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 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 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. 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.
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.
In 1865, 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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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. The sheriff had Ishi handcuffed; he smiled and complied.
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" to the Affiliated Colleges Museum (1903–1931), in an old law school building on the University of California's Affiliated Colleges campus on Parnassus Heights, San Francisco. Studied by the university, 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), the "London Songbird," known for "kaleidoscopic" costume changes. Lena gave Ishi a piece of gum as a token.
On May 13, 1914, 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, researching and mapping for the University of California, 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.