Slave Narratives, Oklahoma
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Various >> Slave Narratives, Oklahoma
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Den dey asked him could he dance and he said no, and dey told him to
dance or make us dance. Dar he stood inside a big ring of dem mens in
blue clothes, wid dey brass buttons shining in de light from de fire
dey had in front of de tents, and he jest stood and said nothing, and
it look lak he wasn't wanting to tell us to dance.
So some of us young bucks jest step up and say we was good dancers,
and we start shuffling while de rest of de niggers pat.
Some nigger women go back to de quarters and git de gourd fiddles and
de clapping bones made out'n beef ribs, and bring dem back so we could
have some music. We git all warmed up and dance lak we never did dance
befo'! I speck we invent some new steps dat night!
We act lak we dancing for de Yankees, but we trying to please Master
and old Mistress more than anything, and purty soon he begin to smile
a little and we all feel a lot better.
Next day de Yankees move on away from our place, and old Master start
gitting ready to move out. We git de wagons we hid, and de whole
passel of us leaves out for Shreveport. Jest left de old place
standing like it was.
In Shreveport old Master git his cotton and tobacco money what he been
afraid to have sent back to de plantation when he sell his stuff, and
we strike out north through Arkansas.
Dat was de awfullest trip any man ever make! We had to hide from
everybody until we find out if dey Yankees or Sesesh, and we go along
little old back roads and up one mountain and down another, through de
woods all de way.
After a long time we git to the Missouri line, and kind of cut off
through de corner of dat state into Kansas. I don't know how we ever
git across some of dem rivers but we did. Dey nearly always would be
some soldiers around de fords, and dey would help us find de best
crossing. Sometimes we had to unload de wagons and dry out de stuff
what all got wet, and camp a day or two to fix up again.
Purty soon we git to Fort Scott, and that was whar de roads forked
ever whichaways. One went on north and one east and one went down into
de Indian country. It was full of soldiers coming and going back and
forth to Arkansas and Fort Gibson.
We took de road on west through Kansas, and made for Colorado Springs.
Fort Scott was all run down, and the old places whar dey used to have
de soldiers was all fell in in most places. Jest old rackety walls and
leaky roofs, and a big pole fence made out'n poles sot in de ground
all tied together, but it was falling down too.
They was lots of wagons all around what belong to de army, hauling
stuff for de soldiers, and some folks told old Master he couldn't make
us niggers go wid him, but we said we wanted to anyways, so we jest
went on west across Kansas.
When we got away on west we come to a fork, and de best road went
kinda south into Mexico, and we come to a little place called Clayton,
Mexico whar we camped a while and then went north.
Dat place is in New Mexico now, but old Master jest called it Mexico.
Somebody showed me whar it is on de map, and it look lak it a long
ways off'n our road to Colorado Springs, but I guess de road jest wind
off down dat ways at de time we went over it. It was jest two or three
houses made out'n mud at dat time, and a store whar de soldiers and de
Indians come and done trading.
About dat time old Master sell off some of de stuff he been taking
along, 'cause de wagons loaded too heavy for de mountains and he
figger he better have de money than some of de stuff, I reckon.
On de way north it was a funny country. We jest climb all day long
gitting up one side of one bunch of mountains, and all de nigger men
have to push on de wheels while de mules pull and den scotch de wheels
while de mules rest. Everybody but de whitefolks has to walk most de
time.
Down in de valleys it was warm like in Louisiana, but it seem lak de
sun aint so hot on de head, but it look lak every time night come it
ketch us up on top of one of dem mountains, and it almost as cold as
in de winter time!
All de niggers had shoes and plenty warm clothes and we wrop up at
night in everything we can git.
We git to Fort Scott again, and den de Yankee officers come and ask
all us niggers iffen we want to leave old Master and stay dar and
work, 'cause we all free now. Old Master say we can do what we please
about it.
A few of de niggers stay dar in Fort Scott, but most of us say we
gwine stay wid old Master, and we don't care iffen we is free or not.
When we git back to Monroe to de old place us niggers git a big
surprise. We didn't hear about it, but some old Master's kinfolks back
in Virginia done come out dar an fix de place up and kept it for him
while we in Colorado, and it look 'bout as good as when we left it.
He cut it up in chunks and put us niggers out on it on de halves, but
he had to sell part of it to git de money to git us mules and tools
and found to run on. Den after while he had to sell some more, and he
seem lak he git old mighty fast.
Young Master bin in de big battles in Virginia, and he git hit, and
den he git sick, and when he come home he jest lak a old man he was so
feeble.
About dat time they was a lot of people coming into dat country from
de North, and dey kept telling de niggers dat de thing for dem to do
was to be free, and come and go whar dey please.
Dey try to git de darkeys to go and vote but none us folks took much
stock by what dey say. Old Master tell us plenty time to mix in de
politics when de younguns git educated and know what to do.
Jest de same he never mind iffen we go to de dances and de singing and
sech. He allus lent us a wagon iffen we want to borry one to go in,
too.
Some de niggers what work for de white folks from de North act purty
uppity and big, and come pestering 'round de dance places and try to
talk up ructions amongst us, but it don't last long.
De Ku Kluckers start riding 'round at night, and dey pass de word dat
de darkeys got to have a pass to go and come and to stay at de dances.
Dey have to git de pass from de white folks dey work for, and passes
writ from de Northern people wouldn't do no good. Dat de way de
Kluckers keep the darkies in line.
De Kluckers jest ride up to de dance ground and look at everybody's
passes, and iffen some darkey dar widout a pass or got a pass from de
wrong man dey run him home, and iffen he talk big and won't go home
dey whop him and make him go.
Any nigger out on de road after dark liable to run across de Kluckers,
and he better have a good pass! All de dances got to bust up at about
'leven o'clock, too.
One time I seen three-four Kluckers on hosses, all wrapped up in
white, and dey was making a black boy git home. Dey was riding hosses
and he was trotting down de road ahead of 'em. Ever time he stop and
start talking dey pop de whip at his heels and he start trotting on.
He was so made he was crying, but he was gitting on down de road jest
de same.
I seen 'em coming and I gits out my pass young Master writ so I could
show it, but when dey ride by one in front jest turns in his saddle
and look back at tother men and nod his head, and they jest ride on by
widout stopping to see my pass. Dat man knowed me, I reckon. I looks
to see iffen I knowed de hoss, but de Kluckers sometime swapped dey
hosses 'round amongst 'em, so de hoss maybe wasn't hisn.
Dey wasn't very bad 'cause de niggers 'round dar wasn't bad, but I
hear plenty of darkeys git whopped in other places 'cause dey act up
and say dey don't have to take off dey hats in de white stores and
such.
Any nigger dat behave hisself and don't go running 'round late at
night and drinking never had no trouble wid de Kluckers.
Young Mistress go off and git married, but I don't remember de name
'cause she live off somewhar else, and de next year, I think it was,
my pappy and mammy go on a place about five miles away owned by a man
named Mr. Bumpus, and I go 'long wid my sister Betty and brother
Jimmie to help 'em.
I live around dat place and never marry till old mammy and pappy both
gone, and Jimmie and Betty both married and I was gitting about forty
year old myself, and den I go up in Kansas and work around till I git
married at last.
I was in Fort Scott, and I married Mathilda Black in 1900, and she is
73 years old now and was born in Tennessee. We went to Pittsburg,
Kansas, and lived from 1907 to 1913 when we come to Tulsa.
Young Master's children writ to me once in a while and telled me how
dey gitting 'long up to about twenty year ago, and den I never heard
no more about 'em. I never had no children, and it look lak my wife
going outlive me, so my mainest hope when I goes on is seeing Mammy
and Pappy and old Master. Old overseer, I speck, was too devilish mean
to be thar!
'Course I loves my Lord Jesus same as anybody, but you see I never
hear much about Him until I was grown, and it seem lak you got to hear
about religion when you little to soak it up and put much by it.
Nobody could read de Bible when I was a boy, and dey wasn't no white
preachers talked to de niggers. We had meeting sometimes, but de
nigger preacher jest talk about bein a good nigger and "doing to
please de Master," and I allus thought he meant to please old Master,
and I allus wanted to do dat anyways.
So dat de reason I allus remember de time old Master pass on.
It was about two years after de War, and old Master been mighty porely
all de time. One day we was working in de Bumpus field and a nigger
come on a mule and say old Mistress like to have us go over to de old
place 'cause old Master mighty low and calling mine and Pappy's and
Mammy's name. Old man Bumpus say go right ahead.
When we git to de Big House old Master setting propped up in de bed
and you can see he mighty low and out'n his head.
He been talking about gitting de oats stacked, 'cause it seem to him
lak it gitting gloomy-dark, and it gwine to rain, and hail gwine to
ketch de oats in de shocks. Some nigger come running up to de back
door wid an old horn old Mistress sent him out to hunt up, and he
blowed it so old Master could hear it.
Den purty soon de doctor come to de door and say old Master wants de
bell rung 'cause de slaves should ought to be in from de fields,
'cause it gitting too dark to work. Somebody git a wagon tire and beat
on it like a bell ringing, right outside old Master's window, and den
we all go up on de porch and peep in. Every body was snuffling kind of
quiet, 'cause we can't help it.
We hear old Master say, "Dat's all right, Simmons. I don't want my
niggers working in de rain. Go down to de quarters and see dey all
dried off good. Dey ain't got no sense but dey all good niggers."
Everybody around de bed was crying, and we all was crying too.
Den old Mistress come to de door and say we can go in and look at him
if we want to. He was still setting propped up, but he was gone.
I stayed in Louisiana a long time after dat, but I didn't care nothing
about it, and it look lak I'm staying a long time past my time in dis
world, 'cause I don't care much about staying no longer only I hates
to leave Mathilda.
But any time de Lord want me I'm ready, and I likes to think when He
ready He going tell old Master to ring de bell for me to come on in.
Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves
SARAH WILSON
Age 87 yrs.
Fort Gibson, Okla.
I was a Cherokee slave and now I am a Cherokee freedwoman, and besides
that I am a quarter Cherokee my own self. And this is the way it is.
I was born in 1850 along the Arkansas river about half way between
Fort Smith and old Fort Coffee and the Skullyville boat landing on the
river. The farm place was on the north side of the river on the old
wagon road what run from Fort Smith out to Fort Gibson, and that old
road was like you couldn't hardly call a road when I first remember
seeing it. The ox teams bog down to they bellies in some places, and
the wagon wheel mighty nigh bust on the big rocks in some places.
I remember seeing soldiers coming along that old road lots of times,
and freighting wagons, and wagons what we all know carry mostly
wiskey, and that was breaking the law, too! Them soldiers catch the
man with that whiskey they sure put him up for a long time, less'n he
put some silver in they hands. That's what my Uncle Nick say. That
Uncle Nick a mean Negro, and he ought to know about that.
Like I tell you, I am quarter Cherokee. My mammy was named Adeline and
she belong to old Master Ben Johnson. Old Master Ben bring my
grandmammy out to that Sequoyah district way back when they call it
Arkansas, mammy tell me, and God only know who my mammy's pa is, but
mine was old Master Ben's boy, Ned Johnson.
Old Master Ben come from Tennessee when he was still a young man, and
he bring a whole passel of slaves and my mammy say they all was kin to
one another, all the slaves I mean. He was a white man that married a
Cherokee woman, and he was a devil on this earth. I don't want to
talk about him none.
White folks was mean to us like the devil, and so I jest let them
pass. When I say my brothers and sisters I mean my half brothers and
sisters, you know, but maybe some of them was my whole kin anyways, I
don't know. They was Lottie that was sold off to a Starr because she
wouldn't have a baby, and Ed, Dave, Ben, Jim and Ned.
My name is Sarah now but it was Annie until I was eight years old. My
old Mistress' name was Annie and she name me that, and Mammy was
afraid to change it until old Mistress died, then she change it. She
hate old Mistress and that name too.
Lottie's name was Annie, too, but Mammy changed it in her own mind but
she was afraid to say it out loud, a-feared she would get a whipping.
When sister was sold off Mammy tell her to call herself Annie when she
was leaving but call herself Lottie when she git over to the Starrs.
And she done it too. I seen her after that and she was called Lottie
all right.
The Negroes lived all huddled up in a bunch in little one-room log
cabins with stick and mud chimneys. We lived in one, and it had beds
for us children like shelves in the wall. Mammy need to help us up
into them.
Grandmammy was mighty old and Mistress was old too. Grandmammy set on
the Master's porch and minded the baby mostly. I think it was Young
Master's. He was married to a Cherokee girl. They was several of the
boys but only one girl, Nicie. The old Master's boys were Aaron, John,
Ned, Cy and Nathan. They lived in a double log house made out of
square hewed logs, and with a double fireplace out of rock where they
warmed theirselves on one side and cooked on the other. They had a
long front porch where they set most of the time in the summer, and
slept on it too.
There was over a hundred acres in the Master's farm, and it was all
bottom land too, and maybe you think he let them slaves off easy! Work
from daylight to dark! They all hated him and the overseer too, and
before slavery ended my grandmammy was dead and old Mistress was dead
and old Master was mighty feeble and Uncle Nick had run away to the
North soldiers and they never got him back. He run away once before,
about ten years before I was born, Mammy say, but the Cherokees went
over in the Creek Nation and got him back that time.
The way he made the Negroes work so hard, old Master must have been
trying to get rich. When they wouldn't stand for a whipping he would
sell them.
I saw him sell a old woman and her son. Must have been my aunt. She
was always pestering around trying to get something for herself, and
one day she was cleaning the yard he seen her pick up something and
put it inside her apron. He flew at her and cussed her, and started
like he was going to hit her but she just stood right up to him and
never budged, and when he come close she just screamed out loud and
ran at him with her fingers stuck out straight and jabbed him in the
belly. He had a big soft belly, too, and it hurt him. He seen she
wasn't going to be afraid, and he set out to sell her. He went off on
his horse to get some men to come and bid on her and her boy, and all
us children was mighty scared about it.
They would have hangings at Fort Smith courthouse, and old Master
would take a slave there sometimes to see the hanging, and that slave
would come back and tell us all scary stories about the hanging.
One time he whipped a whole bunch of the men on account of a fight in
the quarters, and then he took them all to Fort Smith to see a
hanging. He tied them all in the wagon, and when they had seen the
hanging he asked them if they was scared of them dead men hanging up
there. They all said yes, of course, but my old uncle Nick was a bad
Negro and he said, "No, I aint a-feared of them nor nothing else in
this world", and old Master jumped on him while he was tied and beat
him with a rope, and then when they got home he tied old Nick to a
tree and took his shirt off and poured the cat-o-nine-tails to him
until he fainted away and fell over like he was dead.
I never forget seeing all that blood all over my uncle, and if I could
hate that old Indian any more I guess I would, but I hated him all I
could already I reckon.
Old Master wasn't the only hellion neither. Old Mistress just as bad,
and she took most of her wrath out hitting us children all the time.
She was afraid of the grown Negroes. Afraid of what they might do
while old Master was away, but she beat us children all the time.
She would call me, "Come here Annie!" and I wouldn't know what to do.
If I went when she called "Annie" my mammy would beat me for answering
to that name, and if I didn't go old Mistress would beat me for that.
That made me hate both of them, and I got the devil in me and I
wouldn't come to either one. My grandmammy minded the Master's yard,
and she set on the front porch all the time, and when I was called I
would run to her and she wouldn't let anybody touch me.
When I was eight years old old Mistress died, and Grandmammy told me
why old Mistress picked on me so. She told me about me being half
Mister Ned's blood. Then I knowed why Mister Ned would say, "Let her
along, she got big big blood in her", and then laugh.
Young Mister Ned was a devil, too. When his mammy died he went out and
"blanket married." I mean he brung in a half white and half Indian
woman and just lived with her.
The slaves would get rations every Monday morning to do them all week.
The Overseer would weigh and measure according to how many in the
family, and if you run out you just starve till you get some more. We
all know the overseer steal some of it for his own self but we can't
do anything, so we get it from the old Master some other way.
One day I was carrying water from the spring and I run up on
Grandmammy and Uncle Nick skinning a cow. "What you-all doing?", I
say, and they say keep my mouth shut or they kill me. They was
stealing from the Master to piece out down at the quarters with. Old
Master had so many cows he never did count the difference.
I guess I wasn't any worse than any the rest of the Negroes, but I was
bad to tell little lies. I carry scars on my legs to this day where
Old Master whip me for lying, with a rawhide quirt he carry all the
time for his horse. When I lie to him he just jump down off'n his
horse and whip me good right there.
In slavery days we all ate sweet potatoes all the time. When they
didn't measure out enough of the tame kind we would go out in the
woods and get the wild kind. They growed along the river sand betaween
where we lived and Wilson's Rock, out west of our place.
Then we had boiled sheep and goat, mostly goat, and milk and wild
greens and corn pone. I think the goat meat was the best, but I aint
had no teeth for forty years now, and a chunk of meat hurts my
stomach. So I just eats grits mostly. Besides hoeing in the field,
chopping sprouts, shearing sheep, carrying water, cutting firewood,
picking cotton and sewing I was the one they picked to work Mistress'
little garden where she raised things from seed they got in Fort
Smith. Green peas and beans and radishes and things like that. If we
raised a good garden she give me a little of it, and if we had a poor
one I got a little anyhow even when she didn't give it.
For clothes we had homespun cotton all the year round, but in winter
we had a sheep skin jacket with the wool left on the inside. Sometimes
sheep skin shoes with the wool on the inside and sometimes real cow
leather shoes with wood peggings for winter, but always barefooted in
summer, all the men and women too.
Lord, I never earned a dime of money in slave days for myself but
plenty for the old Master. He would send us out to work the neighbors
field and he got paid for it, but we never did see any money.
I remember the first money I ever did see. It was a little while after
we was free, and I found a greenback in the road at Fort Gibson and I
didn't know what it was. Mammy said it was money and grabbed for it,
but I was still a hell cat and I run with it. I went to the little
sutler store and laid it down and pointed to a pitcher I been wanting.
The man took the money and give me the pitcher, but I don't know to
this day how much money it was and how much was the pitcher, but I
still got that pitcher put away. It's all blue and white stripedy.
Most of the work I done off the plantation was sewing. I learned from
my Granny and I loved to sew. That was about the only thing I was
industrious in. When I was just a little bitsy girl I found a steel
needle in the yard that belong to old Mistress. My mammy took it and I
cried. She put it in her dress and started for the field. I cried so
old Mistress found out why and made Mammy give me the needle for my
own.
We had some neighbor Indians named Starr, and Mrs. Starr used me
sometimes to sew. She had nine boys and one girl, and she would sew up
all they clothes at once to do for a year. She would cut out the cloth
for about a week, and then send the word around to all the neighbors,
and old Mistress would send me because she couldn't see good to sew.
They would have stacks of drawers, shirts, pants and some dresses all
cut out to sew up.
I was the only Negro that would set there and sew in that bunch of
women, and they always talked to me nice and when they eat I get part
of it too, out in the kitchen.
One Negro girl, Eula Davis, had a mistress sent her too, one time, but
she wouldn't sew. She didn't like me because she said I was too white
and she played off to spite the white people. She got sent home, too.
When old Mistress die I done all the sewing for the family almost. I
could sew good enough to go out before I was eight years old, and when
I got to be about ten I was better than any other girl on the place
for sewing.
I can still quilt without my glasses, and I have sewed all night long
many a time while I was watching Young Master's baby after old
Mistress died.
They was over a hundred acres in the plantation, and I don't know how
many slaves, but before the War ended lots of the men had run away.
Uncle Nick went to the North and never come home, and Grandmammy died
about that time.
We was way down across the Red river in Texas at that time, close to
Shawneetown of the Choctaw Nation but just across the river on the
other side in Texas bottoms. Old Master took us there in covered
wagons when the Yankee soldiers got too close by in the first part of
the War. He hired the slaves out to Texas people because he didn't
make any crops down there, and we all lived in kind of camps. That's
how some of the men and my uncle Nick got to slip off to the north
that way.
Old Master just rant and rave all the time we was in Texas. That's the
first time I ever saw a doctor. Before that when a slave sick the old
women give them herbs, but down there one day old Master whip a Negro
girl and she fall in the fire, and he had a doctor come out to fix her
up where she was burnt. I remember Granny giving me clabber milk when
I was sick, and when I was grown I found out it had had medicine in
it.
Before freedom we didn't have no church, but slipped around to the
other cabins and had a little singing sometimes. Couldn't have anybody
show us the letters either, and you better not let them catch you pick
up a book even to look at the pictures, for it was against a Cherokee
law to have a Negro read and write or to teach a Negro.
Some Negroes believed in buckeyes and charms but I never did. Old
Master had some good boys, named Aaron, John, Ned, Cy and Nat and they
told me the charms was no good. Their sister Nicie told me too, and
said when I was sick just come and tell her.
They didn't tell us anything about Christmas and New Year though, and
all we done was work.
When the War was ended we was still in Texas, and when old Master got
a letter from Fort Smith telling him the slaves was free he couldn't
read, and Young Miss read it to him. He went wild and jumped on her
and beat the devil out of her. Said she was lying to him. It near
about killed him to let us loose, but he cooled down after awhile and
said he would help us all get back home if we wanted to come.
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