Talk:Yahoya
| Information about this edition | |
|---|---|
| Edition: | Extracted from Adventure magazine, August 1908, pp. 5-56. |
| Source: | https://archive.org/details/AdventureV012N04191608 |
| Contributor(s): | ragpicker |
| Notes: | Accompanying illustration omitted |
| Proofreaders: | ragcleaner |
A letter concerning the story edit
(Editor: Arthur Sullivant Hoffman; p. 217)
NOW consider a story in this very issue—"Yahoya." As the manuscript came to us it stated that one of the Hopi Indians ran 800 miles in 10 days—80 miles a day. It might be true but we knew most of our readers would think it a wild exaggeration. So, with Mr. Gregory's consent, we changed it to twenty days, 40 miles a day—cut it square in two. Yet even so some of you may have written it down as a bad break and wholly impossible. We made similar changes elsewhere in the tale. Mr. Gregory's letter follows:
I agree with you in the matter of toning down the startling matter in the endurance racing. I put the stuff in because it's the truth; because I believe it; because when you speak of Hopi you speak of an animal that is as different from the Bahana as is a wolf from a French poodle. Those lean-bodied devils can do the thing I have told of them; they were builded for it by the desert. But, when all is said and done, I have given you a story and the less it strains credulity upon non-essential points, the better it is going to pan out. Will you cut down the number of miles yourself? Or do you want me to do it?
And here are two notes that accompanied the original manuscript:
In connection with the endurance and swiftness of the Southwestern Indian the following fact, well known to thousands of white men who know these strange people, may be cited: The men of Oraibi will run out across the hot desert sands a distance of 40 miles, do a day's work there in their corn-fields, and run back the same day to Oraibi!
See also George Wharton James's, "The Indians of the Painted Desert," p. 91: "One Oraibi, Ku-wawen-ti-wa, ran from Oraibi to Moenkopi, thence to Walpi and back to Oraibi, a distance of over 90 miles, in one day."