No particular breed of dogs is needed for hunting negroes: blood-hounds, fox-hounds, bull-dogs, and curs were used,[24] and one white man told me how they were trained for it, as if it were a common or notorious practice. They are shut up when puppies, and never allowed to see a negro except while training to catch him. A negro is made to run from them, and they are encouraged to follow him until he gets into a tree, when meat is given them. Afterwards they learn to follow any particular negro by scent, and then a shoe or a piece of clothing is taken off a negro, and they learn to find by scent who it belongs to, and to tree him, etc. All this the farmer told me. I don’t think dogs are employed in the ordinary “driving” in the swamp, but only to overtake some particular slave, as soon as possible, after it is discovered that he has fled from a plantation. Joseph said that it was easy for the drivers to tell a fugitive from a regularly employed slave in the swamps.
“How do they know them?”
“How do you mean?”
“Oh, dey looks strange.”
“Skeared like, you know, sir, and kind o’ strange, cause dey hasn’t much to eat, and ain’t decent [not decently clothed], like we is.”
When the hunters take a negro who has not a pass, or “free papers,” and they don’t know whose slave he is, they confine him in jail, and advertise him. If no one claims him within a year he is sold to the highest bidder, at a public sale, and this sale gives title in law against any subsequent claimant.
The form of the advertisements used in such cases is shown by the following, which are cut from North Carolina newspapers, published in counties adjoining the Dismals. Such advertisements are quite as common in the papers of many parts of the Slave States as those of horses or cattle “Taken up” in those of the North:—
WAS TAKEN UP and committed to the Jail of Halifax County, on the 26th day of May, a dark coloured boy, who says his name is Jordan Artis. Said boy says he was born free, and was bound out to William Beale, near Murfreesboro, Hertford County, N.C., and is now 21 years of age. The owner is requested to come forward, prove property, pay charges, and take the said boy away, within the time prescribed by law; otherwise he will be dealt with as the law directs.
O. P. SHELL, Jailer.
Halifax County, N.C., June 8,1855.