Doctor Habersham's Son

In both "A Name for the City" and Requiem for a Nun the "half orphan" son of Doctor Habersham is eight years old when he first arrives at the Mississippi settlement with his widowed father (202, 6). As a grown man, he becomes the government's local Indian agent and marries a Chickasaw woman who is the granddaughter of either Issetibbeha (202; 7) or (in Requiem's second mention of the event, of Mohataha, 170). Although the circumstances are vague, it seems clear that in the novel he becomes an outspoken advocate for the tribe he marries into, resigning from his government position "in a letter of furious denunciation addressed to the President of the United States himself" - probably Andrew Jackson; afterward he moves to Oklahoma "with his wife's dispossessed people" (7).