Ishi
Encyclopedia
Ishi was the last member of the Yahi, the last surviving group of the Yana people
of the U.S. state of California
. Ishi is believed to have been the last Native American
in Northern California
to have lived most of his life completely outside the European American
culture. At about 49 years old, in 1911 he emerged from the wild near Oroville, California
, leaving his ancestral homeland, present-day Tehama County, near the foothills of Lassen Peak
, known to Ishi as "Wa ganu p'a".
Ishi means "man" in the Yana language. The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber gave this name to the man when he discovered Ishi had never been named. When asked his name, he said: "I have none, because there were no people to name me," meaning that no tribal naming ceremony had been performed. He was taken in by anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley
, who both studied him and hired him as a research assistant. He lived most of his remaining five years in a university building in San Francisco.
of 1848–1855, the Yahi population numbered approximately 400, but the total Yana people numbered about 3,000. The gold rush brought tens of thousands of miners and settlers to northern California, putting pressure on native populations. Gold mining damaged water supplies and killed fish; the deer left the area. The northern Yana group became extinct and the central and southern groups and Yahi populations dropped dramatically. Searching for food, they came into conflict with settlers.
Ishi is estimated to have been born about 1860–1862. In 1865, when he was a young boy, Ishi and his family were attacked in the Three Knolls Massacre, in which 40 of their tribesmen were killed. Approximately 30 Yahi survived to escape, but shortly after cattlemen killed about half of the survivors. The last survivors, including Ishi and his family, went into hiding for the next 40 years, and their tribe was popularly believed to be extinct.
Richard Burrill wrote,in "Ishi Rediscovered", that: "In 1865, near the Yahi’s special place, Black Rock, the waters of Mill Creek turned red at the Three Knolls Massacre. “Sixteen” (Moak 1923:20) or “seventeen” (T. Kroeber 1961: 80) Indian fighters killed about forty Yahi, as part of a retaliatory attack for two white women and a man killed at the Workman’s household on Lower Concow Creek near Oroville (Moak 1923:18). Eleven of the Indian fighters that day were: Robert A. Anderson, Hiram Good, Sim Moak, Hardy Thomasson, Jack Houser (also spelled Howser by Anderson), Henry Curtis (leader of the Concow men), his brother Frank Curtis, as well as Tom Gore, Bill Matthews, and William Merithew. W. J. Seagraves visited the site, too, but some time after the battle had been fought (Waterman 1918: 53).
Burrill continued, "Robert Anderson (1909:79) wrote, “Into the stream they leaped, but few got out alive. Instead many dead bodies floated down the rapid current.” One captive Indian women named Mariah from Big Meadows (Lake Almanor today), was one of those who did escape (Burrill, 2003:39). The Three Knolls battle is also described in Theodora Kroeber’s Ishi In Two Worlds (1961: 81-82), but more information has come to light. It is estimated that with this massacre, Ishi’s entire cultural group,the Yana/Yahi, may have been reduced to about sixty individuals. From 1859 to 1911, Ishi’s remote band became more and more infiltrated by non-Yahi Indian representatives, such as, Wintun, Nomlaki and Pit River individuals. in 1879, the infamous Indian boarding schools started in California. The ranks of embittered reservation renegades who became the new “boys in the hills,” to quote Robert Anderson, became a direct function of what new attacks or removal campaigns that the volunteers and military troops elected to carry out against the northern California Indian tribes during that time."
In the fall of 1908, a group of surveyors came across the camp inhabited by an elderly native woman, a man, and young girl - Ishi's elderly mother, Ishi, and his sister. The latter two fled and the former hid herself in blankets to avoid detection, because she was sick and could not run. The surveyors ransacked the camp and took everything. Ishi's mother and other relatives died soon after Ishi's return. Ishi lived three years beyond the raid alone, the last of his tribe. Finally, starving and with nowhere to go, at the age of about 49 in 1911, Ishi walked out into the white man's world.
After the native was noticed by townspeople, the local sheriff took the man into custody for his own protection. The "wild man" caught the imagination and attention of thousands of onlookers and curiosity seekers. Professors at the University of California, Berkeley
Museum of Anthropology- now the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology
(PAHMA)- read about him and brought him to their facility, then housed on the University of California, San Francisco
campus in an old law school building. Studied by the university, Ishi also worked with them as a research assistant and lived in an apartment at the museum for most of the remaining five years of his life. In the summer of 1915, he lived temporarily in Berkeley with the anthropologist Thomas Talbot Waterman and his family.
Waterman and Alfred L. Kroeber
, director of the museum, studied Ishi closely over the years and interviewed him at length to help them reconstruct Yahi culture. He described family units, naming patterns, and the ceremonies which he knew, but much tradition had been lost because of the few survivors with whom he was raised. He identified material items and showed the techniques by which they were made. Ishi provided valuable information on his native Yana language
, which was recorded and studied by the linguist Edward Sapir
, who had previously done work on the northern dialects.
Ishi died of tuberculosis
on March 25, 1916. It was then an incurable disease. His friends at the university initially had tried to prevent an autopsy on Ishi's body since the body was to be kept intact according to Yahi tradition, but the doctors at the clinic performed one before Waterman was able to stop it. Ishi's brain was preserved and the body cremated. Included alongside his remains were "one of his bows, five arrows, a basket of acorn meal, a boxful of shell bead money, a purse full of tobacco, three rings, and some obsidian flakes." Ishi's remains were interred at Mount Olivet Cemetery near San Francisco.
The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at U.C. Berkeley holds a collection, sometimes displayed, of photographs, tools, productive crafts, and early sound recordings; all Ishi's contribution to our current understanding of his traditional knowledge.
In 1996, M. Steven Shackley of UC Berkeley announced work based on a study of Ishi's arrowheads and those of the northern tribes. He had found that arrowheads made by Ishi were not typical of those recovered from historical Yahi sites. Because Ishi's production was more typical of arrowheads of the Nomlaki
or Wintu
tribes and markedly dissimilar to those of Yahi, Shackley suggested that Ishi may have been only half Yahi and of mixed ancestry, related to another of the tribes. He based his conclusion on a comparative study of the arrowhead
s which Ishi made and others held by the museum from the Yahi, Nomlaki and Wintu cultures. Among Ishi's techniques was the use of what is now known in flintknapping circles as an Ishi stick, used to run long pressure flakes. As it was a traditional technique of the Nomlaki and Wintu tribes, the finding suggests Ishi may have learned the skill directly from a male relative from one of those tribes. Also small groups, they lived close to the Yahi lands and were traditional competitors and enemies of the Yahi.
In 1994 Shackley had heard a paper by Jerald Johnson, who noted morphological evidence that Ishi's facial features and height were more typical of the Wintu and Maidu
. He theorized that under pressure of diminishing populations, members of groups that were once enemies may have intermarried to survive. To further support this, Johnson presented oral histories from the Wintu and Maidu that told of the tribes' intermarrying with the Yahi.
If Ishi were descended from both of the tribes and grew up with members of both, it may help explain his adaptive abilities, as his circumstances, essentially from birth, would have been different from the cultural norm of his people. The debate on this has not been definitively settled, however, and the circumstances of his birth probably died with him.
Yana people
The Yana people were a group of Native Americans indigenous to Northern California in the central Sierra Nevada Mountains, on the western side of the range. The Yana-speaking people comprised four groups: the Northern Yana, the Central Yana, the Southern Yana, and the Yahi...
of the U.S. state of California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. Ishi is believed to have been the last Native American
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
in Northern California
Northern California
Northern California is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The San Francisco Bay Area , and Sacramento as well as its metropolitan area are the main population centers...
to have lived most of his life completely outside the European American
European American
A European American is a citizen or resident of the United States who has origins in any of the original peoples of Europe...
culture. At about 49 years old, in 1911 he emerged from the wild near Oroville, California
Oroville, California
Oroville is the county seat of Butte County, California. The population was 15,506 at the 2010 census, up from 13,004 at the 2000 census...
, leaving his ancestral homeland, present-day Tehama County, near the foothills of Lassen Peak
Lassen Peak
Lassen Peak is the southernmost active volcano in the Cascade Range. It is part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc which is an arc that stretches from northern California to southwestern British Columbia...
, known to Ishi as "Wa ganu p'a".
Ishi means "man" in the Yana language. The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber gave this name to the man when he discovered Ishi had never been named. When asked his name, he said: "I have none, because there were no people to name me," meaning that no tribal naming ceremony had been performed. He was taken in by anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, who both studied him and hired him as a research assistant. He lived most of his remaining five years in a university building in San Francisco.
Biography
Prior to the California Gold RushCalifornia Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...
of 1848–1855, the Yahi population numbered approximately 400, but the total Yana people numbered about 3,000. The gold rush brought tens of thousands of miners and settlers to northern California, putting pressure on native populations. Gold mining damaged water supplies and killed fish; the deer left the area. The northern Yana group became extinct and the central and southern groups and Yahi populations dropped dramatically. Searching for food, they came into conflict with settlers.
Ishi is estimated to have been born about 1860–1862. In 1865, when he was a young boy, Ishi and his family were attacked in the Three Knolls Massacre, in which 40 of their tribesmen were killed. Approximately 30 Yahi survived to escape, but shortly after cattlemen killed about half of the survivors. The last survivors, including Ishi and his family, went into hiding for the next 40 years, and their tribe was popularly believed to be extinct.
Richard Burrill wrote,in "Ishi Rediscovered", that: "In 1865, near the Yahi’s special place, Black Rock, the waters of Mill Creek turned red at the Three Knolls Massacre. “Sixteen” (Moak 1923:20) or “seventeen” (T. Kroeber 1961: 80) Indian fighters killed about forty Yahi, as part of a retaliatory attack for two white women and a man killed at the Workman’s household on Lower Concow Creek near Oroville (Moak 1923:18). Eleven of the Indian fighters that day were: Robert A. Anderson, Hiram Good, Sim Moak, Hardy Thomasson, Jack Houser (also spelled Howser by Anderson), Henry Curtis (leader of the Concow men), his brother Frank Curtis, as well as Tom Gore, Bill Matthews, and William Merithew. W. J. Seagraves visited the site, too, but some time after the battle had been fought (Waterman 1918: 53).
Burrill continued, "Robert Anderson (1909:79) wrote, “Into the stream they leaped, but few got out alive. Instead many dead bodies floated down the rapid current.” One captive Indian women named Mariah from Big Meadows (Lake Almanor today), was one of those who did escape (Burrill, 2003:39). The Three Knolls battle is also described in Theodora Kroeber’s Ishi In Two Worlds (1961: 81-82), but more information has come to light. It is estimated that with this massacre, Ishi’s entire cultural group,the Yana/Yahi, may have been reduced to about sixty individuals. From 1859 to 1911, Ishi’s remote band became more and more infiltrated by non-Yahi Indian representatives, such as, Wintun, Nomlaki and Pit River individuals. in 1879, the infamous Indian boarding schools started in California. The ranks of embittered reservation renegades who became the new “boys in the hills,” to quote Robert Anderson, became a direct function of what new attacks or removal campaigns that the volunteers and military troops elected to carry out against the northern California Indian tribes during that time."
In the fall of 1908, a group of surveyors came across the camp inhabited by an elderly native woman, a man, and young girl - Ishi's elderly mother, Ishi, and his sister. The latter two fled and the former hid herself in blankets to avoid detection, because she was sick and could not run. The surveyors ransacked the camp and took everything. Ishi's mother and other relatives died soon after Ishi's return. Ishi lived three years beyond the raid alone, the last of his tribe. Finally, starving and with nowhere to go, at the age of about 49 in 1911, Ishi walked out into the white man's world.
After the native was noticed by townspeople, the local sheriff took the man into custody for his own protection. The "wild man" caught the imagination and attention of thousands of onlookers and curiosity seekers. Professors at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
Museum of Anthropology- now the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology
Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology
The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology is an anthropology museum located in Berkeley, California...
(PAHMA)- read about him and brought him to their facility, then housed on the University of California, San Francisco
University of California, San Francisco
The University of California, San Francisco is one of the world's leading centers of health sciences research, patient care, and education. UCSF's medical, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, and graduate schools are among the top health science professional schools in the world...
campus in an old law school building. Studied by the university, Ishi also worked with them as a research assistant and lived in an apartment at the museum for most of the remaining five years of his life. In the summer of 1915, he lived temporarily in Berkeley with the anthropologist Thomas Talbot Waterman and his family.
Waterman and Alfred L. Kroeber
Alfred L. Kroeber
Alfred Louis Kroeber was an American anthropologist. He was the first professor appointed to the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and played an integral role in the early days of its Museum of Anthropology, where he served as director from 1909 through...
, director of the museum, studied Ishi closely over the years and interviewed him at length to help them reconstruct Yahi culture. He described family units, naming patterns, and the ceremonies which he knew, but much tradition had been lost because of the few survivors with whom he was raised. He identified material items and showed the techniques by which they were made. Ishi provided valuable information on his native Yana language
Yana language
Yana is an extinct language isolate formerly spoken in north-central California between the Feather and Pit rivers in what is now Shasta and Tehama counties....
, which was recorded and studied by the linguist Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir was an American anthropologist-linguist, widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics....
, who had previously done work on the northern dialects.
Ishi died of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
on March 25, 1916. It was then an incurable disease. His friends at the university initially had tried to prevent an autopsy on Ishi's body since the body was to be kept intact according to Yahi tradition, but the doctors at the clinic performed one before Waterman was able to stop it. Ishi's brain was preserved and the body cremated. Included alongside his remains were "one of his bows, five arrows, a basket of acorn meal, a boxful of shell bead money, a purse full of tobacco, three rings, and some obsidian flakes." Ishi's remains were interred at Mount Olivet Cemetery near San Francisco.
The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at U.C. Berkeley holds a collection, sometimes displayed, of photographs, tools, productive crafts, and early sound recordings; all Ishi's contribution to our current understanding of his traditional knowledge.
Possibly multi-ethnic
Nomlaki
The Nomlaki are a Wintun people native to the area of the Sacramento Valley, extending westward to the Coast Range in Northern California. Currently one person speaks Nomlaki...
or Wintu
Wintu
The Wintu are Native Americans who live in what is now Northern California. They are part of a loose association of peoples known collectively as the Wintun . Others are the Nomlaki and the Patwin...
tribes and markedly dissimilar to those of Yahi, Shackley suggested that Ishi may have been only half Yahi and of mixed ancestry, related to another of the tribes. He based his conclusion on a comparative study of the arrowhead
Arrowhead
An arrowhead is a tip, usually sharpened, added to an arrow to make it more deadly or to fulfill some special purpose. Historically arrowheads were made of stone and of organic materials; as human civilization progressed other materials were used...
s which Ishi made and others held by the museum from the Yahi, Nomlaki and Wintu cultures. Among Ishi's techniques was the use of what is now known in flintknapping circles as an Ishi stick, used to run long pressure flakes. As it was a traditional technique of the Nomlaki and Wintu tribes, the finding suggests Ishi may have learned the skill directly from a male relative from one of those tribes. Also small groups, they lived close to the Yahi lands and were traditional competitors and enemies of the Yahi.
In 1994 Shackley had heard a paper by Jerald Johnson, who noted morphological evidence that Ishi's facial features and height were more typical of the Wintu and Maidu
Maidu
The Maidu are a group of Native Americans who live in Northern California. They reside in the central Sierra Nevada, in the drainage area of the Feather and American Rivers...
. He theorized that under pressure of diminishing populations, members of groups that were once enemies may have intermarried to survive. To further support this, Johnson presented oral histories from the Wintu and Maidu that told of the tribes' intermarrying with the Yahi.
If Ishi were descended from both of the tribes and grew up with members of both, it may help explain his adaptive abilities, as his circumstances, essentially from birth, would have been different from the cultural norm of his people. The debate on this has not been definitively settled, however, and the circumstances of his birth probably died with him.
Legacy
- The anthropologist Theodora KroeberTheodora KroeberTheodora Kracaw Kroeber Quinn was a writer and anthropologist, best known for her accounts of Ishi, the last member of the Yahi tribe of California, and for her retelling of traditional narratives from several Native Californian cultures.Theodora Kracaw was born in Colorado and later moved to...
, also the wife of Alfred Kroeber, popularized Ishi's story in her book Ishi in Two Worlds (1961). She worked with her husband's notes and comments to create the story of a man she had never met, publishing it after Alfred's death. - Robert F. Heizer and Theodora Kroeber edited Ishi the Last Yahi: A Documentary History (1981), which contained additional scholarly materials.
- In 2003, anthropologists Clifton and Karl KroeberKarl KroeberKarl Kroeber was an American literary scholar, known for his writing on the English Romantics and American Indian literature. He was the son of Theodora and Alfred L. Kroeber, noted anthropologists...
, sons of Theodora and Alfred Kroeber, edited Ishi in Three Centuries, the first scholarly book on Ishi to contain essays by Native Americans. Native writers, such as Gerald VizenorGerald VizenorGerald Robert Vizenor is a Native American writer, and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation. One of the most prolific Native American writers, with over 30 books to his name, Vizenor also taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley, where...
, had been commenting on the case since the late 1970s. - The Duke UniversityDuke UniversityDuke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
anthropologist Orin StarnOrin StarnOrin Starn is a Professor of Cultural Anthropology and History and Chair of the Cultural Anthropology Department at Duke University.Starn is the author of Ishi's Brain: In Search of America's Last Wild Indian; his other books include Nightwatch: The Politics of Protest in the Andes and he is...
updated Ishi's story in his book, Ishi's Brain: In Search of America's Last "Wild" Indian (2004). He recounted his quest for the remains of the last of the Yahi, while interpreting what Ishi meant to Americans then and modern Indians today. (In 2000 Ishi's brain was reunited with his cremated remains.) - The Ishi Wilderness Area in northeastern California, believed to be the ancestral grounds of his tribe, is named in his honor.
- Due to a campaign by Gerald Vizenor, the courtyard in Dwinelle HallDwinelle HallDwinelle Hall is the second largest building on the University of California, Berkeley campus. It was completed in 1952, and is named after John W. Dwinelle, who was the State Assemblyman responsible for the "Organic Act" that established the University of California in 1868...
at the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
was renamed "Ishi Court". - Ishi is revered by flintknappers as probably one of the last two native stone tool makers in North America. His techniques are widely imitated by knappers, and ethnographic accounts of his toolmaking are considered to be the Rosetta StoneRosetta StoneThe Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek...
of lithic tool manufacture. - Krober and Waterman's 148 wax cylinder recordings (totaling 5 hours and 41 minutes) of Ishi speaking, singing, and telling stories in the Yahi language were selected by the Library of CongressLibrary of CongressThe Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
as a 2010 addition to the National Recording RegistryNational Recording RegistryThe National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." The registry was established by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, which created the National Recording...
, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In popular culture
- 1964, Theodora Kroeber published a shorter, partially fictionalized version of the story as Ishi: Last of His Tribe.
- Lawrence Holcomb published a novel titled The Last Yahi: A Novel About Ishi (2000).
- Ishi: the Last of His Tribe, with Eloy Casados in the title role, telecast on NBC December 20, 1978. The film was written by Christopher TrumboChristopher TrumboChristopher Trumbo was an American television writer, screenwriter and playwright. Trumbo was considered an expert on the Hollywood blacklist during the McCarthy era. His father, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, was blacklisted as a member of The Hollywood Ten. Trumbo was born on September 25, 1940,...
. - The Last of His Tribe (1992), with Graham GreeneGraham Greene (actor)Graham Greene is a Canadian actor who has worked on stage, and in film and TV productions in Canada, England and the United States.-Early life:...
as Ishi, was also produced as a TV movie. - Jed RiffeJed RiffeJed Riffe is an award winning filmmaker and founder of Jed Riffe Films + Electronic Media. For over 25 years his documentary films have focused on social issues including: Native American histories and struggles and agriculture, food and sustainability issues...
created an award-winning documentary film Ishi: The Last Yahi (1992). - Ishi (2008), a play written by John Fisher, was performed from July 3–27, 2008, at Theatre RhinocerosTheatre RhinocerosTheatre Rhinoceros or Theatre Rhino is a gay and lesbian theatre based in San Francisco. It was founded in the spring of 1977 by Lanny Baugniet and his partner Allan B. Estes, Jr....
in San Francisco. He also directed it. A review in the San Francisco Chronicle said the work "is a fierce dramatic indictment of the ugliest side of California history."
External links
- Ishi's Brain: In Search of America's Last 'Wild' Indian Starn, Orin, New York: W.W. Norton, 2004. (ISBN 0-393-05133-1)
- "A Compromise between Science and Sentiment: A Report on Ishi's Treatment at the University of California, 1911–1916", University of California, San Francisco
- Ishi being from two tribes, Press Release, UC Berkeley
- Ishi: The Last Yahi (1992) documentary synopsis
- Richard Burrill, "Synopsis of Ishi's Life", Ishi Facts Website
- Books on Ishi by Richard Burrill
- "Ishi", Find a Grave
- Saxton Pope, Hunting with the Bow and Arrow, includes discussion about Ishi
- Saxton Pope, "Yahi Archery", University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, The Archery Library
- Remembering Ishi, America's Last 'Wild' Indian, Cotton Boll Conspiracy, August 29, 2011