This Day on August 29, 1911:
A Survivor of American Indian Genocide Walks Out of the California Wilderness
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In the early part of the twentieth century—following the near annihilation of California’s Native Americans the century before—a singular event occurred. In many ways, Natives and non-Natives still experience the impact of this event on communities across the state.
Bruce A. Hardy (Photographer), View of “Ishi Site,” Oroville, CA, 1963
Courtesy of Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Ishi at Time of His Capture, Oroville, Butte County, September 1911
Published in Popular Science Monthly (March 1915)
Courtesy of Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Ishi, the Last Yahi Indian Speaker (center), at an Unveiling of an Indian Monument, Lincoln Park, Alameda, California, 1914
California Historical Society
Courtesy of Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, UC Berkeley
To the museum’s anthropologists, staff, and visitors, Ishi imparted his language, survival and crafts skills, culture, and personal beliefs. To them—and to us even today—his life brought new understandings of Native American heritage in the context of and in contrast to twentieth-century urban life.
Courtesy of Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley
Native and non-Native scholars, artists, cultural and educational leaders, and community members continue to explore these understandings. At the California Historical Society, for example:
- In conjunction with our year-long 2015 exhibition celebrating the 1915 San Francisco World’s Fair, the projected light artist Ben Wood examined Ishi’s life within the context of the fair, which Ishi attended. Wood’s piece Lopa Pikta (Rope Picture), a sound and light installation, was displayed in the windows of the California Historical Society after dark. View the installation on our YouTube channel
California Historical Society
- Beginning July 2016, CHS offered two Native American exhibitions. One examined the impact of California’s only major Indian War (the Modoc War of 1872–73). The other, Native Portraits: Contemporary Tintypes by Ed Drew, featured contemporary tintype portraits by photographer Ed Drew of members of the Klamath, Modoc, and Pit River Paiute tribes, some of them descendants of Modoc War survivors.
- In October 2016, CHS invited author Benjamin Madley to speak about his newly published book An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873, with special guest Greg Sarris, Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. View the recording on our YouTube channel
This post was originally published on August 29, 2016 and has since been updated
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- William Bauer, “Stop Hunting Ishi,” Boom: A Journal of California4, no. 3 (Fall 2014); http://www.boomcalifornia.com/2014/09/stop-hunting-ishiTheodora Kroebler, Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961)
- Benjamin Madley, “It’s time to acknowledge the genocide of California’s Indians,” Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2016; http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-madley-california-genocide-20160522-snap-story.html
- Carl Nolte, “Ishi, last of his tribe, bridges 2 worlds in film every night,” San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 29, 2015; http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/nativeson/article/Ishi-last-of-his-tribe-bridges-2-worlds-in-film-6473649.php
- Alan Taylor, “‘An American Genocide’ by Benjamin Madley,” New York Times, May 27, 2016; http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/books/review/an-american-genocide-by-benja.html?_r=0