Unnamed Slaves of the Old Frenchman

The Old Frenchman came to Yoknapatawpha with a large number of slaves. One of the tasks he gave them was to straighten "the river bed . . . for almost ten miles to keep his land from flooding" (4). They are never described in any detail, but near the end the narrative refers to them as the "progenitors of saxophone players in Harlem honkytonks" while their bodies lie buried "beneath the weathered and illegible headstones" in a cemetery that sits on "a knoll four hundred yards away" from the plantation's big house (375).