Unnamed Slaves of Indians

A number of Mississippi Indians did own slaves, and in "Red Leaves" and "A Justice," Faulkner's other Indian stories, he explores this theme in detail. In "A Courtship," however, it only appears in the narrator's brief mention of the black people whom Ikkemotubbe brings with him when he returns to the Plantation three years after the story's main events: the "eight new slaves which we did not need" (363), later referred to as "the eight more slaves which we had no use for" (379). That second phrase suggests the tribe already possesses other slaves, which is the case when Ikkemotubbe brings six slaves on his return in "A Justice," but there is no mention of them in this story. Neither phrase tells us anything about the enslaved people themselves.