John Field - Cherokee Freedman
This unusually short interview with John Field was made in 1936. It is not know exactly whey he was selected as a subject as he was not born a slave, but was in fact born just after the war. However, his parents were slaves and this incomplete interview does make a reference to the chaos after the war. The interview was clearly incomplete, but is included since he was a descendant of Cherokee slaves. It is written for some reason in the third person with the interviwer speaking.
Right at the close of the Civil War, after the colored folks were freed, the rebels came in and killed a lot of the colored folks, and took a lot of them south.
The slaves were all trying to get away. They were aiming to go to Neosho, Missouri.
From what John Field's mother had told him, whle she was alive, the old cabin where the slave uprising took pace, was one-fourth of a mile coutheast of the Murrell house, instead of due south, according to Ed Hicks. It was such a little to the east, generally speaking, you would say south of the old place.
According to Field a large number of slaves were living on the Ross place.
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