His actual story is more compelling.

He was part of the early Indigenous population history of the Americas.

He lived in a region where people had already developed sophisticated ways of surviving in changing desert and wetland environments.

His community buried him with care.

Ten thousand years later, descendants of Indigenous peoples in the same broad region fought a modern government for the right to rebury him.

The truth contains mystery without requiring fantasy.

We still do not know his name.

We still do not know the exact circumstances of his death.

We still cannot reconstruct every relationship between his community and later peoples of the Great Basin.

Those unknowns are enough.