IkkemotubbesInR

Boon Hogganbeck is one of the major characters in Faulkner's last novel. According to the narrator, "His grandmother had been the daughter of one of old Issetibbeha's Chickasaws" (19). According to Boon himself, at least when he's had a lot to drink, he is "a lineal royal descendant of old Issetibbeha himself" (19); in the short story where Boon first appears as a character - "Lion" (1931) - his genetic relationship to the chief is made explicit, but in The Reivers it's clear that Boon's Indian ancestor was not a member of the Ikkemotubbe|Issetibbeha family, and so neither is he. Four familiar members of that family are referred to in the novel, but interestingly, the narrative attenuates the familial relationships among them. Three of them are mentioned together in Chapter 4: "back in the old days, in the time of our own petty Chickasaw kings, Issetibbeha and Moketubbe and the regicide-usurper who called himself Doom" (73). Readers of earlier texts can supply the missing connections - Issetibbeha is Moketubbe's father and Doom's uncle - but if you aren't already familiar with the family history, these "kings" have no clear relationship to each other. The same thing happens with Sam Fathers. In his brief appearance he is identified as "half Negro and half Chickasaw Indian" (21), with no hint of his place on Ikkemotubbe's family tree. Our graph of what, borrowing a Faulknerian locution, we could call the novel's "not-family" therefore omits the customary vertical and horizontal lines that tie families together.