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Oklahoma Slave Narrative
Sahar Wilson
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 might 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, afeared 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
gad 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 mund chimneys. We lived in one, and it had beds for us
children like shelves in the wall. Mammy used 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, Nicis. 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. Most 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 run at him with her fingers stock 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 then 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. 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 wool leggings 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 spate 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 man 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. Mammy told him she could bear
her own expenses. I remember I didn't know what "expenses" was, and I
thought it was something I was going to have to help carry all the way back. It
was a long time after he knew we was free before he told us. He tried to keep
us. I reckon, but had to let us go. He died pretty soon after he told us, and
some said his heart just broke and some said some Negroes poisoned him. I
didn't know which. Anyways me had to straggle back the best way we could, and
me and mammy just got along one way and another till we got to a ferry over the
Red River and into Arkansas. Then we got some rides and walked some until we
got to Fort Smith. They was a lot of Negro camps there and we stayed awhile and
then started out to Fort Gibson because we heard they was giving rations out
there. Mammy knew we was Cherokee anyway. I guess. That trip was hell on earth.
Nobody let us ride and it took us nearly two weeks to walk all that ways, and
we nearly starved all the time. We was skin and bones and feet all bloody when
we got to the Fort. We come here to Four Mile Branch to where the Negroes was
all setting down, and pretty soon Mammy died. I married Oliver Wilson on January second, 1878. He used to
belong to Mr. DeWitt Wilson of
Tahlequah, and I think the old people used to live down at Wilson Book because
my husband used to know all about that place and the place where I was borned.
Old Mister DeWitt Wilson give me a pear
tree the next year after I was married, and it is still out in my yard and
bears every year. I was married in a white and black checkedy calico apron that
I washed for Mr. Tim Walker's mother Lissie all day for, over close to Ft. Gibson, and
I was sure a happy woman when I married that day. Him and me both got our land
on our Cherokee freedman blood and I have lived to bury my husband and see two
great grandchildren so far. I bless God about Abraham
Lincoln. I remember when my mammy sold pictures of him in Fort Smith
for a Jew. If he give me my freedom I know he is in Heaven now. I heard a lot
about Jefferson Davis in my life. During
the war we hear the Negroes singing the soldier song about hand Jeff Davis to a apple tree, and old Master tell
about the time we know Jeff Davis. Old
Master way Jeff Davis was just a dragoon
soldier out of Fort Gibson when he bring his family out here from Tennessee,
and while they was on the road from Fort Smith to where they settled young Jeff Davis and some more dragoon soldiers rid up
and talked to him a long time. He say my grandmammy had a bundle on her head,
and Jeff Davis say. "Where you
going Aunty!" and she was tired and mad and she said, "I don't know,
to Hell I reckon", and all the white soldiers laugned at her and made her
that much madder. I joined the Four Mile Branch church in 1879 and Sam Selemon was a Creek Negro and the first
preacher I ever heard preach. Everybody ought to be in the church and ready for
that better home on the other side. All the old slaves I know are dead
excepting two, and I will be going pretty soon I reckon, but I'm glad I lived
to see the day the Negroes get the right treatment if they work good and behave
themselves right. They don't have to have no pass to walk abroad no more, and
they can all read and write now, but it's a tarnation shame some of them go and
read the wrong kind of things anyways.
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