Audio Clips

Doom and the steamboat. (15 February 1957; 1:03)

Frederick Gwynn: May I ask a couple of questions about the early Indian stories, about "Red Leaves"? Did Doom, in your mind, did he wreck the steamboat and maybe kill this man David Callicoat, whose name he took? Did he have some notion of getting that steamboat eventually, which he finally had transported twelve miles inland?

William Faulkner: No, the steamboat simply got too far up the river and stayed too long, and when the water fell in the late summer, it couldn't get out again, and so the owners of it just took the valuable machinery out and left the hull there, and Doom decided that would make a nice addition to his house, and so he had his people drag it out of the river across to the plantation.

Frederick Gwynn: Did you ever hear of anyone's really ever doing that [...]?

William Faulkner: [No].

What does the episode with the snake mean? (25 February 1957; 0:58)

Unidentified participant: Mr. Faulkner—

William Faulkner: Yes, sir.

Unidentified participant: In the story "Red Leaves," the slave escapes from his Indian captors and goes and hides in the swamp and, in order to avert his capture, has the cottonmouth strike him in the arm. Then the Indians come and capture him anyway. And why did this happen in the story? Is this to show that man can't escape his condition or—?

William Faulkner: No, that was—the snake episode was to show—to show that—that man, when he knows he's going to die, thinks that he can accept death, but he doesn't, he doesn't, really. The Negro at the time, he—he said I'm already dead, it doesn't matter, the snake can bite me because I'm already dead, but yet at the end, he still wanted to put off—that—that man will cling to life, that in a preference between grief and nothing, man will take grief always.

"Red Leaves" and other Indian stories. (2 May 1958; 2:00)

William Faulkner: Sorry.

Unidentified participant: I was wondering in your Indian stories again, "Lo!" and "A Courtship" and in "A Justice," except for the framework, your stories—these stories are very humorous, but in "Red Leaves," while there is a good deal of wry humor, that story seems to be much more serious, and I wondered if you'd care to comment.

William Faulkner: Only, in primitive peoples—I mean by primitive peoples a—a small group which are obsolete inside another culture—the—the distance between what is humor and what is tragic is never very great, that it—it may be funny now but you better watch out. That was simply that—that the same conditions, the same ingredients, with just a little more or little less fire under it might make something completely different. That the—the implacable pursuit of that poor Negro was funny to anybody but him, and that not—and also it was not funny to the Indians that had to stop sitting down to get up and walk him down to catch him. But the picture of—of those lazy people that didn't want to do that having to—to catch that Negro, to me, was funny. But the result, the purpose of it, was anything but funny. The Indians that went to call on President Jackson was funny, but it wasn't funny to the Indians and certainly wasn't very funny to President Jackson.

Were the Chickasaws cannibals? (15 February 1957; 0:47)

Frederick Gwynn: Were these Chickasaws ever known to be cannibals? There's some mention of how human flesh may have tasted between two of them once.

William Faulkner: No, there's—there's no record, but then it's—who's to say whether at some time one of them might not have tried what it tasted like? Quite often young boys will try things that they are—are horrified to remember later just to see what it was like, what the sensation was like. Maybe as children they may have found a dead man and cooked some of him to see what he tasted like. But they were not cannibals as far as I know.

Where did you get your information on the Chickasaws? (2 May 1958; 1:18)

William Faulkner: Yes, ma'am.

Unidentified participant: Where did you find all your information on the Chickasaw Indians? Are there records [ . . . ]?

William Faulkner: Yes'm. There—there are records there, but I never did do much research. I would—I probably got my information about Indians as I've got it about most of the other things I know, from listening to people and adding a little imagination to it. I suspect that—that no Chickasaw would recognize my Chickasaws, [audience laughter] but people that do know more about Mississippi's history don't quarrel too much with my picture of Chickasaw Indians. And also, I have known some of their descendants. They have mixed with white people or with Negroes—are still in my country. And I don't think that—that people are all that different no matter what color they are. That people are different more because of the pressure of their environment than because of their blood.

Where did you get your interest in Indians? (12 May 1958; 1:03)

William Faulkner: Yes, sir.

Unidentified participant: Where did you personally get your—get your interest in Indians? Was it from relics or living near them in Mississippi or—?

William Faulkner: That's a part of—of my culture, my North Mississippi culture. Our country is—compared to the country east of the mountains is—is—was frontier only a hundred years ago. Remnants of Chickasaw families still live. They're still my neighbors. Some are—are—are mixed with Negroes. Others are mixed with white people. The traditions are still there. There—in my childhood, boyhood, there were old men that could remember having heard their fathers tell them about the old days. The Indian names are still on the creeks and branches. The old roads, the old hilltops, still have the Indian names with the tribal significance.

Are there still Indians in Mississippi? (15 February 1957; 0:31)

Joseph Blotner: [Do they exist just in memory now—]?

William Faulkner: There are a few. There's a reservation, a remnant of—of Choctaws. The others, the Indians in my part of Mississippi have vanished into the two races, either the white race or the Negro race. You see traces of the features in the Negroes and a few of the old names in—in among white families, old white families.