Read an Excerpt
FROM PRINCESS TO CHIEF
Life with the Waccamaw Siouan Indians of North Carolina
By Priscilla Freeman Jacobs, Patricia Barker Lerch THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS
Copyright © 2013 The University of Alabama Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-1797-3
CHAPTER 1
Early Memories
Birth
Priscilla Freeman Jacobs recalled: "I was born on October 27, 1940, at my grandfather Alec Patrick's home, and they always said that the bedroom that I was born in was like 'cross the line'—I was half in Columbus and half in Bladen County. Of course, back then we didn't depend on doctors like they do now. We didn't have doctors; a midwife did me. She passed away before I got to know her.... I remember Mama calling her 'Grandma,' which you can't go by because everybody called everyone grandmas and mamas. After that, Dr. Dawson of Lake Waccamaw came out to deliver my two brothers. People my age and back were probably delivered by midwives."
Priscilla's story of her birth was expanded by her mother, Vera Patrick, who remembered the day she gave birth to Priscilla, her first child. She talked about those memories as her sister Pauline (who was visiting), Priscilla, and Patricia listened intently one morning in May 2006. Vera told this story of giving birth to Priscilla. "My mother [Nettie Patrick] and I picked peas all day on a Saturday until about 3:30 Saturday evening, and she [Mama] said, 'I think it's time for you to go in and wash up because you been out here with me pulling that sack of peas.' I said, 'Well, I'll do that,' so I went in and washed up. And we got us a bite to eat, and so sometime during the night I began hurting, you know; stuck it out until just before day on a Sunday morning. And she came round the room and asked me how I was feeling. I said, 'Mama, I'm hurting.' And she said, 'I think it's about time.'"
The family began to gather for the upcoming birth. Vera's mama sent Vera's brother, who owned a car, down to get her son-in-law, Clif, to tell him it was time for Vera to give birth. Clif was waiting for news with his parents, W. J. and Rena Freeman, down at their place. Vera said, "My brother went down there to this little old white house and told Clif, my husband, 'Mama said it was time for Vera to have that baby, so you better go get the midwife.' So Clif got in the car and he went to Bolton and got the midwife. When he got back to the house [Ms. Nettie's house], his front wheel fell off. As the midwife was getting out of the car, his front wheel fell right off in the yard. And my daddy [Alec Patrick] said, 'Oh you lucky guy! That wheel could have come off when you doing 50'—back then 50 miles [per hour] was something else—and he said, 'That wheel could have come off and both you and her could have been dead.' But the midwife came on in and she examined me and said, 'Yeah, it's time.' And I wasn't in labor but just a few hours before she was born."
Vera gave birth to Priscilla at the home of her own mother, Nettie Patrick. Nettie Patrick assisted during the birth, along with Vera's grandmother Edie Freeman and the midwife Annie Freeman. Although Grandmother Edie was also an experienced midwife at the age of eighty-nine, she no longer delivered babies but remained on hand to offer her advice, if necessary. Vera's mother later became a midwife herself; she brought most of the current older generation into the world but was not practicing as a midwife in 1940.
Waiting outside on the porch, Vera's father, Alec Patrick, and husband, Clif Freeman, talked quietly until they heard the newborn cry. Vera remembered, "When they heard her cry, oh boy, here comes both of them running [laughs]. The midwife couldn't hardly get out the door 'fore Daddy and Pa standing up there." Annie Freeman, the capable midwife, calmed the anxious new father and grandfather, saying, as Vera remembered, "This ain't nothing new to me. I been doing this for years." Still, everyone was excited, as Vera recalled: "But it was kind of exciting, I'm telling you [laughs]. And all day that Sunday, when the news got out that I had her and she was such a pretty baby, everybody was a coming [laughs]. My mama said, 'Well my house is little, but maybe it will hold all of them.' What couldn't come to look at the baby was on the porch waiting to come in [laughs]. Yeah, it was a time."
Vera was encouraged to nurse her newborn soon after giving birth. She said, "There was a lady that came in—Ms. Retty Jacobs—and she said, 'That baby is hungry. We got to get something to feed that baby.' But my mother said, 'Don't put her on the breast right now because her breast is tender and it might cause a blister to come on her breast.' So Retty said, 'We'll fix her a sugar titty.' Mama went in the kitchen and got her a little clean rag, put some sugar in it and wet it and put it on her lips. And she went to popping them lips, and Ms. Retty Jacobs said, 'I told you, Nettie, that baby was hungry.' And so when she sucked all the sugar out of it [the sugar titty], she kept on whining and whining, so Ms. Retty said, 'Pull that breast out, baby, and we going to give that baby some milk.'"
Sometimes new mothers experience sore breasts in the first few days of nursing. Vera recalled this very well: "Well, by that time my breast went to leaking then, so she put the baby to breast and, Lord have mercy, she [Priscilla] nursed that breast. And she finally sucked a blister on my breast. Lord, did I have a time. I finally had to take her off the breast and finish raising her on the bottle. And my breast was lanced eleven times. The last time it was lanced, Dr. Dawson said, 'Ms. Freeman, we going to have to cut that milk vessel under your arm, and that will stop it.' So he went underneath my arm and cut the milk vessel. Lord knows it was a sight to see what come out of that. I had a temperature so high and my breast turned right red and he [Dr. Dawson] said, 'You'd better get something—I don't know of thing except turpentine that could kind of cool that fever down. Get some turpentine and a little piece of cotton and rub it around it, and that will cool the fever.' So my mother did that, and then they went out and got some old 'silver leaves,' we called it. Now they call them 'canna'—the big red flowers with the big wide leaves on them—but back then we call them 'silver leaves.' My mother went out and got some of them to put on my breast. The fever went to leaving."
For the next several weeks, Vera and Priscilla stayed at Vera's parent's home; Grandma Nettie helped Vera with the baby and tended her until Vera felt ready to go down to live again with her husband, Clif, and his family. Vera remembered, "I stayed there about three weeks because my husband's mother had fell and broke her arm. We were living with them. She said, 'Baby, you'll have to stay with your mother 'til you get able to wait on yourself 'cause my arm's broken and I can't help wait on you.' So I stayed with Mama about three weeks. My husband kept saying, 'When are you going to come home and bring that baby?' [laughs]. I said, 'Maybe when she gets three weeks old.' At the end of the three weeks, I come back down the road."
Traditionally, an expectant mother found support from her female relatives. In Priscilla's grandmother Nettie's time, midwives delivered the babies and offered advice to the young mothers. Grandmother Nettie's eleven children were all delivered by her own mother, Great-grandmother Edie, who was a midwife. Midwives were expert at telling when a baby was due and when a young mother should leave the fields and prepare for birth. The midwife usually came to stay with the new mother for nine days after birth, allowing the mother to rest. Other women came bringing food and stayed to assist with such household chores as washing the clothes, cooking, and sweeping up the house and yard. After birth, the baby's navel was wrapped with scorched white gauze; and, depending on the mother's ability, the baby would be nursed for up to nine months.
A healthy woman worked picking cotton right up to her delivery time. If she was healthy after giving birth, she nursed her baby and stayed closer to home, doing household chores. If a woman was fearful about her upcoming ordeal, midwives counseled her to have faith in the Lord, who would ensure a safe delivery. In 1982, Grandmother Nettie described her feelings to Patricia this way: "My mama said that heap a time she'd come and tell me before I had that baby; she said, 'Now Nettie, have faith in the Lord and he will heal and he will deliver that baby. He put it there. He had to put [it] there, and he'll take care of you.' I believe she was a good ole woman. Both my mama and my husband's mama were midwives. They'd boil a little tea before I had the baby. I didn't hurt none the whole time before I had the baby. I get out there and chop cotton, pick peas, beans, or anything. I'd get along 'til right time to have the baby. Doctors were far away and came only afterwards if you hurt, but if you didn't hurt, you just get up. Now they'd always put a band 'round you after you had the baby; they kept your stomach from sagging and [you] having a big belly. Put a band round you and in it with safety pins. That kept you right tight; if you lifted anything, it wouldn't take your boom [strength] away." Grandmother Nettie got help from her "sissies" or sisters-in-law, who, she said, "cared for me just like if I was their sister. If I had a little baby, Kate would come down here, Ella do my wash for me anyhow 'til my month got up" (personal communication to Lerch, September 1982).
Naming
The naming of a child might be given to a respected person such as a schoolteacher. Vera recalled how Priscilla was named when she was one week old. The honor of naming fell to a schoolteacher from Pembroke who was living in Vera's mother's home at the time. Vera said, "Well, there was a schoolteacher who was from Pembroke, Mary Brewington, living with my mother. She went in the Bible and she said, 'Ms. Patrick, let me name that baby.' Mama said, 'All right.' Mama come to the room door and she said, 'Vera, did you have any special name you wanted to name her?' I said, 'No madam.' She said, 'Miss Mary Lee [Brewington] wants to name her.' I said, 'It will be fine with me.' So she went in the Bible and got Priscilla. There was Priscilla and Aquila in the Bible. So she said, 'Let's name her Priscilla.'"
Sometimes babies received other names, arising from special circumstances of their birth. Priscilla heard the story of her special name many times: "The way I received my name was it was said that when I was born I made this cooing sound like pigeons. My grandfather had a lot of pigeons around his home, and they would sit on the rooftop and make a cooing sound, and so that is why they started calling me 'Coo Coo.' I was making a sound like the pigeons. So that is where my name came from. So when I was little it was always like Coo Coo, and then as I grew up one of Coos got dropped, and so I just become Coo to everybody. So, that's where it came from." Vera elaborated, saying, "Every morning, I reckon she was hungry, but every morning she'd wake up but she wouldn't cry. She'd say, 'Coo coo,' and my grandmother would say, 'That baby is hungry Vera.' And I'd say, 'I know it, Grandma. I've not got around to nursing her yet.' And Grandma would say, 'My little Coo Coo [laughs]; my little Coo Coo. I'm going to name her Coo Coo because she's cooing every morning.' Wouldn't miss a morning. Time my eyes would come open, she'd start cooing. And you could hear her, too, clear out the room door [everyone laughs together]. That's why most of us now call her Coo. It stuck from a baby up to now."
Early Childhood
Priscilla spent her first three years living at the home of her paternal grandparents, W. J. and Rena Freeman. Priscilla's parents, Clifton and Vera, who were twenty years old when she was born, joined a large, extended household and contributed their labor to its upkeep and running. Vera Freeman remembered those as days of long, hard work—cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, and doing fieldwork for her in-laws. Although there were many good times, she recalled living there: "Yes, almost three years. Well, it was kind of tough living with your in-laws. They were set in their ways of doing things, their ways of eating, sleeping, and going to bed, and I was set in my ways. And it was kind of tough adjusting to it, yeah, living with my in-laws; but I did it almost three years. She was born and I was still living with them, and that's why she was so ruined, because my husband's mother wouldn't let me spank her or lay my hands on her [laughs]. Grandma Rena would always say, 'No, you won't want to do that.' So I just had to let her come along and do the best she could and do her little mean things until I got out to myself [laughs]. Then when I moved down to where Lacy, my son, is at now, in a little four-room house, that's whenever she got all the whippings."
Priscilla's memory of being a special child to her grandma Rena contrasts with Vera's memory of difficult times: "Grandma Rena was special to me and I was her special child. Everybody says I'm kind of like her. I remember her making me eggnog when I was sick. I was her pet for a while; might've been because I stayed there as a baby and you grow close to people. By the time Lacy was born, who is my mama's baby [youngest child], my parents had moved into their own house; but C. J. and myself were born at grandpa's house. Brother is next to me—two years between each one of us. I'm the oldest; you know, my childhood was good. My parents were good and my grandparents were good. I don't have any bad memories as far as that part of my life goes. Everything was good because I had special people."
When a daughter-in-law moved in with her husband's mother, she had to learn to fit into a household full of her husband's kin and family. Vera's memory is of cooking, cleaning, and working in difficult circumstances. She recalled, "All Grandma wanted to do, my husband's mother, was sit and hold her [Priscilla]." As a new mother, her period of rest quickly ended in her mother-in-law's house, where she rose, she said, "anywhere from three thirty to four o'clock. We's up fixing lunches to take to work for the men folks. And it wasn't a sandwich. We had to roll biscuits. Just about all the flour bought on Friday, it'd be gone by Wednesday of the next week." Young married couples normally lived with the husband's family until they could afford their own home. Vera recalled that this was because "most of the time ... the boys weren't far enough ahead. I don't remember but one man in this whole community that was able to build him a house and have it when he got married. That was Darcy Jacobs. I don't know how he did it, but somehow or other he saved money and he built a little four-room house when he married Ms. Annie Jacobs. 'Cause we always talked about it. He was deaf—not really hard deaf, but he couldn't hear too well. So, I don't know, he just stayed home and kept his money and he farmed, sowing vegetables and stuff, and I reckon somehow or other he saved money and built a little four-room house."
In September 1982, Patricia Lerch asked Vera's mother, Nettie Patrick, where she lived after her marriage. Nettie recalled that she admired her future husband, Alec Patrick, precisely because he took care of his mother and sisters. She said, "Well, this is what I like 'bout him. He's kept his mama here after his daddy died, and his three sisters. He kept 'em here and he'd get out and cut ties [e.g., sawing railroad ties], dip turpentine, work up here for first one then the other. Fed 'em, and his mama stayed home and them girls too until they got big old'n; then they went courting and got married." Like Nettie's daughter Vera, Nettie, too, lived with her husband's family after their marriage in 1911. Her "sissies" accepted her as a sister, helping her after the birth of each of her eleven children.
Priscilla's recollections of her grandparents' home reflected her secure sense of being a special person, whereas her young mother, Vera, struggled to fit in. Vera recalled feeling conflicted when she did not agree with her mother-in-law: "Well, you just learned to keep your mouth closed. If you see anything you don't like, you just close your mouth and put up with it. A lot of times I had it in mind of leaving and going back home, but I didn't ever do it [laughs]. [I thought about it] even after she [Priscilla] was born. My father-in-law was [the kind of] person [who] wanted to take in children that didn't have no parents much or [they] didn't care about them. He had extra boys and extra girls coming in and staying. One lives right up the road here that was one of them. She was there whenever me and my husband got married and moved there, and she [was] a feud [trouble]. I'm telling you, she was something else because her daddy left and her mama wasn't married, so she was, I'd say, just brought up by the hair of the head. She did whatever she wanted to do. She was kind of unruly. I wasn't used to that, but yet she was my mother-in-law's sister's daughter, so I had to put up with it."
The stresses of living in an extended family household were alleviated somewhat if the home had separate sleeping rooms. Priscilla's parents enjoyed the privacy of their own small room within the household, but private conversations and arguments had to be kept to a minimum, as the walls did not prevent others from overhearing a discussion between husband and wife. Vera recalled, "No, and a lot of times you don't want to say something to hurt that mother-in-law or that daddy-in-law, so you just hold your peace." Younger people had to respect their elders by holding their tongue.
Listening to her mother, Priscilla commented, "Well, back then it was so strict as far as a younger person saying anything back to an older person; you didn't defend yourself. You didn't."
This respect for the elders continued in Priscilla's upbringing too: "We were brought up to always [show respect]; the elder folks called it 'honoring.' In my family, in particular, you didn't come in and interrupt an elderly person when they were talking. We were always taught that, and we were taught that children were to be quiet when the elders were talking. We were to be quiet, and we always had to answer 'yes or no, madam,' or 'yes or no, sir.' Even people who were not your actual uncles—they were like much older people—we usually would put a 'handle.' They called it 'putting a handle to their names.' Like I had one I called 'Aunt Bert,' and she was not my aunt; she was just a sweet lady, and I was her little girl. She would rub my hair and she'd say, 'Your hair going to grow, going to grow; you going to have pretty hair.' Always, when I got within hand reach of her, [she was] rubbing my hair. She was not my aunt, but I always called her aunt. But her husband was always 'Mr. Lonnie.' She was kind of close in the family, even though she was not that closely related to the family. I mean in kin." Vera's sister, Pauline offered, "You respected your elders, you know, because we were raised that way. Like it or not, when an older person talked to you, I don't care what you thought, how you felt, or what you wanted to say, it was just 'yes, ma'am' or 'no, sir.'"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from FROM PRINCESS TO CHIEF by Priscilla Freeman Jacobs, Patricia Barker Lerch. Copyright © 2013 The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
