Lucius identifies his family, the Priests, as a "cadet branch" of the Edmondses (17), the family that descends from Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin, one of Yoknapatawpha's antebellum plantation- and slave-owners. Lucius' "cousin" Zachary Edmonds is the current owner of the property, and one of Boon's figurative "proprietors" as well (17).
The father of Lucius Priest's mother, his death at the beginning of the story provides the opportunity for Boon and Lucius' adventure. He and Grandfather attended "the University" (of Mississippi) at the same time, and were "groomsmen in each other's wedding" (45).
The son of Major de Spain, he is described as "incorrigible and bachelor," a bon vivant who is "not in the town but on it . . . like one prolonged unbroken Saturday night" even when he served as Jefferson's mayor (26). "A banker, not a hunter," by the end of the 1920s he has sold "lease, land and timber" where his father's camp had been (19). He is also apparently the first man to own an automobile in Jefferson: a "scarlet" red "racer" (26).
In this text Major de Spain figures primarily as a "hunter" (19), the owner of the hunting camp and the hunting ground around it, and one of the figurative "proprietors" of Boon (17). As one of Yoknapatawpha's aristocrats, he "culled and selected the men he considered worthy to hunt the game he decreed to be hunted" (18-19).
General Compson (best known as the grandfather of Quentin, Caddy, Jason and Benjy in The Sound and the Fury and as Thomas Sutpen's one friend in Absalom, Absalom!) appears in The Reivers as part of the comedy of Boon's life story. It is because Compson needs help finding his way back to the hunting camp that Boon becomes attached to the upper class De Spain, McCaslin/Priest and Compson families. General Compson's war record is briefly mentioned: he "commanded troops not too unsuccessfully" at Shiloh and in front of Atlanta (20).
The Sheriff says that Boon's white friends can "settle" the problem caused by his accidental shooting of a "Negro girl" by "giving her father ten dollars" (15). The father himself does not appear in the text.
The crowd of people who are in the Square when Boon shoots his gun is described as consisting of the people of Yoknapatawpha county, in town for a "First Saturday," a traditional "trade day": "they were all there, black and white" (14).
Isaac McCaslin is a frequent figure in the Yoknapatawpha fictions, and a major character in Go Down, Moses. The "Cousin Isaac McCaslin" who appears in The Reivers is the same character: the narrative mentions how he "abdicated the McCaslin plantation" (17) and describes him as "the best woodsman and hunter this county ever had" (14). But in this last of his appearances in the fictions, he is again represented in the less mythic role of the merchant who owns the hardware store on Courthouse Square. He lives in "a single room" over his store (55).
