Ishi
Ishi was the last known member of the Yahi tribe, who emerged in 1911 near Oroville, California, a region where his people had been thought to be extinct due to violent conflicts with settlers in the late 19th century. After surviving in seclusion for years following the loss of his community, Ishi's unexpected appearance at a slaughterhouse drew significant media attention and scientific interest. To anthropologists, he represented a valuable opportunity to learn about Yahi culture and language. He was taken to the University of California, Berkeley, where he lived at the Museum of Anthropology, demonstrating traditional skills like fire-making and tool-making to museum visitors. While Ishi became a respected figure, his experience also highlighted complex dynamics between Indigenous peoples and scientific communities, as he was often treated more as a specimen than as a fellow human being. Ishi's life and legacy have continued to inspire discussion and reflection on these themes, leading to various biographies, documentaries, and scholarly works exploring his story and its implications. His time at the museum lasted until his death from tuberculosis in 1916, leaving a profound impact on both anthropology and Indigenous rights discussions.
Subject Terms
Ishi
- Born: c. 1862
- Birthplace: Near Deer Creek, Northern California
- Died: March 25, 1916
- Place of death: San Francisco, California
Tribal affiliation: Yahi
Significance: After all other Yahi people had been annihilated by settlers, Ishi became known throughout America as the “last wild Indian”
In 1911, when the man known as Ishi appeared in the corral of a slaughterhouse near Oroville, in Northern California, the Yahi were all thought to have been annihilated many years before. After resisting the invasion of their territory, the Yahi were hunted down and massacred by settlers in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In the 1890’s, Ishi and the few remaining members of his community concealed themselves along Deer Creek and successfully hid any trace of their existence from their European American neighbors. After his last remaining relatives died in 1908, Ishi lived alone until his appearance at the Oroville slaughterhouse.
Ishi immediately became a media sensation and an object of scientific inquiry. To the popular press, he was “the last wild Indian.” To anthropologists, Ishi was an important source of scientific knowledge. From Oroville, anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Thomas Waterman took Ishi to live at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. When Ishi, in keeping with Yahi etiquette, would not reveal his name to probing journalists, Kroeber bestowed the name “Ishi”—a Yana term for “man.”
In the years before his death from tuberculosis in 1916, Ishi made a home for himself at the museum, patiently educating anthropologists about Yahi life and language, demonstrating skills such as fire-making and stone-tool-making for museum visitors (sometimes as many as several thousand in the course of an afternoon) and working as a janitor.
Although Ishi won the respect and sincere affection of anthropologists such as Kroeber, in many ways he was treated more as a scientific specimen and object of curiosity than as a friend, fellow human being, and refugee of war. Many scholars, therefore, have come to see that Ishi’s story holds important lessons about the relationship between science and tribal peoples. Since the 1960’s, Ishi has been the subject of a biography by Theodora Kroeber, documentary and feature films, and essays by native studies scholar Gerald Vizenor.