ght at the store to dye with. It was cotton clothes winter
and summer for the slaves, too, I'll tell you.

When the Civil War come along we seen lots of white soldiers in them
brown butternut suits all over the place, and about all the Indian men
was in it too. Old master Charley Rogers' boy Charley went along too.
Then pretty soon--it seem like about a year--a lot of the Cherokee men
come back home and say they not going back to the War with that
General Cooper and some of them go off the Federal side because the
captain go to the Federal side too.

Somebody come along and tell me my own pappy have to go in the war and
I think they say he on the Copper side, and then after while Miss
Hannah tell me he git kilt over in Arkansas.

I was so grieved all the time I don't remember much what went on, but
I know pretty soon my Cherokee folks had all the stuff they had et up
by the soldiers and they was jest a few wagons and mules left.

All the slaves was piled in together and some of the grown ones
walking, and they took us way down across the big river and kept us in
the bottoms a long time until the War was over.

We lived in a kind of a camp, but I was too little to know where they
got the grub to feed us with. Most all the Negro men was off somewhere
in the War.

Then one day they had to bust up the camp and some Federal soldiers go
with us and we all start back home. We git to a place where all the
houses is burned down and I ask what is that place. Miss Hannah say:
"Skullyville, child. That's where they had part of the War."

All the slaves was set out when we git to Fort Gibson, and the
soldiers say we all free now. They give us grub and clothes to the
Negroes at that place. It wasn't no town but a fort place and a patch
of big trees.

Miss Hannah take me to her place and I work there until I was grown. I
didn't git any money that I seen, but I got a good place to stay.

Pretty soon I married Ran Lovely and we lived in a double log house
here at Fort Gibson. Then my second husband was Henry Richardson, but
he's been dead for years, too. We had six children, but they all dead
but one.

I didn't want slavery to be over with, mostly because we had the War I
reckon. All that trouble made me the loss of my mammy and pappy, and I
was always treated good when I was a slave. When it was over I had
rather be at home like I was. None of the Cherokees ever whipped us,
and my mistress give me some mighty fine rules to