These are the friends of the unnamed narrator of "A Bear Hunt" who associate the Indian mound with "secret and violent blood" and a "savage and sudden destruction" (65). As descendants of "literate, town-bred people," their feelings about the "profoundly and darkly enigmatic mound" stem from their romantic ideas about Indians gotten from the "secret dime novels which we passed among ourselves" (65). One of the boys joins the narrator for a night atop the mound.
The unnamed children of Lucius Provine. The narrator of "A Bear Hunt" makes only one direct reference to them, saying their father "makes no effort whatever to support his wife and three children" (64).
The dead brother of Luke Provine. According to the narrator of "A Bear Hunt," it has been "years now" since he, Luke, and another man, Jack Bonds, "were known as the Provine gang and terrorized our quiet town after the unimaginative fashion of wild youth" (63-64).
Mr. Fraser is the "childless widower" who takes Monk in after his grandmother's death and teaches him how to make whiskey as well as he made it himself (45). They live together for ten years, until Fraser's death. The narrator of "Monk" speculates that "it was probably Fraser who gave [Monk his] name," and the citizens of "the county got to know [Monk] or become familiar with him, at least" through his association with Fraser (45).
Fraser in one of the hunters at Major de Spain's camp in "A Bear Hunt," seen only in a brief scene in which he is playing poker. His role is to give voice to the annoyance that the rest of the hunting party feels listening to Luke Provine's bout of hiccups.
In "A Bear Hunt" Bonds is a "dead and forgotten contemporary" of Luke Provine when he was a young man. According to the narrator, it has been "years now" since Bonds, along with Luke and Luke's unnamed brother, "were known as the Provine gang and terrorized our quiet town after the unimaginative fashion of wild youth" (63-64).
In "A Bear Hunt," John Basket is a Chickasaw who lives in the settlement near the Indian mound, and well-known as moonshiner who makes what Major de Spain describes as "bust-skull whiskey" (75). Basket unwittingly becomes an accomplice in Ash's act of revenge against Luke Provine when Ratliff offhandedly suggests Luke visit the Chickasaws to get a cure for his hiccups. (There are two other Indians named 'Basket' in three other stories, but there's no indication of a relationship among them.)
In "Elly" the various men whom the title character kisses in the shadows on her veranda are described as "youths and young men of the town at first, but later . . . almost anyone, any transient in the small town whom she met by either convention or by chance, provided his appearance was decent" (208).
These "sewing women" make the trousseau for Elly's wedding, coming to her house "daily" after the engagement to Philip is announced (214). Their race is not specified, which typically means 'white' in Faulkner's fiction, but at the same time domestic workers in the fiction are typically 'black,' so we have chosen to call these women's race unknown.
While talking to Philip in "Elly," Elly invents this "party" of people she will be visiting in order to explain her forthcoming absence - and her need for his silent cooperation. She says that the group she'll be with is comprised of "people you don't know and that I don't expect to see again before I am married" (215).
