Major de Spain

There are at least two characters in the Yoknapatawpha fictions called "Major de Spain." One, Manfred, is a "Major" only by courtesy. The one in this story is his father, who actually was a Confederate Major during the Civil War: a "cavalry commander in '61 and -2 and -3 and -4" (273). As in Faulkner's other hunting stories, he owned much of the "big woods," including the hunting "house" mentioned in the story (274), where fifty years earlier the hunters found big game in Yoknapatawpha. In this version of "Delta Autumn" he is also identified as the man who took Ike McCaslin "into the woods his first time" (273; in the revised version published in Go Down, Moses, it is Ike's cousin who does that).