chunk: Starting in Vicksburg, Mississippi preceding the abolition of slavery, The Yellow Chief begins on the plantation of the Blackadder family. Blount Blackadder, the 18-year-old son of the plantation owner Squire Blackadder, punishes a mulatto slave, Blue Dick, out of revenge over a girl, a quadroon named Sylvia. The ‘punishment of the pump’, a frequent act at the Blackadder plantation, consists of placing the victims head directly under the painfully cold stream of a water pump. Daughter Clara Blackadder watches the shameful punishment, only daydreaming about the Irishmen Edward O’Neil, who her father forbids her from marrying. Whilst murdering Sylvia in the woods in the process, Blue Dick proceeds to escape the plantation, never to return.