On Minoritarian Stag Hunts

Abstract

In William Faulkner’s “A Bear Hunt,” the “remnant” (65) of the once powerful Chickasaw manages to retain their antecedents’ ecological wisdom. These contemporaries of Major de Spain, Ike McCaslin, V. K. Ratliff, Lucius Provine, and the African-American aide-de-camp Ash exemplify what Jay S. Winston terms “humanity that is one with that wilderness” (132), as Faulkner forges a historically and culturally profound link between the Chickasaw of Yoknapatawpha and their environment. “A Bear Hunt” captures what Winston calls “the contradictory mystique of the first Yoknapatawphans perhaps more completely than any of the other ‘Indian’ stories” (131). These people probably have, as Ratliff tells Provine, “all sorts of dodges that white doctors ain’t hyeard about yet” (“A Bear Hunt” 71). Provine, reluctant, but desperate to cure his hiccups, finally follows Ratliff’s advice. A remedy would facilitate his active reentry into Major de Spain’s hunting camp. That Provine stands “for a minute looking at the window where the poker game and the folks was” (72) before leaving for the reservation reemphasizes his status as a pariah. The hunters at once exclude him from the game of gambling, the room in which they play cards, and the game in the river bottom. Although Ratliff’s strategy confirms his captivation by a majoritarian focal point, as expressed in his stereotypical view of Chickasaw medicine and his earlier erroneous avowal concerning the tribal burial mound that “nobody want[s]” that “ere hump of dirt” (72), his exclusion of Provine from the hunt is a less extreme response to the hiccupping nuisance than another (admittedly jocular) proposal: “I thought,” relates McCaslin, “I’d have to shoot him to get rid of him” (74).

Permit me, with the greatest deference and respect, to lay at your feet the following genuine Narrative; the chief design of which is to excite in your august assemblies a sense of compassion for the miseries which the Slave-Trade has entailed on my unfortunate countrymen.

—Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (41)