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Sutton, Katie
Bibliography : Katle Button aged ex-slave, Oak street, Evansville, Ind.
"White folks 'jes naturally different from dar kies." said Aunt Katis Sutton, ex -slave, as she tightened her bonnet strings under her wrinkled chin.
"We's different in color, in talk and in ligion and beliefs. We's different in every way and can never be spected to think de to live alike."
"When I was a little gal I lived with my mother in an old log cabin. By marry was good to me but she had to spond so much of her time at humoring the white babies and taking care of them that she hardly over got to even sing her own babies to sleep."
"Ole Missus and Young Missus told the little slave children that the stork brought the white babies to their mothers but that the slave children were all hatched out from buzzards eggs and we believed it was true."
"Yes, Maam, I believes in evil spirits and that there are many folks that can put spells on you, and if'n you dont believe it you had better be careful for there are folks right here in this town that have the power to bewitch you and then you will never be happy again."
Aunt Katie declared that the seventh son of a seventh son, or the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter possesses the power to heal diseases and that a child born after the death of its father possesses a strange and unknown power.
While Aunt Katie was talking, a neighbor came in to borrow a shovel from her.
"He, no, indeed I never lends anything to nobody." she declared.
After the new neighbor left, Aunt Katie said, "She jes erbout wanted dat shovel so she could 'hax'me. A woman borrowed a poker from my marry and hexed mammy by bending the poker and mammy got all twisted up wid rhumatis 'twill her uncle straightened de poker and den mammy got as straight as anybody."
"No, Maam, nobody gwinter take anything of mine out'n this house." Aunt Katie Sutton 's voice was thin and her tune uncertain but she remembered sons of the songs she heard in slavery days. One was a lullaby sung by her mother and the song is given on separate pages of this artical.
Three years ago Aunt Katie was called away on her last journey although she had always immersed the back and front steps of her cottage with chamber lye daily to keep away evil spirits death crept in and demanded the price each of us must pay and Katie answered the call.
Aunt Katie sprinkled salt in the foot prints of departing guests "Dat's so dey kain leave no ill will behind em and can never come agin 'thout an invitation," she explained.
She said she one time planted a tree with a curse and that her worst enemy died that same year.
"Evil spirits creeps around all night long and evil people 's always able to hex you, So, you had best be careful how you talks to strangers. Always spit on a coin before You gives it to a begger and dont pass too close to a hunchbacked person unless you can rub the hump or you will have bed luck as sure as anything."
Aunt Katie declared a rabbit's foot only brought good luck if the rabbit had been killed by a cross eyed negro in a country grave yard in the dark of the moon and she said that she believed one of that description could be found only once in a lifetime or possibly a hundred years.
(Folklore, District # 5, Vanderburgh County, Lauana Creel., "A Slave Mammy's Allaby.")
