Slave Narratives, Oklahoma | Page 2

she died. I was big
enough to do little things for Mr. Sack and his daughter, so they kept
me at the mansion, and I helped the house boys. Time I was nine or ten
Mr. Sack's daughter was getting to be a young woman--fifteen or
sixteen years old--and that was old enough to get married off in them
days. They had a lot of company just before the War, and they had
whole bunch of house negroes around all the time.
Old Mistress died when I was a baby, so I don't remember anything
about her, but Young Mistress was a winder! She would ride horseback
nearly all the time, and I had to go along with her when I got big
enough. She never did go around the quarters, so I don't know nothing
much about the negroes Mr. Sack had for the fields. They all looked
pretty clean and healthy, though, when they would come up to the Big
House. He fed them all good and they all liked him.
He had so much different kinds of land that they could raise anything
they wanted, and he had more mules and horses and cattle than
anybody around there. Some of the boys worked with his fillies all the
time, and he went off to New Orleans ever once in a while with his race
horses. He took his daughter but they never took me.
Some of his land was in pasture but most of it was all open fields, with
just miles and miles of cotton rows. There was a pretty good strip along
one side he called the "old" fields. That's what they called the land that
was wore out and turned back. It was all growed up in young trees, and

that's where he kept his horses most of the time.
The first I knowed about the War coming on was when Mr. Sack had a
whole bunch of whitefolks at the Big House at a function. They didn't
talk about anything else all evening and then the next time they come
nearly all their menfolks wasn't there--just the womenfolks. It wasn't
very long till Mr. Sack went off to Houma with some other men, and
pretty soon we knew he was in the War. I don't remember ever seeing
him come home. I don't think he did until it was nearly all over.
Next thing we knowed they was Confederate soldiers riding by pretty
nearly every day in big droves. Sometimes they would come and buy
corn and wheat and hogs, but they never did take any anyhow, like the
Yankees done later on. They would pay with billets, Young Missy
called them, and she didn't send them to git them cashed but saved
them a long time, and then she got them cashed, but you couldn't buy
anything with the money she got for them.
That Confederate money she got wasn't no good. I was in Arcadia with
her at a store, and she had to pay seventy-five cents for a can of
sardines for me to eat with some bread I had, and before the War you
could get a can like that for two cents. Things was even higher then
than later on, but that's the only time I saw her buy anything.
When the Yankees got down in that country the most of the big men
paid for all the corn and meat and things they got, but some of the little
bunches of them would ride up and take hogs and things like that and
just ride off. They wasn't anybody at our place but the womenfolks and
the negroes. Some of Mr. Sack's women kinfolks stayed there with
Young Mistress.
Along at the last the negroes on our place didn't put in much stuff--jest
what they would need, and could hide from the Yankees, because they
would get it all took away from them if the Yankees found out they had
plenty of corn and oats.
The Yankees was mighty nice about their manners, though. They
camped all around our place for a while. There was three camps of

them close by at one time, but they never did come and use any of our
houses or cabins. There was lots of poor whites and Cajuns that lived
down below us, between us and the Gulf, and the Yankees just moved
into their houses and cabins and used them to camp in.
The negroes at our place and all of them around there didn't try to get
away or leave when the Yankees come in. They wasn't no place to go,
anyway, so they all stayed on. But they didn't do very much work. Just
enough to take care of themselves and their whitefolks.
Master Sack come home before the