Sam Fathers

In this novel's brief reference to Sam Fathers, the narrator refers to him as "the Negro Sam Fathers whose father had been a Chickasaw chief" (91). In the earlier novel Go Down, Moses, however, where Sam is a major figure in Ike McCaslin's life, the narrator says his mother was "a quadroon," which means only one of his eight great-grandparents was black. In any case, by the racial laws of Yoknapatawpha, written and unwritten, any African American ancestor makes him a "Negro" rather than "white" or "Indian."