Den old Mistress come to de door and say we can go in and look at him
if we want to. He was still setting propped up, but he was gone.

I stayed in Louisiana a long time after dat, but I didn't care nothing
about it, and it look lak I'm staying a long time past my time in dis
world, 'cause I don't care much about staying no longer only I hates
to leave Mathilda.

But any time de Lord want me I'm ready, and I likes to think when He
ready He going tell old Master to ring de bell for me to come on in.

Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves

SARAH WILSON
Age 87 yrs.
Fort Gibson, Okla.

I was a Cherokee slave and now I am a Cherokee freedwoman, and besides
that I am a quarter Cherokee my own self. And this is the way it is.

I was born in 1850 along the Arkansas river about half way between
Fort Smith and old Fort Coffee and the Skullyville boat landing on the
river. The farm place was on the north side of the river on the old
wagon road what run from Fort Smith out to Fort Gibson, and that old
road was like you couldn't hardly call a road when I first remember
seeing it. The ox teams bog down to they bellies in some places, and
the wagon wheel mighty nigh bust on the big rocks in some places.

I remember seeing soldiers coming along that old road lots of times,
and freighting wagons, and wagons what we all know carry mostly
wiskey, and that was breaking the law, too! Them soldiers catch the
man with that whiskey they sure put him up for a long time, less'n he
put some silver in they hands. That's what my Uncle Nick say. That
Uncle Nick a mean Negro, and he ought to know about that.

Like I tell you, I am quarter Cherokee. My mammy was named Adeline and
she belong to old Master Ben Johnson. Old Master Ben bring my
grandmammy out to that Sequoyah district way back when they call it
Arkansas, mammy tell me, and God only know who my mammy's pa is, but
mine was old Master Ben's boy, Ned Johnson.

Old Master Ben come from Tennessee when he was still a young man, and
he bring a whole passel of slaves and my mammy say they all was kin to
one another, all the slaves I mean. He was a white man that married a
Cherokee woman, and he was a devil on this earth. I don't want to
talk about him none.

White folks was mean to us like the devil, and so I jest let them
pass. When I say my brothers and sisters I mean my half brothers and
sisters, you know, but maybe some of them was my whole kin anyways, I
don't know. Th