YAHI

The Yahi, a people of the California Culture Area (see CALIFORNIA INDIANS), will always be thought of as Ishi’s people. He was the last Yahi Indian, and the last known Indian in the United States to be pure of all non-Indian influences. The name Yahi, pronounced YAH-hee, means “person” in the Yahi language, part of the Yanan language family.

In August 1911, a gaunt, frightened, and weary man walked out of the foothills of Mount Lassen in northern California to a town called Oroville, about 70 miles northeast of Sacramento. Townspeople found him leaning in exhaustion against a fence. He wore little clothing, only a tattered poncho. He had apparently cropped his hair by singeing it with fire. When questioned, his words were unintelligible. He was recognized as an Indian, but the sheriff who took him into custody had never seen an Indian with such light skin in the area. And none of the Native Americans brought to talk with him recognized his dialect.

Word spread about the mystery man. Two anthropologists in San Francisco, Alfred Kroeber and Thomas Waterman, read about him in a newspaper. They knew that the Yana Indians once lived in the Oroville region. They also knew that a neighboring, related band of Indians, who spoke a different dialect of the Hokan language phylum, had once lived to the south of the Yana. These were the Yahi. It occurred to them that the Indian at Oroville just might be a member of this supposedly extinct tribe. They soon made arrangements to meet with him.

Waterman tried using a dictionary of the Yana language to communicate with him. The withdrawn man, who had refused all food out of fear of being poisoned, did not recognize any of the words. Finally, the anthropologist read the Yana word for wood while pointing to the frame of a prison cot, siwini. The Indian became excited, smiling at this word in common. He asked the scholar if he were of the same tribe, the Yahi. To gain his trust, Waterman replied that he was. With the Indian’s help, he also learned how to modify the Yana language enough to fit the sounds of the related Yahi dialect.

The Anthropological Museum of the University of California took full responsibility for the Yahi. Kroeber and Waterman gave him the name Ishi, which was the word for “man” in the Yahi language. Ishi eventually managed to communicate his story to them.

Ishi was born about 1862. During his youth, he witnessed the period in American history when California was growing at a rapid pace. In 1849 alone, during the California gold rush, about 80,000 prospectors came to California to seek their fortune. Then during the 1850s and 1860s, non-Indians continued to enter the Yahi and Yana domain along the eastern tributaries of the Sacramento River, following Indian trails in search of goldfields and farmlands. They took the best lands for themselves and forced Native Americans to the rugged, parched highlands. Miners and ranchers acted against any resistance with an extermination policy. A pattern developed of small Indian raids, then non-Indian retaliation, culminating in an attack on a Yahi village in 1865 in which men, women, and children were massacred. In the ensuing years, settlers launched further attacks on the Yahi in an effort to exterminate them. They thought they had accomplished this by 1868, when they killed 38 Yahi hiding in a cave.

A dozen or so Yahi had escaped into the wilderness, including a boy about six years old. Over the next decades, the remaining Yahi hid out from whites and lived off the land, occasionally pilfering from white camps. There were some reports of sightings of mysterious Indians. But the Yahi were careful to camouflage their shelters, leave no footprints, make no noise, and light only small campfires. They assumed, even after so much time had passed since the conflict between Yahi and whites, that if they were discovered, they would be killed.

By 1908, only four Yahi remained—Ishi himself, now about 40 years old; his sister; an old man; and an old woman. They lived at wowunupo mu tetnu, or “the grizzly bear’s hiding place,” a narrow ledge about 500 feet above Mill Creek. In that year, a party of whites discovered their hiding place. The Yahi fled, all except the old woman who was too sick to travel. She died soon after her discovery. The old man and Ishi’s sister drowned while in flight.

Ishi lived in the wilderness for three more years, hunting small game and gathering wild foods. He burned his hair off in mourning for his lost friends and relatives. But the game ran out. Hungry and desperate, he opted for a quick death at the hands of whites rather than the slow death of starvation. At that time, August 1911, he made the walk to Oroville.

As it turned out, Ishi was treated well. He was given work at the museum, which he performed with dedication. He demonstrated to museum visitors how his people used to make arrowheads and spearheads. He also helped clean the grounds. Ishi learned about 600 English words and became accustomed to non-Indian ways— clothes, table manners, urban transportation—but he never got used to crowds. He had spent most of his life with only a few family and friends and was continually amazed at the number of people he encountered. When he went to a movie for the first time, he reportedly watched the audience instead of the film. When he visited the shore for the first time, he was in awe of the people on the beach rather than the water itself.

Ishi met with many people who were interested in Native ways. He proved an invaluable source of information concerning Native culture. Kroeber and Waterman accompanied Ishi on a camping trip to Yahi territory, where he shared his earlier experiences and his wilderness skills with them.

Ishi demonstrated how to make arrow and spear points out of obsidian, and bows out of juniper wood for hunting; how to make two-pronged bone harpoons; how to weave nets out of milkweed fibers or animal sinew for catching salmon and other fish; and how to make a brush hut. He also demonstrated how to start a fire with a wooden drill and softwood kindling; how to move noiselessly through the underbrush; how to swing on ropes over

Yahi glass arrowhead made by Ishi

Canyon cliffs; how to snare a deer or lure it into arrow-range by wearing the stuffed head of a buck; and how to make animal and bird calls to attract game. Ishi also identified about 200 plants and their uses as food or medicine. He showed how to make acorn meal. He sang tribal songs and narrated stories about his ancestors, about the spirit world, about wildlife, and about love and other emotions.

Ishi became ill with tuberculosis in 1915 and died the following year. Those who knew him, and those who empathized with the plight of all Native peoples in the Americas, mourned his passing. The last of the Yahi, the final holdout for an earlier way of life, had, through his knowledge and character, made an enduring impression on the culture that displaced him.