"},"resting_place":{"wt":""},"resting_place_coordinates":{"wt":""},"other_names":{"wt":""},"education":{"wt":""},"employer":{"wt":""},"known_for":{"wt":"last of the Yahi people,\"last wild Indian\""},"occupation":{"wt":""},"title":{"wt":""},"height":{"wt":""},"term":{"wt":""},"predecessor":{"wt":""},"successor":{"wt":""},"party":{"wt":""},"boards":{"wt":""},"spouse":{"wt":""},"partner":{"wt":""},"parents":{"wt":""},"children":{"wt":""},"relatives":{"wt":""},"signature":{"wt":""},"website":{"wt":""},"footnotes":{"wt":""}},"i":0}}]}" id="mwCQ">.mw-parser-output .infobox-subbox{padding:0;border:none;margin:-3px;width:auto;min-width:100%;font-size:100%;clear:none;float:none;background-color:transparent}.mw-parser-output .infobox-3cols-child{margin:auto}.mw-parser-output .infobox .navbar{font-size:100%}@media screen{html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .mw-parser-output .infobox-full-data:not(.notheme)>div:not(.notheme)[style]{background:#1f1f23!important;color:#f8f9fa}}@media screen and (prefers-color-scheme:dark){html.skin-theme-clientpref-os .mw-parser-output .infobox-full-data:not(.notheme) div:not(.notheme){background:#1f1f23!important;color:#f8f9fa}}@media(min-width:640px){body.skin--responsive .mw-parser-output .infobox-table{display:table!important}body.skin--responsive .mw-parser-output .infobox-table>caption{display:table-caption!important}body.skin--responsive .mw-parser-output .infobox-table>tbody{display:table-row-group}body.skin--responsive .mw-parser-output .infobox-table tr{display:table-row!important}body.skin--responsive .mw-parser-output .infobox-table th,body.skin--responsive .mw-parser-output .infobox-table td{padding-left:inherit;padding-right:inherit}}
Ishi | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Born | c. 1861 Northern California Sierra Foothills, U.S. |
Died | March 25, 1916 (age 55–56) |
Known for | last of the Yahi people, "last wild Indian" |
Ishi (c. 1861– March 25, 1916) was the last known member of the Native American Yahi people from the present-day state of California in the United States. The rest of the Yahi (as well as many members of their parent tribe, the Yana) were killed in the California genocide in the 19th century. Widely described as the "last wild Indian" in the U.S., Ishi lived most of his life isolated from modern North American culture, and was the last known Native manufacturer of stone arrowheads. In 1911, aged 50, he emerged at a barn and corral, 2 mi (3.2 km) from downtown Oroville, California.
Ishi, which means "man" in the Yana language, is an adopted name. The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber gave him this name because in the Yahi culture, tradition demanded that he not speak his own name until formally introduced by another Yahi. [2] When asked his name, he said: "I have none, because there were no people to name me", meaning that there was no other Yahi to speak his name on his behalf.
Anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley, took Ishi in, studied him, and hired him as a janitor. He lived most of his remaining five years in a university building in San Francisco. His life was depicted and discussed in multiple films and books, notably the biographical account Ishi in Two Worlds published by Theodora Kroeber in 1961. [3] [4] [5] [6]
Ishi was likely born in the year 1861 within the heart of Yahi and Yana territory. At the time of Ishi's birth, the Yana were based in the Sierra Nevada Mountains area between the Pit and Feather Rivers, with the Yahi subgroup living in the southern portion. Written accounts from the 19th century suggest that the Yahi were hunter-gatherers who lived in small egalitarian bands without centralized political authority, chose to seclude themselves even from neighboring peoples, and fiercely defended their territory of mountain canyons. Like many indigenous tribes in California, the Yana and especially the Yahi suffered heavy population losses when European settlers entered their territory during the California Gold Rush of 1848–55; prior to this the Yahi probably numbered several hundred, while the total Yana in the larger region numbered around 3,000. [7]
In 1865, [9] the Yahi were attacked in the Three Knolls Massacre, in which 40 of them were killed. Although 33 Yahi survived to escape, cattlemen killed about half of the survivors. The last survivors, including Ishi and his family, went into hiding for the next 44 years. Their tribe was popularly believed to be extinct. [10]
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; deer became scarcer. The settlers brought new infectious diseases such as smallpox and measles. [11] The northern Yana group went extinct while the central and southern groups (who later became part of Redding Rancheria) and Yahi populations dropped dramatically. Searching for food, they came into conflict with settlers, who set bounties of 50 cents per scalp and 5 dollars per head on the natives. In 1865, settlers attacked a group of Yahi while they were asleep. [12]
Richard Burrill wrote, in Ishi Rediscovered:
In 1865, near the Yahi's special place, Black Rock, the waters of Mill Creek turned red at the Three Knolls Massacre. "Sixteen" or "seventeen" 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. Eleven of the Indian fighters that day were Robert A. Anderson, Harmon (Hi) Good, Sim Moak, Hardy Thomasson, Jack Houser, Henry Curtis, 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.
Robert Anderson wrote, "Into the stream they leaped, but few got out alive. Instead many dead bodies floated down the rapid current." One captive Indian woman named Mariah from Big Meadows (Lake Almanor today), was one of those who did escape. The Three Knolls massacre is also described in Theodora Kroeber's Ishi in Two Worlds.
Since then more has been learned. 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 federal government started Indian boarding schools in California. Some men from the reservations became renegades in the hills. Volunteers among the settlers and military troops carried out additional campaigns against the northern California Indian tribes during that period. [13]
In 1908, a group of surveyors came across the camp inhabited by two men, a middle-aged woman, and an elderly woman. These were Ishi, his uncle, his mother, and a woman who was either a relative or Ishi's wife. The former three fled while the elderly woman tried to hide herself, as she was crippled and unable to flee. The surveyors ransacked the camp, taking fur capes, arrows, bows, and nets. When Ishi appeared near Oroville three years later, he was alone and communicated through mime that his three companions had all died, his uncle and mother by drowning. [14]
After the 1908 encounter, Ishi spent three more years in the wilderness. It is unknown exactly when the rest of his family died. Starving and alone, Ishi, at around the age of 50, emerged on August 29, 1911, at the Charles Ward [16] slaughterhouse back corral [17] near Oroville after forest fires in the area. [18] [19] He was found pre-sunset [20] [21] by Floyd Hefner, son of the next-door dairy owner (who was in town), who was "hanging out", and who went to harness the horses to the wagon for the ride back to Oroville, for the workers and meat deliveries. [22] Witnessing slaughterhouse workers included Lewis "Diamond Dick" Cassings, a "drugstore cowboy". When Sheriff J.B. Webber arrived, he directed Adolph Kessler, a 19-year-old slaughterhouse worker, to handcuff Ishi, who smiled and complied. [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28]
The "wild man" caught the imagination and attention of thousands of onlookers and curiosity seekers. University of California, Berkeley anthropology professors read about him and "brought him" [29] to the Affiliated Colleges Museum (1903–1931), [18] in an old law school building on the University of California's Affiliated Colleges campus [30] on Parnassus Heights, San Francisco. Studied by the university, [31] Ishi also worked as a janitor and lived at the museum the remaining five years of his life.
In October 1911, Ishi, Sam Batwi, T. T. Waterman, and A. L. Kroeber, went to the Orpheum Opera House in San Francisco to see Lily Lena (Alice Mary Ann Mathilda Archer, born 1877), [32] [33] [34] [35] the "London Songbird," known for "kaleidoscopic" costume changes. Lena gave Ishi a piece of gum as a token. [36]
On May 13, 1914, [37] Ishi, Thomas Talbot Waterman, Alfred L. Kroeber, Saxton Pope, and Saxton Pope Jr. (11 years old), took Southern Pacific's Cascade Limited overnight train, from the Oakland Mole and Pier to Vina, California, on a trek in the homelands of the Deer Creek area of Tehama County, [38] researching and mapping for the University of California, [7] [39] fleeing on May 30, 1914, during the Lassen Peak volcano eruption.
Waterman and Kroeber, director of the museum, studied Ishi closely and interviewed him at length in an effort to reconstruct Yahi culture. He described family units, naming patterns, and the ceremonies he knew. Much tradition had already been lost when he was growing up, as there were few older survivors in his group. He identified material items and showed the techniques by which they were made.
In February 1915, during the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, Ishi was filmed in the Sutro Forest with the actress Grace Darling for Hearst-Selig News Pictorial, No. 30. [40] [41]
In June 1915, for three months, [7] Ishi lived in Berkeley with Waterman and his family. [42]
In the summer of 1915, [7] Ishi was interviewed on his native Yana language, which was recorded and studied by the linguist Edward Sapir, who had previously done work on the northern dialects. [43] These wax cylinders have had the sound recovered by Carl Haber's and Vitaliy Fadeyev's optical IRENE technology. [44] [45] [46] [47]
Lacking acquired immunity to common diseases, Ishi was often ill. He was treated by Pope, a professor of medicine at UCSF. Pope became a close friend of Ishi, and learned from him how to make bows and arrows in the Yahi way. He and Ishi often hunted together. Ishi died of tuberculosis on March 25, 1916. [1] [48] [49] [50] [51] It is said that his last words were, "You stay. I go." [52] Kroeber, who was in New York at the time of Ishi's death, tried to prevent an autopsy on his body, sending letters and telegrams strongly stating his objections. He believed Yahi tradition called for the body to remain intact. But Pope performed the autopsy, per hospital protocol. [53]
Ishi's brain was preserved and his body cremated, in the mistaken belief that cremation was the traditional Yahi practice. His friends placed several items with his remains before cremation: "one of his bows, five arrows, a basket of acorn meal, a boxfull of shell bead money, a purse full of tobacco, three rings, and some obsidian flakes." Ishi's remains, in a deerskin-wrapped Pueblo Indian pottery jar, were interred at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Colma, California, near San Francisco. [54] Kroeber sent Ishi's preserved brain to the Smithsonian Institution in 1917. It was held there until August 10, 2000, when the Smithsonian repatriated it to the descendants of the Redding Rancheria and Pit River tribes. This was in accordance with the National Museum of the American Indian Act of 1989 (NMAI). [55] According to Robert Fri, director of the National Museum of Natural History, "Contrary to commonly-held belief, Ishi was not the last of his kind. In carrying out the repatriation process, we learned that as a Yahi–Yana Indian his closest living descendants are the Yana people of northern California." [56] His remains were also returned from Colma, and the tribal members intended to bury them in a secret place. [55]
Ishi used thumb draw and release with his short bows. [57] [58]
Steven Shackley of UC Berkeley learned in 1994 of 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 had intermarried to survive. Johnson also referred to oral histories of the Wintu and Maidu that told of the tribes' intermarrying with the Yahi. [59] The theory is still debated, and this remains unresolved.
In 1996, Shackley announced work based on a study of Ishi's projectile points and those of the northern tribes. He had found that points made by Ishi were not typical of those recovered from historical Yahi sites. Because Ishi's production was more typical of points of the Nomlaki or Wintu tribes, and markedly dissimilar to those of Yahi, Shackley suggested that Ishi had been of mixed ancestry, and related to and raised among members of another of the tribes. [59] He based his conclusion on a study of the points made by Ishi, compared to others held by the museum from the Yahi, Nomlaki and Wintu cultures.
Among Ishi's techniques was the use of what is known as an Ishi stick, used to run long pressure flakes. [60] This is known to be a traditional technique of the Nomlaki and Wintu tribes. Shackley suggests that Ishi learned the skill directly from a male relative of one of those tribes. These people lived in small bands, close to the Yahi. They were historically competitors with and enemies of the Yahi. [60]
Ishi's story has been compared to that of Ota Benga, an Mbuti pygmy from Congo. His family had died and were not given a mourning ritual. He was taken from his home and culture. During one period, he was displayed as a zoo exhibit. Ota shot himself in the heart with a borrowed pistol on March 20, 1916, five days before Ishi's death. [61]
Depicted in the video for "Blue Train Lines," a song by Mount Kimbie and King Krule. The video follows the story of the two anthropologists falling out. One proceeds to sell all of Ishi's possessions on eBay. [87]
Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master Of Arts in History (Public History)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) [94] Sitting upon the side of his cot in the insane cell, Ishi, uncertain of his fate, answered "ulsi" (I don't understand) in the language of his tribe, to a broadside of questions in Spanish, English and half a dozen Indian languages. A few weeks later he was taken in charge by the department of anthropology and became a "scientific specimen" at the museum and later assistant janitor.
Yahi translator Sam Batwi, Alfred L. Kroeber, and Ishi, photographed at Parnassus in 1911...Deer Creek area of Tehama county...December 10, 1914 to Feb. 1, 1915: Ishi hospitalized for 62 days, First Tubercular Diagnosis in early 1915. Summer 1915: Linguistics work with Edward Sapir; Ishi stays with Watermans at Berkeley for three months and is "carefully looked after." August 22, 1915: Ishi hospitalized for six weeks, then moved to the Museum of Anthropology.
In the late 1860s, when Ishi was a small boy, a rancher named Norman Kingsley and three other whites shot 30 Yahi, including babies and young children, in a cave on Mill Creek. In the midst of the slaughter, Kingsley exchanged his .56 Spencer rifle for a .38-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver, because the rifle "tore them up so bad," especially the babies.
In these notes, Kroeber summarized what was known of Ishi just four days after his discovery.
The Sheriff handed me a pair of handcuffs and told me (Adolph Kessler) to put them on him, and to hang on to him. Ishi made no attempt to run or resist the handcuffs but seemed very pleased. At no time did he seem to be real scared but he did a lot of smiling. He did not try to run away or get excited. The Sheriff put him in the buggy, accompanied by Constable John Toland and took him to the county jail. (Excerpts of article submitted by The Lady of Butte County, Alberta Tracy, with permission of the Butte County Historical Society (Vol. 5 No. 4))
via: archive.org
Adolph Kessler recounts his discovery of Ishi, the last Yahi Indian, at the Oroville slaughter house in 1911. Video-taped in 1973 at Red Bluff High School.
These memories range from personal accounts about the Bidwells, family cattle drives, early days in Paradise and Chico, hitching canoe rides on riverboat barges, Chico's first teenage aviator, the discovery of Ishi in Oroville, western Colusa County Indian life and John Bidwell's explorations, herding geese (it's not what you might think it is), pioneer life in Orland and Newville including feuding Civil War veterans, memories of Modoc County, the town of Prattville and Big Meadows before Lake Almanor flooded the areas, railroad torpedoes, and President Kennedy's visit to Lassen Volcanic National Park in 1963.
Butte County Sheriff: Ishi's Letter of Transfer J. B. Weber Sheriff W. H. White. Under-Sheriff of Butte County Oroville Cal., Sept. 4th, 1911 Received of Sheriff J.B. Webber of Butte county the person of an elderly Yana Indian, name and place of residence at present unknown, recently taken under the protection of the County of Butte, said person to be taken to the Univrrsity of California for linguistic and phonetic study. The welfare and comfort of this said person to be duly looked after until the disposition of his case by proper authority. Instructor and Assistant Curator University of California.
In addition to making fire for their edification Ishi sang several Indian songs for them. The particular songs they had never heard before, and they sang him one or two of their own tribal tunes in return. Whether they were love songs is an open question, but Ishi refused to smile at any time the rest of the day.
The climactic moment of the evening is Ishi's introduction to 'the silvery voiced and fascinating Orpheum headliner, Lily Lena of the London music halls.'
On the evening of May 13, 1914, Ishi and his friends depart from the massive Oakland Mole railroad station, on Southern Pacific's Cascade Limited "overnight" passenger train. Their destination is Vina, in Tehama County, California, located 114 miles north of Sacramento. Ishi becomes the lead guide for a trip into the rugged and remote Yahi foothill country. They experience, in all, nineteen days of adventure, turmoil, challenges, discoveries, and some resolution. The group remains in the foothill country until the evening of May 30, 1914, when the sleeping volcano, Lassen Peak, awakens and starts erupting!
One of the demons Ishi had to confront was the expedition's packer, "One-Eyed Jack" Apperson, who in 1908 was a Vina rancher who helped discover and sack Ishi's Yahi village...Along the way Ishi demonstrated his stone toolmaking ability, and the anthropologists documented his skills as a craftsman, fisherman and bow hunter. Ishi came to confide in Saxton Pope Jr., once telling the boy he "heard his family members calling him." Whatever ghosts there were, Ishi seemed to deal with them just fine.
San Francisco: Grace Darling visits Ishi, the famous old chief, last of the California Indians who has been an object of scientific study.
In the depths of Sutro Forest she (Grace Darling) had an encounter with Ishi, "the wild man, the primitive being who was captured in the remote wilderness of the Sierras by the scientific experts." The Los Angeles Examiner again depicted Darling's activities in registers embracing the wonders of modernity, giving her report on the alleged primitive a racist slant by treating Ishi as an exhibit. "From the last word in twentieth century mechanism to the crude beginnings of primitive life went Grace Darling today." The reporter from the Examiner vicariously translated Ishi's emotions: "All the gallantry that slumbers in the breast of the cave man awakened in Ishi when he met his fair visitor." (Los Angeles Examiner, 18 February 1915, I:8.)
...himself is not named so as to refer to the levirate, it is highly significant as indicative of this custom that he was said by Ishi to address his wife's children as his own children, thus implying a potential fatherhood in himself...
Among its best known is Ishi's retelling of the Story of Wood Duck, the only recording of the extinct Yahi language. Ishi was recorded between 1911 and 1914 by Berkeley anthropologist T.T. Waterman, who began translating the story but didn't finish because the fuzzy sound quality made the words too difficult to discern.
The new technique, developed by Berkeley Lab physicist Carl Haber, goes back to the sound's source: It takes high-res images of the wax cylinders' ridges
Currently the research centers around two efforts. IRENE (top image above) is a scanning machine for disc records which images with microphotography in two dimensions (2D). It is under evaluation at the Library of Congress. For cylinder media, with vertical cut groove, and to obtain more detailed measurements of discs, a three dimensional (3D) scanner is under development (bottom image). It is planned to begin evaluating this device at the Library of Congress in 2009.
Thin, hungry and clad only in a cast-off undershirt, Ishi was discovered in August 1911, at a slaughterhouse four miles from Oroville. A few weeks later he was taken in charge by the department of anthropology of the University of California and became a "scientific specimen" at the museum and later an assistant janitor. With two twigs Ishi produced fire out of thin air; with nimble fingers he produced monstrous nets; fashioned with flakes of elk antler the finest arrowheads. According to Professor T. T. Waterman, Ishi was one of a small party of survivors who fled to the hills east of Sacramento in 1865 after suffering almost complete extermination at the hands of an armed band of whites.
The story also notes Ishi's emergence near Oroville and how he became a "scientific specimen" and later assistant janitor at the University of California Affiliated Colleges Museum from 1911 to 1916. The museum was located on what is now UC San Francisco's main campus.
Arrowpoints made in the historic Yahi sites excavated by the Department of Anthropology in the 1950s and housed at the museum are quite different from Ishi's products," said Shackley. "But tools and arrowpoints made at historic Nomlaki or Wintu sites also housed at the museum bear striking resemblance to those made by Ishi.
A beacon of publishing and children's literature on the West Coast, the complete catalog of the Parnassus Press were sold to Houghton Mifflin in 1979.
Fall 2014
Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology