Analysing a slave narrative - Harriet Miller

I decided to look at the interview that was carried out with an elderly lady who went by the name Aunt Harriet who was mixed race, with a Cherokee father and a white mother, and for this reason she lived a hard life because of her race. The fact that she was a child of mixed race is quite significant, as during the 19th century it was almost unheard of for people to have a relationship with someone of a different race, especially not someone who was black or a native American. However this is probably the reason Harriet was not able to stay with her parents, as it would have been seen as shameful to the white mother for people to know she had a child with a Cherokee man. She says about how her 'whitefolks tried to send [her] to school but de whitefolks wouldn't receive [her] on account [she] was mixed'. This quote is interesting, firstly, because of the way she used 'my whitefolks', showing that she acknowledged she was more of a possession to the white people that took her in, than family. However, it is worth noting that her 'whitefolks' had an interest in providing her with an education but that is all that is spoken of education in the narrative, and it is evident that she did not go on to be taught to speak properly given the frequent use of the words 'de', 'deirs' and 'dey' in place of 'the', 'theirs' and 'they' throughout the narrative. Whilst Harriet was allowed to mix with white children growing up, she was no longer afforded this in adulthood, and 'had to turn to negroes for companionship', which is when she became a slave.

It becomes evident that Harriet knew her place-so to speak- as a slave saying that 'if slaves stayed in deir places dey warn't whipped or put in chains' and that she remembered 'but three whippings in [her] life', showing that she had learnt that where she worked, she knew how she must behave if she were to avoid getting beaten by her master. However, because she was only beaten three times in her life, it is clear that she was not under the control of such a strict overseer as many African Americans and Indians were at the time. Another thing that is worth noting is that she belonged to a church, though 'de back seats was what de slaves set', so despite the clear segregation very much prominent at the time,  it can be inferred that the white slave-owners felt it was important to educate their slaves in western Christianity. This is something that happened a lot before the abolition of slavery, especially with the native Indian slaves, as the white people did not want them to practise their traditional Indian rituals and beliefs. 

Source: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mesn&fileName=043/mesn043.db&recNum=130&itemLink=S?ammem/mesnbib:@field(AUTHOR+@od1(Miller,+Harriet))