My father was African.  He was born in Atlanta.  My mother was a Cherokee Indian.  Her name was Alice Gamage.  I was born in 1864.  I don’t know where I was born—­think it was in the Territory—­my father stole my mother one night.  He couldn’t understand them and he was afraid of her people.  He went back to Savannah after so long a time and they was in Florida when I first seen any of her people.  When I got up any size I asked my father all about him and my mother marrying.  He said he knowed her ’bout two year ’fore they married.  They sorter courted by signs—­my mother learned me her language and it was natural fur me to speak my father’s tongue.  I talked for them.  She was bout fifteen when she run away.  I don’t know if a preacher ever did marry em or not.  My father said she was just so pretty he couldn’t help lovin’ her.  He kept makin’ signs and she made signs.  I liked my Gramma Gamage.  She couldn’t understand much.  We all went to the Indian Territory from Florida and Georgia.  That’s how I come out here.

I don’t remember the Ku Klux.  I remember hearing ma and gramma talk ’bout the way they tried to get way from ’em.  My father was a farmer till freedom.  He farmed around here and at Pine Bluff.  He died at West Point.  My mother and step-mother both died at Pine Bluff.  They took my mother to her nation in Oklahoma.  She was sick a good while and they took her to wait on her.  Then come and took her after she died.  There show is a fambly.  My father had twenty-two in his fambly.  My mother had five boys and three girls and me.  My stepmother had fourteen more children.  That’s some fambly aint it?  All my brothers and sisters died when I was little and they was little.  My father’s other children jess somewhar down round Pine Bluff.  I guess I’d know em but I aint seed none of them in I don’t know how long.

The first work I ever done was sawmilling at Pine Bluff.  Then I went down in Louziana, still sawmilling—­I followed dat trade five or six years.  Den I got to railroading.  I was puttin down cross ties and layin’ steel.  I got to be straw boss at dat.  I worked at dat fifteen years.  I worked doing that in six different states.  That was show fine livin’—­we carried our train right along to live in.  I married and went to farming.  Then I come to work at this oil mill here (in Des Arc).  The reason I quit.  I didn’t quit till it went down and moved off.  I aint had nothin’ much to do since.  I been carryin’ water and wood fur Mrs. Norfleet twenty years and they cooks fur me now.  My wife died ’bout a year ago.  She been dead a year last January.  She was sick a long time ’fore she died.  Well the relief gives me a little to eat, some clothes and I gets $5.00 a month and I takes it and buys my groceries and I takes it up to Mrs. Norfleet’s.  They says come there and eat.  They show is good to me ’cept I aint able to carry the wood up the steps much no more.  It hurt me when I worked at the oil mill.  I helped them ’bout the house all the time.