"Yat" [pp. 489-495]

A DIGGER INDIAN STORY OF THE CALIFORNIAN FOOTHILLS.
I.
THIS is not my story; it is the story of
the older inhabitants of Pleasant Valley, told as they tell it when you have
made them understand that you really
want to hear something of the Digger Indians -at least something of that tribe
which has from "the beginning" dwelt
in this little valley of the Sierra Nevada.
It is not told in the language of the narrators, for they are ordinary, sensible
farmer folk, and they have no particular
dialect, unless a trifling superabundance
of ungrammatical phrase can be called a
"dialect." This latter cannot be better
shown than in their reply to your question,
"Don't know nothin' about them
Diggers, except that you can smell'em
three miles off." Which is the truth, as
every one knows.
The Pleasant Valley tribe- or the
Pleasant Valleys, as they are calleddwells today on a little knoll back in the
heavy timber, hidden from view from
the road which winds through the valley
and leads up to the rich Nevada County
mines. But long years ago they had
their camp-and indeed, they moved
but recently- on a high knoll which
overlooked the lower portion of Pleasant
Valley. The hill Digger invariably sets
his lodge upon an eminence of some kind,
if it is possible. He was trained to it in
his youth, when the tribes were powerful and an overlooking position was a
necessity, -and an Indian is slow to
forget. It was here, on the high craggy
489
point - from which one can look down
upon wide level fields cut into sections by
hair-lines of fence, a few brown-roofed
houses, and running through the valley
like a winding white ribbon, the gleaming
sands of Deer Creek-that there was a
"big soup" and Yat-the stalwart,
robust Yat-became as a little child.
His name was not Yat. "Yat" was
what the white people called him. His
real name was spelled differently, but it
sounded something like Yat, and so it
became Yat.
Yat was twenty - three then,- a
strong, straight, supple young man, with
a well-featured, pleasant face. He was
an orphan. His mother had died when
he was yet a little papoose, and his
father had become involved in a row
with some white men over a mining claim
on the Yuba, and had been shot for his
temerity. An old squaw, who was some
sort of relative, took him in then and he
grew up under her care until she died
and they cremated her with wierd and
solemn ceremony.
Yat was the champion of the tribe, and
as such was, of course, loved and disliked. Loved by the squaws, the older
men, Chief Pamblo, and some of the
young bucks; disliked by the would-be
athletes who were always defeated in
contests with him. But Yat himself had
no enmities; he smiled at those who
praised him, and laughed at those who
sneered at him. He loved them all, he
said, but he did not say that there was
one whom he loved more than all the
others. The name of this one was not