The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

The "young woman" whom Doom seduces in New Orleans is first described as the "daughter of a fairly well-to-do West Indian family" (318). She is mainly white, but when her son Issetibbeha remembers her a few pages later, the narrative explicitly refers to "her Negro blood" (321). Given the casualness of the later reference, Faulkner might have expected his readers to read the designation "West Indian" as code for racial mixing in the first description, though that's by no means certain.

At the head of the tribe is a single chief, "the Man." But the narrative notes that the larger political structure includes "a hierarchy of cousins and uncles who ruled the clan," and who meet as a group to discuss tribal issues like "the Negro question" (319). The narrative refers to them in the "conclave" as "one," "a third," "a second," and so on, but does not give them names or individualities or distinguish between the two generations in any way (319).

At the head of the tribe in this story is a single chief, "the Man." But the narrative notes that the larger political structure includes "a hierarchy of cousins and uncles who ruled the clan," and who meet as a group to discuss tribal issues like "the Negro question" (319). The narrative refers to them in the "conclave" as "one," "a third," "a second," and so on, but does not give them names or individualities or distinguish between the two generations in any way (319).

During his years in New Orleans, Doom is introduced by "his patron," De Vitry, into the company of the "gamblers and cutthroats of the river front" (317).

Despite his imposing name, "the Chevalier Soeur Blonde de Vitry" is described as an expatriate Frenchman whose "social position" in New Orleans is "equivocal" (317). Living "among the gamblers and cutthroats of the river front" (317), De Vitry becomes Doom's patron and companion, and is the original source of Doom's non-native name Doom. De Vitry calls him "du homme," the Man, after the name of the tribal chief, and this sobriquet morphs into "Doom" (318).

In this story Doom is described as "one of three children" (317), but the narrative does not say if his siblings are male or female.

The son of Issetibbeha, Moketubbe becomes "the Man," the new chief, when his father dies (313). The narrative describes his "broad, flat, Mongolian face" (320), but it is most preoccupied with his physical and mental debility. It repeatedly refers his obesity and to his "monstrous shape," describing him as "diseased with flesh" (327, 321). During the pursuit for his father's runaway slave, he has to be carried by other Indians.

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.

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.