Chaney Richardson
From:
Oklahoma
Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves
10-13-37
[Date stamp: NOV 5 1937]
CHANEY RICHARDSON
Age 90 years
Fort Gibson, Okla.
I was born in the old Caney settlement southeast of Tahlequah on the
banks of Caney Creek. Off to the north we could see the big old ridge
of Sugar Mountain when the sun shine on him first thing in the morning
when we all getting up.
I didn't know nothing else but some kind of war until I was a grown
woman, because when I first can remember my old Master, Charley
Rogers, was always on the lookout for somebody or other he was lined
up against in the big feud.
My master and all the rest of the folks was Cherokees, and they'd been
killing each other off in the feud ever since long before I was
borned, and jest because old Master have a big farm and three-four
families of Negroes them other Cherokees keep on pestering his stuff
all the time. Us children was always afeared to go any place less'n
some of the grown folks was along.
We didn't know what we was a-feared of, but we heard the Master and
Mistress keep talking 'bout "another Party killing" and we stuck close
to the place.
Old Mistress' name was Nancy Rogers, but I was a orphan after I was a
big girl and I called her "Aunt" and "Mamma" like I did when I was
little. You see my own mammy was the house woman and I was raised in
the house, and I heard the little children call old mistress "mamma"
and so I did too. She never did make me stop.
My pappy and mammy and us children lived in a one-room log cabin close
to the creek bank and jest a little piece from old Master's house.
My pappy's name was Joe Tucker and my mammy's name was Ruth Tucker.
They belonged to a man named Tucker before I was born and he sold them
to Master Charley Rogers and he just let them go on by the same name
if they wanted to, because last name didn't mean nothing to a slave
anyways. The folks jest called my pappy "Charley Rogers' boy Joe."
I already had two sisters, Mary and Mandy, when I was born, and purty
soon I had a baby brother, Louis. Mammy worked at the Big House and
took me along every day. When I was a little bigger I would help hold
the hank when she done the spinning and old Mistress done a lot of the
weaving and some knitting. She jest set by the window and knit most
all of the time.
When we weave the cloth we had a big loom out on the gallery, and Miss
Nancy tell us how to do it.
Mammy eat at our own cabin, and we had lots of game meat and fish the
boys get in the Caney Creek. Mammy bring down deer meat and wild
turkey sometimes, that the Indian boys git on Sugar Mountain.
Then we had corn bread, dried bean bread and green stuff out'n
Master's patch. Mammy make the bean bread when we git short of corn
meal and nobody going to the mill right away. She take and bile the
beans and mash them up in some meal and that make it go a long ways.
The slaves didn't have no garden 'cause they work the old Master's
garden and make enough for everybody to have some anyway.
When I was about 10 years old that feud got so bad the Indians was
always talking about getting their horses and cattle killed and their
slaves harmed. I was too little to know how bad it was until one
morning my own mammy went off somewhere down the road to git some
stuff to dye cloth and she didn't come back.
Lots of the young Indian bucks on both sides of the feud would ride
around the woods at night, and old Master got powerful oneasy about my
mammy and had all the neighbors and slaves out looking for her, but
nobody find her.
It was about a week later that two Indian men rid up and ast old
master wasn't his gal Ruth gone. He says yes, and they take one of the
slaves along with a wagon to show where they seen her.
They find her in some bushes where she'd been getting bark to set the
dyes, and she been dead all the time. Somebody done hit her in the
head with a club and shot her through and through with a bullet too.
She was so swole up they couldn't lift her up and jest had to make a
deep hole right along side of her and roll her in it she was so bad
mortified.
Old Master nearly go crazy he was so mad, and the young Cherokee men
ride the woods every night for about a month, but they never catch on
to who done it.
I think old Master sell the children or give them out to somebody
then, because I never see my sisters and brother for a long time after
the Civil War, and for me, I have to go live with a new mistress that
was a Cherokee neighbor. Her name was Hannah Ross, and she raised me
until I was grown.
I was her home girl, and she and me done a lot of spinning and
weaving too. I helped the cook and carried water and milked. I carried
the water in a home-made pegging set on my head. Them peggings was
kind of buckets made out of staves set around a bottom and didn't have
no handle.
I can remember weaving with Miss Hannah Ross. She would weave a strip
of white and one of yellow and one of brown to make it pretty. She had
a reel that would pop every time it got to a half skein so she would
know to stop and fill it up again. We used copperas and some kind of
bark she bought at the store to dye with. It was cotton clothes winter
and summer for the slaves, too, I'll tell you.
When the Civil War come along we seen lots of white soldiers in them
brown butternut suits all over the place, and about all the Indian men
was in it too. Old master Charley Rogers' boy Charley went along too.
Then pretty soon--it seem like about a year--a lot of the Cherokee men
come back home and say they not going back to the War with that
General Cooper and some of them go off the Federal side because the
captain go to the Federal side too.
Somebody come along and tell me my own pappy have to go in the war and
I think they say he on the Copper side, and then after while Miss
Hannah tell me he git kilt over in Arkansas.
I was so grieved all the time I don't remember much what went on, but
I know pretty soon my Cherokee folks had all the stuff they had et up
by the soldiers and they was jest a few wagons and mules left.
All the slaves was piled in together and some of the grown ones
walking, and they took us way down across the big river and kept us in
the bottoms a long time until the War was over.
We lived in a kind of a camp, but I was too little to know where they
got the grub to feed us with. Most all the Negro men was off somewhere
in the War.
Then one day they had to bust up the camp and some Federal soldiers go
with us and we all start back home. We git to a place where all the
houses is burned down and I ask what is that place. Miss Hannah say:
"Skullyville, child. That's where they had part of the War."
All the slaves was set out when we git to Fort Gibson, and the
soldiers say we all free now. They give us grub and clothes to the
Negroes at that place. It wasn't no town but a fort place and a patch
of big trees.
Miss Hannah take me to her place and I work there until I was grown. I
didn't git any money that I seen, but I got a good place to stay.
Pretty soon I married Ran Lovely and we lived in a double log house
here at Fort Gibson. Then my second husband was Henry Richardson, but
he's been dead for years, too. We had six children, but they all dead
but one.
I didn't want slavery to be over with, mostly because we had the War I
reckon. All that trouble made me the loss of my mammy and pappy, and I
was always treated good when I was a slave. When it was over I had
rather be at home like I was. None of the Cherokees ever whipped us,
and my mistress give me some mighty fine rules to live by to git along
in this world, too.
The Cherokee didn't have no jail for Negroes and no jail for
themselves either. If a man done a crime he come back to take his
punishment without being locked up.
None of the Negroes ran away when I was a child that I know of. We all
had plenty to eat. The Negroes didn't have no school and so I can't
read and write, but they did have a school after the War, I hear. But
we had a church made out of a brush arbor and we would sing good songs
in Cherokee sometimes.
I always got Sunday off to play, and at night I could go git a piece
of sugar or something to eat before I went to bed and Mistress didn't
care.
We played bread-and-butter and the boys played hide the switch. The
one found the switch got to whip the one he wanted to.
When I got sick they give me some kind of tea from weeds, and if I et
too many roasting ears and swole up they biled gourds and give me the
liquor off'n them to make me throw up.
I've been a good church-goer all my life until I git too feeble, and I
still understand and talk Cherokee language and love to hear songs and
parts of the Bible in it because it make me think about the time I was
a little girl before my mammy and pappy leave me.
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Red Richardson
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Henry F Pyles
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