Colonel Nathaniel G. Dick

Character Key Number: 
337
Display Name: 
Colonel Nathaniel G. Dick
Sort Name: 
Dick, Colonel Nathaniel G.
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
Yes
Biography: 

Colonel Dick is a Union cavalryman with a "bright beard" and "hard bright eyes" who appears in "Ambuscade" and "Raid" and is mentioned in "The Unvanquished" as a short story. Across these texts as well as The Unvanquished he appears as a chivalrous gentleman who knows how to treat a lady like Rosa Millard even in the midst of the confict between Yankees and rebels. When his troop of Ohio cavalry comes to the Sartoris plantation looking for Colonel John in the first story, he wins her respect by tactfully accepting the lie he knows she is telling about the whereabouts of Bayard and Ringo. In the later "Raid," she seeks him out among the crowds of Union soldiers and self-emancipating slaves to help in retrieving the silver and mules that a different Union unit has confiscated - which he gives her without hesitation.