Issetibbeha

An Indian chief, the son of Doom and the unnamed West Indian woman with some "Negro blood" (321). Issetibbeha becomes chief at age nineteen when his father dies. Under his leadership, the tribe continues, as one of them puts it, to "do as the white men do," and particularly to raise and sell slaves (319). He travels to Paris, and returns with several artifacts of high European culture that he displays proudly. At age twenty-one he has a son called Moketubbe. Issetibbeha dies thirty years later. According to Louis Berry, he was "not old" when he "became dead" (317), a phrasing that suggests the possibility that he was murdered by Moketubbe.