I seen a lot of things in my
lifetime, and I reckon the more I seen the more I got to give up my thanks for. I been in this
world about a hundred years, I think, for I was a grown man and been a grown man quite a while
when the Civil War come along.
I was born in North Carolina, in
Jefferson County close to a little town called Rayville on a big plantation belong to Old Master
Henry Clay. He was some akin to the Tillmans in that country and they was sure big rich.
My pappy's name was Solomon Clay
and my mammy's name was Hanna. She belong to a Smalls down in South Carolina in Concordia Parish,
that was some more kinfolks of the Clays I think because when her an Pappy is freed they go and
live with the Smalls until they both die. Old master Clay already dead when the War come along,
thought.
I was home with my folks until I
was about fifteen years old I reckon and then I was sold to a man name Cheet, Dyson Cheet, and he
move to Louisiana close to Texarkansas, but he hire me out to t man name Good man Carter to work on his
steamboat for a long long time, maybe four or five years in all, so I don't know much about
Old Master Dyson Cheet.
Then he give me or will me to his
boy Tom Cheet and he bring me to the Creek Nation because his wife come from Mississippi, and she
is just part Creek Indian so they can get a big farm out here if they want it. That was a pretty
place and I always will call it home, but I been everywhere since then and I went back and took the
name I borned under because I never forget my old Master Henry Clay, and besides Mammy and pappy
kept the name of Clay too.
Well I had such a ramblin' time in
my life I better start back on the old plantation in North Carolina, and tell what it look like
first to give me a better start in my mind, anyway. Mammy and Pappy and me lived in a house close
to the big house back there, and Pappy was the coach boy and horse boy. The big house was two
stories high with a big porch what run clean to the top, and more window blinds that I ever seen
in a house since. Our little house was made of planks, heavy oak lumber all whitewashed with lime,
and we had good furniture; Old Mistress give us what she was through with. The bed was high like
you could hang a curtain on, and had springs like we got today. My grandpa used to live in that
house too, before I was born, and about the first thing I remember was when Old Master sell him and
Grandmammy to a lady in town.
That lady lived by herself, and she
knowed my grandpappy a long time and wanted to give him a good home and light work, and Mammy say
she give a thousand dollars for the two of them.
Grandpappy's name was Uncle Dick
Tillman, and Grandmammy's name was Millie Tillman, and they belong to the Tillmans when Old Master
bought them long before my pappy was borned. Our little house was full, I'll tell you. Because I
had seven sisters while I was there and seven more after I left, but I never did see part of them little ones. Only the names of some of the big ones come to me; there's
Chole, Millie, Rachel,
Susanna, and Hannah. That's all I remember.
We eat fish, greens potatoes, sow
belly and corn pone mostly, but sometimes in winter we get some fresh beef when they have a
neighborhood killing. Everybody go to the field about seven o'clock when the big bell ring, and
com ein late by the same bell.
Young slaves that too little for
the field work in the Mistress garden, and we get so much for each family to take home from the
garden. Old negroes make our clothes from homespoun cotton, and some mixed wool in cold either. I
had one long shirt that had give different colors in the stripes. We wear them long shirts when we
was little boys, without any pants in the summer.
Old Master Clay was good to my
folks, and kept on laughing at Mammy on account of so many girl babies. He just say, "Better
do better next time" And the next one was a girl too! She never quit work but three days on
account of a baby, and when she got back in the field she carry the baby in a red blanket tied to
her back. When it git hungry she just slip it around in front and feed it and go right on picking or
hoeing while it have its ninnny.
Old Master was awfully kind and
religious. I think he would preach a little sometime or maybe teach Sunday school. I never seen
him whip a slave, but he had a whipping machine to scare them with mostly. When he say to the
overseer, "Drive them today," he meant we was getting behind the season and he wanted us
to hurry up. But the overseer was a negro too, and he just worked harder and told us to lay into
it or he'd tell on us.
Sometimes Old master come to the
field in his buggy and talk to us, and one time I seen some neighbor negroes getting whipping in
the field, and I asked old Master what that for, and he say" Hoe your row youngun' or you
might catch the like of that too."
They was about six hundred acres in
the plantation, so my mammy told me one time, but I don't think it was in one piece. Then they had
nearly two hundred slaves, big and little, mostly little it seems like. They all lived in the
"nigger quarters" that set way off from the house. They was little one room plank cabins
setting close together in a row so that you could step from one porch to the other.
When I was about fourteen or
fifteen, I went off with Mr. Dyson Cheet to Louisiana and he started to whittle a plantation right
out of the woods. All I had to do was cut down trees and rup sprouts all day every day.
I cut cord wood too, to sell to the
steamboats, and pretty soon I was hired to work on one of the boats. I guess it had a name but I
don't remember it. Boss Man was Mr. Goodman Carter, and he was a good ship master. Us negro boys
worked as roustabouts to load and unload and keep the fire going. The boat run from Alexandria
Louisiana, down the Red River to the Mississippi, and then up to St. Louis and back to Alexandria
again.
I was on that boat quite a long
time, and then Old Mater's boy Tom Cheet marry a part Creek woman and I got to live with them.
They settle south of where Muskogee is now about two miles from the Honey Springs town. That was a
good plantation, too, and they had good double log houses and lots of stock.
I lived in a cabin with a stick and
mud chimney, and I had to keep putting out the fire where it set the sticks of the chimney until I
daubed it all good with red clay.
Mistress had me help the children of
the other slaves to make post out of red clay because I was good at it. We made good clay pots and
I have made hominy in them like the Creeks make lots of time. We would make the pots and hang them
in the chimney to bake, sometimes a whole week, then pick out the ones that didn't crack.
I was a great fellow with the
Matser's children because I would make them clay marbles. Roll them and bake them like the pots,
and the children and the grown negroes too would play "Sevens" with them on Sunday. It
see like the slaves of the Creek county had a better time than most of the negroes in Louisiana,
too. They played more and had their own church and peachers.
We went to place where the colored
preacher was Reverend Seymour Perry, and we used to baptize in the Elk and sing "Oh I Wish I
Could Find Some \secret Place Where I Could Find My God." They sung, "When I come to die
I want to be ready" and such songs as that.
The big thing on that plantation
was the corn shucking. One every two weeks almost and negroes form other plantations would come
over to shuck for their masters and then we would to to another shucking the same way. The masters
sold lots of corn to the army at Fort Gibson at the start of the War, and I took several loads,
but before that we took it to Webbers Falls mostly.
War come along and Master go with
the sough side, and I went along to drive a wagon, but I got separated from Master the first thing
and ever seen him but once or twice in the War. When they was going to strike a battle somewhere
they would come and get us and our wagons and we would haul stuff for several days and nights to
some place where they could get it. Then we would go off away from there before they had the
battle so they wouldn't get us captured.
I've hauled like that all around
Webbers Falls and Fort Gibson and Fort Davis and all over these rocky hills sometimes when we had
to take an axe and cut a road at night, but I never seen but one battle and that was just the smoke. We was at a place close to where Braggs is now and we seen the fire when the Yankees burn
up Honey Springs.
After the War all the negroes don't
know what to do. My old pappy and mammy even come all the way to here in a ox wagon and then turn
around and go back to North Carolina. The couldn't make a living here.
I stayed with Master until he died,
and that wasn't very long, and then I married and settled down. Master been trying to get me to
marry a long time, and here is how he done it. I never did get along good with these Creek slaves
out here and I always stayed around with the white folks. In fact I was afraid of these Creeks and
always got off the road when I seen Creek negroes coming along. They would have red strings tied
on their hats or something wild looking.
Well young Master say, "Henry
why don't you go over to Josh Brooks house and see them folks. His daughter Maggie say to tell
you to come on over to church out there. You got to make some friends out there, so you just go on
over and see her. You free now."
Well, I take his good horse and
Texas saddle and I ride over that way. Get about there and set down on a log to think about what I
going to talk about. Them Creek negroes was so funny to talk to anyways. Well, I set there from in
the morning to way in the evening and ever go on to that house. Just turn round and go back.
Young Master say, "What that
gal have to say Henry boy?"
"Good things, Boss" I
tell him. I sure lied and he knowed it too, for he nearly died laughing. Just he same I went on
back and pretty soon I got the gal and married her, and we got some of that Creek money and bought
a house close to Honey Springs.
On the boat I learned to fiddle,
and I can make an old fiddle talk. So I done pretty good playing for the white dances for a long
time after the War, and they sure had some goods ones. Everything from a waltz to a Schottische I
played. Sometimes some white people didn't like to have me play, but young Master (I always called
him that till he died) would say, "Where I go my boy can go to."
I never was sick bad in my life but
once. On the old place in North Carolina Old Mistress looked after the sick and got a doctor, but
out here young Mistress give the sick ones mullein, May apple, burr vine, Red Root, Life
Everlasting and things like that for sickness. All the negroes wore a little bag of asafoetida
around the neck to keep off disease, too.
That
time I was sick I thought I seen ghosts, but I guess it was the fever. We was moving, the year
after the war, and at midnight we had to break camp because I thought I seen people moving around
in the woods, dogs barked out in the woods, and an old Indian with one eye come up to my pallet
and when I moved the covers he disappeared.
I been back to Africa since the
War, too.
Some white people come from Tennessee I think and got up a delegation of negroes to go
back and show the Africans how we are civilized. It was right about the time of statehood, for
Oklahoma was a state when I got back.
They took about fifty negreos and I
went along. We sailed from New Orleans on a big boat and they was negores from every state in the
bunch.
We went to the Bahamas Islands and
then on to Africa, and when we got to the jungle camp in Africa I seen them African Negroes just
like they was wild.
They had some little men with scars
all over them that they said was cannibals, and they would eat human meat.
In one place where we
was about a month they had underground jails. Just dug a big hole and put heavy logs over it and d
irt on that. Then they put the prisoner they got in their wars down in that hole and sold them off
to white men that come in ships to get them.
They was still selling them too,
but not to men from America any more but from other places. The bunch I was with tried to tell
them it was wrong.
In one place they ate raw meat and
we tired to offer them cooked meat and they told the black man that we had along that it was bad
for the stomach, so he said.
I don't think we done any good, and
still we stayed there in Africa a long time maybe two or three years.
When we come back home I
just keep on living around one place an other, in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and two or three
times in Missouri.
We got this little place here and
been here ever since, and I guess it it my last resting place. I'm glad we are free, and don't
have to work any more whether we are sick or not, like in slavery days.
I went to church always and am a good Christian, and I hope to see my Maker and both my Masters because
they was both good, kind men.
Everybody should have religion, but
you got to go slow, and not try to change the leopard spots quick like them people done in Africa.
I don't think they done a bit of good.
Just trust in God and hoe your row and sidestep way from the great
temptation that's what I say.