d. Monroe learned to snare and break mustangs and
became a cowpuncher. He lives in Hondo, Texas. He has an air of
pride and self-respect, and explained that he used little dialect
because he learned to talk from the "white folks" as he was growing
up.

"I was bo'n in Mississippi, Monroe County. I'm 84 years old. My master,
George Reedes, brought me, my father and mother and my two sisters to
Texas when I was two years old. My father was Nelson Brackins and my
mother was Rosanna.

"My master settled here at a place called Malone, on the Hondo River. He
went into the stock business. Our house there was a little, old picket
house with a grass roof over it out of the sage grass. The bed was made
with a tick of shucks and the children slept on the floor. The boss had
just a little lumber house. Later on he taken us about 20 miles fu'ther
down on the Hondo, the Old Adams Ranch, and he had a rock house.

"I was about six years old then. I had some shoes, to keep the thorns
outa my feet, and I had rawhide leggin's. We just had such clothes as we
could get, old patched-up clothes. They just had that jeans cloth,
homemade clothes.

"I was with George Reedes 10 or 12 years. It was my first trainin'
learnin' the stock business and horse breakin.' He was tol'able good to
us, to be slaves as we was. His brother had a hired man that whipped me
once, with a quirt. I've heard my father and mother tell how they
whipped 'em. They'd tie 'em down on a log or up to a post and whip 'em
till the blisters rose, then take a paddle and open 'em up and pour salt
in 'em. Yes'm, they whipped the women. The most I remember about that,
my father and sister was in the barn shuckin' co'n and the master come
in there and whipped my sister with a cowhide whip. My father caught a
lick in the face and he told the master to keep his whip offen him. So
the master started on my father and he run away. When he finally come in
he was so wild his master had to call him to get orders for work, and
finally the boss shot at him, but they didn't whip him any more. Of
course, some of 'em whipped with more mercy. They had a whippin' post
and when they strapped 'em down on a log they called it a 'stroppin'
log.'

"I remember they tasked the cotton pickers in Mississippi. They had to
bring in so many pounds in the evenin' and if they didn't they got a
whippin' for it. My sister there, she had to bring in 900 pounds a day.
Well, cotton was heav