|
Oklahoma Slave Narrative
Eliza Whitmire
My name is Eliza Whitmire. I live on a
farm, near Estella, where I settled shortly after the Civil War and where I
have lived ever since. I was born in slavery in the state of Georgia, my
parents having belonged to a Cherokee Indian of the name of George Sanders, who owned a large plantation in
the old Cherokee Nation, in Georgia. He also owned a large number of slaves but
I was too young to remember how many he owned. I do not know the exact date of
my birth, although my mother told me I was about five years old when President Andrew Jackson ordered General Scott to proceed to the Cherokee country, in Georgia,
with two thousand troops and remove the Cherokees by force to the Indian
Territory. This bunch of Indians were called the Eastern Emigrants. The Old
Settler Cherokees had moved themselves in 1835 when the order was first given
to the Cherokees to move out. The weeks that followed General Scott's order to remove the Cherokees
were filled with horror and suffering for the unfortunate Cherokees and their
slaves. The women and children were driven from their homes, sometimes with
blows and close on the heels of the retreating Indians came greedy whites to
pillage the Indians' homes, drive off their cattle, horses and pigs, and they
even rifled the graves for any jewelry, or other ornaments that might have been
buried with the dead. The Cherokees, after being driven from their homes, were
divided into detachments of nearly equal size and late in October, 1838, the
first detachment started, the others following one by one. The aged, sick and
the young children rode in the wagons, which carried the provisions and
bedding, while others went on foot. The trip was made in the dead of winter and
many died from exposure from sleet and snow, and all who lived to make this
trip, or had parents who made it, will long remember it, as a bitter memory. When we arrived here from Georgia my parents
settled with their master, George Sanders,
near Tahlequah, or near the place where Tahlequah now is located, for at that
time the capital had not been established. I well remember the time when a
commission of three men were selected from the Illinois Camp Ground to look out
the location for a capital and when the date was set to meet at a big spring, where
the present town of Tahlequah now stands, there were only two of the
commissioners present. They waited and waited for the third man to come, but
finally gave him up and selected the site, on account of the number of springs
surrounding the town. I remember, too, the great Inter-Tribal Council, which
was held in Tahlequah in the year of 1843, under the leadership of Chief John Ross. My mother assisted with the
cooking at that gathering, while my duty was to carry water to those at the
meeting, from the near-by springs. About ten years after we arrived in the
Indian Territory I witnessed the erection of four little log cabins to house
the officers of the Cherokee Government. I have seen a dashing young slave boy
acting as coachman for Chief John Ross
drive him in from his home, near Park Hill, and let him out at the Capitol
Square, where he would spend the day, at the little log cabins, then the seat
of government of the Cherokee tribe. The old square was first surrounded by a
rail fence, at that time, and many horses could be seen tied there while their
owners spent the day in the new Capitol. I remember a few years after we
arrived there, that Major General Ethan Allen
Hitchcock came here from Washington to hold a conference with Chief John Ross and the Cherokee people, with
reference to a new treaty, seeking to pay the Cherokees for their loss and
wrongs during their removal from Georgia. This meeting was held under a big
shed erected in the center of the square, and was attended by a large number of
people. Chief John Ross addressed the
audience in English and Chief Justice Bushyhead
interpreted it in Cherokee. The Government agreed to indemnify the Indians for
their losses but I am told that they now have claims filed in the court of
claims for some of this very money. Moves To Lawrence, Kansas, Before the Civil
War Immediately before the Civil War broke out, between the states, George Sanders moved to Lawrence, Kansas, taking
all of of his slaves with him, and remained there until the war was over, and the
slaves were set free. I well remember the time when the Confederate guerrilla
under the leadership of Quantrill burned
the city of Lawrence in 1863. After the war was over my father built the first
bridge across the Kansas River, near the city of Lawrence. After he completed
this bridge he moved back to the Indian Territory, and settled on the place
where I am now living. We received allotments under the Dawes Commission, and I
allotted on the old homestead, my father having died long ago. Cherokee Bill, famous Indian outlaw, who once
roamed the Indian Territory was well known to me, and was captured on Big
Creek, not over fifteen miles from my place. He was reared near Ft. Gibson, and
was a mulatto, his father having been a soldier at Ft. Gibson, and his mother
was a negro. He had two brothers, Luther
and George Goldsby. Luther was at one time a porter at the Cobb Hotel
in Vinita. He was light enough to be a mixed-breed Cherokee Indian but made no
pretence of being other than a negro. Cherokee Bill
was bad from the time he was a young man. He started first with the Cook
Gang, which was pretty much of a terror in the Indian Territory at that
time. During the latter part of the 80's or the early part of the 90's, while
he was with this gang, they pulled several train robberies and killed a great
many people. During the early part of their career these men robbed stage
coaches and gradually became worse, until they engaged freely in train and bank
robberies and often killed their victims. At one time, while Cherokee Bill was with them, it was said they had
planned to rob the Vinita Bank, which at that time was located on the corner
now the present site of the Cobb Hotel. The robbery never occured however and
it was never really known, whether they intended doing this. Going back now,
before the Civil War, when our master lived on a farm down near Tahlequah, I
will tell you something about spinning and weaving. Every farm home, or most of
them owned an old time spinning wheel and during slave times it was the duty of
the slave women to do the spinning and weaving, and many an old Indian woman,
who was used to having slaves to do this work for them learned the art and did
this for themselves and for their entire family, after we were set free. The
Indian masters owned large flocks of sheep. The negro men did the shearing, and
the women washed the wool, carded it into small bats and sorted it for quality,
then spun it into threads, or yarn. The finest quality was woven into goods to
be used for the best clothes, such as dresses and men's clothes. The next
quality was woven for undergarments and clothes for the slaves. The very
coarsest was knit into socks, and that was a job of itself, for socks were
woven out so fast, that it required all the extra time in knitting. The old
spinning wheel could always be heard until late at night, buzzing and whizzing,
as two of the slaves worked to make the thread to be used the next day for
weaving. The women were always vying with each other to see who could make the
smoothest and best thread. The South is noted for its great cotton fields.
Acres and acres were planted in this product and the slaves, both men and
women, were required to work in the fields. It was hard work too, as the
weather was always hot while it was growing, and the picking came in the fall
of the year, and all were required to pick cotton. A lot of this was done by
hand by the women folks and it was a slow and tedious job, then it was carded
and spun into cloth, by the same method as was used in making up the wool. The
cotton cloth was used for so many things that wool could not be used for, that
someone was always spinning and weaving. "Linsey" was woven from
goat's wool, and it was used for the coarsest cloth, as it was very warm, and
hard to wear out. "Jeans Cloth" was made from cotton, with a small
mixture of wool to give it warmth. This was the most durable of all hand made
goods. All hand made goods were dyed at home. We made excellent yellow dye from
the inside bark of the oak tree. Indigo was bought to dye blue. Different
shades were made, according to the dye used. Green was made from a mixture of
the blue and yellow dye. Red was made from venitian. This could be mixed with
blue to make purple. A very pretty design could be made by tying strings around
the goods ever so often, and wherever the string was tied the goods would not
dye, making a sort of pretty model design. All sewing was done by hand, and
some of the slaves were very apt at this art and were usually kept busy at that
trade. While these old slave days were
very trying, and we went through many hardships, our Indian masters were very
kind to us and gave us plenty of good clothes to wear and we always had plenty
to eat. I can't say that I have been any happier and contented, since I was free,
than I was in those good old days when our living was guaranteed, even though
we had to work hard to get it. Looking back over the time I have spent, since
slave days, I can see that the colored race have had many ups and downs since
being put on their own footing, and I believe that a great many of them would
have fared better had they had their masters to feed them. It is true that
there were a few hard masters, and I have heard of a few who whipped their
slaves unmercifully, but they were few. Most of us slaves fared well and many
of them did not know what to do when set free, and they had a hard time getting
a start in life. Some of the slaves went back and worked for their old masters
for several years, rather than to try and make a living, after being set free.
The slaves, who belonged to the Cherokees fared much better than the slaves who
belonged to the white race, for the reason that the Indian slaves who had left
the states could come right back to the Territory and settle on Indian land,
and when allotment came they gave us an equal right with them in land drawings.
The United States Government forced them to do this, I have been told.
Journalist's Note: This interview with this old slave woman was taken at a
Homecoming in Vinita, in 1935, when we were seeking to find the oldest person
at the gathering. We figured that she was a hundred and two years old at the
time, having been born possibly in 1833. I have heard since that she was dead
hence my old notes on her.
BACK TO SLAVE NARRATIVE INDEX
|