Phyllis Petite, age 83 yrs
Cherokee Freedwoman, Fort Gibson, Oklahoma
I was born in Rusk County Texas, on a plantation about eight miles east of Belleview. There wasn't
no town where I was born, but they had a a church.
My mammy and pappy belonged to a part Cherokee named
W.P. Thompson where I was born. He had
kinfolks in the Cherokee Nation, and we all moved up here to a place of Fourteen Mile Creek close
to where Hulbert now is, way before I was big enough to remember anything. Then, so I been told,
old master Thompson sell my pappy and mammy and one of my baby brothers and me back to one of this
neighbours in Texas name of John Harnage.
Mammy's name was Letitia Thompson and Pappy's was Riley Thompson. My little brother was named
Johnson Thompson, but I had another brother sold to Vann and he always call his self Harry Vann.
His Cherokee master lived on the Arkansas river close to Webber's Falls and I never did know him
until we was both grown. My only sister was Patsy and she was borned after slavery and died at
Wagoner, Oklahoma.
I can just remember when master John Harnage took us to Texas. We went in a covered wagon with
oxen and camped out all along the way. Mammy done the cooking in big wash kettles and pappy done
the driving of the oxen. I would set in a wagon and listen to him pop his whip and holler.
Master John took us to his plantation and it was big
one, too. You could look from the field up to
the Big House and any grown body in the yard look like a little body, it was so far away.
We negroes lived in quarters not far from the Big House and ours was a single log
house with a
stick and dirt chimney. We cooked over the hot coals in the fireplace.
I just played around until I was about six years old I reckon, and then they put me up at the Big
House with my mammy to work. She done all the cording and spinning and weaving, and I done a whole
lot of sweeping and minding the baby. The baby was only about six months old, I reckon. I used to
stand by the cradle and rock it all day, and when I quit I would go to sleep right by the cradle
sometimes before mammy would come and get me.
The Big House had great big rooms in front, and they was fixed up nice too. I remember when old
Mrs. Harnage tried me out sweeping up the front rooms. They had two or three great big pictures of
some old people hanging on the wall. They was full blood Indians it look like, and I was sure
scared of them pictures! I would go here and there and every which-a-way, and anywheres I go them
big pictures always looking straight at me and watching me sweep! I kept my eyes right on them so I
could run if they moved, and old Mistress take me back to the kitchen and say I can't sweep
because I miss all the dirt.
We always have good eating, like turnip greens cooked in a kettle with hog skins and crackling
grease, and skinned corn, and rabbit or possum stew. I like big fish tolerable well too, but I was
afraid of the bones in the little ones.
That skinned corn ain't like the boiled hominy we have today. To make it you boil some wood ashes,
or have some drip lye from the hopper to put in the hot water. Let the corn boil in the lye water
until the skin drops off and the eyes drop out and then wash that corn in fresh water about a
dozen times or just keep carrying water from the spring until you are wore out, like I did. Then
you put the corn in a crock and set it in the spring, and you got good skinned corn as long as it
last, all ready to warm up a little batch at time.
Master had a big, long log kitchen setting away from the house, and we set a big table for the
family first, and when they was gone we negroes at the house eat at that table too, but we don't
use the china dishes
The negro cook was Tilda Chisholm. She and my mammy didn't' do no outwork. Aunt Tilda sure could
make them corn-dodgers. Us children would catch her eating her dinner first out of the kettles and
when we say something she say" "Go on child, I jest tasting that dinner." In the
summer we had cotton homespun clothes, and in winter it had wool mixed in. They was dyed with
copperas and wild indigo.
My brother, Johnson Thompson, would get up behind old Master Harnage on his horse and go with him
to hunt squirrels. Johnson would go 'round on the other side of the tree, and rock the squirrels
so they would go 'round on Master's side so's he could shoot them. Master's old mare was named,
"Old Willow" and she knowed how to stop and stand real still so he could shoot.
His children was just all over the place! He had two houses full of them! I only
remember Bell,
Ida, Maley, Mary and Will, but they was plenty more I don't remember.
That old horn blowed 'way before daylight, and all the field negroes had to be out in the row by
the time of sun up. House negroes got up too, because old Master always up to see everybody get
out to work.
Old Master Harnage bought and old slaves most all the time, and some of the new negreos
always acted up and needed a licking. The worst ones got beat up good, too! They didn't have no jail to
put slaves in because hewn the Masters got done licking them they didn't need no jail.
My husband was George Petite. He tell me his mammy was sold away from him when he was a little
boy. He looked down a long lane after her just as long as he could see her, and cried after her.
He went down to the big road and set down by his mammy's barefooted tracks in the sand, and set
there until it got dark, and then he come on back to the quarters.
I just saw one slave try to get away right in hand. They caught him with bloodhounds and brung him
back in. The hounds had nearly tore him up, and he was sick a long time. I don't remember his
name, but he wasn't one of the old regular negroes.
In Texas we had a church where we could go. I think it was a white church and they just let the
negroes have it when they got a preacher sometimes. My mammy took me sometimes, and she loved to
sing them salvation songs.
We used to carry news from one plantation to the other I reckson, 'cause momma would tell about
things going on some other plantation and I know she never been there.
Christmas morning we always got some brown sugar candy or some molasses to pull, and we
children was up bright and early to get that 'lasses pull, I tell you! And in the winter we played skeeting
on the ice when the water froze over. No, I don't mean skating. That's when you got iron skates,
and we didn't' have them things. We just get a running start and jump on the ice and skeet as far
as we could go, and then you run some more.
I nearly busted my head open, and brother Johnson said: "Try it again, " but after that
I was scared to skeet any more.
Mammy say we was down in Texas to get away from the War, but I didn't see any war and any
soldiers. But one day old Master stay after he eat breakfast and when us negroes come in to eat he
say" After today I ain't your master any more. You all as free as I am." We just stand
and look and don't know what to say about it.
After a while pappy got a wagon and some oxen to drive for a
white man who was coming to the
Cherokee Nation because he had folks here. His name was Dave Mounts and he had a boy named John.
We come with them and stopped at Fort Gibson where my own grandmammy was cooking
of the soldiers at the garrison. Her name was Phyllis Brewer and i was named after her. She had a good Cherokee
master. My mammy was born on his place.
We stayed with her about a week and then we moved out on Four Mile Creek to live. She died on
Fourteen-Mile Creek about a year later
When we first went to Four Mile Creek, I seen negro women chopping wood and asked them who they
work for and I found out they didn't know they was free yet.
After a while my pappy and mammy both died, and I was took care of by my aunt Elsie Vann. she took
my brother Johnson, too, but I don't know who took Harry Vann.
I was married to George Petite, and I had on a white under dress
and black high top shoes, and a
large cream colored hat, and on top of all I had a blue wool dress with tassles all around the
bottom of it. That dress was for me to eat the terrible supper in. That what we called the wedding
supper because we eat too much of it. Just danced all night too! I was at Mandy Foster's house in
Fort Gibson and the preacher was Reverend Barrows. I had that dress a long time, but it's gone
now. I still got the little sun bonnet I wore to church in Texas.
We had six children, but all are dead but George, Tish an Annie now.
Yes, they tell me Abraham Lincoln set me free, and I love to look at his picture on the wall in
the school house at Four Mile branch where they have church. My grand mammy kind of help start that
church, and I think everybody ought to belong to some church.
I want to say again my Master Harnage was Indian, but he was a good man and mighty good to us
slaves, and you can see I am more than six feet high and they way I weighs over a hundred and
sixty, even if my hair is snow white
Contributed by M. Dawson, May 2002
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