It wasn’t Moby Dick. I don’t remember what it was and American lit isn’t an area where I would claim any expertise at all, so I can’t be of much help.
Oh, OK. The other suggestion was in one of Fennimore Cooper’s “Prairie,” a character with an ax named Ishmael Bush, I believe. “The Prairie” follows Nattie Bumppo, who stars in “The Last of the Mohicans” and “The Deerslayer,” as he goes out west in his old age.
Here’s a brief comment on the character that I just googled: “Then there is the Squatter, Ishmael Bush, who is brutal, stupid, representing the border between nature and civilization, or the first step of civilization. He seems to be the most interesting character in the book, because he represents almost all phases in the book. He has left civilization, he lives an almost mythic life on the prairie, but at the end of the novel he returns to civilization.”