More like Moketubby

Red Leaves; what an entrancing little story.  What interested me most about this was Faulkner's treatment of these two groups of people - Africans and Native Americans - with qualities both similar and disparate.  Each fell victim to the encroaching European culture in its own way.  In Red Leaves, we learn how a line of Native American men came to own and run a plantation, and consequently a brace of slaves.  As they are unaccustomed to agriculture, they are initially at a loss as to how to dispose of the Africans; they have superstition about eating them (even though they seem to view them more as cattle than as people), but their stewardship sensibility prevents them from simply killing the Africans.  Ergo, the gravitation to agriculture and profit.  This is a problem - and, of course, a conclusion - I had never thought about before, but it makes sense within the context.

This story, like many of Faulkner's works, also seems to touch upon the perversion of an ideal, or a fall from an original state.  Doom (du homme) begets Issetibbeha, who begets Moketubbe, and they progressively deviate further from the expected culture and lifestyle of Native Americans; indeed, Moketubbe is too rotund to move large distances, and the very plumpness of his feet prevents him from wearing the special shoes that seem to signify the mantle of authority and leadership.  Near the story's end, Basket remarks "Take them off.  Honor has been served."  The shoes become a symbol of authority rather than a requisite of authority.  Rulers become figureheads.  Sic transit gloria.