*Interview with Nathan Beauchamp*
--_Gertha Couric, Eufaula, Alabama_
_HALF BREED_
I walked up a little path bordered with small stones, an atmosphere of
solitude surrounding me. In the sky, large, white cumulous clouds like
great bolls of cotton, floated leisurely northward. Far down the road a
ramshackle buckboard disappeared over a slight hill; directly in front
the path ran at twenty yards into the dilapidated steps of a Negro
cabin, while an old colored man in a vegetable garden to the left to the
cabin broke the stillness with the intermittent metallic sounds of his
spade digging into thirsty soil. I knew at a glance that this was Nathan
Beauchamp.
"Hello, Uncle Nathan," I called.
[Illustration: _Nathan Beauchamp, Eufaula, Alabama_]
"Mornin', white folks," he answered, as he discontinued his spading and
raised his hand in a friendly gesture.
I walked over to where Uncle Nathan was standing and stopped in the
little furrows of brown earth. Already a thick coat of dust had formed
on my shoes.
"Uncle Nathan," I said, "I'd like to have a brief chat with you about
slavery days, if you can spare a few minutes from your garden here?"
"Yassuh, boss," he said, punctuating his reply with a spat of tobacco
that was soon nothing but a dark mark in the parched ground, "glad to be
of any 'sistance."
We moved to the shade of a large oak where we sat down together on a
sturdy, home-made bench.
"Well, white folks," he went on after taking a long turn at the dipper
hanging on the tree which shades a well. "I'll tell you a story of my
mammy an' pappy. Nathan Beauchamp, my pappy, belonged to Massa Green
Beauchamp at White Oak Springs, near Eufaula.
Massa Green was a member of de legislature when de capital was at
Tuscaloosy. He had many a acre of land an' hund'eds of slaves. Pappy use
to dribe de wagon in to Eufaula to git supplies an' on de way he would
meet up wid an Injun gal a-carryin' big baskets dat she was a goin' to
sell dere. He would ask her iffen she wanted to ride, an' she always say
yes. So one day pappy came to de massa and tell him dat dere was an
Injun gal on de St. Francis Indian Village dat he wanted fo' a wife, an'
de boss say all right so pappy married de Indian gal. Her name was Mimi.
So I is half nigger an half Injun. My mammy died 'bout five year after
freedom, but I can remembers dat she had long black hair, and I
remembers de way de sun sparkle on her teeth when she smile. Atter she
married pappy, she still carried her pretty baskets to Eufaula to sell.
Sometime she walk all de way dere and back, twenty fo' miles. I been
libin' here in Eufaula fifty year or mo', white fo'ks, an' I owns my
little cabin an' de lan' around it. T'ain't much, but its enough to keep
me a-goin', dis wid de little sto' I owns."