Doom's Clan

The tribe of Indians who live at the northern edge of Yoknapatawpha during the early part of the 19th century is not given a name in this story; in his later fictions Faulkner identifies them first as "Choctaw," then as "Chickasaw." They are associated several times with cannibalism (314, 319). Their customs include burying a chief's dog, horse and personal slave along with the chief, though the story also several times references the time before they owned any slaves, and they blame the newly arrived white settlers for introducing slavery to them. The only direct contact the story shows between them and whites in Yoknapatawpha is when "a combination itinerant minister and slave trader" visits their plantation (318), though perhaps the "Memphis trader" to whom Issetibbeha sells 40 slaves also visits them as part of the transaction (320). The story makes it clear, however, that they have had many interactions with the white world. Their regular outfits include European accessories like the "enameled snuffbox" that Three Basket wears as an earring (313), and they attend the chief's funeral in "their stiff European finery" (331). And the tribe some years earlier decided to "do as the white men do" - to raise and "feed" Negroes as slaves "and sell them to the white men for money" (319).