Late summer of 1911, near the snow-capped volcanic peak of Mt. Lassen, California, a solitary Indian walked out of his ancestral homeland in the southern Cascade Range of foothills. As a child during the Gold Rush, he had witnessed his people repeatedly massaquered by white settlers. For nearly forty-years, he had lived in hiding with a small band of survivors. 

   Now, all the others of his small group were dead. There was no one left in the world that spoke his native language. Alone, his hair burned short in mourning, he walked out into an unknown world. We know him today as "Ishi," the last living member of a small band of Yahi Indians. On August 28, 1911, Ishi was captured at the Charles Ward Slaughterhouse near the city of Oroville, California. Arrested and taken to the Butte County Jail, he was placed in a padded cell for the insane. Ishi became an instant media sensation. Newspapers from around the country called him "the last wild Indian" or "the last Stone Age Man in North America." 

   The area's residents were stunned to learn that a "wild" Indian still existed, assuming that all the Mill Creek and Deer Creek Indians had been exterminated decades before. Anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber of the University of California sent Thomas T. Waterman to Oroville to determine who this lone Indian was and to bring Ishi back to San Francisco for further study. Ishi would live the rest of his life at the UC Museum of Anthropology where he devoted his remaining years to sharing much of his Yahi history, language, and culture. 

   On March 25, 1916, less than five-years from being discovered, Ishi died of tuberculosis. Ishi left behind a legacy of invaluable information about his Yahi culture. He is a testament to survival and of the courageous human spirit bridging the divide between two worlds. In 2000, Ishi's repatriated remains and his ashes were buried in the Ishi Wilderness during a privately conducted Native American ceremony. This is my journey in finding Ishi.


If you would like to learn more about Ishi's Untold Story, please visit author Richard L. Burrill's website at -->> http://www.ishifacts.com/