IkkemotubbesInRQ

When Faulkner adds the events of "A Name for the City" to the larger story of Yoknapatawpha he tells in the prose sections of Requiem for a Nun, he adds quite a bit of substance to Mohataha's role as "the Chickasaw matriarch" (17). At her first mention she is still identified in a context that is defined by the men in her family: "Ikkemotubbe's mother and old Issetibbeha's sister" (17). But these men are merely mentioned. "Grotesque and regal," she leaves a vivid impression on the narrative's retina in Act III, when it describes the exodus of the tribe from their ancestral lands. Having signed the final cession papers with "her X," wearing a French silk dress "and a hat crowned with the royal-colored plume of a queen," amid her Negro slaves and "the young men of her body guard," it is she who tells the tribe to "Turn the mules west," and who leads them from "home" (170-71). The youngest generation of the family - her grandchildren, including the granddaughter who marries a white man - is also identified with her, not her son. It is still the case, however, that the narrative shows no interest in her family as a family; the relationships are genealogical, but not emotional.