Foxfire 9

by Foxfire Fund, Inc.

  The process of making them is fascinating, and we’re glad, thanks to Nola Campbell’s generosity, to be able to share it with you.

  ALLISON ADAMS

  OH SOON SHROPSHIRE

  My uncle married my grandmother—my mother’s mother—and he brought her down here to the reservation. My mother was from Chesnee, South Carolina. Her first husband was mean with her, and he didn’t provide for her like he was supposed to do, so she upped and followed her mother here to the reservation. My mama and daddy got together after she left her first husband. Her name was Maggie Price, and when she married my daddy she became Maggie Price Harris. She was full white. I took back after my mother’s side of the people. I’d rather be darker than what I am.

  My daddy’s name was James Davy Harris and he was full Indian. There’s not many [full-blooded] Indians anymore. He didn’t go to school, but he was a Sunday school teacher. Everything he learnt, he learnt in church. We’re Mormons—Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

  Our church was established on the reservation before I was ever born in the world. I grew up and joined the church when I was eight years old because my daddy belonged and therefore I wanted to. He wanted us [children] to be baptized there, so I was baptized where he wanted me to be. That’s where I’m at today. I grew up in the Mormon Church and I’m proud of it. We use the same Bible [as other churches] and we’ve got a Book of Mormon to go along with it. There’s a lot of people that don’t know the teachings of the Mormon Church, but [the Book of Mormon] is the only thing that’s different, I think, and it’s referenced to the Bible.

  I was born down here on the Catawba Indian Reservation in York County [South Carolina] in 1918, May second. I was raised around here and I’ve been living here almost all this time. My uncle come after us to take us over there to Fort Mill [South Carolina] to work for awhile. So I guess if he hadn’t done that, we’d a’ just lived right down there on the reservation all [my life]. There wasn’t no place for the [Catawba] Indians to go but there.

  There were seven of us children. I had two brothers. One of ’em died when he was quite young, ’bout the year I was born. He had the flu and then he took pneumonia with it and he died. My other brother, Douglas, has been dead about ten years now. I have one sister dead, Ruthie, and three a-living. My oldest sister, Verdy, is seventy-six. My twin sisters, Reola and Viola, must be sixty-three. They’re about three years younger than I am.

  [There’s a story about the time when the twins were born.] Mama sent us over to my uncle’s the night they were born. I didn’t know what we was going over there for, but we went to stay all night with Mama’s sister, Randy, and her husband. I wanted to be rocked to sleep that night, and she wasn’t going to. I cried and I cried, but she said she wanted me to go on and lay down and go to sleep myself. I told her that if she didn’t rock me to sleep that night, I was gonna tell my daddy. So she rocked me to sleep. [There was a room in their house where cotton was stored after it was] picked before they got ready to take it to the gin and have it baled up. That was the room where we children slept that night. She throwed a quilt over that cotton and left me on the cotton pile. Next morning, my brother Douglas came after me and said, “Sister, now Mama’s got two little ol’ babies in the bed with her over there, and I don’t want you lookin’ at ’em.” So I done what he told me, and we went to the house. Reola and Viola had took my place and I didn’t like it one bit. I reckon I was petted when I was little. I’d cry for someone to carry me; I didn’t want to walk.

  I didn’t get to go to school my first year at (age) six because they said I was too little. I had got ready and went, but they said I was too little so I was sent back home. That was all right. I didn’t care about having to go back home.

  [When I got home], Mama fixed me a cotton sack to pick cotton in [because] Daddy said I had to pick cotton. I was gonna pick cotton on the row he was picking on and he didn’t like that. He put me out in front of him because he didn’t want me goose-picking. That’s where you leave the cotton in the burr. “You ain’t gonna be goose-picking it now! You got to get it all out of the burr or you’re going to have to go back and pick it,” he said. Ruthie and Verdy was pickin’ behind me and oh, they was just laughing and talking! I was tryin’ to look behind to see what was going on back there and my daddy snatched a limb off the cotton stalk and just whipped me good across the back. “That’ll learn you how to look back. I put you out here to work!”

  I said, “Well, I was working.”

  He said, “You wasn’t working. You was looking back at what Ruthie and Verdy were doing. You’re not supposed to be looking at them.” They weren’t talking to me, but I wanted to hear what was going on. I was nosy!

  The next year I went to school. We went on the reservation. Daddy wouldn’t let us go if it was bad weather. He’d keep us there at home ’cause he said we had too far to walk. We had about a good mile! I went through the fifth grade, but that’s as far as I went. Indians could not go to high school in the early 1930s, so I never got to go. I got out in the fifth grade.

  I wouldn’t smoke, but one time I watched for the other girls that was secretly smoking and that smoke was just a-boiling up. I was [pretending] to break pine tops to build a little playhouse but was really watching for teachers so that I could warn the other girls and they could put out their cigarettes [if the teachers came near]. The boys went and told the teachers that we was all down there a-smoking. Honey, that schoolteacher didn’t come the way I was a-looking. [Instead of coming] straight down from the schoolhouse, she went around through the field up from behind us. Well, she caught ’em smokin’ and she washed my mouth out with Octagon soap because I wouldn’t tell on them. I stayed there at the pump for half a day that day. I said, “No way you going to get me in that schoolhouse after she done washed my mouth out.”

  We caught the boy that went and told on us. We was jumping rope on the south side and he just come a-flying around that way. I said to the girl I was turning rope with, “He’s the one who told on us. Now if you’ll help me to wrap him up in this here rope, then I’ll whip him right good.” So she went one way around him and I went another and we got him wrapped up in that rope. Then I pushed him down and jumped on him and just went to beating him for dear life. I had to write, “I must not fight on the school grounds” one hundred times. [My teacher] asked me to apologize to him and I wouldn’t. He didn’t have to do anything because I’d done beat up on him!

  One morning, my mama went to carry my daddy’s breakfast to the field. When she left, they wasn’t nobody there [at the house] but Ruthie, Viola, Reola, and me. We knowed where our mama kept the snuff so we decided to go get us a dip of snuff. I gave Ruthie a spoonful and she put it in her mouth and Reola and Viola got them a dip and I got mine. They was all spitting theirs out and I was eating mine. I was the one that got sick! It was my idea to get the snuff and then after I got it, I got sick. Mama didn’t know what was wrong with me and I didn’t tell her till many, many years after that.

  [One time] Mama sent me and Ruthie to get my daddy’s and my brother’s axes. So Ruthie said, “I’m gonna get Daddy’s ax.”

  I said, “No, you’re not gonna get Daddy’s ax either. I’m gonna get it!” I run out there and I beat her to it and I got the ax.

  Ruthie said to me, “If you’ll just put your foot up on this chopping block, I’ll cut your toes off.” I always was a little daredevil, so I set my foot up there and she cut my toe off, sure ’nough! There was just a little skin holding [the tip of it] on, so [when my mama found out what we’d done] she went to the woods and got some soft pine resin. She got some spiderwebs down with a broom. Then she got some soot out of the fireplace and she put all of that on [my toe] and glued it on there with paper tape. I’ve got my toe yet!

  I was picky ’bout what I ate. [I still am.] I had one hen that I called mine. When she was layin’, I didn’t eat eggs from other hens. I had to have the eggs that hen laid. If she didn’t lay till about dinnertime [noon], I
didn’t eat breakfast till then, till I got my egg. If I didn’t have one to cook that she laid, I didn’t eat!

  My brother raised game chickens. One time, when I was less than seven years old, I was gonna get me one and take it in the house and raise it in the house. I got a little dib [from its mother], and that old [mother] hen flogged me! I threw that little chicken down and climbed a peach tree, but she was right on my back. [Someone in the family] had to knock that hen off my back.

  I wanted Verdy, my oldest sister, to carry me all the time and she didn’t like it, so one day she said, “I’ll fix you! I’ll fix you up good!” She carried me right close to a rock pile and she fell down with me. She done it on purpose. That broke me from wanting her to carry me—right then and there.

  It was hard times back [when I was a child], and when Christmas came, people enjoyed it. They really loved to see Christmas come. I’d get a new pair of shoes every Christmas and I’d sleep with ’em on the first night. Since we didn’t get but one pair a year, they had to do us. We could tear ’em up if we wanted to, but if we did we went barefooted. If we took care of’em they lasted us all winter. When the first day of May came, I was tickled, because Mama’d let us go barefooted.

  But we just didn’t have the money to buy other things for Christmas. We would get fruit: apples, oranges, grapes and raisins, maybe five or six English walnuts and some Brazil nuts [we got very few of those]. We didn’t get much candy because Daddy didn’t believe in us eating sweets like that. He didn’t want us to have it, but we’d slip around and if we got a dime or a penny, we would get us some candy anyway.

  We didn’t have [store-bought] baby dolls to play with then. We would get us an old torn-up dress or a piece of cloth and make a head for a baby doll. Then we’d get another piece of good-sized cloth and we’d [put the center of that over the head]. We’d tie a string right under the head and that’d make a neck and the rest of the cloth was the body. That’s what we played with for baby dolls. It was many, many years before I had a real baby doll to play with.

  My daddy and brother would go hunting, but they didn’t go very often. When they did, they’d bring back six or seven rabbits. I’ve seen them clean them things, dress ’em, and Mama’d dry ’em over the fireplace. They just kept ’em turning like they were cookin’ ’em over the fire.

  My daddy died before I turned ten years old. When my daddy was sick, we [were living] in just a two-room house down next to the river. About every hour I’d run to the spring and get fresh water for him. I carried a half-gallon fruit jar to the spring and got him a drink of water and carried it back to him every hour, and I would just run for dear life. He died in April and I was ten on the second day of May. The day they took him away from home to the hospital, he was real bad sick. The Red Cross women came down and got him, carried him to a hospital in town and that’s where he died after about a week. I was crazy about my daddy. We missed him after he was gone. Mama had to put us out on a farm over there off the reservation to work after he died.

  I can remember back when we moved down out of the reservation to that farm. We had to go to work on the Sutton farm and pick and hoe cotton, or anything they had for us to do. The Indians always farmed, and they raised their children up to help. That’s how I learned to pick cotton. I picked cotton before I was ever eight years old.

  So Ruthie and I both worked on that farm. We didn’t finish elementary school like other children did. In the fall while school was going on, the owner of the farm said he wanted four or five bales of cotton done a day. It doesn’t bother me to work. I like to work, but I didn’t think it was right for him to do us like that. It was because we was Indians. That’s how come we had to work like that.

  I never will forget this. Me and Ruthie were picking cotton. Mama sent the two twins to the field where we was at. I don’t know what they was doing out there, but they started crying up a breeze. They said, “Oh, I’m sick, I’m sick, I’m sick.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

  “My head’s a-hurting,” they just kept it up.

  So I told ’em, “If I give you something, will you take it?” Yeah, they’d take it. So I went through the cotton rows and I picked up little rabbit droppings. I got six—two for Reola, two for Viola, and two for Lillian, my uncle’s little girl. I gave ’em to ’em and I said, “You take these and your heads’ll quit hurting.” So they took ’em and they chewed ’em up and I gave ’em some water to swallow. After a while they were walking around out through [the field] and they wasn’t crying. I said, “Has you’ns heads quit hurting?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know what you took?” “No.”

  I said, “You’ns took rabbit pills!”

  “Oh, we’re gonna tell Mama!” So they went running to the house and told Mama and I got a good whippin’. I always was a little devil!

  One time we children didn’t get our pay for working in the cotton fields. I tried to get my mama to go and collect our pay for what work we done, but she wouldn’t do it. So our uncle went and got our money that we worked for. He was my mama’s brother and she didn’t want me telling him [about us not getting paid] but I did anyhow.

  We moved off the Sutton place in September of 1930. My brother, Douglas, told Mama she was going to have to move us back home [to the reservation]. He came and got us hisself. Mama didn’t want to move, but I had told Douglas [about us not getting paid] and he said, “Well, I’ll bring y’all back home.”

  When I was about sixteen years old, we moved off the reservation again to do some more farming. We went to work on the Kelly place. Guy Ballard was the man that was [in charge] of the farming. When he moved off, he was replaced by a man named Smith. Now, that man was mean! We’d go up to his house and he had close to an acre of peach trees right out beside the well house. He didn’t want us to pull any of those peaches, but his wife would tell us to get down there back of the well house so he couldn’t see us and we could get all the peaches we wanted. We would have to throw the peach seeds where he couldn’t find ’em, so we’d run off and eat those peaches.

  I was a Harris back [before I married] and when I married the first time, I married another Harris. We was maybe fifth cousins, something that’s distantly kin. When my husband was in the service, I got my check as Nola Harris Harris. I said that if I marry again, I’m gonna change my name! Raymond, my first husband, must have been about pretty close to full Indian because his dad was full and his mother was an Indian too. He was also born and raised on the reservation and his father was chief at one time.

  Raymond farmed. He raised corn and vegetables. I canned what I could of blackberries and different fruits and vegetables. That helped out. Raymond also cut pulpwood for different people. He didn’t get but about fifty cents a cord for it. If it was cold out there and was going to snow, I’d get the ax and I’d go to the woods and I’d cut down firewood and carry it up. Then when my husband came home, he didn’t have no wood to get. I’d done got it. Using an ax and cutting wood—I guess that’s how come my hands are so big. I guess I do have the strength of a man, not a woman.

  From farming, Raymond went to work at the Goldtec Mill. Then he went to the Blue Buckle Industrial Mill. That’s when he [got drafted into the service] and had to go overseas. The Blue Buckle people told him that they would give him his job back when he got out of the service. He was discharged from the service in ’45.

  He served as chief [of the Catawba tribe] from ’48 until he resigned in ’51 when he got sick. [The tribe] wanted him to [remain chief] for two more years and he told ’em he just couldn’t do it. He had been the youngest to serve as chief down there.

  He went to the veterans’ hospital when he got sick. He felt like the doctors down there weren’t doing anything for him, so after he stayed in the hospital about eight days, I took him back home. He died at [the age of] thirty-eight in January of 1952—a young man. I wasn’t but thirty-four.

  Now just before Raymond died, he told me to take
care of Grady. I was thinking he didn’t know what he was talking about. He said, “That little boy of ours.”

  I said, “Yeah, I know—Grady.”

  “I want you to take care of him,” and that was the last thing he ever said to me before he died.

  One day [shortly after Raymond died], I whipped Grady. That night, Raymond came to me in a dream. Just seemed so real, like he was there in person! I was in the kitchen and had my back turned to the little hallway, just a little square place where the doors went into each room. He was standing in that doorway into the kitchen. I don’t know what I was doing, but I had my face turned to the window in my dream. He spoke to me. I turned around. I said, “I thought you was a little skinny man.”

  He said, “No, I just gained a little bit of weight.”

  I asked him, “Well, what do you want?”

  “I don’t want you whipping Grady like you whipped him the other day.”

  “Well, he deserved it.”

  “If you whip him, don’t whip him that hard.” [And then he went away.] Now, Grady was the only one of our children that he was concerned about before he died, ’cause Grady was sick all the time.

  I had ten children, five boys and five girls. Betty was born in 1934, Carl in 1937 [he was killed in Vietnam], Grady in 1939, Martin in 1941, Delia in 1944, Leon in 1946, and Deborah in 1948. Then Raymond, their daddy, died in 1952. I stayed single two years and about two months and then I married Willie Campbell in 1954. Edwin was born in 1954. Rita was born in 1956, and then my last one was born in 1963. [She was born dead and I had carried her for nine months.] So that’s the family.