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WE DO NOT WANT TO BECOME AND
END LIKE ISHI
Ishi was the last surviving
member of the Yahi tribe. He was born about 1862. The Yahi were related to the
Yana Indians who once lived in northern California of todays USA. Contact with
whites began with the California Gold Rush of 1849, which led to struggles
over land, raids on white settlements, and devastating counterattacks. Two
massacres of Yahi Indians at Mill Creek in the 1860s all but wiped them out.
The remaining survivors hid themselves away completely and were thought to
have died
until Ishi, starving and alone, appeared at the town of Oroville in 1911.
News of his appearance reached two anthropologists, Alfred Kroeber and Thomas
Waterman, who came to Oroville to learn more about him and his people. Ishi
showed how the Yahi survived in the wilderness and shared with them the songs
and stories of his ancestors. Kroeber brought Ishi to San Francisco, where he
lived in the Museum of Anthropology. Ishi died of tuberculosis in 1916.
OUR LAND IS NOT FOR SALE LIKE
THE ONE GRABBED FROM ISHI
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