Dressing the Part:

Charles Betts Galloway’s first charge as Methodist bishop in 1886 was Indian Territory. The bishop’s grandfather had held slaves and taken up Indian land; his father had served in the Civil War; he overlapped with Faulkner’s first twelve years; and his daughter’s son shared a desk with Faulkner in elementary school. Galloway’s hope for Indian people was that they would be converted to Christianity. He saw the Indian people he met as dignified and thoughtful in his accounts of visits and meetings with them. In addition to his observations, we have the testimony of Charles Dickens, who met Choctaw Peter Pitchlynn, and a businessman who witnessed the Chickasaw crossing the Mississippi going westward. Indian dress in Faulkner’s works has been seen as symbolic; The chapter explores this theme through the observation of men contemporaneous with the middle times of the fictional Yoknapatawpha.