Nellie Johnson
Creek Freedwoman
Age 90 Yrs
I don't know how old I is, but I is a great big half grown gal when
the time of the War come, and I can remember how everything look at that time, and what all the
people do, too.
I'm pretty nigh to blind right now, and all I can do is set on the little old front porch and maybe
try to keep the things picked up behind my grandchild and his wife , because she has to work and he is
out selling wood most of the time.
But I didn't have to live in any such a house during the time I was young like they is, because I
belonged to Old Chief Rolley MicIntosh and my pappy and mammy have a big, nice clean log house to
live in, and everything round it look better than most renters these days.
We never did call old Master anything but the Chief or the General for that's what everybody called
him in them days, and he never did act towards us like we was slaves, much anyways. He was the mikko
of the Kawita town long before the War and long before I was borned, and he was the chief of the
Lower Creeks, even before he got to be the chief of all the Creeks.
But just at the time of the War, the Lower Creeks stayed with him and the Upper Creeks, at least
them that lived along to the south of where we live, all go off after the old man Gouge, and he take
most of the Seminole, too. I hear of old Tuskenugge, the big man of the Seminoles, but I never did see
him, nor mighty few of the Seminoles.
My mother tells me old Genera ain' been living in that Kawita
town very many years when I was borned.
He com up there from down on the fork of the river where the Arkansas and the Verdigris run together
a little while after all the last of the Creeks come out to the Territory. His brother, old Chili
McIntosh live down in that fork of the rivers too, but I don't think he ever move up into that
Kawita town. It was in the narrow stretch where the Verdigris come close to the Arkansas. They got
a pretty good sized white folks town they call Coweta, but the old Creek town was different from
that. The folks lived all around in that stretch between the rivers, and my old Master was the boss
all of them.
For a long time after the Civil War, the had a court at the new town, called Coweat court and a
school house too, but before I was born they had a mission school down the Kawita Creek from where
the town now is.
Earliest I can remember about my master was when he come to the slave settlement where we live and
get out of the buggy and show a preacher all round the place. That preacher named Mr. Loughridge,
and he was the man had the mission down on Kawita Creek before I was born, but at that time he had a
school off at some others place. He got down out of the buggy and talk to all us children, and ask
us how we getting along.
I didn't even know at the time that Old Chief was my master, until my pappy tell me after he was
gone. I think all the time he was another preacher.
My pappy's name was Jackson McIntosh, and my mammy was Hagar. I think old chief bring them out to the
Territory when he come out with his brother Chili and the rest of the Creek people. My pappy tell me
that old Master's pappy was killed by the Creeks because he signed up a treaty to bring his folks
out here, and old Master always hated that bunch of Creeks that done that.
I think old man Gouge was one of the big men in that bunch, and he fit in the War on
the Government
side, after he done holler and go on so about the Government making him come out here.
Old Master have lots of land took up all around that Kawita place, and I don't know how much, but a
lot more than anybody else. He have it all fenced in with good rail fence and all the Negreos have
all the horses and mules to work it with. They all live in good log houses they built themselves,
and have everything they need.
Old mater's land wasn't all in one big filed, but a lot of little fields scattered all over the
place. he just take up land what already was kind of prairie and the niggers don't have to clear up
much woods.
We all lived around on them little farm's and we didn't have to be under any
overseer like the
Cherokee Negroes had lots of times. We didn't have to work if they wasn't no work to do that day.
Everybody could have a little patch of his own, too, and
work it between times, on Saturdays and Sundays if he wanted to. What he made on that patch belong to him, and the old Chief never bothered
the slaves about anything.
Every slave can fix up his own cabin any way he want to, and pick out a good place with spring if he
can find one. Mostly, the slave houses had just one big room with a stick and mud chimney, just like
the poorer people among the Creeks had. Then they had a brush shelter built out of four poles with a
roof made out of brush, set out to one side of the house where they do the cooking and eating, and
sometimes the sleeping too. They set there when they is done working, and lay around on corn shuck
beds, because they never did use the log house much only in cold and rainy weather.
Old Chief just treat all the Negroes like they was hired hands, and I was a big girl before I knowed
very much about belonging to him.
I was one of the youngest children in my family; only Sammy and Millie was younger
that I was. My
big brothers was Adam, August and Nero, and my big sisters was Flora, Nancy and Rhoda. We could work
a mighty big patch for our own selves when we was all at home together, and put in all the work we
had to for the old Master, too, but after the War the big children all get married off and took up
land they own.
Old Chief lived in a big log house made double with a hall in between, and
a lot of white folks was
always coming there to see him about something. He was gone off somewhere a lot of the time, too,
and he just trusted the Negroes to look after his farms and stuff. We would just go on out in the fields
and work the crops just like they was our own, and he never come around excepting when we had
harvest time, or to tell us what he wanted planted.
Sometimes he would send a Negro to tell us to gather up some chickens or turkeys or shoats he wanted
to sell off and sometimes he woulds send after loads of corn and wheat to sell. I heard my pappy say
old Chief and Mr. Chili McIntosh was the first ones to have any wheat in the Territory, but I don't
know about that.
Along during the War the Negro men got pretty lazy and shiftless but my pappy and my big brothers
just go right and work like they always did. My pappy always said we better off to stay on the place
and work good and behave ourselves because old Master take care of us that way. But on lots of other
places the men slipped off.
I never did see many soldiers during the War, and there wasn't any fighting close to where we live.
It was kind of down in the bottoms, not far from the Verdigris and that Gar Creek, and the soldiers
would have bad crossings if they come by our place.
We did see some whackers riding around sometimes in little bunches of about a dozen, but they never
did bother us and never did stop. Some of the Negro girls that I knowned of mixed up with the poor
Creeks and Seminoles, and some got married to them after the War, abut none of my family ever did
mix up with them that I knows of.
Along towards the last of the War I never did see old Chief come around any more, and somebody say
he went down into Texas. he never did come back that I knows of, and I think he died down there.
One day my pappy come home and tell us all that the Creek done sign up to quit the War, and that old
Master send word that we all here now and can take up some land for our own selves or just stay
where we is if we want to. Pappy stayed on that place where he was at until he died.
I got to be a big girl and went down to work for a Creek family close to where they got that
Checotah town now. At that item it was just all a scattered settlement of Creeks and they call it
Eufala town. After a while I marry a man name Joe Johnson, at a little settlement they call
Rentiesville. He have his freedmen's allotment close to that place, but mine is up on the
Verdigris,
and we move up there to live.
We just had one child, names Luisa, and she married Tom Armstrong. They had three-four children but
one was named Tom and it is with him I live with now. My husband's been dead a long, long time now.
Contributed by M. Dawson, May 2002
