Bob Niwachee was born to Mahogany and Irontail Niwachee on February 29, 1976. Irontail Niwachee was a full-blooded member of the Nattuck Indian tribe and a graduate of Harvard Law School. He was retained by the Nattuck tribe to handle any and all legal issues required by members, a task which was expanded to include pursuing the possibility of allowing casino gambling on reservation land. He played no small part in the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988.

Irontail first met his wife, Mahogany Jones, when they were both students spending their off hours in Cambridge coffee houses, she while attending MIT. The two dated and then married once Mahogany graduated. Twelve years later, Bob was born.

The couple and their son experienced racism from many sides. Irontail was Native American, Mahogany African-American, and Bob was both and neither. They lived in an affluent suburb of Boston which was ninety-nine percent European Caucasian. Bob looked like his mother. He was obviously not white. The children of his father's Indian friends called Bob black. The African-American children he would meet focused on his Indian heritage.

Bob was a typical boy, suffering the normal heartbreaks and scrapes, celebrating the normal achievements and goals. He played soccer, collected stamps, and dreamed of getting a good job and starting a family.

After graduating from the School of Hotel Management at Cornell, Bob was hired to run the newly constructed Nattuck Gaming Casino, a venture made possible by his father. This casino was not as extravagant as some other Indian casinos because the Nattuck reservation consisted of a single acre plot, much of which had to serve as parking for the buses.

The Nattuck Gaming Casino was built tall and narrow, earning it the nickname The Totem Pole. There were four gaming rooms, a restaurant, lounge, and guest accommodations for sixteen, double-occupancy.

One of the applicants for head bartender was a Jewish Japanese girl named Rachel Osaka. She did not receive the position but did manage to catch the eye and interest of Bob, who asked her to dinner. The two dated and moved in together six months later.

Unfortunately, casino profits proved not as high as some may have wished and tribal members found themselves not buying fancy new luxury cars but being able to replace all four tires on their current vehicle. To increase their slice of the pie, the members voted to shrink the number of people gathered around the table. Tribal guidelines became more stringent. Bob, with a non-Nattuck mother, was out.

A national job search introduced Bob to the Yoknapatawpha County Convention Center. Bob had the experience of taking a new facility and turning it into a going concern and he was soon offered a job managing the YCCC.

Bob proposed to Rachel, wishing to marry near both their families before relocating to Mississippi. Rachel declined his proposal. She simply could not move away from her sick father. Bob went to Oxford alone.

Despite being a stranger to the area, Bob quickly staffed the YCCC and trained the new employees. He formed alliances with contractors and vendors. He joined Chambers of Commerce and circulated among business and society leaders. Within a year, prospective wedding parties were told that the ballrooms were booked solid for the next eighteen months. He even hosted the event when his parents renewed their wedding vows.

Bob himself remained single. Although he flew back to Massachusetts twice to spend time with Rachel, she told him during the second visit that she was seeing someone else and that the relationship appeared serious.

Rumors began to fly that Bob was dating one of the interns from the University of Mississippi. Once the semester was over, she was gone and the gossip stopped.

Bob became a part-time instructor at Ole Miss. He was a successful businessman with real-world management experience, exactly what the students needed to fill out the theory they learned from professors. Although nothing negative appears in his personnel folder, he taught just one course.

When Walbert Dopelson, director of the Yoknapatawpha County Literature Festival, and Allie Lamar, sponsor of the beauty pageant, approached him about holding the pageant at the YCCC, Bob contacted the planners for events already booked for those dates and offered them vastly reduced rates if they would be willing to reschedule. Enough of them agreed that he was able to squeeze the pageant into the calendar.

For all his successes, the Yoknapatawpha County Literature Festival Beauty Pageant was the first hosted event to receive national attention.