Ikkemotubbe

A Chickasaw chief, Ikkemotubbe is also known as Doom, a corruption of the French "Du Homme," a nickname given him by his friend Chevalier Soeur-Blonde de Vitry, whom he met after running away to New Orleans as an adolescent (202). This 1940 magazine version of "The Old People" seems to suggest that Doom is both Sam Fathers' grandfather (202) and father (203). When Faulkner revised the story for inclusion in Go Down, Moses (1942), he made it clear that he was Sam's father. The Machiavellian Ikkemotubbe, in his rise to become chief of his tribe, intimidates his cousin, Moketubbe, the tribal leader, to relinquish authority by poisoning both a puppy and Moketubbe's eight-year-old son, with the implied threat that Moketubbe might similarly die. Ikkemotubbe seems similarly ruthless to his own family: he compels the slave woman who is pregnant with his child to marry one of the slaves he inherits from Moketubbe and then sells them - the female slave, the male slave, and the son she bore - to the great-grandfather of the narrator.