Like other Indian tribes in the old South, the Chickasaw own slaves. Although it does not describe them in any detail, the narrative mentions them on two occasions - both times specifically as Mohataha's slaves. In Act I, they purchase items at the Indian agency-store in the settlement (17), and in Act III, a few of them accompany Mohataha as personal servants on her trips to town, and again when along with her tribe she leaves for the "West" (170).
In a facetious passage connecting the lost lock in 1826 to the future of the U.S., the narrator of Requiem for a Nun makes "a glorious prophecy" about the when when the American "people" will identify federal money with the "manna" of a generous god (17). They are described as "a race of laborers" whose only labor it to consume government funds (17).
