![]() Dewey grabs it with his hand, and drops it into a burlap sack.ĬHAFIN : I got him. Dewey tries to lift it up with his homemade snake hook - a golf club bent at one end. It isn’t long, though, before Dewey spots a black rattlesnake lying coiled up and still on the top of a rock. ISAY : He tells me not to worry - it’s still early in the serpent hunting season. We walk over a rock under which Dewey says he one day found 23 deadly copperheads slithering. ISAY : This is one of Dewey’s all-time favorite snake hunting spots. ISAY : On this Saturday, Dewey Chafin maneuvers his way up Copperstone Mountain.ĬHAFIN : Right now you’re in rattlesnake country, and you can find them anywhere in these weeds. He is a serpent handler.ĭEWEY CHAFIN : I’m Dewey Chafin, 59 years old. Sound Portraits was the predecessor to Stor圜orps and was dedicated to telling stories that brought neglected American voices to a national audience.ĭAVID ISAY : On just about any warm afternoon you can find a weathered-looking white haired man wandering the hills of remote West Virginia, hunting for poisonous snakes - not to kill, but to bring back with him to church. This documentary comes from Sound Portraits Productions, a mission-driven independent production company that was created by Dave Isay in 1994. Premiered November 30, 1992, on All Things Considered. Recorded in West Virginia, Alabama, and Georgia. The documentary is an intimate portrait of unwavering faith and religious ecstasy virtually unknown in mainstream American traditions. In They Shall Take Up Serpents, we hear the voices of believers and nonbelievers alike, widows who have lost their husbands to snakebites and wives who fear the same fate. Nevertheless, there have been fewer than 100 confirmed deaths in the history of snake handling. In accordance with their faith, handlers refuse medical treatment when bitten. While serpent handling has been outlawed in all but two southern states, there remain several thousand practicing snake handlers today, most of whom live in poor coal mining communities. “They shall take up serpents and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them.”įor the past eighty years, believers living in the Appalachian hills of the southeastern US have incorporated handling serpents and drinking strychnine (a “salvation cocktail”) into their religious beliefs and practice.
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