The Slave Narrative Collection
An OKGenWeb Special Project
 

We strongly recommend that you read the information below from the Library of Congress explaining the language used in these interviews. 

Jim Treat
Age 86
West Harrison Ave., McAlester, Okla.

"I went down to Dad's old corn field.
Black snake bit me on my heel
I turn around and run my best,
Stuck my head in a hornet's nest."

Run nigger, run,
De Parreroll'll git you!
Run nigger, run,
De Patteroll come!
Run nigger, run,
De Patteroll'll git you!
Run Nigger, run,
You better make it home!

We all sun dat song and had a lot of fun singing it but it was true jest the same. Dat was one of the things dat the niggers dreaded most, was a patteroller.

Slaves would have a little party; all the niggers would gather at one of the cabins and lock the door so the parrerollers couldn't git in. When the party was over and they started home, the patterollers would stop them and demand their passes. Woe to the nigger that didn't nave one!

I guess they was all right in some cases but they over-done it I can tell you.

I recollects that down in the neighborhood jest below us we was all the time hearing about the patterollers beating some nigger, Finally the slaves got tired of it and decided to do something about it. One night they got some grape vines and twisted them together and stretched them across the road. They went down the road and waited and finally four or five patterollers come along. The niggers boys started running back up the road and by this time the Patterollers was running their horses full speed after them. Just before they got to the vines the niggers ducked out of the road and the horses run full tilt into the vines. You never saw such a spill. The horses turned "summer-sets" and one man was killed, tow had their legs broke and one got a arm broke. Curse these boys had to take to de woods and finally made their was to the north. Several colored folks lost their lives over it, too, but Patterollers was sorter scarce in them parts from then on.

I was born in September 1851. My old Master kept a record of his slaves' ages and we all knowed how old we was. I was one of twenty-two children. All of us lived to be grown 'cept Tommy, Ivory and a little girl. Now there's jest two of us left, my brother, who was born the first year after the surrender. He's a preacher and lives in Parsons, Kansas. His name is Bill Threat.

My mother, her brother, grandmother and auntie belonged to ol man Johnnie Bowman, an Indian. He got in a tight and hed to sell 'em.  He sold them to Russell Allen and he made him promis not to sell them one by one but in pairs or all together. He sold grandmother and Auntie to old Hollis Mongomery but kept mother and her brother till freedom.

Russell Allen wasn't mean to his niggers but he shore expected them to stay on the plantation and do their work. After he sold my grandmother and aunt, mother and Uncle Jack got awful lonesome to see them. One day Jack decided he would run off and go to see them. It was forty some-odd miles to where they lived but that didn't seem far to him for he kept thinking about him seeing his mother. His master sent a man after him. He tried to rope around jack's waist and led him behind his horse all the way home. He rode so fast dat Uncle Jack had to un to keep up, When they got home they give him a whupping but he didn't mind it so much as eh was too tired.

I knowed another man who was purty hard for his master to handle. He was always doing something and getting whupped and he'd run away. His master was always slick enought to catch him. One day he run off and he made up his mind he was not gonna be a smart as the best of 'em. He saw a big hollow stump about eight or gen feet high and they was a small hole in the bottom. The stump was large enought around for him to git inside and set down. He wasn't thinking of any thing else 'cepting hiding from his master so he clum up and dropped down inside. Jest imagin how he felt when he dropped and found four little bear cubs iside. Man, was he scared!

He tried and tried to git out but couldn't The hole was so small and he couldn't climb back up. There he set expecting the old bear back any minute and realizing that iffen the bear didn't eat him he'd starve to death. 

Along about cark he heard the old bear coning, he looked up and she was coming down hind part first. All on a suddent he got desprit and he reach up and grab onto her and she started climbing back out. He hung on for dear life and as soon as he could he grabbed holt of the stump and he fell off on one side and the bear the other, 'twas hard to tell which was the worse scared. He ran home and took his whupping and never did give his master no more trouble.

I was born and raised near Talidiga, Alabama in Talidiga County, on the Coosa river. This river is called the Tallapoosa river now. We lived right on the line between Talidiga and Sinclair Counties.

My father, Jim Threat, belonged to Gum Threat, and my mother Hannah Allen, was owned by Russell Allen.

My grandmother's name was Mary Swine. Old man Swine got overstocked with children and sold her along with a passel of kids to Johnnie Bowman. He sold her to Russell Allen. Dan Threat bought my father in Maryland, VA. when he was seven and brought him to Alabama. He never saw his parent again. Dan Threat kept him till his son Gum threat was grown and married and he gave him and three other slaves to Gum for a wedding present.

Iffen they ever was a devil on this earth it was Gum Threat. He jest didn't have any regard for his slaves. He made 'em work from daylight to dark and didn't give them any more food and cloths than they could possibly git along with. He beat them for everything they done and a lot they didn't do so you may know they all hated him. He had one man, Charles Posey, that would take and take till he couldn't stand it no longer and he'd run off. He run off once and Gum sent three white men to hunt him and he told then he would kill'em iffen they didn't catch him. Course they did all in they power and finally caught him. They brought him home.

Gum Threat's house was built on a high foundation and the gallery was high off the ground. Charles was standing by the edge of the gallery and Gum come walking out and walked up close to him and drawed back his foot with a heavy boot on it and kicked Charles under the chin. You could hear his neck pop. He fell to the ground and kicked around like he was dying, They brought him to and then Gym Threat stripped him to the waist and took him into the old building, stretched him out and fastened his feet and hands wide apart, then he took a live coal of fire as big as your hand and laid it in the middle of his bare back. I remember seeing the scar there and it was about 1/8 of an inch deep.

He always seemed to have it in for Charles after that and beat him for everything. When the war started he run off and joined the northern soldiers and was made a guard in the army. The soldiers protected him and he never did have to go back any more.

My father married my mother while he was living with Dan Treat and he would git to come home every Saturday night. Gum let him keep on coming till the war started. Everbody was harder on their slaves then and Gum wouldn't let father dome home any more. One night he slipped off and come home and spent the night. He overslept the next morning and ran all the way so he would hit there in time to go to work. The hands were jest starting to the field when he got there but the overseer started in to give him a whupping anyway and father bit his thumb so he called for help and strapped him down and gave him thirty lashes.

To punish him they put him under a hard taskmaster. He couldn't do all the work they set for him to do so he run away. He'd slip in to us at night and hide out in the daytime. All of Russell Allen's niggers knowed he stayed with us for a good while. I now thing old Master knowed he was staying there but he didn't let on.

Father finally decided to try to slip off to the northern soldiers and he left one night about three o'clock. He met up with Sterl Beavers, a white man. Sterl pretended that he was sorry for father and told him that if he would go home with him he would hide him till he could git away to the north. They had to cross a big creek on a foot log. Father was afraid to trust Sterl and about half-way across the creek he jumped in and stayed under water jest as long as he could. He jest let himself drift with the current of the water. When he come to the top Sterl shot at him but didn't hit him. Father stayed out for a few days longer and he come back and gave himself up and took his whupping. When they whupped a slave they made him say, "Oh, pray Master" to show that he had to be humble.

Gum Threat has a brother-in-law named Alex Jordan and they was all the time gitting drunk and fighting. Once they had a fight and Gum knocked Alex down and stomped him in the face with his heavy goots. Alex never got over it but he decided that Gum was the best man so he jest bid his time.

As the war come on, food and clothes got powerful scarce. Gum and Alex decided they would kill off their old niggers so they wouldn't have to take care of them any longer as they couldn't sell them and nobody wanted old niggers, I remember one man they had in the bunch that they was going to kill was Uncle Pinkley Chinkenscales. They was all on the way to the woods where they had planned to do the killing when Alex Jordan's gun went off and blowed the top off Gum's head off. This broke up the killing game.

I went back to my old home about seventeen years ago and I went to the spot where Gum was killed. The print of his body is still there, the place where his head struck and in fact the print of his whole body is there, no grass will grow there. He fell on a sloping place and his blood run down about two or three feet and now when it is damp and cloudy that blood will come up on the ground just like sweat.

Alex Jordan died six years later, He was buried in the same graveyard that Bum Threat is buried. The graveyard was near Jordan's house and the third night after Alex was buried two big balls of fire rose out of that graveyard and went up clean out of site, it done this four, five times and then come down and bust on Alex Jordan's chimney. Everybody said it was Gum and Alex fighting. I guess they're still at it.

Yassum, I've seen lots of spooks. Back where I was raised they hung so many deserters and spies from the army that ghosts was a common thing.

Once I went to a place to dig for money. The place was guarded by two men who buried it and was killed there. Everbody was afraid to go there to dig but an old conjure woman told me to go there and iffen they come for me to say, :What in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost do you want back in this old sinful world?" and they would go away,

Well, I got there and was onloading my tools to go to digging and here come the two men. They was average size and there wasn't the color of blood in their faces. I was so scared that I forgot what I was supposed to say and I jest said, "What do you want?" the looked at me a minute and jest gradually disappeared. I loaded my tools in my wagon and cleared out. I never went back there either. I am not afraid of spirits now.

I've known some witches or conjure women, too. When I was first married I was working for a colored man helping him gather corn. His wife didn't like me and she didn't want me to help him. On Sunday evening she walked up to me and tapped me on the breast twice. I went to the field the next day and I had to go back home for I had a hardest chill I ever had in my life. Late that evening I had another one and it was so bad I shook the whole bed. I had one of those chills everyday for a week and I knowed in my mind that she had conjured me.

On Saturday I noticed an old hen feeding around my door. I picked up a piece of iron and took after her. She run round the house tow or three times and then stopped and stood with her wings drooping and looked up at the top of the chimney. I hit her and knocked her abut ten feet. I beat her till I was sure she was dead and I got the axe and chopped her up. To break the evil spell you have to bury a piece of de flesh, burn a piece and throw a piece into running water. I done all this.

The next morning the woman come down and set awhile and made mention that sometimes a stray chicken come to your house. I speak right up and I say, "Yes Ma'am, a old hen come here yesterday and I killed her and chopped her up and burned a piece, buried a piece and throwed a piece in some funning water" She say, "Oh my goodness, what made you kill my hen?" Then she asked for a cup of coffee and my wife told he she couldn't git nothing there and she keep begging and say, "Please give me something," My wife handed her a little old piece of cloth and she grabbed it and away she went home. I took a piece of pure sliver and clipped it ground off some of it and put it in some whiskey and drank it. I sure broke her charm over me.

I knowed another woman a few years ago that had power of conjuring a body, and one time one of her grandsons got in jail and she gave her son-in-law some dried roots and told him to go up to the jail and chew those roots and to spit all around the jail and to give some to his son so he could spit it all around inside and the jailer would let him out. they done as she told them and sure enough the jailer turned him out and he went back home with his Pa.

My mothers master, Russell Allen, was a purty good man and was good to his slaves as a general rule, He expected them to stay on the plantation and to do their work. My mother's daily task was to milk seven cows twice a day, cook all the meals for the family and weave seven yards of cloth a day.

The kitchen was some distance from the house and mother and us children lived in the kitchen. Mother done all the cooking and my sisters carried the food to the dining room and waited on the table. My brother Sam had to swing the fly brush over the table to mind the flies off the food.

Mother and us smaller children slept in the kitchen. The bed we slept in was called a Coosa-filley. A hole was bored in the wall and a pole run in it, a forked stake was fastened to the floor near the center of the room and the end of the pole rested in it. Another pole was placed across for the foot and one end rested in this fork and the other in a hole in the other side of the house. Split puncheons were used for slats with the flat side up, Mother wove course ducking for the grass or leaves to be placed in. We had a layer of cotton on the top and this made the bed softer, Some of these beds were made solid and shucks, straw, or leaves were put on this and blankets spread over it. We had a good bed, warm cloths and good food. Mother made us children help her spin and weave our own cloths.

I didn't work any as my old master kind of petted me. He always called me Sharp Head. I'd go up to the big house and he would split open a biscuit and spread it with butter and give give it to me. That was a treat for we didn't get biscuits very often.

The big house was a frame house, painted slate gray, and had five rooms in it. The quarters was back of the house about three hundred yards. The overseer lived close to the quarters. I was a good thing that mother belonged to Russell Allen instead of Gum Threat for he never would have let her keep her big batch of children. Master Allen always kept all the children and he had the old decrepit woman to take care of the babies and small children while their mothers worked.

When slave owners got in a tight and couldn't pay their debts or wanted to raise money for something they would put up one or two of their slaves and on the first Tuesday in the month they would cry them off to the highest bidder. Buyers from all over the country would be there. Some of them was just speculators who just bought and sold. Niggers sure hated to be sold and especially to speculators. They lived in constant fear that they would be sold away from their families. The block was about three feet high and had two steps leading up to it. I've seen old men and women, young men and women and even little children sold there. The slave would stand up and turn slowly round while the buyers inspected the. They'd even look at their teeth. The owners would tell what kind of dispostion they had and the kind of work they was best at. Some times a hushey young man or woman brought $1000 to $1100.

During the war slave owners was mighty hard on their slaves. Bill allen refugeed Elsey, Clarissy, Hester and Sister Phoebe to Texas and we never saw or heard of them any more.

Bob Allen went to the war and as he was so used to having somebody to wait on him he took my mother's brother with him to be his special servant. Uncle took smallpox and died and was buried at the camp.

We could hear the cannons at Talidiga, Miss 'Lizabeth walked the floor all day with her arms folded. Her face was so sad it made you want to cry. After the battle the Yankees commenced to cross the river and we could see them and everyone got just as solemn as death. They camped close to our house and the captain come up and began asking all sorts of questions. Old Master was sitting out in the yard in the shade of a big tree and the Cap'n say to him, "Are you a rebel?" 

Old master say, " I am a know-nothing."

"You have some sons in the Sesesh army, haven't you?"

"Yes, but they're all twenty-one years old."

The captain and some of his men went in the house and got all the guns and took them out and broke them over a tree, then they hunted all thought the house and took all the jewelry they could find, Old Master had buried a big sack full of money and they didn't git very much money. I remember the guns they broke was a musket and an old human rifle.

They then went to the barn. We had a row of six or seven cribs and they was all full of corn. The men pried up the logs and took out about three close to the bottom and then they got in and stomped the corn out till it fell all 'round on the ground. They turned three-hundred horses in and they et corn all night.

We had a neighbor named Kelso who was terrible mean to his niggers. He had about seventy-five and all he fed them was cotton seed boiled and thickened with corn meal. This was poured into long troughs and the people ate it with wooden spoons. Most any night you could see a light in his gin house till nine o'clock and you could hear them beating someone and hear them crying, "Oh, pry Master." Everybody knowed how mean he was and several times the white men in the country went to him and tried to git him to treat them better but he kept it up.

The next morning after the Yankees camped at our house the captain put me and my brother on a horse and told us to go show him where old man Kelso lived. When we got there the old man was setting in the yard in the shade and the cap'n ordered his men to go to the smokehouse and bust it open. You never saw the like of fine meat. He divided it out among the slaves. There must have been at least a thousand pounds of flour; they busted the ends out of the barrels and jest scattered it all over the place. Next they emptied three hogs-heads of lard. There was about twenty barrels of New Orleans molasses, they split the barrels and let the syrup all spill. You never say such a mess of flour, lard and syrup. They got on their horses and went on their was and old man Kelso didn't say a word.

Soon after this the war ended and some more Yankee soldiers some to our place and told Russell Allen, "Your colored folks are as free as you are now so turn them loose and let them go where they please and do as they please." About nine o'clock my father come and old man Allen called him and he told him, "You niggers is free now and I want you to take your family and git away from here jest as quick as you can."

Father was stumped for he didn't know what on earth he was going to do with that big family. We had now home, no food and mighty few cloths.

Old man Ramsey told father that he had an old house down in the field that needed a floor and an chimney that he could have if he would fix it up, Pappy and the older boys set in and built a chimney and we moved in on the dirt floor. We stayed there about a month when Ramsey said he needed the house so we had to move out. Our old doctor moved from the bend of the river and he let us have his house till we could find some place to live and we stayed there for three weeks. Old lady Drummonds let us build a house on her place and we lived there a long time. Pappy built a double log house and it seemed like a  mansion to us.

We would work for folds and take our pay in meat scraps, corn meal, shorts and anything they was a mind to give us. Nobody had much to eat or ear and it was nearly out of the question to ever git any money.

We got along better when spring come, for berries were plentiful and we would go to a pine tree and peel the outside bark off and scrape the body of the tree and get these scrapings. I don't know how much good was in this but is was good and sweet and we liked it. I've seen men plow for about two hours and stop their teams and go to the berry patch and eat berries. This was their breakfast; then they would go back and plow until about half-past ten and turn their teams on the grass and they would go back to the berry patch and get their dinner. We had almost no clothes, just sacks with holes cut for our heads and arms.

Old man Buchannan lost all his slaves and the Yankees took all his horses, so he got two boys, Luther and John, to help him. He hitched them to a double plow and turned all of his ground and planted cotton. When it got big enough he put John to hoeing and Luther to pulling a single plow. He made four bales of cotton and sold it for a dollar a pound. All the boys got was what they et and a suit of cloths. I guess at that they done pretty well considering the way the rest of us got along.

After the war we had the Ku Kluxers to take the place of the Patterollers. They was mighty hard on the colored folks. If a white man wanted a colored man or woman to work for him and they didn't go, the Ku Kluzers would come at night and take them out and whup them. They would ride right up in the yard to your door and have horses heads inside the door. If you asked him please not trample up your yard he's say, "Dam your yard."

After dark all colored people went into their house and they'd talk in nlow whispers. Ku Kluxers was always snooping around to see if you was talking about them. Colored folks didn't dare do that.

I'll tell you some of the songs we used to sing:

"Jest anything it is my song,
Through the globe we march along.
Marching on we sweet-like sing,
Sound the praise of anything"

"Now Ladies and gentlemens you need't thing wrong,
You asked me sing you a little song
I asked you what must I sin
And you said jest anything."

"As I went down to Logan's stream,
Purty, fair maiden I chanced for to meet,
She looked so near, she looked so sweet,
Purtier than anything."

"Now my son is almost complete,
Think you gentlemens ought to treat,
You can treat the singer sling,
But I'll put up with anything."

*****

"Ha! Ha! white folks going for to see,
Ha! Ha! White folk going to see,
Going for to tell you this, that and 'tother,
Fell in love with a great waterfall."

"Fell in love with Dinah Crow,
Teeth was shining like banks of snow,
Eyes as bright as rings of the moon,
Teeth as sharp as a 'possum or a coon."
(Dat nigger's teeth was plenty sharp, Great consolation between us niggers)

"Asked Miss Dinah to be my bride,
She bit my arm, she tore my coat,
Give such a rash-tash
She mashed mer d--- nose."
(Dat nigger's temper was plenty rash, Great consolation between us niggers.

 

Contributed by M. Dawson, May 2002