Juan Ignacio has that uncanny personality that anyone can love and trust. Everybody confides in him because they think they can trust him. In fact, they can trust him. He doesn't spill the beans. Rather, he condones everything they say so that they will speak more freely. They think he agrees with them. And eventually they start saying mortifying things that he absolutely does not agree with. He is haunted by them thinking he agrees. For example, some of the Indian tribes still believe in sacrificing children. This leaves him taking on the guilt of other people's sins.

Juan also doesn't know who he is. He did not get to live with the Yamasee. Long enough embrace their ways. When someone asks who he is or who he is affiliated with, he doesn't know the answer. So he just thinks, trying to think of how to answer the question. Someone always interjects and answers it for him. The Indians say he is one of whatever tribe they are. Or maybe they diagnose him as from a different tribe. The English say he is an English friendly. This Spaniard say he is a Spanish citizen. He finds something uncomfortable about every single option so he's never able to settle on one.

At a campsite with the English soldiers, when they ask him this question, they actually wait for an answer. At them, one of them burst out laughing and says, it's like a blank page. Exclamation and they all roar laughing. Just like Sheila did to me when we were playing Scrabble for the first time I met her.

 As he's dying, he is mulling over that he feels like he is genuinely only a child of God, not a child of any human construct. He is alone and that allows him to be one with God and to enter into God's kingdom.