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Oklahoma Slave Narrative
Cornelius Neely Nave
I was born after the war, about 1868, and what I knows about slave times is what my pappa told me, and maybe that be not very much. Two year old when my mamma die so I remember nothing of her, and most of my sisters and brothers dead too. Pappa named Charley
Nave
; mamma's name was Mary Vann
before she marry, and her pappa was Talaka Vann,
one of Joe Vann
's slaves down around Webber's Falls. My father was born in Tahlequah, his Master Nave
was Cherokee, just about where the colored church stands on depot hill. In the master's yard was the slave cabin, one room log, dirt floor, no windows. I think I heard 'em say mother was born on Bull Creek, that somewhere up near Kansas, maybe in Kansas near Coffeyville.
Vinita was the closest town where I was born; when I get older seem like they call it 'the junction', account the rails cross there, but I never ride on the trains, just stay at home. I remember that home after the war brought my pappa back home. He went to the war for three year with the Union soldiers. But about the home it was a double room log house with a cooling off space between the rooms, all covered with a roof, but no porch,
and the beds was made of planks, the table of pine boards and there was never enough boxes for the chairs so the littlest children eat out of a tin pan off the floor. That house was on the place my pappa said he bought from Billy Jones
in 1865. The land was timbered and the oldest children clear the land, or start to do the work, while pappa go back to Tahlequah to get my sick mamma and the rest of the family. Because mamma was sick then he brought her sister, Sucky Pea
, and her husband Charley Pea
, to help around with him. We lived there a long time, and I was old enough to remember setting in the yard watching the river (Grand River) go by, and the Indians go by. All Indians lived around there, the real colored settlement was four mile from us, but I wasn't scared of them
Indians for pappa always told me his master, Henry Nave
, was his own father; that make me part Indian and the reason my hair is long, straight and black like a horse mane. Some of them Indian families was Joe Dirt Eater,
Six Killer
(some of the Six Killers live a few miles SE of Afton at this time, 1938), Chewey Noi
and Guss Buffington
. One of the Six Killer
women was mighty good to us and we called her 'mammy', that a long time after my mamma die though. Pappa got the soldier fever from being in the war; no, I don't mean like the chills and fever, but just a fever to be in the army, I guess, for he joined the regular U.S. Army after awhile, serving five years in the Tenth Cavalry at Fort Sill during the same
time John Adair
of Tahlequah, and John Gallagher
of Muskogee, was in the army. Coming out of the army for the last time, pappa took all the family and moved to Fort Scott, Kansas, but I guess he feel more at home with the Indians for pretty soon we all move back, this time to a farm near Fort Gibson.
I never hear much about the war that my father was in, but I know he fought for the North. He didn't tell us children much about the war, except he said one time that he was in the battle of Honey Springs (1863) down near Elk Creek south of Fort Gibson. That
sure was a tough time for the soldiers, for father said they fought and fought before the 'Seeseh' soldiers finally took off to the south and the northern troops went back to Fort Gibson. Seem like it take a powerful lot of fighting to rid the country of them Rebs. Another time his officer give him a message;
he was on his way to deliver it when the enemy spy him and cry out to stop, but father said he kept on going until he was shot in the leg. Then he hide in the bushes along the creek and got away. He got that message to the captain just the same.
When father was young he would go hunting the fox with his master, and fishing in the streams for the big fish. Sometimes they fish in the Illinois river, sometimes in the Grand, but they always fish the same way. They make pens out in the shallow water with
poles every little ways from the river banks. They'd cut brush saplings, walk out into the stream ahead of the pen and chase the fish down to the riffle where they'd pick 'em up. Once they catch a cat-fish most as big as a man; that fish had eggs big as hen eggs, and he made a feast for twenty-five Indians on
the fishing party.
Florence Smith
was my first wife and Ida Vann
the second. All my children was from the first marriage; Thomas
, Dora
, Charley
, Marie Opal
, William
,
Arthur
, Margaret
,
Thadral
and Hubbard
. The last one was named for Hubbard Ross
; he was related to Chief John Ross
and was some kin to Daniel Nave
, my father's master.
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