Mary Grayson
From:
Oklahoma
Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves
MARY GRAYSON
Age 83 yrs.
Tulsa, Oklahoma
I am what we 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 me.
When mammy was about 10 or 13 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 make chinking for the
big log houses that they built for the master and the cabins they made
for themselves. Well, my mammy run 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 a while 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 Choe-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, toward Gibson station and Fort
Gibson, and the land was sandy. Some of the McIntoshes lived over that
way, and my Uncle William belonged to one of them.
We slaves didn't have a hard 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 worked 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 the Cherokees over back of Ft.
Gibson was not going to be in the War, and 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, but down below us along the Canadian
River they were Upper Creeks 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 Opoeth-le-ya-hola, 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 Negroes 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.
Then early one morning, about daylight, old Mr. Mose came down to the
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 your 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 a 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 going 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 falling 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 through 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 they 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 reckon 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 Negroes 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. Then 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 rights 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 times when we would get to a river or big creek. 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 Weeleetka we met a Creek family of freedmen who
were going to the Agency too, and mammy paid them to 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 we got away into the Cherokee country some of them called the
"Pins" helped to 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 selection 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 until our children were grown and Tate died, then I came to live
with my daughter in Tulsa.
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