I think Tubman I had a small influence over the making of her own legend.Harriet was known to be a story teller and did enjoy telling people about the trips that she made. The first biography of Harriet Tubman, Scenes, was based off of what stories she told Sarah Bradford. I think at this point, however, is where Harriet’s influence stops and others influences start.
Tubman was illiterate so she was not able to write an autobiography or to read the things that other people wrote about her. Also when people want to get a point across, they tend to fudge the details a bit. One example is with the differences between Sarah Bradford’s 1869 and 1886 biography of Harriet Tubman. The 1886 version is more about the facts of Harriet Tubman because that book was written with haste since Bradford was leaving the country soon. By Bradford’s 1886 biography, the facts seemed to be a lot bigger than what they were in the beginning biography. For example, the number of trips and people saved increased tremendously. In the 1869 version, it was said that Tubman had made eight trips and saved about 50 people. By the time 1886 came, Tubman was said to have made 19 trips and saved over 300 people. This dramtic increase clearly shows how much the legend of Harriet Tubman grew. Also there were many people who used Harriet Tubman as an example when they gave their speeches. Most of the time in these speeches, the speakers would target the legends of Harriet to be able to get their point across. For example, in the speech that Frances Ellen Watkins Harper gave, she refers to Harriet as ” a woman who has gone down into the Egypt of slavery and brought out hundreds our people into liberty”.
Also, many of the abolitonists and helpers of the Underground Railroad would talk about the great things that Harriet did and the stories that she told them. After telling the story so many times, it is sure to be misconstrued.
The way that many of the things about Tubman spread reminds me a lot of telephone. For cheerleading, we would host a cheerleading camp during the summer for younger kids. Of course their attention spans were not long enough to be able to do cheerleading all day so we would have to play games with them. One of the popular games happened to be telephone. You never knew what the end result would be because some of the girls would try to actually remember what was said in the beginning and some of the girls would purposely change what was said.
Because of all these facts, I believe that Tubman only had a small role in her legend. She provided the stories and others took the stories and turned them into legends.
Nice post, Charli. One of the questions your comments raise has to do with the issue of power. How much power did Tubman have in her society? Do the legends about her make her seem more powerful than she was?