A Weary Land by Kelly Houston Jones;

Author:Kelly Houston Jones; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 3)
Published: 2021-09-17T21:00:00+00:00

Even free-range stock required some maintenance. Some farmers brought cattle in every night while others allowed them to roam for longer periods. The routine was determined by available grazing and weather. Periodically, bondspeople gathered roaming cattle and gave them salt. Nelson Densen explained of Arkansas’s landscape, “The timber made it a good place for cattle and hogs for at that time they run out in the woods free,” so when enslaved stock raisers tended herds they worked a great deal of time away from cultivated and cleared zones. They herded cattle and rustled up hogs from the woods, cane, prairies, and swamps, all the while gaining useful knowledge of the terrain. On the Bozeman place, Mart and Anthony cared for sheep and followed strays “up into the mountains” (the Ouachitas) when they wandered away from the flock.128 The miles that enslaved people like Mart and Anthony trekked through the forested areas away from the fields added to their knowledge of their neighborhood. As with just about any of their tasks, however, herding could put enslaved people in danger in the woods and swamps. Arch, who drove cattle for the Chicot County Hilliards, got lost in the swamp overnight and was feared drowned. While Arch returned safely, Jackson, the stock driver for the Walworth holdings in the same county, was not so lucky. One winter evening, Jackson, who was already missing a leg, failed to return to the plantation at the usual time to bring in the cattle. Because his mule appeared at the plantation soaking wet, and his missing leg would have hindered his movement, those on the plantation suspected Jackson might have drowned. Bondspeople combed the area for weeks, finally discovering his body along the river more than a month later.129 In the “immense canebrake” of southern Arkansas, it was imperative that Doc Quinn, who was enslaved on the Red River, and other hands protect the stock in sturdy pens overnight. Caring for cattle and horses came with other chores, like digging wells and building dams to hold water for them in the absence of other ready sources.130

A man named Peter became caught up in a dispute between neighbors in Saline County that was prompted in part by the loose roaming of the neighborhood’s cattle. In 1848, neighbors caught Elihu Cornelius, illiterate and described as sixty-five to seventy years old, slaughtering another farmer’s red and white cow with the help of a bondsman, named Peter, a few miles outside of Benton. Cornelius’s neighbor George Keesee claimed that over the course of ten years much of his stock had gone missing and believed that Cornelius had been systematically picking them off by driving his stock close to a neighbor’s herd then pulling in a “good fat one” from the other farmer’s stock before heading home. According to his accusers, after gathering a stolen animal up with his, Cornelius put all the cows in the pen at night, killed the stolen cow, turned his back out, and butchered the pilfered beef in the night.

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