Refuge - Softcover

Smith, D. W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1452002185 ISBN 13: 9781452002187

Publisher: AuthorHouse, 2010

Synopsis

The book attempts to give homage to a largely forgotten or even unknown chapter in American History; the African-American Law Man in the old west. There are plenty of true stories about these Americans but mostly on obscure web pages and the untouched books in the local library. The Main Character is a fictional collection of several law man that our history has over looked like Bass Reeves from the Oklahoma Territory and before him Willie Kennard from Colorado. As dedicated as Bat Masterson or Wyatt Earp and as quick on the draw as William Butler Hickock but never caught the eye of the dime store novelist; until now.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

REFUGE

By D.W. Smith

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 D.W. Smith
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-0218-7

Chapter One

Big Jeff

This may be a strange way to begin, but I want to mention that the secondary purpose of this book is to tell the story of my own adventures as a lawman, way back when the west was wild, men were men, and all that other crap we get filled with today. I can't be sure my experience was typical of what others went through, but this is what I saw. I hope you find it interesting, and maybe even learn something.

I am almost 100. My memory is still as good as ever - and I took notes, and talked with some of the people involved. I am not sure why, because I don't remember planning ever to write a book.

I am not sure if every single detail is correct, and am certainly not sure if I remember all that people said. When I tell you what people say, I may be correcting bad English without thinking, from my own habits. My own view, shared by many other Negroes, was that some people were going to hate former slaves just for who they were - and we were far better off than Indians - but I always tried to improve my English. Let them hate me if they want, but not laugh at me.

I learned how to read and write as a slave. Many of us did, despite it being against the law, more than masters would admit. Even today, I don't want to say who taught me.

I read a lot, and even enjoy western movies - I find them very funny, considering how little reality they bear to what I remember about living in the west.

I had better get this written down while I am still around to write. I don't know how much time I have left. I have also missed some promised deadlines to get this to a publisher. Delays are a bad habit of old age, not anticipating that unexpected things come up, promising when you think it can be done, not allowing for problems and promising the get it to someone after you think it can be done. This way you would look good, not slow and lazy. Forgive the writer of this story. The story is well worth telling, and I think it will be worth reading.

This deadline missing is ironic, in a way. A very key element in this story is a deadline, and the problems it created when the central figure was not able to keep the deadline - though he missed by just a day or two, and it was really not his fault.

I want to tell the story of the town of Refuge, a small town in south west Idaho, already on the decline when this story starts. I want to tell of what I did in the town. More importantly, I want to tell the story of Gabe Johnson, one of the few Negro law enforcement officers in Idaho, a good man, and good lawman, and how he probably prevented an Indian War.

My name is Thomas Jefferson - yes, for real, that's my name. I was born a slave, and became free at the end of the Civil War. People always call me Big Jeff (if you saw me you would know why) or just plain Jeff.

My name was given me by my owner in Mississippi, Steven Jefferson, a man with a strange sense of humor. Mr. Jefferson was not a bad man, reasonably kind as a master, at least compared to others. I hold surprisingly little hate for the man. I also hold no love. I was well treated, at least as compared to others. But I am not a dog, however well treated. I am a man. I am a human being.

Steven Jefferson could afford to be a kind master. The threat of force was always there, behind his cheerful smile. The masters had others to do their dirty work. A friend I made after the war told me about the visit to his plantation in Mississippi, about twenty miles from Jefferson place on which I grew up, of a northern architect who wrote of his visit. When you read this, keep in mind that the incident took place in front of a Northern observer, a non-slave owner. Some Northerners were sympathetic to the slave owners and the slave system, but the overseer had just met the writer and had no way of knowing how the Yankee felt.

The Yankee was being shown around the plantation by an overseer, introduced maybe an hour before - we sometimes called overseers "crackers," for the crack of the whip they used so much in their work, keeping slaves in line while enabling the "Massa" to remain kindly.

The crackers were poor white trash given unusual power.

The visitor's account follows:

"The plows at work, both with single and double mule teams, were generally held by women, and very well held, too. I watched with some interest for any indication that their sex unfitted them for the occupation. Twenty of them were plowing together, with double teams and heavy plows. They were superintended by a Negro man who carried a whip, which he frequently cracked at them, permitting no dawdling or delay at the turning; and they twitched their plows around on the head-land, jerking their reins, and yelling to their mules, with apparent ease, energy, and rapidity. Throughout the Southwest the Negroes, as a rule, appear to be worked much harder than in the Eastern and Northern Slave States. They are constantly and steadily driven up to their work, and the stupid, plodding, machine-like manner in which they labor, is painful to witness. This was especially the case with the hoe-gangs. One of them numbered nearly two hundred hands (for the force of two plantations was working together), moving across the field in parallel lines, with a considerable degree of precision. I repeatedly rode through the lines at a canter, without producing the smallest change or interruption in the dogged action of the laborers, or causing one of them, so far as I could see, to lift an eye from the ground ... I think it told a more painful story than any I had ever heard, of the cruelty of slavery. It was emphasized by a tall and powerful Negro who walked to and fro in the rear of the line, frequently cracking his whip, and calling out in the surliest manner, to one and another, 'Shove your hoe, there! Shove your hoe!' But I never saw him strike anyone with the whip. I happened to see the severest corporeal punishment of a Negro that I witnessed at the South while visiting this estate ... The manner of the overseer, who inflicted the punishment, and his subsequent conversation with me about it, indicated that it was by no means unusual in severity. I had accidentally encountered him, and he was showing me his plantation. In going from one side of it to the other, we had twice crossed a deep gully, at the bottom of which was a thick covert of brushwood. We were crossing it a third time, and had nearly passed through the brush, when the overseer suddenly stopped his horse exclaiming, 'What's that? Hallo! Who are you, there?' It was a girl lying at full length on the ground at the bottom of the gully, evidently intending to hide herself from us in the bushes. 'Who are you, there?' 'Sam's Sall, sir.' 'What are you skulking there for?' The girl half rose, but gave no answer. 'Have you been here all day?' 'No, sir.' 'How did you get here?' The girl made no reply. 'Where have you been all day?' The answer was unintelligible. After some further questioning, she said her father accidentally locked her in, when he went out in the morning. 'How did you manage to get out?' 'Pushed a plank off, sir, and crawled out.' The overseer was silent for a moment, looking at the girl, and then said, 'That won't do; come out here.' The girl arose at once, and walked towards him. She was about eighteen years of age. A bunch of keys hung at her waist, which the overseer espied, and he said, 'Your father locked you in; but you have got the keys.' After a little hesitation, she replied that these were the keys of some other locks; her father had the door-key. Whether her story was true or false, could have been ascertained in two minutes by riding on to the gang with which her father was at work, but the overseer had made up his mind. 'That won't do,' said he; 'get down.' The girl knelt on the ground; he got off his horse, and holding him with his left hand, struck her thirty or forty blows across the shoulder with his tough, flexible, 'raw-hide' whip (a terrible instrument for the purpose). They were well laid on, at arm's length, but with no appearance of angry excitement on the part of the overseer. At every stroke the girl winced and exclaimed, ''Yes, sir!' or 'Ah, sir!' or 'Please, sir!' not groaning or screaming. At length he stopped and said, 'Now tell me the truth.' The girl repeated the same story. 'You have not got enough yet,' said he; 'pull up your clothes-lie down.' The girl without any hesitation, without a word or look of remonstrance or entreaty, drew closely all her garments under her shoulders, and lay down upon the ground with her face toward the overseer, who continued to flog her with the raw-hide, across her naked loins and thighs, with as much strength as before. She now shrunk away from him, not rising, but writhing, groveling, and screaming, 'Oh, don't, sir! Oh, please stop, master! Please, sir! Please, sir! Oh, that's enough, master! Oh, Lord! Oh, master, master! Oh, God, master, do stop! Oh, God, master! Oh, God, master!' A young gentleman of fifteen was with us; he had ridden in front, and now turning on his horse, looked back with an expression only of impatience at the delay. It was the first time I had ever seen a woman flogged. I had seen a man cudgeled and beaten, in the heat of passion, before, but never flogged with a hundredth part of the severity used in this case. I glanced again at the perfectly passionless but rather grim business-like face of the overseer, and again at the young gentleman, who had turned away; if not indifferent he had evidently not the faintest sympathy with my emotion. Only my horse chafed. I gave him rein and spur and we plunged into the bushes and scrambled fiercely up the steep acclivity. The screaming yells and the whip strokes had ceased when I reached the top of the bank. Choking, sobbing, spasmodic groans only were heard. I rode on to where the road, coming diagonally up the ravine, ran out upon the cotton-field. My young companion met me there, and immediately afterward the overseer. He laughed as he joined us, and said: 'She meant to cheat me out of a day's work, and she has done it, too.'"

My plantation, the one on which I lived, never had a well spoken Northerner to tell its story. But something like what happened to the girl could have happened to me. I don't remember who it was, the name of the freed slave who strongly expressed what we all thought. "Now that I've been free, I know what a dreadful condition slavery is. I have seen hundreds of escaped slaves, but I never saw one who was willing to go back and be a slave."

The story I am telling here took place in the period of the Indians wars - the terms Americans give to the small group of Indians, from various tribes, fighting the might of the United States government - or at least what was left of the U.S. Army after the Civil War. This is the stage on which the story takes place; I am not just showing off my historical knowledge - and the fact that a former slave, forbidden to learn to read or write by Southern state law, learned to do both reasonably well. A decent white person, whose name I still don't want to reveal, taught me to read so I could the Bible. Writing came somewhat later.

Gabe Johnson and I had a problem for several reasons. Readers who know a little about that period know of the Indian wars and how they were settled by white, and Negro, soldiers. But the Indian wars might have been over a lot more quickly, and with a lot less bloodshed and resentment, if Congress had not wanted to save money and cut the Army so drastically after the end of the Civil War.

The Black Hills of the Dakota territory, two of today's states east from Idaho, was the center of attention in 1876, about the time Gabe came to Refuge. The Sioux Indians had lived there for over 100 years, and considered the land sacred. In 1866, Red Cloud, the Oglala Sioux war chief, had kicked the Army and settlers off of the Bozeman trial into Montana. The whites agreed to stay out. This peace lasted all of six years. Then George Custer showed up on the scene. Custer had a good reputation as a Union cavalry commander in the Civil War, one of the boy generals. But he never had has own command. In the Civil War Custer could give full reign to his aggressive combat nature, as a first rate field commander. His bosses would make the strategic decisions.

His record as Lt. Colonel, the effective commander of the 7th Cavalry regiment, was mixed at best. (I admit to some surprise when I later learned all this). In 1867 he was suspended for a year, for such offenses as using his men for personal errands, abandoning two men on a march, and ordering his men to immediately shoot, rather than return for trial, deserters. He was effective in the Civil War, but one cannot help thinking his basic motivation was his own glory.

Custer was restored to duty in 1868, looking for a way to recapture the dashing image from the Civil War. A few months after returning to duty, he led a surprise attack on the peaceful camp of Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle. Eleven Indian warriors were killed, including Black Kettle. Ninety women, children, and old men were killed.

In 1874, Custer led a large expedition into the Black Hills, over 1,000 men. The expedition included geologists and other scientists, and reported back on its results. They found gold, with predictable results from the gold fever plaguing mankind for so long. The Sioux did not share the gold lust, and resent intruders into their sacred land. By 1876, the Sioux were in the warpath. Custer, however, has been called to Washington to testify about War Department graft. One of the names he mentioned as being involved was President Grant's brother, Orville. Grant ordered Custer to stay in D.C. to testify at the upcoming trial of accused graft takers. Custer suspected, probably correctly - the man could make enemies, but could often recognize the dangers others posed to him (though not the danger he posed to himself) - that this was also done to deny Custer the chance for military glory in the upcoming campaign.

When Grant refused to see Custer, Custer went, against orders, to St. Paul, Minnesota to see General Alfred Terry, one of the commanders of the upcoming military campaign against the Sioux. Terry got Custer restored to command. On May 17, 1876, Custer and part of the Seventh Cavalry moved out with the rest of Terry's command. A month later, a force under General George Crook lost the Battle of the Rosebud, and withdrew from the campaign for eight weeks.

In the half century since Custer lived, objective historians remember him as a first rate subordinate battlefield commander. Custer's arrogance, the other side of his confidence and fearlessness, always gave him the potential for disaster as an independent commander. He needed a firm commander keeping an eye on him.

Custer proved it at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. He split his command of the 7th cavalry, and took 250 men to attack what he thought was jus a few hundred Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors. There were about 3,000 warriors, and it took them less than an hour to kill every trooper with Custer, and Custer himself. The good people of the East had been very sympathetic to the Indians when they were victims. But Custer's last stand was also the last stand of the Sioux. By a year after the June 25, 1876 Battle of the Little Big Horn the war was over. Sitting Bull, and many Sioux survivors, fled into Canada, just north of Montana.

This was a factor in the story of Refuge. Chief Joseph and his band of non-treaty Nez Perce were headed in the general direction of the Sioux when they were stopped by soldiers under Nelson Miles. Even more unfortunately for the Nez Perce, even those who had signed treaties with the government, there was also gold in Idaho. Gold had been a white man's obsession since they first landed in America. Indians, at least those in the United States, never shared this lust.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from REFUGEby D.W. Smith Copyright © 2010 by D.W. Smith. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1452002185
• ISBN 13: 9781452002187
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160