we had wool-mix for winter.

Everything was stripedy 'cause Mammy like to make it fancy. She dye
wid copperas and walnut and wild indigo and things like dat and make
pretty cloth. I wore a stripedy shirt till I was about eleven years
old, and den one day while we was down in de Choctaw Country old
Mistress see me and nearly fall off'n her horse! She holler, "Easter,
you go right now and make dat big buck of a boy some britches!"

We never put on de shoes until about late November when de frost begin
to hit regular and split our feet up, and den when it git good and
cold and de crop all gathered in anyways, they is nothing to do
'cepting hog killing and a lot of wood chopping, and you don't git
cold doing dem two things.

De hog killing mean we gits lots of spare-ribs and chitlings, and
somebody always git sick eating too much of dat fresh pork. I always
pick a whole passel of muskatines for old Master and he make up sour
wine, and dat helps out when we git the bowel complaint from eating
dat fresh pork.

If somebody bad sick he git de doctor right quick, and he don't let no
negroes mess around wid no poultices and teas and sech things like
cupping-horns neither!

Us Cherokee slaves seen lots of green corn shootings and de like of
dat, but we never had no games of our own. We was too tired when we
come in to play any games. We had to have a pass to go any place to
have singing or praying, and den they was always a bunch of patrollers
around to watch everything we done. Dey would come up in a bunch of
about nine men on horses, and look at all our passes, and if a negro
didn't have no pass dey wore him out good and made him go home. Dey
didn't let us have much enjoyment.

Right after de War de Cherokees that had been wid the South kind of
pestered the freedmen some, but I was so small dey never bothered me;
jest de grown ones. Old Master and Mistress kept on asking me did de
night riders persecute me any but dey never did. Dey told me some of
dem was bad on negroes but I never did see none of dem night riding
like some said dey did.

Old Master had some kind of business in Fort Smith, I think, 'cause he
used to ride in to dat town 'bout every day on his horse. He would
start at de crack of daylight and not git home till way after dark.
When he get home he call my uncle in and ask about what we done all
day and tell him what we better do de next day. My uncle Joe was de
slave boss and he tell us what de Master say