Page:Fifty Years in Chains, or the Life of an American Slave.djvu/203

Rh A report had been current among us for some time, that there would be a distribution of clothes to the people at New-Year's day; but how much, or what kind of clothes we were to get no one pretended to know except that we were to get shoes, in conformity to a long-established rule of this plantation. From Christmas to New-Year appeared a long week to me, and I have no doubt that it appeared yet longer to some of my fellow slaves, most of whom were entirely barefoot. I had made moccasins for myself, of the skins of squirrels that I had caught in my traps, and by this means protected my feet from the frost, which was sometimes very heavy and sharp in the morning.

On the first day of January, when we met at the blowing of the morning horn, the overseer told us we must all proceed to the great house, where we were to receive our winter clothes; and surely, no order was ever more willingly obeyed. When we arrived at the house our master was up, and we were all called into the great court yard in front of the dwelling. The overseer now told us that shoes would be given to all those who were able to go to the field to pick cotton. This deprived of shoes the children, and several old persons, whose eye-sight was not sufficiently clear to enable them to pick cotton. A new blanket was then given to every one above seven years of age — children under seven received no blanket, being left to be