Trail Sisters: Freedwomen in Indian Territory, 1850–1890

2. Surviving the War

Chapter Two Surviving the War “Dead all over the hills when we get away.” Phoebe Banks, in Baker and Baker, The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives In the closing days of the decade of the 1850s, all of Indian Territory became disquieted by the rumors of war. Old feuds and political competitions within the Indian nations that had not yet healed since the days of forced removal resurrected themselves. Indian peoples experienced divided loyalties between ties to the North and the South, but most hoped to avoid entanglement in what seemed an inevitable collision. Within their families enslaved women and men quietly discussed the growing danger and the alternatives that might be open to them. Members of the slave communities held secret meetings to organize and plan for a variety of responses to their increasingly changing circumstances. The narrative of Morris Sheppard, a Cherokee freedman, recounts the mounting pressure among slaveholders to decide the fate of their property as the Civil War approached, as well as the impact these decisions had on slave families. “When de War come old Master seen he was going into trouble,” Sheppard remembered, “and he sold off most of de slaves.” The sale of Sheppard’s mother had cruel consequences. At the time of the sale, she was separated from her sister, three sons, and a Surviving the War •43• daughter, who went to different owners. His mother was sold to an abusive master and died shortly after she left the Sheppard plantation. Sheppard ’s mistress told him that she died from “rough treatment,” but surely this was compounded by the separation from her kindred and familiar environment. Morris Sheppard was retained on the property, but other of the plantation slaves were sold and prepared for delivery. They were placed in a pen for the trader to examine. Sheppard never forgot the sight of his relatives and companions who had to “sleep in dat pen in a pile like hogs,” until they were loaded onto a steamboat at Webbers Falls to be shipped to Fort Smith. Chaney Richardson’s master, Charlie Rogers, also disposed of his slaves. “Old Master sell the children or give them out to somebody,” Richardson said, and she did not see her relatives again until after the Civil War. She was sent to live with a new mistress.1 Slaveholding became central to any discussion about the future, and these open conversations influenced the minds of Territory slaves. Many enslaved men now saw an opportunity to strike out for freedom. While Arkansas and Texas were slave states, Kansas had been admitted as a free state in 1851. Freedom depended, however, on a swift and careful escape. This made departure for enslaved women and their children nearly impossible. As the days before the beginning of military operations slipped by, slave women experienced increased violence, sales of their family members, and abandonment. “Patrollers” had been active in Indian Territory for more than a decade , and enslaved women expressed a variety of reactions to them. In some cases, these individuals traveled throughout the Indian Nations to protect the enslaved people from outside slave catchers. Kiziah Love recalled how frightened all of the women were of any unfamiliar horsemen or wagon travelers. Now there was such an increase in strange people coming into the Territory to steal slaves and sell them that the women stayed close to the house. Free blacks and Seminole slaves were particularly vulnerable because of their more independent affiliation with their owners and freedom of movement. Citizens in Van Buren, Arkansas, had formed a company specifically to purchase captured Seminole slaves. In most instances, however, the patrollers were not there to provide safety. Polly Colbert described them as the “law.” These men checked the passes of all blacks who were on the roads and far from their home plantations Trail Sisters •44• or farms. If the documents were suspect, the patrollers beat the slaves and escorted them back home. According to Kiziah Love, Buck Colbert was one of the worst patrollers. Even if slaves had a pass, he would claim they had stayed away too long and beat them anyway. Matilda Poe told a WPA interviewer that slaves did not leave home often for fear of the patrollers . She described them as “low white trash” just looking for any excuse to shoot blacks.2 In these unstable times, more slave men took the chance to run to...