said
some Negroes poisoned him. I didn't know which.

Anyways we had to straggle back the best way we could, and me and
mammy just got along one way and another till we got to a ferry over
the Red River and into Arkansas. Then we got some rides and walked
some until we got to Fort Smith. They was a lot of Negro camps there
and we stayed awhile and then started out to Fort Gibson because we
heard they was giving rations out there. Mammy knew we was Cherokee
anyway, I guess.

That trip was hell on earth. Nobody let us ride and it took us nearly
two weeks to walk all that ways, and we nearly starved all the time.
We was skin and bones and feet all bloody when we got to the Fort.

We come here to Four Mile Branch to where the Negroes was all setting
down, and pretty soon Mammy died.

I married Oliver Wilson on January second, 1878. He used to belong to
Mr. DeWitt Wilson of Tahlequah, and I think the old people used to
live down at Wilson Rock because my husband used to know all about
that place and the place where I was borned. Old Mister DeWitt Wilson
give me a pear tree the next year after I was married, and it is still
out in my yard and bears every year.

I was married in a white and black checkedy calico apron that I
washed for Mr. Tim Walker's mother Lizzie all day for, over close to
Ft. Gibson, and I was sure a happy woman when I married that day. Him
and me both got our land on our Cherokee freedman blood and I have
lived to bury my husband and see two great grandchildren so far.

I bless God about Abraham Lincoln. I remember when my mammy sold
pictures of him in Fort Smith for a Jew. If he give me my freedom I
know he is in Heaven now.

I heard a lot about Jefferson Davis in my life. During the War we hear
the Negroes singing the soldier song about hand Jeff Davis to a apple
tree, and old Master tell about the time we know Jeff Davis. Old
Master say Jeff Davis was just a dragoon soldier out of Fort Gibson
when he bring his family out here from Tennessee, and while they was
on the road from Fort Smith to where they settled young Jeff Davis and
some more dragoon soldiers rid up and talked to him a long time. He
say my grandmammy had a bundle on her head, and Jeff Davis say, "Where
you going Aunty?" and she was tired and mad and she said, "I don't
know, to Hell I reckon", and all the white soldiers laughed at her and
made her that much madder.

I joined the Four Mile Branch church in 1879 and Sam Solomon wa