Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1886 — THE LAST DAYS OFSLAVERT. [ARTICLE]

THE LAST DAYS OFSLAVERT.

Negroes Caught with Molasses—Tiger Tail’s Slaves and Sewing Machines. Recurring to the landing of the Wan deret, says the Atlanta Constitution, the last American slave ship, at Jekyill’s Island on our coast in 1854, Judge Henry Tompkins says: “I met an old negro in Chatham County, where I was holding court, who was brought over on the Wanderer. He said to me: ‘Dee got us wid ’lasses. Dee gib up ’lasses—we lick um up. Dee spil uni on plank—we crall up ’ce plank, and lick um ’lasses, lack ’ee toll hog wid co’n.’ Which goes to show that even in its primitive shape taffy is very taking-” Judge Tompkins, continuing the casual conversation, said: “It would be interesting to know if any Southern slaves were spirited over to Cuba at the close of the war or thereabout and sold in Cuban markets. There was some talk of it at the time. A few determined men might have easily bunched a hundred negroes on the Florida coast and slipped over in sailing vessels to where each slave would have brought good prices in gold. “I knew a man,” he went on to say, “who actually saw a few years since the slaves in the possession of Tiger Tail, the Seminole chief who lives in the Florida swamps. It was Judge Faulkner of New York. He and a party of friends were in an unexplored lake one day when they saw a long dugout, holding four Indians and three negroes, issue from an inlet and skirt along the lake. The negroes were rowing and the Indians lying lazily on skins, which they were carrying to market. They accosted the chief, who told them frankly they were his ‘niggers.’ He was told with particularity the story of emancipation. He replied: “‘Ugh! Injun nigger no free!’ and motioning to his slaves they bend to the oars and the dugout glided into another inlet and was lost to view.” Tiger Tail seems to bo quite an original Seminole. A sewing-machine agent drifted into his dominion one day and set up a machine in Tiger Tail’s tent. The old chief, with great deliberation, watched him put it through its paces. He then arose, brushed the agent to one side, and seating himself adjusted his feet in the treadle. He started the wheel and found he could make it go. He sewed up one piece of cloth and down another and then gravely and critically examined his work. At last he appeared to be satisfied that it was all right. He then turned quietly to his wives, who had watched the proceedings with interest, and kicked them, one after the other, out of his tent.