Mary Grayson
Creek Freedwoman
Tulsa,
Oklahoma
I am what colored people call a "native". That means that I didn't come into the Indian
country from somewhere in the Old South, after the War, like so many negroes did, but I was born
here in the old Creek Nation, and my master was a Creek Indian. That was eighty three years ago, so
I am told.
My mammy belonged to white people back in Alabama when she was born---down in the southern part I
think, for she told me that after she was a sizeable girl her white people moved into the eastern
part of Alabama where there was a lot of Creeks. Some of them Creeks was mixed up with the whites,
and some of the big men in the Creeks who come to talk to her master was almost white, it looked
like. "My white folks moved around a lot when I was a little girl,", she told
When mammy was about 10 or 12 years old some of the Creeks begun to come out to the Territory in
little bunches. They wasn't the ones who was taken out here by the soldiers, and contractor
men---they come on ahead by themselves and most of them had plenty of money, too. A Creek come to my
mammy's master and bought her to bring out here, but she heard she was being sold and run off into
the woods. There was an old clay pit, dug way back into a high bank, where the slaves had been
getting clay to mix with hog hair scrapings to making chinking for the big log houses that they
built for the master and the cabins they made for themselves. Well, my mammy ran and hid way back in
that old clay pit, and it was way after dark before the master and the other man found her.
The Creek man that bought her was a kind sort of a man, mammy said, and wouldn't let the master
punish her. He took her away and was kind to her, but he decided she was too young to breed, and he
sold her to another Creek who had several slaves already, and he brought her out to the Territory.
The McIntosh men was the leaders in the bunch that come out at that time, and one of the bunch
named, Jim Perryman, bought my mammy and married her to one of his "boys" but after he
waited and she didn't have a baby he decided she was no good breeder and he sold her to Mose
Perryman.
Mose Perryman was my master and he was a cousin to Legus Perryman, who was a big man in the Tribe.
he was a lot younger than Mose, and laughed at Mose for buying my mammy, but he got fooled, because
my mammy got married to Mose's slave boy Jacob, the way the slaves was married them days, and went
ahead and had ten children for Mr. Mose.
Mose Perryman owned my pappy and his older brother, Hector and one of the McIntosh men,
Oona, I
think his name was, owned my pappy's brother William. I can remember when I first heard about there
was going to be a war. The older children would talk about it, but they didn't say it was a war all
over the country. They would talk about a war going to be "back in Alabama", and I guess
they had heard the Creeks talking about it that way.
When I was born we lived in the Choska bottoms and Mr. Mose Perryman had a lot of land broke in all
up and down the Arkansas river along there. After the War, when I had got to be a young woman, there
was quite a settlement grew up at Choska (pronounced Choce-skey) right across the river east of
where Haskell now is, but when I was a child before the War all the whole bottoms was marshy kind of
wilderness except where farms had been cleared out. The land was very rich, and the Creeks who got
to settle there were lucky. They always had big crops. All west of us was high ground, towards
Gibson station and Fort Gibson, and the land was sandy. Some of the McIntoshes lived over the way,
and my Uncle William belonged one of them.
We slaves didn't have a hart time at all before the War. I have had people who were slaves of white
folks back in the old states tell me that they had to work awfully hard and their masters were cruel
to them sometimes, but all the Negroes I knew who belonged to Creeks always had plenty of clothes
and lots to eat and we all lived in good log cabins we built. We worked the farm and tended to the
horses and cattle and hogs, and some of the older women around the owner's house, but each Negro
family looked after a part of the fields and worked the crops like they belonged to us.
When I first heard talk about the War the slaves were allowed to go and see one another sometimes
and often they were sent on errands several miles with a wagon or on a horse, but pretty soon we
were all kept at home, and nobody was allowed to come around and talk to us. But we heard what was
going on.
The McIntosh men got nearly everybody to side with them about the War, but we Negroes got word
somehow that there were some Union people over there who would help slaves to get away, but we children
didn't know anything about what we heard our parents whispering about, and they would stop
if they heard us listening. Most of the Creeks who lived in our part of the country, between the
Arkansas and the Verdigris, and some even south of the Arkansas, belonged to the lower Creeks and
sided with the South, and there was a good deal of talk about them going with the North. Some of the
Negroes tried to get away and go down to them, but I don't know of any from our neighborhood that
went to them.
Some Upper Creeks came up into the Choska bottoms talking around among the folks there about siding
with the North. They were talking, they said, for old man Gouge, who was a big man among the Upper
Creeks. His Indian name was Opoethleyahola and he got away into Kansas with a big bunch of Creeks
and Seminoles during the War.
Before that time, I remember one night my uncle William brought another Negro man to our cabin and
talked a long time with my pappy but pretty soon some of the Perryman Negreos told them that Mr.
Mose was coming down and they went off into the woods to talk. But Mr. Mose didn't come down. When
pappy came back mammy cried quite a while, and we children could hear them arguing late at night.
Then my uncle Hector slipped over to our cabin several times and talked to pappy and mammy began to
fix up grub, but she didn't give us children but a little bit of it, and told us to stay around with
her at the cabin and not go playing with the other children.
The early one morning, about daylight, old Mr. Mose came down to them cabin in his buggy, waving a
shot gun and hollering at the top of his voice. I never saw a man so mad in all my life, before nor
since!
He yelled in at mammy to "git them children together and git up to my house before I beat you
and all of them to death." Mammy began to cry and plead that she didn't know anything, but he
acted like he was going to shoot sure enough, so we all ran to mammy and started for Mr. Mose's
house as fast as we could trot.
We had to pass all the other Negro cabins on the way, and we could see that they were all empty, and
it looked like everything in them had been tore up. Straw and corn shucks all over the place, where
somebody had tore up the mattresses, and all the pans and kettles gone off the outside walls where
they used to hang them.
At one place we saw two Negro boys loading some iron kettles on a wagon, and a little further on was
some boys catching chickens in a yard, but we could see all the Negroes had left in a big hurry.
I asked mammy where everybody had gone and she said, "Up to Mr. Mose's house, where we are
going. He's calling us all in."
"Will pappy be up there too?" I asked her.
"No. Your pappy and you Uncle Hector and your Uncle William and a lot of other menfolks won't
be here any more. They went away. That's why Mr. Mose is so mad, so if any of you younguns say
anything about any strange men coming to our place I'll break your necks!" Mammy was sure
scared!
We all thought sure she was going to get a big whipping, but Mr. Mose just looked at her minute and
then told her to get back to the cabin and bring all the clothes, and bed ticks and all kinds of
cloth we had and come back ready to travel.
"We're goin to take all you black devils to a place where there won't no more of you run
away!" he yelled after us. So we got ready to leave as quick as we could. I kept crying about
my pappy but mammy would say, "Don't you worry about your pappy, he's free now. Better be
worrying about us. No telling where we all will end up!" There was four or five Creek families
and their Negroes all got together to leave, with all their stuff packed in buggies and wagons, and
being toted by the Negroes or carried tied on horses, jack asses, mules and milk cattle. I reckon it
was a funny looking sight, or it would be to a person now; the way we was all loaded down with all
manner of baggage when we met at the old ford across the Arkansas that lead to the Creek Agency. The
agency stood on a high hill a few miles across the river from where we lived, but we couldn't see it
from our place down in the Choska bottoms. But as soon as we got up on the upland east of the bottoms
we could look across and see the hill.
When we got to a grove at the foot of the hill near the Agency Mr. Mose and the other masters went
up to the Agency for a while. I suppose they found out up there what everybody was supposed to do
and where they was supposed to go, for when we started on it wasn't long until several more families
and their slaves had joined the party and we made quite a big crowd.
The little Negro boys had to carry a little bundle apiece, but Mr. Mose didn't make the little girls
carry anything and let us ride if we could find anything to ride on. My mammy had to help lead the
cows part of the time, but a lot of the time she got to ride an old horse, and she would put me up
behind her. It nearly scared me to death, because I had never been on a horse before and she had to
hold on to me all the time to keep me from fallin off.
Of course I was too small to know what was going on then, but I could tell that all the masters and
the Negroes seemed to be mighty worried and careful all the time. Of course I know now that the
Creeks were all split up over the War, and nobody was able to tell who would be friendly to us or
who would try to poison us or kill us, or at least rob us. There was a lot of bushwhacking all
though that country by little groups of men who was just out to get all they could. They would
appear like they was the enemy of anybody then run across, just to have an excuse to rob them or
burn up their stuff. If you said you was with the South they would be with the North and if you
claimed to be with the Yankees they would be with the South, so our party was kind of upset all the
time we was passing through the country along the Canadian. That was where old Gouge had been
talking against the South. I've heard my folks say that he was a wonderful speaker, too.
We all had to move along mighty slow, on account of the ones on foot, and we wouldn't get very far
in one day, then we Negroes had to fix up a place to camp and get wood and cook supper for
everybody. Sometimes we would come to a place to camp that somebody knew about and we would find it
all tromped down by horses and the spring all filled in and ruined. I reckons old Gouge's people
would tear up things when they left or maybe some Southern bushwhackers would do it I don't know
which.
When we got down to where the North Fork runs into the Canadian we went around the place where the
Creek town was. There was lots of Creeks down there who was on the other side, so we passed around
that place and forded across west of there. The ford was a bad one and it took us a long time to get
across. Everybody got wet and a lot of the stuff on the wagons got wet. Pretty soon we got down into
the Chickasaw country, and everybody was friendly to us, but the Chickasaw people didn't treat their
slaves like the Creeks did. They was more strict, like the people in Texas and other places. The
Chickasaws seemed lighter color than the Creeks but they talked more in Indian among themselves and
to their slaves. Our masters talked English nearly all the time except when they were talking to
Creeks who didn't talk good English and we never did learn very good Creek. I could always
understand it and can yet, a little, but I never did try to talk it much. Mammy and Pappy used
English to us all the time.
Mr. Mose found a place for us to stop close to Fort
Washita, and got us places to stay and work. I
don't know which direction we were from Fort Washita, but I know we were not very far. I don't know
how many years we were down in there, but I know it was over two for we worked on crops at two
different places, I remember. The one day Mr. Mose came and told us that the War was over and that
we would have to root for ourselves after that. Then he just rode away and I never saw him after
that until after we had got back up into the Choska country. Mammy heard that the Negroes were going
to get equal right with the Creeks and that she should go to the Creek Agency to draw for us, so we
set out to try to get back.
We started out on foot, and would go a little ways each day, and mammy would try to get a little
something to do to get us some food. Two or three times she got paid in money, so she had some money
when we got back. After three or four days of walking we came across some more Negroes who had a
horse, and mammy paid them to let us children ride and tie with their children for a day or two.
They had their children on the horse, so two or three little ones would get on with a larger one to
guide the horse and we would ride a while and get off and tie the horse and start walking on down
the road. Then when the others caught up with the horse they would ride until they caught up with
us. Pretty soon the old people got afraid to have us do that, so we just led the horse and some of
the little ones rode it.
We had our hardest time when we would get to a river or big
crek. If the water was swift the horse
didn't do any good, for it would shy at the water and the little ones couldn't stay on, so we would
have to just wait until someone came along in a wagon and maybe have to pay them with some of our
money or some of our goods we were bringing back to haul us across. Sometimes we had to wait all day
before anyone would come along in a wagon.
We were coming north all this time, up through the Seminole Nation, but when we got
to Weleetka we
met a Creek a family of freedmen who were going to the Agency too, and mammy paid them tot take us
along in their wagon. When we got to the Agency mammy met a Negro who had seen pappy and knew where
he was, so we sent word to him and he came and found us. he had been through most of the War in the
Union Army.
When he got away into the Cherokee country some of them called the "PINS" helped tot
smuggle him on up into Missouri and over into Kansas, but he soon found that he couldn't get along
and stay safe unless he went with the Army. He went with them until the War was over, and was around
Gibson quite a lot. when he was there he tried to find out where we had gone but said he never could
find out. He was in the Battle of Honey Springs, he said, but never was hurt or sick. When we got back
together we cleared a section of land a little east of the Choska bottoms near where Clarksville now
is, and farmed until I was a great big girl.
I went to school at a little school called Blackjack school. I think it was a kind of mission school
and not one of the Creek nation schools, because my first teacher was Miss Betty Weaver and she was
not a Creek but a Cherokee. Then we had two white teachers, Miss King and John Kernan, and another
Cherokee was in charge. his name was Ross, and he was killed one day when his horse fell off a
bridge across the Verdigris, on the way from Tullahassee to Gibson Station.
When I got to be a young woman i went to Okmulgee and worked for some people near there for several
years, then I married Tate Grayson. We got our freedmen's allotments on Mingo Creek, east of Tulsa
and lived there unit our children were grown and Tate died, then I came to live with my daughter in
Tulsa.
Contributed by M. Dawson, May 2002
