I did find an obscure link on a Reddit thread to one of these incantations, and I followed that rabbit hole until I found the book that that came from.
So, I think we're actually going to be able to nail down what I guess we could say what flavor of folk magic the power doctors of the Ozarks specifically are. It's pretty fascinating. It is. Gosh, I don't know if I want to spoil it. It's a big surprise- it's actually Pennsylvania Dutch Powwow.
Which is something that is kind of famous if you're into those circles. If you're a folklorist, if you're into studying those kinds of cultural elements, most people will know what Pennsylvania Dutch Powwow is. But no one that I can find has ever actually linked it to what a lot of folks were doing, specifically what we call power doctors, or what Randolph called power doctors in the Ozarks. But we actually have word-for-word, I mean, word-for-word specific incantations that come out of a grimoire from 1820, that was printed by a Pennsylvania Dutch practitioner named John George Hohman. And it comes straight from that.
So 127 years later, Randolph is quoting these incantations, these conjure words, and you can actually go back and find them in this one of the earliest American grimoires or books of “forbidden magic.” So it's a definite link. This is actually what they were practicing. And as to my knowledge, and through all the research, I've not found anyone else that's actually tied those two things together yet.
Travis: How did you get linked up with the museum? How did this evening come to be?
Minor: Well, it started some three years ago when I went to school to become a cultural anthropologist, and I actually started volunteering at the Fort Smith National Historic Site.
Here in Fort Smith, our community of historians and folks of that ilk are a really tight community because there's not a whole lot of us. So if you end up volunteering with one, you end up knowing everyone and doing a lot of things with all of the people in the area. That's essentially how I got connected to the Fort Smith Museum of History and Caroline Speir and that's how this evening came to be.
Travis: And so Thursday, Oct. 9, at 6 p.m. What can people expect to hear? I mean, we just got a little preview there, but why do people want to be there in person?
Minor: Probably the greatest reason would be that you're going to get a look at what life was really like in the Ozarks in the early- well, from the earliest pioneers coming all the way up through when Randolph was recording these things in the 1920s, 30s and 40s.
People have a lot of misconceptions about what life was like. A lot of folks have that rosy retrospection, right? Like clapboard houses in the church down on the corner. But folks back then were just as normal, just as complicated as our lives are today. We're going to have basically a little bit of an overview of why they were practicing folk magic, what was the importance of it. Also bring it all the way back around to how a lot of us are still practicing it today and don't even realize it in some of our superstitions that we still carry with us.
Travis: And for people who are interested to learn a little bit more about you and your work, where can they go to do so?
Minor: Honestly, the best place to find me and link up with me would be at my website, which is waywardstories.com. I've got a podcast and several things I do over there. All my social media is there, and that's kind of the landing page where you would be able to catch up with me and what I'm up to.
Travis: All right, one more time. It is Thursday, Oct. 9, at the Fort Smith Museum of History, six p.m. It’s a ticketed event, correct?
Minor: It is a ticketed event. And if I could add one thing, if you do find yourself trying to get tickets and say they are sold out, we will be doing this program again in Mountainburg for the Boston Mountain Heritage Society on October 18 at six p.m., which is a Saturday evening. It is a free event, but you can find them on Facebook and make reservations for that event if you miss the first one.
Moore: That was cultural anthropologist Justin Minor, speaking with Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis. You can visit Fort Smith Museum for tickets and more information about tomorrow's event. Minor added that a culturally significant food will also be part of the evening. Stay with us for a later edition of Ozarks at Large, in which we'll hear more from Minor about his work. Jack produces his stories inside the Bruce Nan Applegate News Studio one.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
