Harney and Frost have both eccentric but parallel views on Appalachian people and better described by Frost as, “Mountain whites” and by Harney as “natives.” Harney and Frost have a harsh way of describing the Appalachian people in their excerpts, but I do not see them as problematic, if anything they are direct and to the point.

Harney has an interesting way of describing the Appalachian people. He guides you through his piece by placing you in a story. Hiding his depiction of the “natives”. He states that, “A like individuality appears in their idiom. It lacks the Doric breadth of the Virginian of the other slope, and is equally removed from the soft vowels and liquid intonation of the southern plain. It has verbal and phraseological peculiarities of its own.” He is explaining how the natives are easily distinguished from other Virginians. The natives speak in a certain tone and way that is seen as illiterate and loose. He focuses solely on a white female native who is illiterate and can barley write a letter. “Poor simple child of the woods! What did she know of the wheels within wheels, and the rings of political influence by which a superior authority was to be invoked? I agree with Harney and his judgment on the natives. They are cut off from a growing evolving society that is advancing each day. These native people and mountain whites are stagnant, they are not growing everyday.

Frost’s view on Appalachian people is quite the same. He describes these “Mountain whites” as, “illiterates, moonshiners, homicides, and even yet mountaineers are scarcely distinguished in our thought from the poor white trash.” Mountain whites go without because they have slim to none. They are cut off from society, when they don’t have an item they adapt and use what is around them. This goes for language and speaking as well. They are miles away from civilization, they have conjured up there own terms for certain symbols. The fact is Frost is right; he is spot on with his views. Mountain whites are almost considered poor white trash because they do not fit in with society or live by the societies rules. Mountain whites are there own community adapting to life but not advancing at all and almost going backwards in literacy.

Even though both of these men have harsh views on the Appalachian people, I do not see it has problematic. They are justifying the truth of this group of individuals, “As a matter both of taste and of common sense, we should not try to make them conform to the regulation type of Americans; they should be encouraged to retain all that is characteristic and wholesome in their present life” (Frost 319). In conclusion the men in these excerpts have adequate interpretations of Appalachian people and there illiterate ways.