Sarah Wilson, age 87 yrs
Cherokee Freedwoman, Fort Gibson, Oklahoma
I was a Cherokee slave and 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
ins 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 whiskey, 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 she 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 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 Masters's. He was married to a Cherokee girl They was
several of the boys but only one girl, Nicie. The old Masters'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 their selves 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 run at him with her finger struck 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 in Ft. 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 ain't afeard of
them nor nothing else in this world," and old Master jumped on him while he was tied an 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 he alone, she got big blood in her," an 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 moth 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'd
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 patatoes 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
between where we lived and Wilson' 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 ain't 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 sprouting
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 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 the 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 Matser. He
woulds end us out to work the neighbor's field and he got paid for it, but we never did see the
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 settler 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 what 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.
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 sisters 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 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 a while and said he would help 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 we had to straggle back the the best way we couldn't 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 heared 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 near 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 Rock 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
Lizzie all day for, over close to Ft. Gibson, and I was a 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 my mammy sold pictures of him in Ft. Smith for a
Jew. If he give me my freedom I know he 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 hang Jeff Davis to a apple tree, and old Master tell about the time we know
Jeff Davis. Old Master say Jeff Davis was just a dragoon soldier out of Ft. 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 ride up and talked to him a long time. He
say my grandmammy had a bundle on her head, and Jeff Davis say, "Where are 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 laughed at her and made her that much madder.
I joined the Four Mile Branch church in 1879 and Sam Solomon 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 its a tarnation shame some of them go and read the wrong kind of things
anyways.
Contributed by M. Dawson, May 2002
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