“Dr. Waters had a good heart.  He didn’t call us ‘slaves’.  He call us ‘servants’.  He didn’t want none of his niggers whipped ’ceptin when there wasn’t no other way.  I was grown up pretty good size.  Dr. Waters liked me cause I could make wagons and show mules.  Once when he was going away to be gone all day, he tole me what to do while he was gone.  The overseer wasn’t no such good man as old master.  He wanted to be boss and told me what to do.  I tole him de big boss had tole me what to do and I was goin’ to do it.  He got mad and said if I didn’t do what he said I’d take a beating.  I was a big nigger and powerful stout.  I tole the overseer fore he whipped me he’s show himself a better man than I was.  When he found he was to have a fight he didn’t say no more about the whipping.

“I worked on de plantation till de war broke.  Then I went into the army with them what called themselves secesh’s.  I didn’t fight none, never give me a gun nor sword.  I was a servant.  I cooked and toted things.  In 1863 I was captured by the Yankees and marched to Little Rock and sworn in as a Union Soldier.  I was sure enough soldier now.  I never did any fighting but I marched with the soldiers and worked for them whatever they said.

“We marched from Pine Bluff on through Ft.  Smith and the Indian Territory of Oklahoma.  Then we went to Leavenworth Kansas and back to Jefferson County, Arkansas.  And all that walking I did on these same foots you see right here now.

“On this long march we camped thirty miles from Ft.  Smith.  We had gone without food three days and was powerful hongry.  I started out to get something to eat.  I found a sheep, I was tickled.  I laughed.  I could turn the taste of that sheep meat under my tongue.  When I got to camp with the sheep I had to leave for picket duty.  Hungrier than ever, I thought of that sheep all the time.  When I got back I wanted my chunk of meat.  It had been killed, cooked, eat up.  Never got a grease spot on my finger from my sheep.

“When time come for breaking up the army I went back to Jefferson county and set to farmin’.  I was free now.  I didn’t do so well on the land as I didn’t have mules and money to live on.  I went to Dersa County and opened up a blacksmith shop.  I learned how to do this work when I was with Dr. Waters.  He had me taught by a skilled man.  I learned to build wagons too.

“I made my own tools.  Who showed me how?  Nobody.  When I needed a hack saw I made it out of a file—­that was all I had to make it of.  I had to have it.  Once I made a cotton scraper out of a piece of hardwood.  I put a steel edge on it.  O yes I made everything.  Can I build a wagon—­make all the parts?  Every thing but the hubs for the wheels.