Slave Narratives, Oklahoma
V >>
Various >> Slave Narratives, Oklahoma
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 | 12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24
We all stayed on for a long time 'cause we didn't have no other home
and didn't know how to take keer of ourselves. We was kind of scared I
reckon. Finally I heard my mother was in Walker County, Alabama, and I
left and went to live with her.
My mother was Harriet Davis and she was born in Virginia. I don't know
who my father was. My grandmother was captured in Africa when she was
a little girl. A big boat was down at the edge of a bay an' the people
was all excited about it an' some of the bravest went up purty close
to look at it. The men on the boat told them to come on board and they
could have the pretty red handkerchiefs, red and blue beads and big
rings. A lot of them went on board and the ship sailed away with them.
My grandmother never saw any of her folks again.
When I was about five years old they brought my grandmother, my mother
and my two aunts and two uncles to Tuskaloosa from Fayettesville,
Alabama. We crossed a big river on a ferry boat. They put us on the
"block" and sold us. I can remember it well. A white man "cried" me
off just like I was a animal or varmint or something. He said, "Here's
a little nigger, who will give me a bid on her. She will make a good
house gal someday." Old man Davis give him $300.00 for me. I don't
know whether I was afraid or not; I don't think I cared just so I had
something to eat. I was allus hungry. Miss Davis' grandmother and one
of my aunts and uncles. Old man Davis bought the rest of us. Uncle
Henry looked after me when he could. I could see my mother once in
awhile but not often.
I had a purty easy time. I didn't have to work very hard 'till I was
about ten years old. I started working in the field and I had to work
in the weaving room too. We made all our own clothes. I spun and wove
cotton and wool. Old Master bought our shoes. We made fancy cloth. We
could stripe the cloth or check it or leave it plain. We also wove
coverlids and jeans to make mens suits out of. I could still do that
if I had to.
We all went to church with the white folks. We didn't have no colored
preachers. The niggers would get happy and shout all over the place.
Sometimes they'd fall out doors.
The Big House was a double log, two story house, not very fine but
awful comfortable. They was four big fireplace rooms downstairs and
two upstairs. Then they was two sort of shed rooms. There was a big
piazza across the front. The kitchen was a way off from the house,
seems like it was 200 feet at least. Our quarters were close by at the
back. He didn't have many slaves and they was nearly all my kinfolks.
There was Aunt Emmy and Phillis, Uncles Henry, Mitchell, Louis and
Andy, and the others were Uncle Logan and Uncle Nathan. They was old
Mistress' slaves when she done married.
Old Master and old Mistress had three boys, Eli, Billy and Dock. They
had to go to war and old Mistress sho' did cry. She say they might get
killed and she might not see 'em any more. I wonder why all dem white
folks didn't think of that when they sold mothers away from they
chillun. I had to be sold away from my mother. Two of her boys was
badly wounded but they all come back.
Abe Lincoln done everything he could for the niggers. We lost our best
friend when he got killed.
Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves
GEORGE KYE
Age 110 yrs.
Fort Gibson, Okla.
I was born in Arkansas under Mr. Abraham Stover, on a big farm about
twenty miles north of Van Buren. I was plumb grown when the Civil War
come along, but I can remember back when the Cherokee Indians was in
all that part of the country.
Joe Kye was my pappy's name what he was born under back in Garrison
County, Virginia, and I took that name when I was freed, but I don't
know whether he took it or not because he was sold off by old Master
Stover when I was a child. I never have seen him since. I think he
wouldn't mind good, leastways that what my mammy say.
My mammy was named Jennie and I don't think I had any brothers or
sisters, but they was a whole lot of children at the quarters that I
played and lived with. I didn't live with mammy because she worked all
the time, and us children all stayed in one house.
It was a little one room log cabin, chinked and daubed, and you
couldn't stir us with a stick. When we went to eat we had a big pan
and all ate out of it. One what ate the fastest got the most.
Us children wore homespun shirts and britches and little slips, and
nobody but the big boys wore any britches. I wore just a shirt until I
was about 12 years old, but it had a long tall down to my calves. Four
or five of us boys slept in one bed, and it was made of hewed logs
with rope laced acrost it and a shuck mattress. We had stew made out
of pork and potatoes, and sometimes greens and pot liquor, and we had
ash cake mostly, but biscuits about once a month.
In the winter time I had brass toed shoes made on the place, and a
cloth cap with ear flaps.
The work I done was hoeing and plowing, and I rid a horse a lot for
old Master because I was a good rider. He would send me to run chores
for him, like going to the mill. He never beat his negroes but he
talked mighty cross and glared at us until he would nearly scare us to
death sometimes.
He told us the rules and we lived by them and didn't make trouble, but
they was a neighbor man that had some mean negroes and he nearly beat
them to death. We could hear them hollering in the field sometimes.
They would sleep in the cotton rows, and run off, and then they would
catch the cat-o-nine tails sure nuff. He would chain them up, too, and
keep them tied out to trees, and when they went to the field they
would be chained together in bunches sometimes after they had been
cutting up.
We didn't have no place to go to church, but old Master didn't care if
we had singing and praying, and we would tie our shoes on our backs
and go down the road close to the white church and all set down and
put our shoes on and go up close and listen to the service.
Old Master was baptized almost every Sunday and cussed us all out on
Monday. I didn't join the church until after freedom, and I always was
a scoundrel for dancing. My favorite preacher was old Pete Conway. He
was the only ordained colored preacher we had after freedom, and he
married me.
Old Master wouldn't let us take herb medicine, and he got all our
medicine in Van Buren when we was sick. But I wore a buckeye on my
neck just the same.
When the War come along I was a grown man, and I went off to serve
because old Master was too old to go, but he had to send somebody
anyways. I served as George Stover, but every time the sergeant would
call out "Abe Stover", I would answer "Here".
They had me driving a mule team wagon that Old Master furnished, and I
went with the Sesesh soldiers from Van Buren to Texarkana and back a
dozen times or more. I was in the War two years, right up to the day
of freedom. We had a battle close to Texarkana and another big one
near Van Buren, but I never left Arkansas and never got a scratch.
One time in the Texarkana battle I was behind some pine trees and the
bullets cut the limbs down all over me. I dug a big hole with my bare
hands before I hardly knowed how I done it.
One time two white soldiers named Levy and Briggs come to the wagon
train and said they was hunting slaves for some purpose. Some of us
black boys got scared because we heard they was going to Squire Mack
and get a reward for catching runaways, so me and two more lit out of
there.
They took out after us and we got to a big mound in the woods and hid.
Somebody shot at me and I rolled into some bushes. He rid up and got
down to look for me but I was on t'other side of his horse and he
never did see me. When they was gone we went back to the wagons just
as the regiment was pulling out and the officer didn't say nothing.
They was eleven negro boys served in my regiment for their masters.
The first year was mighty hard because we couldn't get enough to eat.
Some ate poke greens without no grease and took down and died.
How I knowed I was free, we was bad licked, I reckon. Anyways, we quit
fighting and a Federal soldier come up to my wagon and say: "Whose
mules?" "Abe Stover's mules," I says, and he tells me then, "Let me
tell you, black boy, you are as free now as old Abe Stover his own
self!" When he said that I jumped on top of one of them mules' back
before I knowed anything!
I married Sarah Richardson, February 10, 1870, and had only eleven
children. One son is a deacon and one grandson is a preacher. I am a
good Baptist. Before I was married I said to the gal's old man, "I'll
go to the mourners bench if you'll let me have Sal," and sure nuff I
joined up just a month after I got her. I am head of the Sunday School
and deacon in the St. Paul Baptist church in Muskogee now.
I lived about five miles from Van Buren until about twelve years ago
when they found oil and then they run all the negroes out and leased
up the land. They never did treat the negroes good around there
anyways.
I never had a hard time as a slave, but I'm glad we was set free.
Sometimes we can't figger out the best thing to do, but anyways we can
lead our own life now, and I'm glad the young ones can learn and get
somewhere these days.
Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves
[Date stamp: NOV 5 1937]
BEN LAWSON
Age 84 yrs.
Oklahoma City, Okla.
I was born in Danville, Illinois. De best I can get at my age I is 84
years old. My father dey tell me was name Dennis Lawson and died
before I was born. My mother's name was Ann Lawson, who I saw once. I
was given by her to my Mistress, Mrs. Jane Brazier, when a kid and she
was too. My mother raised me, she and her son to manhood. I got no
brothers or sisters to my knowledge. I was de only slave dey had and
dey raised me to be humble and fear dem as a slave and servant. As I
was de only slave I slept in de same room wid my Mistress and her son
who was grown, her husband and father being dead.
I worked on the farm doing general farm work, hoeing, plowing,
harvesting the crop of wheat, corn, barley, oats, rice, peas, etc. To
make and harvest the crops dey would hire poor white help and as dey
was grown and I was a lad, dey kept me in a strain in order to keep up
wid dem for if I didn't it was just too bad for my back. So's dere
would be work for me to do during the bad days of winter dey built a
pen under a shed and dey would lay a cloth on de ground covering the
ground in the pen and wid small mesh wire on top of de pen on which de
wheat was laid and wid a wooden maul I would pounder out wheat all day
long, even though dey could have thrashed it as dey did de biggest
part of it.
At meal time dey would give me what was left of de scraps off dey
table in a plate, which I would eat most de time on de back porch in
warm weather and in de kitchen in winter.
For summer I wore a lowell shirt and for winter I wore de same old
lowell shirt only wid outing slips and a pair of brogan shoes or a
pair of old shoes dat was thrown away by my Mistress' son.
Their house was a 3-room log house unpainted, wid only one bed room
and a dining room and kitchen.
The plantation had 'bout 160 acres and was worked by my Mistress' son
and myself plus poor white hired help, my being de only slave.
I was treated most harshly 'mongst a group of just white people and
who seemed to think me de old work ox for all de hardest work. De
nearest other Negro slaves were 'bout 15 or 20 miles from me.
When I was grown I ran away one night and walked and rode de rods
under stage coaches to Paducah, Kentucky. I got me a job and worked as
a roustabout on a boat where I learned to gamble wid dice. I fought
and gambled all up and down de Mississippi River, and in de course of
time I had 'bout $3,000, but I lost it.
I don't know de month or de year I was born in but I can 'member de
sinking of de biggest circus show in de Mississippi River at Mobile,
Alabama when I was 10 to 14 years old, I ain't sure which.
There wasn't no children for me to play with and it seem like I never
was a child but was just always a man. I wasn't never told dat I was
free, and I didn't know nothing 'bout de War much dat brought my
freedom. Dey kept all of dat away from me and I couldn't read or write
so I didn't know.
I've been married only once. My wife is 54 years old, and her name is
Hattie Lawson. We have no children. Since we married after freedom
there wasn't nothing unusual at our wedding.
Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves
[Date stamp: AUG 16 1937]
MARY LINDSAY
Age 91 yrs.
Tulsa, Oklahoma.
My slavery days wasn't like most people tell you about, 'cause I was
give to my young Mistress and sent away to Texas when I was jest a
little girl, and I didn't live on a big plantation a very long tine.
I got an old family Bible what say I was born on September 20, in
1846, but I don't know who put de writing in it unless it was my
mammy's mistress. My mammy had de book when she die.
My mammy come out to the Indian country from Mississippi two years
before I was born. She was the slave of a Chickasaw part-breed name
Sobe Love. He was the kinsfolks of Mr. Benjamin Love, and Mr. Henry
Love what bring two big bunches of the Chickasaws out from Mississippi
to the Choctaw country when the Chickasaws sign up de treaty to leave
Mississippi, and the whole Love family settle 'round on the Red River
below Fort Washita. There whar I was born.
My mammy say dey have a terrible hard time again the sickness when
they first come out into that country, because it was low and swampy
and all full of cane brakes, and everybody have the smallpox and the
malaria and fever all the time. Lots of the Chickasaw families nearly
died off.
Old Sobe Love marry her off to a slave named William, what belong to a
full-blood Chickasaw man name Chick-a-lathe, and I was one of de
children.
De children belong to the owner of the mother, and me and my brother
Franklin, what we called "Bruner", was born under the name of Love and
then old Master Sobe bought my pappy William, and we was all Love
slaves then. My mammy had two more girls, name Hatty and Rena.
My mammy name was Mary, and I was named after her. Old Mistress name
was Lottie, and they had a daughter name Mary. Old Master Sobe was
powerful rich, and he had about a hundred slaves and four or five big
pieces of that bottom land broke out for farms. He had niggers on all
the places, but didn't have no overseers, jest hisself and he went
around and seen that everybody behave and do they work right.
Old Master Sobe was a mighty big man in the tribe, and so was all his
kinfolks, and they went to Fort Washita and to Boggy Depot all the
time on business, and leave the Negroes to look after old Mistress and
the young daughter. She was almost grown along about that time, when I
can first remember about things.
'Cause my name was Mary, and so was my mammy's and my young Mistress'
too. Old Master Sobe called me Mary-Ka-Chubbe to show which Mary he
was talking about.
Miss Mary have a black woman name Vici what wait on her all the time,
and do the carding and spinning and cooking 'round the house, and Vici
belong to Miss Mary. I never did go 'round the Big House, but jest
stayed in the quarters with my mammy and pappy and helped in the field
a little.
Then one day Miss Mary run off with a man and married him, and old
Master Sobe nearly went crazy! The man was name Bill Merrick, and he
was a poor blacksmith and didn't have two pair of britches to his
name, and old Master Sobe said he jest stole Miss Mary 'cause she was
rich, and no other reason. 'Cause he was a white man and she was
mostly Chickasaw Indian.
Anyways old Master Sobe wouldn't even speak to Mr. Bill, and wouldn't
let him set foot on the place. He jest reared and pitched around, and
threatened to shoot him if he set eyes on him, and Mr. Bill took Miss
Mary and left out for Texas. He set up a blacksmith shop on the big
road between Bonham and Honey Grove, and lived there until he died.
Miss Mary done took Vici along with her, and pretty soon she come back
home and stay a while, and old Master Sobe kind of soften up a little
bit and give her some money to git started on, and he give her me too.
Dat jest nearly broke my old mammy's and pappy's heart, to have me
took away off from them, but they couldn't say nothing and I had to go
along with Miss Mary back to Texas. When we git away from the Big
House I jest cried and cried until I couldn't hardly see, my eyes was
so swole up, but Miss Mary said she gwine to be good to me.
I ask her how come Master Sobe didn't give her some of the grown boys
and she say she reckon it because he didn't want to help her husband
out none, but jest wanted to help her. If he give her a man her
husband have him working in the blacksmith shop, she reckon.
Master Bill Merrick was a hard worker, and he was more sober than most
the men in them days, and he never tell me to do nothing. He jest let
Miss Mary tell me what to do. They have a log house close to the shop,
and a little patch of a field at first, but after awhile he git more
land, and then Miss Mary tell me and Vici we got to help in the field
too.
That sho' was hard living then! I have to git up at three o'clock
sometimes so I have time to water the hosses and slop the hogs and
feed the chickens and milk the cows, and then git back to the house
and git the breakfast. That was during the times when Miss Mary was
having and nursing her two children, and old Vici had to stay with her
all the time. Master Bill never did do none of that kind of work, but
he had to be in the shop sometimes until way late in the night, and
sometimes before daylight, to shoe peoples hosses and oxen and fix
wagons.
He never did tell me to do that work, but he never done it his own
self and I had to do it if anybody do it.
He was the slowest one white man I ever did see. He jest move 'round
like de dead lice falling off'n him all the time, and everytime he go
to say anything he talk so slow that when he say one word you could
walk from here to way over there before he say de next word. He don't
look sick, and he was powerful strong in his arms, but he act like he
don't feel good jest the same.
I remember when the War come. Mostly by the people passing 'long the
big road, we heard about it. First they was a lot of wagons hauling
farm stuff into town to sell, and then purty soon they was soldiers on
the wagons, and they was coming out into the country to git the stuff
and buying it right at the place they find it.
Then purty soon they commence to be little bunches of mens in soldier
clothes riding up and down the road going somewhar. They seem like
they was mostly young boys like, and they jest laughing and jollying
and going on like they was on a picnic.
Then the soldiers come 'round and got a lot of the white men and took
them off to the War even iffen they didn't want to go. Master Bill
never did want to go, 'cause he had his wife and two little children,
and anyways he was gitting all the work he could do fixing wagons and
shoeing hosses, with all the traffic on de road at that time. Master
Bill had jest two hosses, for him and his wife to ride and to work to
the buggy, and he had one old yoke of oxen and some more cattle. He
got some kind of a paper in town and he kept it with him all the time,
and when the soldiers would come to git his hosses or his cattle he
would jest draw that paper on 'em and they let 'em alone.
By and by the people got so thick on the big road that they was
somebody in sight all the time. They jest keep a dust kicked up all
day and all night 'cepting when it rain, and they git all bogged down
and be strung all up and down the road camping. They kept Master Bill
in the shop all the time, fixing the things they bust trying to git
the wagons out'n the mud. They was whole families of them, with they
children and they slaves along, and they was coming in from every
place because the Yankees was gitting in their part of the country,
they say.
We all git mighty scared about the Yankees coming but I don't reckon
they ever git thar, 'cause I never seen none, and we was right on the
big road and we would of seen them. They was a whole lot more soldiers
in them brown looking jeans, round-about jackets and cotton britches
a-faunching up and down the road on their hosses, though. Them hoss
soldiers would come b'iling by, going east, all day and night, and the
two-three days later on they would all come tearing by going west! Dey
acted like dey didn't know whar dey gwine, but I reckon dey did.
Den Master Bill git sick. I reckon he more wore out and worried than
anything else, but he go down with de fever one day and it raining so
hard Mistress and me and Vici can't neither one go nowhar to git no
help.
We puts peach tree poultices on his head and wash him off all the
time, until it quit raining so Mistress can go out on de road, and
then a doctor man come from one of the bunches of soldiers and see
Master Bill. He say he going be all right and jest keep him quiet, and
go on.
Mistress have to tend de children and Vici have to take care of Master
Bill and look after the house, and dat leave me all by myself wid all
the rest of everything around the place.
I got to feed all the stock and milk the cows and work in the field
too. Dat the first time I ever try to plow, and I nearly git killed,
too! I got me a young yoke of oxens I broke to pull the wagon, 'cause
Vici have to use the old oxens to work the field. I had to take the
wagon and go 'bout ten miles west to a patch of woods Master Bill
owned to git fire wood, 'cause we lived right on a flat patch of
prairie, and I had to chop and haul the wood by myself. I had to git
postoak to burn in the kitchen fireplace and willow for Master Bill to
make charcoal out of to burn in his blacksmith fire.
Well, I hitch up them young oxen to the plow and they won't follow the
row, and so I go git the old oxens. One of them old oxens didn't know
me and took in after me, and I couldn't hitch 'em up. And then it
begins to rain again.
After the rain was quit I git the bucket and go milk the cows, and it
is time to water the hosses too, so I starts to the house with the
milk and leading one of the hosses. When I gits to the gate I drops
the halter across my arm and hooks the bucket of milk on my arm too,
and starts to open the gate. The wind blow the gate wide open, and it
slap the hoss on the flank. That was when I nearly git killed!
Out the hoss go through the gate to the yard, and down the big road,
and my arm all tangled up in the halter rope and me dragging on the
ground!
The first jump knock the wind out of me and I can't git loose, and
that hoss drag me down the road on the run until he meet up with a
passel of soldiers and they stop him.
The next thing I knowed I was laying on the back kitchen gallery, and
some soldiers was pouring water on me with a bucket. My arm was broke,
and I was stove up so bad that I have to lay down for a whole week,
and Mistress and Vici have to do all the work.
Jest as I gitting able to walk 'round here come some soldiers and say
they come to git Master Bill for the War. He still in the bed sick,
and so they leave a parole paper for him to stay until he git well,
and then he got to go into Bonham and go with the soldiers to
blacksmith for them that got the cannons, the man said.
Mistress take on and cry and hold onto the man's coat and beg, but it
don't do no good. She say they don't belong in Texas but they belong
in the Chickasaw Nation, but he say that don't do no good, 'cause they
living in Texas now.
Master Bill jest stew and fret so, one night he fever git way up and
he go off into a kind of a sleep and about morning he died.
My broke arm begin to swell up and hurt me, and I git sick with it
again, and Mistress git another doctor to come look at it.
He say I got bad blood from it how come I git so sick, and he git out
his knife out'n his satchel and bleed me in the other arm. The next
day he come back and bleed me again two times, and the next day one
more time, and then I git so sick I puke and he quit bleeding me.
While I still sick Mistress pick up and go off to the Territory to her
pappy and leave the children thar for Vici and me to look after. After
while she come home for a day or two and go off again somewhere else.
Then the next time she come home she say they been having big battles
in the Territory and her pappy moved all his stuff down on the river,
and she home to stay now.
We git along the best we can for a whole winter, but we nearly starve
to death, and then the next spring when we getting a little patch
planted Mistress go into Bonham and come back and say we all free and
the War over.
She say, "You and Vici jest as free as I am, and a lot freer, I
reckon, and they say I got to pay you if you work for me, but I ain't
got no money to pay you. If you stay on with me and help me I will
feed and home you and I can weave you some good dresses if you card
and spin the cotton and wool."
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 | 12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24