In "A Courtship" the "whisky-trader" who apparently makes regular visits to the Chickasaws brings the whiskey on which the tribe's young men get Log-in-the-Creek drunk (364). What he trades his whiskey for is not specified.
"Dead" before "A Courtship" begins, this man is mentioned as the original owner of the "shotgun" that Herman Basket's aunt threatens to use on her niece's suitors (368).
In "A Courtship," before Ikkemotubbe and David Hogganbeck's eating contest begins, this "ten-year-old boy" runs around the race-track once, to give the contestants a chance to recover their breath (372).
The phrase the narrator of "A Courtship" uses to describe Herman Basket's sister - "she walks in beauty" - sounds faintly 'Indian' but is actually borrowed from Lord Byron (362). Or "sat in it, that is," he adds - which sounds pretty risque, though becomes less so when he adds that she doesn't walk at all "unless she had to" (362). Like Eula Varner in Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, she is lazy and slovenly but exercises an irresistible power over all the men who see her. While she is at the center of the story's courtship plot, she does not actually speak a single word in it.
The "second cousin" of Herman Basket's aunt is also the "grand-niece of the wife of old David Colbert" (363, 365). She does not appear in "A Courtship," but the "silver wine pitcher" she bequeathed her second cousin does (363).
The father of the Chickasaw Indian who narrates "A Courtship" advises Ikkemotubbe about the best strategy for courting Herman Basket's sister, and helps Owl-by-Night look for Ikkemotubbe's horse. Along with "the young men," he also stokes the fire in the steamboat at the end of the story (380), which leaves open a possibility that the text never develops: perhaps like Ikkemotubbe, the narrator's father "went away" from the plantation (362).
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).
The "boy slave who turned the wheel" is the steersman on Studenmare's steamboat (366). His age is not given, but the narrator of "A Courtship" notes that he is "not much more than half as big as Captain Studenmare" (366).
The unnamed aunt whom Herman Basket and his sister live with in "A Courtship" seems to be their surrogate parent; the other Chickasaw often hear her voice when it is raised to scold her niece's laziness. She is also actively involved in her niece's courtship. It is to ingratiate himself and his cause with her that Ikkemotubbe sends a pony and his gamecocks as gifts, and when the suitors won't behave she does not hesitate to threaten them with a shotgun. She feels that her family is superior to "Issetibbeha's whole family" (365).
Although his name evokes the way enslaved Negroes were often named, Sylvester's John is actually one of the young Chickasaw men who are interested in Herman Basket's sister in "A Courtship" - until it becomes clear that Ikkemotubbe wants her. After that, he is one of the young men who willingly help Ikkemotubbe's courtship.
