As part of the WPA’s Indian-Pioneer History Project, field worker Grace Kelley interviewed Lizzie Wynn in Dustin, Oklahoma, on November 29, 1937.

… Daddy had two [slave] families, besides three others who worked in the house. I don’t know just how many but there were quite a few.

The war was caused by some wanting to free the negroes so daddy said he guessed that we would be safe if he just turned them loose. But he took a notion to do like the rest were doing. He had freed all but the old woman and for some reason she was going with us. We got close to Netuma when he took very sick and had to be put to bed. We had stopped at an Indian house. The Northern soldiers came to the door and I was standing at the head of his bed. They told me to move but I thought that if I stayed there they surely wouldn’t shoot him. They shot him and blood and brains spattered all over me. I wasn’t scared but I was sad. After they had killed him, they left and the old negro woman said that they would go after some wagons and come back after us. We covered daddy up and shut the doors and left him lying in the bed. There was a hill at the back of the house so we ran to it so that we could get away without being seen. We traveled two days and nights without food or water and were exhausted when we came to a little house where an old woman lived. She had some hominy or rather corn cooked in water. We stayed there two months and were absolutely naked. One morning early, I went down close to the road and was sitting behind a big tree, sunning myself to get warm. I wasn’t in the habit of going down there and don’t know why I’d want to unless they led me to. I saw a negro coming down the road on a white horse and he looked like our old woman’s boy that we called “Siminole.” When he got closer I knew that it was and hollered at him. He wanted to know why we were there and all about us. I was crying and trying to answer all his questions at the same time. He said he would go and see mother. He told her that if he could he would get a wagon and get us away that night. The women stayed awake that night but we children went to sleep. He came back and they woke us. He had blankets and quilts to wrap us up in and we started on another and the last part of our journey.¹

ENDNOTES

¹ Lizzie Wynn, Interview 12286, vol. 101, Nov. 29, 1937, Dustin, Okla., 57–59, Indian Pioneer Papers, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Okla.