e have bill of
sale made, 'cause the law say he done stole me when I'm small child.
Master kept me in chains sometimes. He shot several men.

"I didn't have no quarters but stays 'round the place and throw old sack
down and lay there and sleep. I'm 'fraid to run, 'cause master say he'd
hunt me and kill nigger.

"When I's 'bout seventeen I marries a gal while master on drunk spell.
Master he run her off, and I slips off at night to see her, but he finds
it out. He takes a big, long knife and cuts her head plumb off, and ties
a great, heavy weight to her and makes me throw her in the river. Then
he puts me in chains and every night he come give me a whippin', for
long time.

"When war come, master swear he not gwine fight, but the Yankees they
captures New Orleans and throws master in a pen and guards him. He gets
a chance and 'scapes.

"When war am over he won't free me, says I'm valuable to him in his
trade. He say, 'Nigger, you's suppose to be free but I'll pay you a
dollar a week and iffen you runs off I'll kill you.' So he makes me do
like befo' the war, but give me 'bout a dollar a month, 'stead week.

"He say I cost more'n I'm worth, but he won't let me go. Times I don't
know why I didn't die befo' I'm growed, sleepin' on the ground, winter
and summer, rain and snow. But not much snow there.

"Master helt me long years after the war. If anybody git after him, he
told them I stay 'cause I wants to stay, but told me if I left he'd kill
him 'nother nigger. I stayed till he gits in a drunk brawl one night
with men and women and they gits to shootin' and some kilt. Master got
kilt. Then I'm left to live or die, so I wanders from place to place. I
nearly starved to death befo' I'd leave New Orleans, 'cause I couldn't
think master am dead and I'm 'fraid. Finally I gits up nerve to leave
town, and stays the first night in white man's barn. I never slep'.
Every time I hears something, I jumps up and master be standin' there,
lookin' at me, but soon's I git up he'd leave. Next night I slep' out in
a hay field, and master he git right top of a tree and start hollerin at
me. I never stays in that place. I gits gone from that place. I gits
back to town fast as my legs carry me.

"Then I gits locked up in jail. I don't know what for, never did know.
One the men says to me to come with him and takes me to the woods and
gives me an ax. I cuts rails till I nearly falls, all with chain locked
'round feet, so I couldn't run o