Major de Spain

In the later Yoknapatawpha fictions the De Spain's became one of the most powerful families in Yoknapatawpha business and politics. There are at least two characters called "Major de Spain," though only one was a real Confederate Major. The one in this story appears to be the son of that man, given the title "Major" as a courtesy (though when Faulkner revised the story for inclusion in Go Down, Moses he moved it back a generation in time, making the De Spain in that novel the real Major). This De Spain, like his father, is a wealthy planter with large land holdings, including a hunting camp, where each year he is joined in November by his friends - the narrator's father along with Walter Ewell and Uncle Ike McCaslin - for the love of blood sport.