Unnamed Anglo-Saxon Pioneers

The history of Mississippi as recounted in Requiem for a Nun includes "the Anglo-Saxon, the pioneer" who came into the area after it became part of the U.S. (81), part of the group referred to as "the pioneers, the hunters, the forest men with rifles" (171). The narrator identifies "the pioneer" as male - "the tall man, roaring with Protestant scripture and boiled whiskey" (81) - but with him comes his and his wife's family. We include in this group the "brawling teamsters and trappers and flatboatmen" who often are held in the jail (180). As the institutions of society move into the region, this figure becomes "obsolete," vanishing like the Indians, the Spaniards and the Frenchmen who lived there before him because "only the wilderness could feed and nourish him" (82).