Slave Narratives, Oklahoma | Page 6

log fort,
the Cherokee Indians take over the land and start up the town of
Keetoowah. The folks who move in there make the place so wild and
rascally the Cherokees give up trying to make a good town and it
kinder blow away.
My husband was Tom Banks, but the boy I got ain't my own son, but I
found him on my doorstep when he's about three weeks old and raise
him like he is my own blood. He went to school at the manual training
school at Tullahassee and the education he got get him a teacher job at
Taft (Okla), where he is now.

Oklahoma Writers' Project Ex-Slaves
10-19-38 520 Words
NANCY ROGERS BEAN Age about 82 Hulbert, Okla.
I'm getting old and it's easy to forget most of the happenings of slave
days; anyway I was too little to know much about them, for my
mammy told me I was born about six years before the War. My folks
was on their way to Fort Gibson, and on the trip I was born at Boggy
Depot, down in southern Oklahoma.
There was a lot of us children; I got their names somewheres here. Yes,
there was George, Sarah, Emma, Stella, Sylvia, Lucinda, Rose, Dan,
Pamp, Jeff, Austin, Jessie, Isaac and Andrew; we all lived in a
one-room log cabin on Master Rogers' place not far from the old
military road near Choteau. Mammy was raised around the Cherokee
town of Tahlequah.
I got my name from the Rogers', but I was loaned around to their
relatives most of the time. I helped around the house for Bill
McCracken, then I was with Cornelius and Carline Wright, and when I
was freed my Mistress was a Mrs. O'Neal, wife of a officer at Fort
Gibson. She treated me the best of all and gave me the first doll I ever
had. It was a rag doll with charcoal eyes and red thread worked in for
the mouth. She allowed me one hour every day to play with it. When
the War ended Mistress O'Neal wanted to take me with her to
Richmond, Virginia, but my people wouldn't let me go. I wanted to stay
with her, she was so good, and she promised to come back for me when
I get older, but she never did.
All the time I was at the fort I hear the bugles and see the soldiers
marching around, but never did I see any battles. The fighting must
have been too far away.
Master Rogers kept all our family together, but my folks have told me
about how the slaves was sold. One of my aunts was a mean, fighting
woman. She was to be sold and when the bidding started she grabbed a

hatchet, laid her hand on a log and chopped it off. Then she throwed the
bleeding hand right in her master's face. Not long ago I hear she is still
living in the country around Nowata, Oklahoma.
Sometimes I would try to get mean, but always I got me a whipping for
it. When I was a little girl, moving around from one family to another, I
done housework, ironing, peeling potatoes and helping the main cook. I
went barefoot most of my life, but the master would get his shoes from
the Government at Fort Gibson.
I wore cotton dresses, and the Mistress wore long dresses, with
different colors for Sunday clothes, but us slaves didn't know much
about Sunday in a religious way. The Master had a brother who used to
preach to the Negroes on the sly. One time he was caught and the
Master whipped him something awful.
Years ago I married Joe Bean. Our children died as babies. Twenty
year ago Joe Bean and I separated for good and all.
The good Lord knows I'm glad slavery is over. Now I can stay peaceful
in one place--that's all I aim to do.

Oklahoma Writers' Project Ex-Slaves [Date stamp: AUG 16 1937]
PRINCE BEE Age 85 yrs. Red Bird, Okla.
I don't know how old I was when I found myself standing on the toppen
part of a high stump with a lot of white folks walking around looking at
the little scared boy that was me. Pretty soon the old master, (that's my
first master) Saul Nudville, he say to me that I'm now belonging to
Major Bee and for me to get down off the auction block.
I do that. Major Bee he comes over and right away I know I'm going to
like him. Then when I get to the Major's plantation and see his oldest
daughter Mary and all her brothers and sisters, and see how kind she is
to all them and to all the colored children, why,