n there was plenty game to find. Many a time I've kilt seventy-five
or eighty squirrels out of one big beech. There was lots of deer and
bears and quails and every other kind of game, but when they ran the
Indians out of the country, the game jus' followed the Indians. I've
seed the bigges' herds of deer followin' the way the Indians drifted.
Whenever the Indians lef', the game all lef' with them, for some reason
I dunno.

"Talkin' 'bout victuals, our eatin' was good. Can't say the same for all
places. Some of the plantations half starved their niggers and 'lowanced
out their eatin' till they wasn't fittin' for work. They had to slip
about to niggers on other places to piece out their meals. They had
field calls and other kinds of whoops and hollers, what had a meanin' to
'em.

"Our place was fifteen hunerd acres in one block, and 'sides the crops
of cotton and corn and rice and ribbon cane we raised in the bottoms, we
had veg'tables and sheep and beef. We dried the beef on scaffolds we
built and I used to tend it. But bes' of anythin' to eat, I liked a big,
fat coon, and I allus liked honey. Some the niggers had li'l garden
patches they tended for themselves.

"Everythin' I tell you am the truth, but they's plenty I can't tell you.
I heard plenty things from my mammy and grandpappy. He was a fine diver
and used to dive in the Alabama river for things what was wrecked out of
boats, and the white folks would git him to go down for things they
wanted. They'd let him down by a rope to find things on the bottom of
the riverbed. He used to git a piece of money for doin' it.

"My grandmammy was a juksie, 'cause her mammy was a nigger and her daddy
a Choctaw Indian. That's what makes me so mixed up with Indian and
African and white blood. Sometimes it mattered to me, sometimes it
didn't. It don't no more, 'cause I'm not too far from the end of my
days.

"I had one brother and one sister I helped raise. They was mostly
nigger. The Carters told me never to worry 'bout them, though, 'cause my
mammy was of their blood and all of us in our fam'ly would never be
sold, and sometime they'd make free man and women of us. My brother and
sister lived with the niggers, though.

"I was trained for a houseboy and to tend the cows. The bears was so bad
then, a 'sponsible pusson who could carry a gun had to look after them.

"My massa used to give me a li'l money 'long, to buy what I wanted. I
allus bought fine clothes. In the summer