ns 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.