Unnamed Pioneers and Settlers

During the time covered by the story, the white settlement that becomes Jefferson is occupied, first, by two men and a boy who are given names by the narrator and their own character entries in our database. This entry represents the next two generations or at least phases of inhabitants, which can called pioneers and settlers. The pioneers are the whites who acquire their land in the "wilderness" directly from the Indians who were already there (200); it isn't long before they become "the older residents" (206) who are followed into the region by the settlers, the "new names and faces" who make up much of the community at the time of the story (206). The character called Compson is among this second group, but the rest are nameless, and described as "so new" that they have "no discernible antecedents or past at all" (206). The narrator strongly implies that many of them are not much different than the bandits they put into the jail. Curiously, the only female inhabitant of the settlement mentioned in the story is the enslaved cook owned by Holston.