e take anything they needed iffen they found it.

First I hear something way off say "Br-r-rump!" Then again, and again.
Then something sound like popcorn beginning to pop real slow. Then it
git faster and I start for de settlement and de big house.

All Master's folks was staying at de big house then, and couldn't git
back to town 'count of de soldiers, so they all put on they good
clothes, with de hoop skirts and little sunshades and the lace
pantaloons and got in the buggy to go see de battle!

They rid off and it wasn't long till all the niggers was following
behind. We all got to a hill 'bout a half a mile from the crossroads
and stopped when we couldn't see nothing but thick smoke all over de
whole place.

We could see men on horses come in and out of de smoke, going this way
and that way, and then some Yankees on horses broke through de woods
right close to us and scattered off down through de field. One of de
white officers rid up close and yelled at us and took off his hat, but
I couldn't hear nothing he said.

Then he rid on and catch up with his men. They had stopped and was
turning off to one side. He looked back and waved his hat again for us
to git away from that, and jest then he clapped his hand to his belly
and fell off his hoss.

Our white folks turned their buggy round and made it for home and no
mistake! The niggers wasn't fur behind neither!

They fit on back toward our plantation, and some of the fighting was
inside it at one corner. For three-four days after that they was
burying soldiers 'round there, and some of de graves was on our old
place.

Long time afterwards people come and moved all them to other
graveyards at Shiloh and Corinth and other places. They was about a
hundred killed all around there.

After de War I married Molly Timberlake and we lived on there 'til
1902, when we come to Indian Territory at Haskell. They wasn't no
Haskell there then, and I helped to build dat town, doing carpenter
work and the like.

We had two boys, Bill and Jim Dick, and eight daughters, Effie, Ida,
Etta, Eva, Jessie, Tommie, Bennie and Timmie. Her real name is
Timberlake after her mammy. They all went to school and graduated in
the high schools.

My wife has been dead about ten years.

Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves
10-13-37
[Date stamp: NOV 5 1937]

CHANEY RICHARDSON
Age 90 years
Fort Gibson, Okla.

I was born in the old Caney settlement southeast of Tahlequah on the