orth of Van Buren. I was plumb grown when the Civil War
come along, but I can remember back when the Cherokee Indians was in
all that part of the country.

Joe Kye was my pappy's name what he was born under back in Garrison
County, Virginia, and I took that name when I was freed, but I don't
know whether he took it or not because he was sold off by old Master
Stover when I was a child. I never have seen him since. I think he
wouldn't mind good, leastways that what my mammy say.

My mammy was named Jennie and I don't think I had any brothers or
sisters, but they was a whole lot of children at the quarters that I
played and lived with. I didn't live with mammy because she worked all
the time, and us children all stayed in one house.

It was a little one room log cabin, chinked and daubed, and you
couldn't stir us with a stick. When we went to eat we had a big pan
and all ate out of it. One what ate the fastest got the most.

Us children wore homespun shirts and britches and little slips, and
nobody but the big boys wore any britches. I wore just a shirt until I
was about 12 years old, but it had a long tall down to my calves. Four
or five of us boys slept in one bed, and it was made of hewed logs
with rope laced acrost it and a shuck mattress. We had stew made out
of pork and potatoes, and sometimes greens and pot liquor, and we had
ash cake mostly, but biscuits about once a month.

In the winter time I had brass toed shoes made on the place, and a
cloth cap with ear flaps.

The work I done was hoeing and plowing, and I rid a horse a lot for
old Master because I was a good rider. He would send me to run chores
for him, like going to the mill. He never beat his negroes but he
talked mighty cross and glared at us until he would nearly scare us to
death sometimes.

He told us the rules and we lived by them and didn't make trouble, but
they was a neighbor man that had some mean negroes and he nearly beat
them to death. We could hear them hollering in the field sometimes.
They would sleep in the cotton rows, and run off, and then they would
catch the cat-o-nine tails sure nuff. He would chain them up, too, and
keep them tied out to trees, and when they went to the field they
would be chained together in bunches sometimes after they had been
cutting up.

We didn't have no place to go to church, but old Master didn't care if
we had singing and praying, and we would tie our shoes on our backs
and go down the road close