If somebody bed sick he git de doctor right quick, and he don’t let no Negroes ness around wid no poultices and teas and sech things like cupping-horns neither! Us Cherokee slaves seen lots of green corn shootings and de like of dat, but we never had no games of our own. I always pick a whole passel of muakatines for old Master and he make up sour wine, and dat helps out when we git the bowel complaint from eating dat fresh pork. De hog killing mean we gits lots of spare-ribs and chitlings, and somebody always git sick eating too much of dat fresh pork. I wore a stripedy shirt till I was about eleven years old, and den one day while we was down in de Choctaw Country old Mistress see me and nearly fall off’n her horse! She holler, “Easter, you go right now and make dat big buck of a boy some britches!” We never put on de shoes until about late November when de frost bagin to hit regular and split our feet up, and den when it git good and cold and de drop all gathered in anyways, they is nothing to do ‘cepting hog killing and a lot of wood shopping, and you don’t git cold doing den two things. She dye wid copperas and walnut and wild indigo and things like dat and make pretty cloth. Everything was stripedy ’cause Mammy like to make it fancy. Smith because he didn’t raise no cotton, but he had a few sheep and we had wool-mix for winter. My aunt done de carding and spinning and my mammy done de weaving and cutting and sewing, and my pappy could make cowhide shoes wid wooden pegs. We even had brown sugar and cane molasses most of de time before de war. Master Joe was sure a good provider, and we always had plenty of corn pone, sow belly and greens, sweet potatoes, cow peas and cane molasses. I didn’t know what “sell” meant and I ast Pappy, “Is he going to bring ’em back when he git through selling them?” I never did see no money neither, until time of de war or a little before. One time old Master and another man come and took some calves off and Pappy say old Master taking dem off to sell. I had as a good blase-faced horse for dat. We had about twenty calves and I would take dem out and grase ’em while some grown-up Negro was greasing de cows so as to keep de cows milk. I never did have much of a job, jest tending de calves mostly. When crop was laid by de slaves jest work ’round at dis and dat and keep tol’able busy. Up at five o’clock and back in sometimes about de middle of de evening, long before sundown, unless they was a crop to git in before it rain or something like dat. They was so many of us for dat little field we never did have to work hard. Mails cost big money and old Master’s blacksmith wouldn’t make none ‘cepting a few for old Master now and den, so we used wooden dowais to put things together. No nails inmone of dem nor in de chairs and tables. At night dem trundles was jest all over de floor, and in de morning we shove dem back under de big beds to git dem out’n de may. We had home-made wooden beds wid rope springs, and de little ones slept on trundle beds dat was home made too.
#Sweet corn webber falls ok windows#
Us slaves lived in log cabins dat only had one room and no windows so we kept de doors open most of de time. The Big House was a double log wid a big hall and a stone chimney but no porches, wid two rooms at each end, one top side of de other. I got a pass and went to see dem sometimes, and dey was both treated mighty fine. I had two brothers, Silas and George, dat belong to Mr. Dey was both raised ’round Webber’s Falls somewhere. Pappy’s name was Caesar Sheppard and Mammy’s name was Easter. and something growing on dat place winter and summer. We git three or four crops of different things out of dat farm every year. Dey only had two families of slaves wid about twenty in all, and dey only worked about fifty acres, so we sure did work every foot of it good. She inherit about half a dozen slaws, and say dey was her own and old Master can’t sell one unless she give him leave to do it. Old Mistress was small and mighty pretty too, and she was only half Cherokee. My mammy was a Crossland Negro before she come to belong to Master Joe and marry my pappy, and I think she come wid old Mistress and belong to her. He had black eyes and mustache but his hair was iron gray, and everybody liked him because he was so good-natured and kind. Master’s name was Joe Sheppard, and he was a Cherokee Indian. Old Master tell me I was borned in November 1852, at de old home place about five miles east of Webbers Falls, mebbe kind of northeast, not far from de east bank of de Illinois River.
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