ayed round
down there till I got to be a grown woman and married. You know I had
a pretty fine wedding 'cause my pappy had worked hard and commenced to
be prosperous. He had cattle, hogs, chickens and all those things like
that.

A college of dem niggers got together and packed up to leave
Louisiana. Me and my husband went with them. We had covered wagons,
and let me tell you I walked nearly all the way from Louisiana to
Oklahoma. We left in March but didn't git here till May. We came in
search of education. I got a pretty fair education down there but
didn't take care of it. We come to Oklahoma looking for de same thing
then that darkies go North looking fer now. But we got dissapointed.
What little I learned I quit taking care of it and seeing after it and
lost it all.

I love to fish. I've worked hard in my days. Washed and ironed for 30
years, and paid for dis home that way. Yes sir, dis is my home. My
mother died right here in dis house. She was 111 yeahs old. She is
been dead 'bout 20 yeahs.

I have three daughters here married, Sussie Pruitt, Bertie Shannon,
and Irene Freeman. Irene lost her husband, and he's dead now.

Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves

10-19-1938
1,428 words

PHOEBE BANKS
Age 78
Muskogee, Oklahoma.

In 1860, there was a little Creek Indian town of Sodom on the north
bank of the Arkansas River, in a section the Indians called Chocka
Bottoms, where Mose Perryman had a big farm or ranch for a long time
before the Civil War. That same year, on October 17, I was born on the
Perryman place, which was northwest of where I live now in Muskogee;
only in them days Fort Gibson and Okmulgee was the biggest towns
around and Muskogee hadn't shaped up yet.

My mother belonged to Mose Perryman when I was born; he was one of the
best known Creeks in the whole nation, and one of his younger
brothers, Legus Perryman, was made the big chief of the Creeks (1887)
a long time after the slaves was freed. Mother's name was Eldee; my
father's name was William McIntosh, because he belonged to a Creek
Indian family by that name. Everybody say the McIntoshes was leaders
in the Creek doings away back there in Alabama long before they come
out here.

With me, there was twelve children in our family; Daniel, Stroy,
Scott, Segal, Neil, Joe, Phillip, Mollie, Harriett, Sally and Queenie.

The Perryman slave cabins was all alike--just two-room log cabins,
with a fireplace where mother do the cooking fo