Ishi

Ishi, last known member of the Yahi tribe, with anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber (1911).

Ishi (c. 1860 – March 25, 1916) was the name given to the last member of the Yahi tribe of California, and means man in the Yahi language. Ishi is believed to be the last Native American in Northern California to have lived the bulk of his life completely outside the European American culture. He emerged from the wild on August 29, 1911 near Oroville, California, after leaving his ancestral homeland in the foothills near Lassen Peak. His real name was never known, because in his society it was taboo to say one's own name. Since he was the last member of his tribe, his real name died with him.

Prior to European contact, the Yahi population numbered approximately 3,000. In 1865 Ishi and his family were victims of the Three Knolls Massacre, from which approximately 30 Yahi survived. The remaining Yahi escaped but were forced into hiding after cattlemen killed about half of the survivors. Eventually all of Ishi's companions died, and he was discovered by a group of butchers in their corral at Oroville, August 29, 1911.

After being noticed by townspeople, Ishi was taken into custody by a local sheriff for his own protection. He was then moved to the Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, San Francisco where he lived the remainder of his life in evident contentment until his death from tuberculosis in 1916. While at the Museum Ishi was studied closely by the anthropologists Alfred L. Kroeber and Thomas Talbot Waterman, helping them reconstruct Yahi culture by identifying material items and showing how they were made. He also provided information on his native Yana language which was recorded and studied by Edward Sapir, who had previously done work on the northern dialects.

His story was popularized in a book by Theodora Kroeber, wife of Alfred Kroeber, who worked with her husband's notes and comments to create the story of a man she had never met. The book, Ishi in Two Worlds (ISBN 0520229401), was published after Alfred Kroeber's death in 1960. In 2003, anthropologists Clifton and Karl Kroeber, sons of Alfred L. Kroeber, edited a book together on the Ishi case, Ishi in Three Centuries (ISBN 0803227574). This is the first scholarly book on Ishi to contain essays by Indians, though Native writers such as Gerald Vizenor had been commenting on the case since the late 1970s. Ishi's story was updated by Duke University anthropologist Orin Starn in his book, Ishi's Brain: In Search of America's Last 'Wild' Indian, published in 2004 (ISBN 0-393-05133-1). Ishi's Brain follows Starn's quest for the remains of the last of the Yahi and understand what he meant to Americans then and modern Indians today.

Thanks to a campaign by Gerald Vizenor, the University of California, Berkeley has an "Ishi Court" on campus.

Ishi and archery

Ishi, like other California Indians of his time, was an excellent archer.

Among his closest friends at the university was Dr. Saxton Pope, a physician called in to care for him. Pope was particularly fascinated by the bows and arrows Ishi made, and by the practice of archery. Ishi taught Pope how to make the equipment and the two hunted together in the mountains of California. After Ishi's death, Pope continued with the archery that Ishi had taught him and went on to write the book Hunting with the Bow and Arrow. Many consider Pope to be the father of modern-day archery and archery hunting, but much of his knowledge and the origins of modern-day hunting can be traced to Ishi and his teachings.

External links

[Encyclopedia of North American Indians entry on Ishi]
Ishi's Brain: In Search of America's Last 'Wild' Indian Starn, Orin, New York: W.W. Norton, 2004. (ISBN 0393051331)
The Ishi report, University of California [link]

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