r is buried.

That's the way my Mammy hears it and told it to us children. She was a
Christian and I know she told the truth.

Like I said, Mammy was never sold only to Master Jackson. But she's
seen them slave auctions where the men, women and children was
stripped naked and lined up so's the buyers could see what kind of
animals they was getting for their money.

My pappy's name was Jacob Keller and my mother was Maria. They's both
dead long ago, and I'm waiting for the old ship Zion that took my
Mammy away, like we use to sing of in the woods:

"It has landed my old Mammy,
It has landed my old Mammy,
Get on board, Get on board,
'Tis the Old Ship of Zion--
Get on board!"

Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves
[Date stamp: AUG 16 1937]

NELLIE JOHNSON

I don't know how old I is, but I is a great big half grown gal when
the time of the War come, and I can remember how everything look at
that time, and what all the people do, too.

I'm pretty nigh to blind right now, and all I can do is set on this
little old front porch and maybe try to keep the things picked up
behing my grandchild and his wife, because she has to work and he is
out selling wood most of the time.

But I didn't have to live in any such a house during the time I was
young like they is, because I belonged to old Chief Rolley McIntosh,
and my pappy and mammy have a big, nice, clean log house to live in,
and everything round it look better than most renters got these days.

We never did call old Master anything but the Chief or the General for
that's what everybody called him in them days, and he never did act
towards us like we was slaves, much anyways. He was the mikko of the
Kawita town long before the War and long before I was borned, and he
was the chief of the Lower Creeks even before he got to be the chief
of all the Creeks.

But just at the time of the War the Lower Creeks stayed with him and
the Upper Creeks, at least them that lived along to the south of where
we live, all go off after that old man Gouge, and he take most of the
Seminole too. I hear old Tuskenugge, the big man with the Seminoles,
but I never did see him, nor mighty few of the Seminoles.

My mammy tells me old General ain't been living in that Kawita town
very many years when I was borned. He come up there from down in the
fork of the river where the Arkansas and the Verdigris run together a
little while after all the last of the Creeks