During the time they come to fighting
in the Civil War, I was about twelve year old. That make me about 89 years old now, and the year
about 1849, when I was born on the Dick Bean plantation over at Lincoln, Arkansas, about 20 miles
southwest of Fayetteville.
My father was named Joe Bean, and
mother was name Cosby Bean and when she died about 15 year back, she was 112 years old. She was a
Cherokee Indian slave, come here from Georgia when the Indians did, but I don' know her master'
name, I mean the Indian master. Some time old Master Bean buy her that' all I know about it.
Our old slave family was a big one,
most of them is now dead, but I remember the names, all except two of the little children who died
early, having no names. Dere was Anderson, Mary, Sarah, Cinda, Martha, Rochelle, and Christie;
some of the girls still living.
The master was Dick Bean the mistress
was Nancy Bean' dey both dead now, the master gone first someday before the war closed, while his
young son Dick the Second, was fighting for the South. He come through the war safe enough and
live to raise his own son, Dick the Third (I always calls him) who lets me live in this one-room
log cabin on his farm, God Bless his soul!
The old master's house in Arkansas was
a big six-room, two story, place on pine planks, wid a porch all around the house. Not far from
the big house was a rock building used for the looms; in dere dey made cloth and thread and dey
make it for anybody what come dere with cotton or wool. I helped throw the thread in the loom and
I get the dye stuff; the walnut bark for black, the post oak bark that mixing with the copperas
for yellow, the log wood mixing with alum for the red-brown colors.
I remember the old slave cabins all
just alike setting in a row with a box-elder tree growing in the middle of the yard. The cabins
was only one room, without windows, facing the south, with a fireplace in one end. Six of dem
cabins fill up the yard, near as I get to it now.
The flooring was rough plank, 'cept
round the fireplace where the stones reach out, and where we eat from the wooden dished on the
floor. Lots of good eats for old master didn't hide out the vegetables and the meats, dey always
handy in the smokehouse and wide open for the slaves when de needs. It. The beds was made of posts
put together wid wooden pegs, corded rope for the springs covered with cowhide first and then a
homespun tick filled wid grass straw. Cover dat wid a homespun quilt and you got the bed.
During the slave times Master Bean had
two horses, a bay trotter and a brown single-footer, mighty fine travelers dem riding horses. We
ride on the squirrel hunts, me on the bay, master close behind on the brown, waiting for me to
sight up a squirrel. Dem was the best days of all.
But dem days go when the fighting
stars, and we starts to moving around. The First move was to Dardanelle way from Fort smith close
by the Arkansas River, on a place where lied the old master's married daughter Eliza. Dat's where
master died.
He stayed shut up in the house a long
time before he died. Dat worry me, thought maybe he already died. Worry me too, because I always
used to put on the master's hoses and tie em for him and bring drinks of spring water to cool him
after a long ride, and then I figures to find out is he living or not.
They won't let nobody in the room just
break me up because I was near crazy to be with him when he's sick and need me. So I go around the
house and rolls me up a barrel to the window of his room, and there he was laying on the bed by
the window and I knock on the glass so he'll turn and see me.
"Joe, Joe, come here!" I
hear him like it was yesterday. "Take bucket to he spring an get Master Dick a fresh drink.
They let me take the water to him, and I recollect that was about the last thing I get to do for
good old Master Bean.
When he first get sick he was worried
about the Federals coming and taking his money. He had gold and silver around the house, heaps of
it. He stack it on the floor in long rows to county it before he sack it up getting ready to hide
it from the soldiers of the stealing bands that rove around the county.
The money was buried by the master and
an old slave who was the most trusted one on the place. Folks heard about the money being buried
and after the master died some white men get hold of the old slave and try to make it tell where
it was buried. The man heated and old axe and burned the old slave's feet, but he never told. Not
until young Master Dick come back from the war.
Master Kick just jest there on the
porch, face buried in his hands "Everything lost in the war," the young master groaned.
"My daddy is gone, the money is all gone, don't know what me and mama will do."
"Hush! Young Master Kick, I show
you where the money hid. I show you that, but I can't bring back your old daddy; I can't bring
back the old master."
After freedom, some of the slaves kept
on with old mistress and young Dick, working for good wages.
Right after the war, I come to Ft.
Gibson. Camped in a tent house made of elm bark. A creek Indian drifter moved out and we moved in.
Lived about one half mail from the garrison. Been around here ever since. One I lived in Jesse
James. Cave at McBride switch they call ii nowadays. Another time I live on a patch of ground
where folks say "Cherokee Bill" (Crawford Goldsby hanged in 1896 by Judge Parker) had
battle with officers of Fourteen Mile Creek.
When I get to thinking about slave
days I always remember of the slaves that run away. Master Bean had a white overseer, but he
didn't allow for no whippings, cept maybe he cuff a young one around it he done something real
mean, or maybe sometimes he sell one for the same reason. Whippings, like some of them rich owners
did, No! The old master's hide get all turned around if somebody hit a Negro. He'd let nobody
chunk em around.
But the ones that run away, well, they
get the dogs after em. Book hounds they called em, and if a slave be gone two days, say, the dogs
was used to track , and the masters would say, "If we don't catch them on this farm, catch em
on the next!"
One time I saw a slave whipped on
another plantation, He was a new slave, what I mean, they had just bought him and the overseer
said the whipping was "just to break him in!" First they beat him with a whip, then with
a strap, after tieing him to a log. Peeled off his shirt and laid on with the whip, and then pour
salt and pepper water over him so's his back would sting and burn.
I see them use blood-hounds a long time
after the war. That's when the store safe was robbed at Melvin (Oklahoma), not far from where I
live. Went to town when I heard about it, and they brought the dogs in to tail the robber. Tehm
blood hounds look like fat cur dogs to me, but they starts out trailing and pretty quick they's
barking and howling at a colored man's house.
Somebody yelled, "We got
him!" But when they all get to where the dogs are they found them all fighting over a
pickings of the scrap bucket! And the robber is still free.
A black wool suit and a white poplin
shirt, that's my wedding clothes. Go them from the store a Fort Gibson, I married Louisa Alberty,
she was a free. Worked for Reverend Dunkin, she did, who was our preacher at the wedding. Married
Mary Rogers the next time.
There was lots of children, can't
remember all the names. Minnie, Linda, John, Jack, Tom Potum, lots more than that, can't remember.
I belong to the colored
Baptist church because I want a good resting place when I go; if they is such a place as Hell it
don't see like such a good resting place to me.
