Childless “Fathers,” Native Sons: Mississippi Tribal Histories and Performing the Indian in Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses

Abstract

MICHAEL D’ALESSANDRO Harvard University Childless “Fathers,” Native Sons: Mississippi Tribal Histories and Performing the Indian in Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses WHEN ASKED ONCE ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF HIS NATIVE AMERICAN characters, William Faulkner openly admitted that he “made them up” (Dabney 11). Later he asserted that such characterizations might be accurate strictly because he eschewed research: “I never read any history. . . . I talked to people. If I got it straight it’s because I didn’t worry with other people’s ideas about it” (Cantwell 57). Despite these statements, critics have continually tried—and failed—to tie the Native Americans of Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County to the actual Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes who inhabited Faulkner’s native Mississippi before their expulsion in the 1830s. Duane Gage concludes that “Faulkner’s Indians are not history’s Indians. They are William Faulkner’s Indians, . . . created from fantasy, lore and incidental history to suit the author’s needs” (27). Similarly, Howard Horsford affirms that “the blunt truth is that [Faulkner] shows very little familiarity with early Mississippi history or with the Choctaws and Chickasaws who were its victims” (311). Thus most scholars have conceded Faulkner’s Native American creations to be unapologetic fictions. These critics appear satisfied with the mere discovery of the author’s erroneousness. They rarely explore the larger ramifications of Faulkner’s inaccurate Native American representations,particularlyregardingthemuddledfolklorethattrickled down to local Mississippians. These critics also focus too heavily on the one-dimensional Native Americans of early stories like “Red Leaves” (1930) and “Lo!” (1934).1 Yet the dignified figures of later fiction, particularly Sam Fathers in Go Down, Moses (1942), represent equally broad and perhaps more troubling caricatures. A half-Chickasaw elder and wilderness guide to Yoknapatawpha’s youth, Sam serves a crucial 1 For examples, see Gage, Parker, and Sayre. 376 Michael D’Alessandro role in young Isaac (“Ike”) McCaslin’s miseducation. As a ten-year-old boy in 1878, Ike stands in line to inherit his grandfather’s plantation.2 But after learning of his ancestors’ sordid histories, he identifies an alternate birthright as a Native American. Throughout a trilogy of stories within Go Down, Moses—“The Old People,” “The Bear,” and “Delta Autumn”—readers observe Ike’s naïve worship of Sam and his performance of presumed Native American traditions, few of which evince any factual validity. Such efforts of “playing Indian” manifested throughout turn-of-the-century America and reveal how white Americans often struggled to confront a modernizing nation. Contrary topreviouscritics’assessments,Faulknerseekstodrawreaders’attention to, and not distract notice from, this inherent performativity. Examining Go Down, Moses against anthropological histories of Choctaws and Chickasaws reveals that the novel’s historical inaccuracies —includingfactualdiscrepanciesintheMississippitribes’languages,oral narratives, relationships with nature, and hunting rituals—ultimately serve to magnify Faulkner’s construction of Sam Fathers as a performative, false Native American. This playacting has severe ramifications for future generations. Young Ike believes he can honor Mississippi history most purely through renouncing his inheritance to his family’s plantation and accessing a Native American past instead. But Ike’s misreading of his spiritual father Sam as a genuine Indian marks his wilderness initiation as a sham and his enactment of inherited Native American traditions as afailure.Faulknerimpliesthatwhitedescendants’overeagernesstobelieve such a theatrical version of race constitutes perhaps the most dangerous quality of a South rushing towards modernization in the late nineteenth century. Tragically, this false South becomes the inheritance of those who, as represented by Ike and later his descendants, remain incapable of reading history and irresponsible in trying to preserve it. Chickasaws, Choctaws, and a Willful Ignorance Only in the past few decades has ethnographic research filled in the histories of Mississippi’s early Native American tribes. Following France’s devastating defeat of the Natchez tribe in the 1730s, the two remaining tribes—the Chickasaws and the Choctaws—separated across 2 Timelines and characters’ ages are taken from Nancy Dew Taylor’s annotations (10, 110, 137). 377 Childless “Fathers,” Native Sons Mississippi territory (Dabney 7). By the beginning of the nineteenth century, roughly 15,000 Choctaws inhabited the southern part of the state while also holding land in Louisiana. Meanwhile, about 4,000 Chickasaws occupied northern Mississippi, including...