The Yana people were a group of Native Americans

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...

 indigenous to 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...

 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. The noun stem Ya- means "person"; the noun suffix is -na in the northern Yana dialects and -hi [xi] in the southern dialects. The groups are extinct as functional tribes, though some individuals still survive.

History

The anthropologist 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...

 put the 1770 population of the Yahi at 1,500. Sherburne F. Cook

Sherburne F. Cook

Sherburne Friend Cook was a physiologist by training, and served as professor and chairman of the department of physiology at the University of California, Berkeley...

 estimated their numbers at 1,900 and 1,850. Estimates of the total Yana population before the Gold Rush was 3,000. The Yana people lived on wild game, fished salmon, fruit, acorns and roots. Their territory was approximately 40 miles by 60 miles and contained mountain streams, gorges, boulder-strewn hills, and some lush meadows. Each group had relatively distinct boundaries, dialects and customs.

The Yahi were the southern portion of the Yana

Yana

Yana may refer to:Places* Yana, an administrative capital in Bauchi State, Nigeria* Yana, Burma, a village in Hkamti Township in Hkamti District in the Sagaing Region of northwestern Burma...

-speaking people. They were hunter-gatherer

Hunter-gatherer

A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...

s who lived in small egalitarian bands without centralized political authority. They were reclusive and fiercely defended their diminishing territory of mountain canyons.

After James W. Marshall

James W. Marshall

James Wilson Marshall was an American carpenter and sawmill operator, whose discovery of gold in the American River in California on January 24, 1848 set the stage for the California Gold Rush. The mill property was owned by Johan Sutter who employed Marshall to build his mill...

 discovered gold

California 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...

 in 1848, tens of thousands of gold-miners and ranchers flocked into Yana territory. The food supply dropped dramatically, as gold mining damaged the streams and fish runs, and deer fled the crowded area. The tribe suffered great population losses and fought with the settlers over territory.

The Yahi initially numbered around 400. Lacking firearms, they were destroyed by four raids by armed white settlers. On August 6, 1865, seventeen settlers raided a Yahi village at dawn. In 1866, more Yahis were massacred when they were caught by surprise in a ravine. Around 1867, thirty-three Yahis were killed after being tracked to a cave. Finally, around 1868, four cowboys trapped about thirty Yahis in another cave.

Ishi

The last known survivor of the Yahi was named Ishi

Ishi

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...

 by American anthropologists. Ishi had spent most of his life in hiding with his tribe members in the Sierra wilderness, emerging at the age of about 49, after the deaths of his mother and last relatives. He was the only Yahi known to European-Americans. Ishi emerged from the mountains 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...

 on August 29, 1911, having lived his entire life outside of the European-American culture.

Professors from 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...

 read about him and brought him to San Francisco both for study and for his protection. Called the "last wild Indian", he had been treated as a curiosity by the public. Under the auspices of the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, director of the Museum of Anthropology, Ishi lived there until his death from 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...

 (then incurable) in 1916. His language was recorded and studied in 1911 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.

By tribal custom, he was not to reveal his name to an enemy. Rather, one would be introduced by a friend, and then the name could be offered. Since he was the last of his people, he had no friends, although he made some later at the University of California. Tradition demanded that he never speak his name. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley gave him the name Ishi

Ishi

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...

, the Yana word for "man". He accepted this and adopted the term "Mr. Ishi" when he learned enough English. Ishi worked as a research assistant at the Museum of Anthropology. He taught Saxton Pope

Saxton Pope

Saxton Temple Pope was an American doctor, teacher, author and outdoorsman. He is most famous as the father of modern bow hunting, and for his close relationship with Ishi, the last member of the Yahi tribe and the last known American Indian to be raised largely isolated from Western culture...

, a professor at the medical school and his physician, how to make arrows and bows, and to hunt with them. Pope is considered to be the "father" of modern bow hunting, as he published extensively on techniques.

See also

• 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....
  
  
• Yana traditional narratives
  Yana traditional narratives
  Yana traditional narratives include myths, legends, tales, and oral histories preserved by the Yana people of the eastern Sacramento Valley and foothills of northeastern California....
  
  
• Indigenous peoples of California

External links

• Ishi: The Last Yahi (1992), documentary, IMDB
• http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=moajrnl;cc=moajrnl;rgn=full%20text;idno=ahj1472.1-12.005;didno=ahj1472.1-12.005;view=image;seq=0408;node=ahj1472.1-12.005%3A4Stephen Powers
  Stephen Powers
  *This article is about the 19th-century journalist and historian of California Indians.Stephen Powers was an American journalist, ethnographer, and historian of Native American tribes in California. He traveled extensively to study and learn about their cultures, and wrote notable accounts of them...
  
  , "Yana and local groups"], Overland Monthly
  Overland Monthly
  Overland Monthly was a monthly magazine based in California, United States, and published in the 19th and 20th century.The magazine's first issue was in July 1868, and continued until the late 1875. The original publishers, in 1880, started The Californian, which became The Californian and Overland...
  
  Journal, 1875, online at University of Michigan
• Map: "Native Tribes, Groups, Language Families, and Dialects of California region in 1770", California Prehistory

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