Mattie Logan
From:
Oklahoma
Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves
MRS. MATTIE LOGAN
Age 79 yrs.
Route 5, West Tulsa, Oklahoma.
This is a mighty fitting time to be telling about the slave days, for
I'm just finished up celebrating my seventy-nine years of being around
and the first part of my life was spent on the old John B. Lewis
plantation down in old Mississippi.
Yes, sir! my birthday is just over. September 1 it was and the year
was 1858. Borned on the John B. Lewis plantation just ten mile south
of Jackson in the Mississippi country. Rankin County it was.
My mother's name was Lucinda, and father's name was Levi Miles. My
mother was part Indian, for her mother was a half-blood Cherokee
Indian from Virginia.
There was children a-plenty besides me. There was Sally, Julia,
Hubbard, Ada, Ira, Anthony, Henry, Amanda, Mary, John, Lucinda, Daniel
and me, Mattie. That was my family.
The master's family was a large one, too. Six children was born to the
Master and Mistress. Her name, his first wife, was Jennie, the second
and last was named, Louise. The children was, Rebecca, Mollie, Jennie,
Susie, Silas, and Begerlan. They kind of leaned to females.
My mother belonged to Mistress Jennie who thought a heap of her, and
why shouldn't she? Mother nursed all Miss Jennie's children because
all of her young ones and my mammy's was born so close together it
wasn't no trouble at all for mammy to raise the whole kaboodle of
them. I was born about the same time as the baby Jennie. They say I
nursed on one breast while that white child, Jennie, pulled away at
the other!
That was a pretty good idea for the Mistress, for it didn't keep her
tied to the place and she could visit around with her friends most any
time she wanted 'thout having to worry if the babies would be fed or
not.
Mammy was the house girl and account of that and because her family
was so large, the Mistress fixed up a two room cabin right back of the
Big House and that's where we lived. The cabin had a fireplace in one
of the rooms, just like the rest of the slave cabins which was set in
a row away from the Big House. In one room was bunk beds, just plain
old two-by-fours with holes bored through the plank so's ropes could
be fastened in and across for to hold the corn-shuck mattress.
My brothers and sisters was allowed to play with the Master's
children, but not with the children who belonged to the field Negroes.
We just played yard games like marbles and tossing a ball. I don't
rightly remember much about games, for there wasn't too much fun in
them days even if we did get raised with the Master's family. We
wasn't allowed to learn any reading or writing. They say if they
catched a slave learning them things they'd pull his finger nails off!
I never saw that done, though.
Each slave cabin had a stone fireplace in the end, just like ours, and
over the flames at daybreak was prepared the morning meal. That was
the only meal the field negroes had to cook.
All the other meals was fixed up by an old man and woman who was too
old for field trucking. The peas, the beans, the turnips, the
potatoes, all seasoned up with fat meats and sometimes a ham bone, was
cooked in a big iron kettle and when meal time come they all gathered
around the pot for a-plenty of helpings! Corn bread and buttermilk
made up the rest of the meal.
Ten or fifteen hogs was butchered every fall and the slaves would get
the skins and maybe a ham bone. That was all, except what was mixed in
with the stews. Flour was given out every Sunday morning and if a
family run out of that before the next week, well, they was just out
that's all!
The slaves got small amounts of vegetables from the plantation garden,
but they didn't have any gardens of their own. Everybody took what old
Master rationed out.
Once in a while we had rabbits and fish, but the best dish of all was
the 'possum and sweet potatoes--baked together over red-hot coals in
the fireplace. Now, that was something to eat!
The Lewis plantation was about three hundred acres, with usually fifty
slaves working on the place. Master Lewis was a trader. He couldn't
sell of our family, for we belonged to Mistress Jennie. Negro girls,
the fat ones who was kinder pretty, was the most sold. Folks wanted
them pretty bad but the Mistress said there wasn't going to be any
selling of the girls who was mammy's children.
There was no overseer on our place, just the old Master who did all
the bossing. He wasn't too mean, but I've seen him whip Old John. I'd
run in the house to get away from the sight, but I could still hear
Old John yelling, 'Pray, Master! Oh! Pray, Master!', but I guess that
there was more howling than there was hurting at that.
My uncle Ed Miles run away to the North and joined with Yankees during
the War. He was lucky to get away, for lots of them who tried it was
ketched up by the patrollers. I seen some of them once. They had
chains fastened around their legs, fastened short, too, just long
enough to take a short step. No more running away with them chains
anchoring the feets!
There wasn't any negro churches close by our plantation. All the
slaves who wanted religion was allowed to join the Methodist church
because that was the Mistress' church.
A doctor was called in when the slaves would get sick. He'd give pills
for most all the ailments, but once in a while, like when the
children would get the whooping cough, some old negro would try to
cure them with home made remedies.
The whooping cough cure was by using a land turtle. Cut off his head
and drain the blood into a cup. Then take a lump of sugar and dip in
the blood, eat the sugar and the coughing was supposed to stop. If it
did or not I don't know.
And that makes me think about another cure they use to tell about. A
cure for mean overseers. And I don't mean kill, just scare him, that's
all. They say the cure was tried on an overseer who worked for Silas
Stien, who was a slave owner living close by the Lewis plantation.
It seems like this overseer was of the meanest kind, always whipping
the slaves for no reason at all, and the slaves tried to figure out a
way to even up with him by chasing him off the place.
One of the slaves told how to cure him. Get a King snake and put the
snake in the overseer's cabin. Slip the snake in about, no, not about,
but just exactly nine o'clock at night. Seems like the time was
important, why so, I don't remember now.
That's what the slaves did. Put in the snake and out went the
overseer. Never no more did he whip the slaves on that plantation
because he wasn't working there no more! When he went, when he went,
or how he went nobody knows, but they all say he went. That's what
counted--he was gone!
The Yankees didn't come around our plantation during the war. All we
heard was, 'They'll kill all the slaves,' and such hearing was
a-plenty!
After the war some man come to the plantation and told the field
negroes they was free. But he didn't know about the cabin we lived in
and didn't tell my folks nothing about it. They learned about the
freedom from the old Master.
That was some days after the man left the place. The Master called my
mother and father into the Big House and told them they was free. Free
like him. But he didn't want my folks to leave and they stayed, stayed
there three year after they was free to go anywhere they wanted.
The master paid them $200 a month to work for him and that wasn't so
much if you stop to figure there was two grown folks and thirteen
children who could do plenty of work around the place.
But that money paid for an 80-acre farm my folks bought not far from
the old plantation and they moved onto it three year after the freedom
come.
I think Lincoln was a mighty good man, and I think Roosevelt is trying
to carry some of the good ideas Lincoln had. Lincoln would have done a
heap more if he had lived.
The young negroes who are living now are selfish and shiftless.
They're not worth two cents and don't have the respect for other folks
to get along right. That's what I think.
I been married three times, but no children did I have. The first man
was Frank Morris, the next was Jim White, and the last was John Logan.
All gone. Dead.
From Mississippi I come to Idabel, Oklahoma, in 1909, two year after
statehood. I moved to Muskogee in 1910, staying there while the times
was good and coming to Tulsa some years ago.
I'm pretty old and can't work hard anymore, but I manage to get along.
I'm glad to be free and I don't believe I could stand them slavery
days now at all.
I'm my own boss, get up when I want, go to bed the same way. Nobody to
say this or that about what I do.
Yes, I'm glad to be free!
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