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.
Born~Died 1860 ~ Mar 25, 1916Last edited Oct 15, 2026, 3:37 PM
Ishi (c. 1861 – March 25, 1916) was the last known member of the Native AmericanYahi 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 genocide123 in the 19th century. Widely described as the "last wild Indian" in the United States, 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 anthropologistAlfred 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.4 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 1961.5
This page is based on “Ishi” from English Wikipedia, (r1378462717) CC BY-SA 4.0 used under the license. The original authors are listed in its page history.
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 3,000.9
In 1865,10 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 exterminated.11
The gold rush brought tens of thousands of miners and settlers to northern California, putting pressure on native peoples. Gold mining poisoned water supplies and killed fish; deer became scarcer. The settlers brought new infectious diseases such as smallpox and measles.12 The northern Yana group was wiped out while the central and southern groups (who later became part of Redding Rancheria) and Yahi suffered drastic losses. 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.13
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.14
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 wife of Ishi's. The former three fled while the elderly woman tried to hide herself, as she was disabled 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.15
Arrival into European American society
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 28, 1911, at a slaughterhouse near Oroville after forest fires in the area.16171819 The sheriff had Ishi handcuffed; he smiled and complied.202122232425
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),29303132 the "London Songbird," known for "kaleidoscopic" costume changes. Lena gave Ishi a piece of gum as a token.33
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 June 1915, for three months,9 Ishi lived in Berkeley with Waterman and his family.39
In the summer of 1915,9 Ishi was interviewed on his native Yana language, which was recorded on wax cylinders and studied by the linguistEdward Sapir, who had previously done work on the northern dialects.40
Death
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, 1916.4142434445 It is said that his last words were, "You stay. I go."46 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.47
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.48 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).49 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."50 His remains were also returned from Colma, and the tribal members intended to bury them in a secret place.49
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.53 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.53 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.54 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.54
Legacy and honors
The Last Yahi Indian Historical landmark, Oro Quincy Highway & Oak Avenue, Oroville, CA 95966555657
Ishi is revered by flintknappers as probably one of the last two native stone toolmakers in North America. His techniques are widely imitated by knappers. Ethnographic accounts of his toolmaking are considered to be the Rosetta Stone of lithic tool manufacture.58
Kroeber 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 Congress as a 2010 addition to the National Recording Registry. This is an annual selection of recordings that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".59
The Ishi Wilderness Area in northeastern California, believed to be the ancestral grounds of his tribe, is named in his honor.
Ishi Giant, an exceptionally large giant sequoia discovered by naturalist Dwight M. Willard in 1993, is named in his honor.
Ishi was the subject of a portrait relief sculpture by Thomas Marsh in his 1990 work, Called to Rise, featuring twenty such panels of noteworthy San Franciscans, on the facade of the 25-story high-rise at 235 Pine Street, San Francisco.61
Anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley wrote a letter in 1999 apologizing for Ishi's treatment.62
Kroeber, Theodora; Kroeber, Karl (2002). Ishi in Two Worlds: a biography of the last wild Indian in North America. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-22940-2. OCLC50805975.72
A mass-market, second-hand account of Ishi's life story, published in 1961, after the death of her husband Alfred, who had worked with Ishi, but had refused to write or talk about him.
Ishi the Last Yahi: A Documentary History (1981), edited by Robert Heizer and Theodora Kroeber, contains additional scholarly materials76
Merton, Thomas (1976). Ishi Means Man. Unicorn keepsake series. Vol. 8. Greensboro, N.C.: Unicorn Press.
Novels
Othmar Franz Lang. Meine Spur löscht der Fluss77 (young adult novel in German)
Lawrence Holcomb. The Last Yahi: A Novel About Ishi.78
Stage productions
Ishi (2008), a play written and directed by John Fisher, was performed from July 3–27, 2008, at Theatre Rhinoceros in San Francisco. The San Francisco Chronicle review said the work "is a fierce dramatic indictment of the ugliest side of California history."79
Music
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.80
Comics
Osamu Tezuka: The story of Ishi the primitive man, (first appeared in Weekly-Shonen-Sunday, Shogakkan in Japan, issue of October 20, 1975, total 44 pages).
A report prepared at the request of Senator John L. Burton to the California Research Bureau that focused on four examples of early State of California laws and policies that significantly impacted the California Indians' way of life.
Starn, Orin (2004). Ishi's Brain: In Search of America's Last 'Wild' Indian (1st ed.). New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-05133-1.
recounts the author's quest to find the remains of Ishi. (In 2000, Ishi's brain was returned to the closest related tribes, who placed it with his cremated remains.)
Fleras, Augie (2006). "Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America". Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. 27 (3): 265–268. doi:10.1080/01434630608668780. S2CID216112743. ↩
Japenga, Ann (August 29, 2003). "Revisiting Ishi". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on December 15, 2019. Retrieved January 31, 2019. ↩
Rockafellar, Nancy. "The Story of Ishi: A Chronology". A History of UCSF. Archived from the original on July 4, 2018. Retrieved February 13, 2021. 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. ↩↩2↩3↩4
"Butte". CA State Parks. Archived from the original on October 23, 2017. Retrieved February 8, 2021. ↩
"Ishi". biography.yourdictionary.com. Archived from the original on October 22, 2018. Retrieved July 21, 2018. ↩
Thornton, Russell (292). American Indian Holocaust and Survival. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 110. ISBN 978-0806122205. ↩
Burrill, Richard (2001). Ishi Rediscovered. Barron's art guides, Anthro Company. ISBN 978-1878464514. ↩
Kamiya, Gary (September 6, 2014). "Ishi, last 'wild' Indian, found refuge in S.F."SFGate.com. Archived from the original on November 16, 2020. Retrieved February 14, 2021. 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. ↩
Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Lynch, Lee (March 14, 2014). "Discovery of Ishi, the Last of His Tribe". YouTube. Retrieved February 14, 2021. 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. ↩
Brown, David Brown; Leek, Nancy Leek; Reifschneider-Smith, Josie Reifschneider-Smith; Womack, Ron Womack (eds.). Conversations With The Past: Vibrant Voices From Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta And Tehama Counties. Association For Northern California Historical Research. Archived from the original on January 23, 2021. Retrieved February 11, 2021. 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 Letter of Transfer 4 September 1911". Foundations of Anthropology at the University of California. bancroft.berkeley.edu. Archived from the original on October 23, 2019. Retrieved February 11, 2021. 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. ↩
"History of UCSF". UC San Francisco. Archived from the original on July 29, 2019. Retrieved February 11, 2021. ↩
"Ishi Host at Reception to Indian Maids". The Call. San Francisco, CA: National Endowment for the Humanities. August 26, 1912. p. 14. Archived from the original on December 8, 2022. Retrieved February 11, 2021. 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. ↩
Kroeber, Karl; Kroeber, Clifton B. (2003). Ishi in Three Centuries. U of Nebraska Press. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-8032-2757-6. Archived from the original on August 5, 2023. Retrieved February 14, 2021. 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.' ↩
Burrill, Richard. "Ishi's Return Home: The 1914 Anthropological Expedition Story". ishifacts.com. Archived from the original on March 11, 2022. Retrieved February 15, 2021. 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! ↩
Staff (November 25, 2014). "Book Review: Ishi's Return Home, by Richard Burrill". HistoryNet. Archived from the original on October 23, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2021. 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. ↩
Selig Polyscope Company (April 15, 1915). "Hearst-Selig News Pictorial, No. 30". IMDb. Archived from the original on July 4, 2021. Retrieved February 15, 2021. San Francisco: Grace Darling visits Ishi, the famous old chief, last of the California Indians who has been an object of scientific study. ↩
Olsson, Jan (2007). "7. "Whizz! Bang! Smash!" – Hearst, Girls, and Formats". Los Angeles Before Hollywood: Journalism and American Film Culture, 1905 to 1915. National Library of Sweden. pp. 289–292. ISBN 978-91-88468-06-2. Archived from the original on September 1, 2023. Retrieved February 15, 2021. 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, February 18, 1915, I:8.) ↩
"Ishi, Last of Old Tribe, Dies". Sausalito News. Vol. 32, no. 14. Sausalito, California: California Digital Newspaper Collection. April 1, 1916. Archived from the original on December 9, 2022. Retrieved February 11, 2021. 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. ↩
Miller, Johnny (March 16, 2016). "Items have been culled from The Chronicle's archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on December 9, 2022. Retrieved February 11, 2021. 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. ↩
"Tribe Now Dead". Delaware Daily Journal-Herald. Delaware, Ohio. June 5, 1916. p. 5. Archived from the original on September 1, 2023. Retrieved February 11, 2021. ↩
"The Stone Age Man..."The Western Sentinel. Winston-Salem, North Carolina. April 28, 1916. p. 6. Archived from the original on December 9, 2022. Retrieved February 11, 2021. ↩
Olson, Ryan (March 25, 2016). "Friday marks 100th anniversary of Ishi's death". Chico Enterprise-Record. MediaNews Group, Inc. Archived from the original on December 9, 2022. Retrieved February 11, 2021. 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. ↩
Miller, Robert Ellis (December 20, 1978). "Ishi: The Last of His Tribe". Edward & Mildred Lewis Productions. Archived from the original on March 22, 2021. Retrieved February 11, 2021. ↩
Hook, Harry (March 28, 1992). "The Last of His Tribe". Home Box Office (HBO), River City Productions Inc. Archived from the original on January 26, 2021. Retrieved February 11, 2021. ↩
Riffe, Jed; Roberts, Pamela (April 25, 1993). "Ishi: The Last Yahi". IMDb. Archived from the original on March 20, 2017. Retrieved February 11, 2021. ↩
Fincke, SueAnn. "Ishi, the Last of His Kind". MPH Entertainment Productions, History Channel (US) (TV). Archived from the original on July 22, 2022. Retrieved February 11, 2021. ↩
"Morgan Reynolds". Book Publishing Directory. Archived from the original on October 16, 2021. Retrieved April 8, 2021. ↩
"Indian Lands". nature.berkeley.edu. Archived from the original on October 25, 2020. Retrieved February 13, 2021. ↩
Burrill, Richard (2011). "Acknowledgments, Appendices, Chapter Notes, Bibliography, Index". Ishi's Untold Story in His First World, Parts I & II (PDF). Chico, CA: The Anthro Company. pp. 205–296. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 9, 2022. Retrieved February 15, 2021. ↩
Kroeber, Clifton; Kroeber, Karl, eds. (2003). Ishi in Three Centuries. U of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-2757-6. ↩
Watkins, Joe (February 15, 2017). "Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums by Samuel J. Redman". Journal of Anthropological Research. 73 (1): 102–104. doi:10.1086/690550. ↩
Ishi (c. 1861 – March 25, 1916) was the last known member of the Native AmericanYahi 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 genocide123 in the 19th century. Widely described as the "last wild Indian" in the United States, 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 anthropologistAlfred 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.4 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 in 1961.
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 3,000.9
In 1865,10 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 exterminated.11
The gold rush brought tens of thousands of miners and settlers to northern California, putting pressure on native peoples. Gold mining poisoned water supplies and killed fish; deer became scarcer. The settlers brought new infectious diseases such as smallpox and measles.12 The northern Yana group was wiped out while the central and southern groups (who later became part of Redding Rancheria) and Yahi suffered drastic losses. 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.13
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.14
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 wife of Ishi's. The former three fled while the elderly woman tried to hide herself, as she was disabled 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.15
Arrival into European American society
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 28, 1911, at a slaughterhouse near Oroville after forest fires in the area.16171819 The sheriff had Ishi handcuffed; he smiled and complied.202122232425
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),29303132 the "London Songbird," known for "kaleidoscopic" costume changes. Lena gave Ishi a piece of gum as a token.33
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 June 1915, for three months,9 Ishi lived in Berkeley with Waterman and his family.39
In the summer of 1915,9 Ishi was interviewed on his native Yana language, which was recorded on wax cylinders and studied by the linguistEdward Sapir, who had previously done work on the northern dialects.40
Death
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, 1916.4142434445 It is said that his last words were, "You stay. I go."46 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.47
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.48 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).49 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."50 His remains were also returned from Colma, and the tribal members intended to bury them in a secret place.49
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.53 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.53 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.54 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.54
Legacy and honors
The Last Yahi Indian Historical landmark, Oro Quincy Highway & Oak Avenue, Oroville, CA 95966555657
Ishi is revered by flintknappers as probably one of the last two native stone toolmakers in North America. His techniques are widely imitated by knappers. Ethnographic accounts of his toolmaking are considered to be the Rosetta Stone of lithic tool manufacture.58
Kroeber 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 Congress as a 2010 addition to the National Recording Registry. This is an annual selection of recordings that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".59
The Ishi Wilderness Area in northeastern California, believed to be the ancestral grounds of his tribe, is named in his honor.
Ishi Giant, an exceptionally large giant sequoia discovered by naturalist Dwight M. Willard in 1993, is named in his honor.
Ishi was the subject of a portrait relief sculpture by Thomas Marsh in his 1990 work, Called to Rise, featuring twenty such panels of noteworthy San Franciscans, on the facade of the 25-story high-rise at 235 Pine Street, San Francisco.61
Anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley wrote a letter in 1999 apologizing for Ishi's treatment.62
Kroeber, Theodora; Kroeber, Karl (2002). Ishi in Two Worlds: a biography of the last wild Indian in North America. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-22940-2. OCLC50805975.72
A mass-market, second-hand account of Ishi's life story, published in 1961, after the death of her husband Alfred, who had worked with Ishi, but had refused to write or talk about him.
Ishi the Last Yahi: A Documentary History (1981), edited by Robert Heizer and Theodora Kroeber, contains additional scholarly materials76
Merton, Thomas (1976). Ishi Means Man. Unicorn keepsake series. Vol. 8. Greensboro, N.C.: Unicorn Press.
Novels
Othmar Franz Lang. Meine Spur löscht der Fluss77 (young adult novel in German)
Lawrence Holcomb. The Last Yahi: A Novel About Ishi.78
Stage productions
Ishi (2008), a play written and directed by John Fisher, was performed from July 3–27, 2008, at Theatre Rhinoceros in San Francisco. The San Francisco Chronicle review said the work "is a fierce dramatic indictment of the ugliest side of California history."79
Music
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.80
Comics
Osamu Tezuka: The story of Ishi the primitive man, (first appeared in Weekly-Shonen-Sunday, Shogakkan in Japan, issue of October 20, 1975, total 44 pages).
A report prepared at the request of Senator John L. Burton to the California Research Bureau that focused on four examples of early State of California laws and policies that significantly impacted the California Indians' way of life.
Starn, Orin (2004). Ishi's Brain: In Search of America's Last 'Wild' Indian (1st ed.). New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-05133-1.
recounts the author's quest to find the remains of Ishi. (In 2000, Ishi's brain was returned to the closest related tribes, who placed it with his cremated remains.)
Fleras, Augie (2006). "Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America". Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. 27 (3): 265–268. doi:10.1080/01434630608668780. S2CID216112743. ↩
Japenga, Ann (August 29, 2003). "Revisiting Ishi". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on December 15, 2019. Retrieved January 31, 2019. ↩
Rockafellar, Nancy. "The Story of Ishi: A Chronology". A History of UCSF. Archived from the original on July 4, 2018. Retrieved February 13, 2021. 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. ↩↩2↩3↩4
"Butte". CA State Parks. Archived from the original on October 23, 2017. Retrieved February 8, 2021. ↩
"Ishi". biography.yourdictionary.com. Archived from the original on October 22, 2018. Retrieved July 21, 2018. ↩
Thornton, Russell (292). American Indian Holocaust and Survival. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 110. ISBN 978-0806122205. ↩
Burrill, Richard (2001). Ishi Rediscovered. Barron's art guides, Anthro Company. ISBN 978-1878464514. ↩
Kamiya, Gary (September 6, 2014). "Ishi, last 'wild' Indian, found refuge in S.F."SFGate.com. Archived from the original on November 16, 2020. Retrieved February 14, 2021. 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. ↩
Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Lynch, Lee (March 14, 2014). "Discovery of Ishi, the Last of His Tribe". YouTube. Retrieved February 14, 2021. 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. ↩
Brown, David Brown; Leek, Nancy Leek; Reifschneider-Smith, Josie Reifschneider-Smith; Womack, Ron Womack (eds.). Conversations With The Past: Vibrant Voices From Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta And Tehama Counties. Association For Northern California Historical Research. Archived from the original on January 23, 2021. Retrieved February 11, 2021. 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 Letter of Transfer 4 September 1911". Foundations of Anthropology at the University of California. bancroft.berkeley.edu. Archived from the original on October 23, 2019. Retrieved February 11, 2021. 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. ↩
"History of UCSF". UC San Francisco. Archived from the original on July 29, 2019. Retrieved February 11, 2021. ↩
"Ishi Host at Reception to Indian Maids". The Call. San Francisco, CA: National Endowment for the Humanities. August 26, 1912. p. 14. Archived from the original on December 8, 2022. Retrieved February 11, 2021. 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. ↩
Kroeber, Karl; Kroeber, Clifton B. (2003). Ishi in Three Centuries. U of Nebraska Press. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-8032-2757-6. Archived from the original on August 5, 2023. Retrieved February 14, 2021. 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.' ↩
Burrill, Richard. "Ishi's Return Home: The 1914 Anthropological Expedition Story". ishifacts.com. Archived from the original on March 11, 2022. Retrieved February 15, 2021. 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! ↩
Staff (November 25, 2014). "Book Review: Ishi's Return Home, by Richard Burrill". HistoryNet. Archived from the original on October 23, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2021. 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. ↩
Selig Polyscope Company (April 15, 1915). "Hearst-Selig News Pictorial, No. 30". IMDb. Archived from the original on July 4, 2021. Retrieved February 15, 2021. San Francisco: Grace Darling visits Ishi, the famous old chief, last of the California Indians who has been an object of scientific study. ↩
Olsson, Jan (2007). "7. "Whizz! Bang! Smash!" – Hearst, Girls, and Formats". Los Angeles Before Hollywood: Journalism and American Film Culture, 1905 to 1915. National Library of Sweden. pp. 289–292. ISBN 978-91-88468-06-2. Archived from the original on September 1, 2023. Retrieved February 15, 2021. 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, February 18, 1915, I:8.) ↩
"Ishi, Last of Old Tribe, Dies". Sausalito News. Vol. 32, no. 14. Sausalito, California: California Digital Newspaper Collection. April 1, 1916. Archived from the original on December 9, 2022. Retrieved February 11, 2021. 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. ↩
Miller, Johnny (March 16, 2016). "Items have been culled from The Chronicle's archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on December 9, 2022. Retrieved February 11, 2021. 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. ↩
"Tribe Now Dead". Delaware Daily Journal-Herald. Delaware, Ohio. June 5, 1916. p. 5. Archived from the original on September 1, 2023. Retrieved February 11, 2021. ↩
"The Stone Age Man..."The Western Sentinel. Winston-Salem, North Carolina. April 28, 1916. p. 6. Archived from the original on December 9, 2022. Retrieved February 11, 2021. ↩
Olson, Ryan (March 25, 2016). "Friday marks 100th anniversary of Ishi's death". Chico Enterprise-Record. MediaNews Group, Inc. Archived from the original on December 9, 2022. Retrieved February 11, 2021. 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. ↩
Miller, Robert Ellis (December 20, 1978). "Ishi: The Last of His Tribe". Edward & Mildred Lewis Productions. Archived from the original on March 22, 2021. Retrieved February 11, 2021. ↩
Hook, Harry (March 28, 1992). "The Last of His Tribe". Home Box Office (HBO), River City Productions Inc. Archived from the original on January 26, 2021. Retrieved February 11, 2021. ↩
Riffe, Jed; Roberts, Pamela (April 25, 1993). "Ishi: The Last Yahi". IMDb. Archived from the original on March 20, 2017. Retrieved February 11, 2021. ↩
Fincke, SueAnn. "Ishi, the Last of His Kind". MPH Entertainment Productions, History Channel (US) (TV). Archived from the original on July 22, 2022. Retrieved February 11, 2021. ↩
"Morgan Reynolds". Book Publishing Directory. Archived from the original on October 16, 2021. Retrieved April 8, 2021. ↩
"Indian Lands". nature.berkeley.edu. Archived from the original on October 25, 2020. Retrieved February 13, 2021. ↩
Burrill, Richard (2011). "Acknowledgments, Appendices, Chapter Notes, Bibliography, Index". Ishi's Untold Story in His First World, Parts I & II (PDF). Chico, CA: The Anthro Company. pp. 205–296. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 9, 2022. Retrieved February 15, 2021. ↩
Kroeber, Clifton; Kroeber, Karl, eds. (2003). Ishi in Three Centuries. U of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-2757-6. ↩
Watkins, Joe (February 15, 2017). "Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums by Samuel J. Redman". Journal of Anthropological Research. 73 (1): 102–104. doi:10.1086/690550. ↩