From pioneer days gourd receptacles have been in daily use in many a mountain home. The best example is the proverbial gourd dipper.
Out here in Graham County and elsewhere in the hills where there are folks who still get their water supply straight from sparkling springs that gurgle out of the hillside near the house, the gourd dipper continues to hold a cherished place. Such folks will tell you that spring water is the coldest, sweetest and purest when drank from a mellowed gourd.
When Hernando DeSoto, the Spanish conquistador, came this way in 1540 he found the Cherokee using gourd shells for storage and carrying. He found them used as water jugs, dippers, spoons and dishes, mixing bowls, pottery smoothers, rattles, roof-drains, medicine masks, and parts of ornaments.
He discovered the Cherokee using the flowers as food, coloring material and in their ceremonies. The wild species were eaten green, or used as medicine, but rarely made into utensils.
Later, when the pioneers put down their roots in the mountains, they also turned to gourds for use as domestic utensils. Time was when many a mountain woman kept a small cooking salt gourd hanging near the fireplace where the cooking was done. And near the fire was the meal gourd. The salt gourd usually had an opening in the upper part of one side and was hung up by the stem.
Then there was the darning gourd, a small gourd used as a darning egg. Its sides were smooth as a waxed apple. There was the fat gourd too. It was a large gourd used as a receptacle for grease and meat drippings. Still another was the soap gourd, a container for homemade soft soap.
The men folks also found a heap of uses for gourds. They used gourds to hold the powder and shot for the muzzle loadin’ rifles. When it was molasses making time, they used gourd skimmers and gourd dippers. They even made gourd horns to call their sheep.
Many a mountain fiddler learned to play on a gourd fiddle. That was in the days of puncheon floors and cornstalk bows. In these days, it was not uncommon to see supplies stored in gourds under the beds in a mountain cabin.
Most of the old uses to which gourds were put have disappeared. But there is still many a mountain farmer who uses them in his battle with the crows. He strings hollow gourds to the tops of long poles in his corn patch for the martins to keep the crows off. But others plant them just they will spread their vines over the fences and keep the snakes away.