Character Analysis
Sam Fathers might be a highly respected part-Chickasaw, part African American character, but we have to confess that Faulkner's depiction of him as semi-mute, brooding, incomprehensible and spiritual seems kind of stereotyped.
His Own Battleground
Sam Fathers and his quadroon mother have been sold into slavery to old Carothers McCaslin by his father, the Chickasaw chief Doom. After Abolition, though, Sam Fathers stands apart from other ex-slaves because of his status as a chief's son. He doesn't farm the fields, but instead works as a carpenter, which the narrator calls "white man's work," and even if he lives "among the negroes," "he was still the son of that Chickasaw chief and the negroes knew it" (4.1.13).
The narrator, reporting Isaac's opinions about Sam, says that it's a great tragedy that this noble chief's blood has been sullied by the quadroon slave woman's blood. Isaac imagines that Sam probably feels that his black blood betrayed him.
Not betrayed by the black blood and not willfully betrayed by his mother, but betrayed by her all the same, who had bequeathed him not only the blood of slaves but even a little of the very blood which had enslaved it; himself his own battleground, the scene of his own vanquishment and the mausoleum of his defeat. (4.1.11)
Riiight. So according to this logic, anyone who is mixed-race is condemned to being a victim of an epic battle between his or her various racial backgrounds.
The narrator never gives us direct access to Sam's thoughts, so what we learn about him comes to us from Isaac. Sam himself only utters three or four profound-sounding words like "Now, shoot quick, and slow," or "Oleh, Chief. Grandfather," but doesn't really speak outside of that. He's the strong, silent type. Kind of a stereotype of the wise, spiritual Native American elder.
Now, Shoot Quick, and Slow
Sam is a very skilled woodsman and hunter, and he teaches McCaslin Edmonds and Isaac McCaslin to navigate the woods and hunt. What sets him apart from other hunters in "The Old People," "The Bear," and "Delta Autumn" is that he is spiritually invested in protecting the wilderness while hunting. He tries to teach both McCaslin and Isaac to respect the wilderness and the animals they hunt. Isaac really takes Sam's teachings to heart, and these teachings are at the heart of his belief that land should not be treated as property.