Ishi's Brain: In Search of America's Last "Wild" Indian

by Orin Starn

A chronicle of the search for the truth about the life and death of a legendary Native American. Captured in the hills of northern California in 1911, Ishi, the last stone-age Indian in North America, was brought to San Francisco by the famous anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, and became a living museum display until his death five years later.

Ishi's Brain is a first-person account by anthropologist Orin Starn, who sought to unravel the mystery of Ishi's true nature and to locate his brain in the archives of the Smithsonian museum in the hope of finally repatriating Ishi's remains. The trail to Ishi's brain leads Starn through the painful history of the extermination of the Indians, the strange and sometimes scandalous history of anthropology, and the changing, mixed-up world of Native California today. This absorbing new portrait of Ishi, wild man of Deer Creek, museum curiosity, and last of his tribe, will appeal to anyone interested in Native America, a story of science and scandal, and the life and legend of California's most famous Indian. 15 illustrations.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Biography, Native American, The United States Of America, College

320 pages, Hardcover

Published February 1, 2004

About the author

Orin Starn is Professor and Chair of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. He is the author of Nightwatch: The Politics of Protest in the Andes and a co-editor of The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics, both also published by Duke University Press. His most recent book is the award-winning Ishi’s Brain: In Search of America’s Last “Wild” Indian. An avid golfer with a five handicap, Starn has written about golf for the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers and provided commentary on ESPN and NPR. He blogs about golf at golfpolitics.blogspot.com and regularly teaches a course about sports and society.

Reviews

[Ushan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1911, a Native American man who looked about 50 appeared near a slaughterhouse in Oroville, CA, a town on the border of the Sacramento Valley and the Sierra Nevada mountains. He looked starving; his hair was cropped short. The man did not understand English, Spanish or Maidu, a Native American language then still spoken in the valley. He was fed and put into the local jail while the authorities debated, what to do with him. An anthropologist at the University of California read the news of the strange Indian in a newspaper, and came to Oroville by train with a list of words of Yana, a language known to have been spoken by hill tribes. In the 1860s members of the southernmost band of Yana have been massacred by white settlers in retaliation for the Indians raiding their farms; apparently, some escaped the massacre and went into hiding. As late as 1908 surveyors stumbled upon an Indian camp in the mountains and ransacked it. The man in jail understood some of the words; he did speak a variety of Yana. He was released and taken to UC Berkeley's Museum of Anthropology (now Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology), then in San Francisco. The man worked as a janitor and a "living exhibit" at the museum; he taught the anthropologists how to hunt with bow and arrow, how to lure rabbits, how to flake obsidian into arrow points. He took San Francisco children on quail hunts at Golden Gate Park. He recorded his tribe's mythology and lore on wax cylinders. In 1916 he died of tuberculosis. We do not know the man's name: it was his tribe's custom that one man would be introduced to another by a friend, and since he was the last of his tribe, he had no friends to introduce him, and did not want to break the custom. He is usually referred to as Ishi, the word for man in his native language. His tribe and language are known as Yahi, which means person in his native dialect of Yana; the word Yana means the same thing in another dialect of the language.

After the sensation of "the last wild Indian in North America" had subsided, Ishi was forgotten for over 40 years. In 1961 Theodora Kroeber, second wife of Alfred Kroeber, a famous anthropologist who worked with Ishi at the museum, wrote a book Ishi in Two Worlds about the man. The book has a million copies in print, and has been translated into many foreign languages. Kroeber also wrote a children's book about Ishi, also a commercial success. I bought and read Ishi in Two Worlds when I was about 19; a couple of years later I took a History of California class in college, and the professor, a specialist on the Communist Party USA and a fan of the Black Panther Party, put this book on the required reading list but told us to watch out for the biases that are characteristic of its time (these weren't her exact words, but this is the gist I remember). As Starn tells in his book, Ishi in Two Worlds does have biases that are characteristic of its time, but probably not in the sense the professor meant.

The 1960s and the 1970s were one of the periods of white America's infatuation with all things native. It was then when Carlos Castaneda's tale of apprenticeship with an (apparently fictional) Yaqui Indian shaman was published and became a bestseller. It was a time of the Vietnam war, when a book about evil white Americans' slaughter of good colored people and the sad tale of a survivor was sure to find a wide readership. The reality, says Starn, was less black-and-white and more interesting than Kroeber makes it to be. For starters, the people in the hills who raided white farms in the 1860s were not only pure-blooded Yahi Mesolithic hunters-gatherers. According to the newspapers of the time, some spoke English and used firearms, whatever their tribal identity. Kroeber took the number of Indians killed in the massacres from the memoirs of an Indian fighter written 50 years after the fact; contemporary newspapers give much smaller numbers. The arrow points made by Ishi at the museum are different from the arrow points found at Yahi archeological sites, but similar to the arrow points used by lowland tribes; perhaps Ishi's father or uncle was a lowlander and taught him how to make them; perhaps the white invasion made friends of erstwhile enemies. The baskets looted from Ishi's camp by the surveyors in 1908 were also more typical of Maidu than Yahi style. Ishi and his family survived until 1911 not as much by hunting and gathering as by stealing food and tools from the whites, which was excusable because they no longer had the liberty to roam the mountains and shoot wild game like their ancestors did. When modern archaeologists found the camp looted in 1908, they first thought it a pioneer camp because of all the late-19th-early-20th-century manufactured articles: knives, a saw blade, fabric and so on. Only things like flat river rocks used for grinding acorns convinced the archeologists that this was the Indian camp.

Much of the book is about Ishi's remains. According to federal law, Native American tribes can claim the remains of their tribesmen from museums and bury them according to the tribal custom. Does this apply to Ishi, who was the last of his tribe? When Ishi died, his body was cremated and the ashes stored at a cemetery in Colma, CA as "Indian Ishi"; however, it turned out that his brain was in a jar at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. After many bureaucratic adventures, they were reburied in 2000 in the former Yahi tribal territory by the descendants of other Yana bands.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

My grandmother had a copy of Ishi, Between Two Worlds which I read one summer up at her cottage in Michigan as a child. It made a big impression back then so that Starn's critique of portions of it herein made sense. I had been expecting such as well as an expansion of the story of Ishi's life and was surprised that in addition Starn actually deals with the story of Ishi's brain, once lost, since discovered and returned to be buried with his ashes. All of this is given within the context of the history of the relations between native Americans and white settlers (and white anthropologists), with a focus on California.

[Shane Gower · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book very fascinating! I learned of Ishi while studying the Gold Rush in Sacramento as part of the National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks of American History grant program. While there we visited the State Indian museum of California and our Indian guide (part Ohlone) told us about Ishi and this book. Having studied Maine's Native Americans some, I was intrigued. The book was all the more interesting to me because I had just been in that part of California where Ishi had lived. It was really interesting to read about Ishi. I found myself wondering what would it be like to be the last person of your people? Ishi made himself known to civilization in 1911 and apparently had been living without contact with "white civilization", his people massacred and decimated by disease. After making himself known he lived in a museum for 5 years and willingly told anthropologist Alfred Kroeber all he knew about his people. He died from tuberculosis and his body was autopsied against his will. His brain was removed and sent to the Smithsonian where it had been kept ever since. The author, Orin Starn was involved in trying to get the brain back to California for a proper burial and much of the book is devoted to this little adventure. In places it felt like he was trying to drag the story out. To be honest, this probably could have been a 3 part article in the New Yorker rather than a whole book. Some chapters seem to almost repeat in a summary what had happened up to that point. However, I was drawn in by the journey to find where Ishi's village had been and the saga of returning the brain. I like how Starn portrayed the issue of archaeologists claiming Native bones to study vs. the the idea that dead bodies are viewed by Natives as sacred and should not be touched. He even ended on a mystery that I am still pondering. Ishi had recorded 5 songs in 1914 of his people. No one knew what they meant or even tried to understand them because Ishi had claimed to be "Yahi" and none were left who knew his language. Starn happened to be with an Indian who had heard the recording and knew that the language was a dialect of Maidu known as Mountain Maidu. The Indian also said there were only 4 older people left who knew the language, Starn took the recordings to them and they listened to them. They were grim and the first response was "he shouldn't have sung that song". Another asked when he died and after being told it was 2 years later he said "I'm not surprised". As it turns out, they were implying he sang the songs as a form of suicide. He sang songs of doctoring, powerful songs according to the Indians. Did he do this intentionally? Maybe he didn't even know what the songs meant? Did he think since no one was left who knew them that it didn't matter? Was he sending us a message? Was he trying to preserve a part of his people? What would he think that 100 years later we finally found out what he was singing? Compelling stuff!! Nice work Mr. Starn!

[Sandra Park · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to reading this book after I completed an online course taught by the author. However, I found the book hard to read. It is fairly boring. In some places, it takes a long time to make a point. In other places, it seems to skip over things. It should be a fascinating story but I actually gave up less than halfway through. This is unusual because I have been known to complete many books that I was not enjoying, just because I like things to be completed.

[Debra Lilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I work closely with archaeologists and live in Sacramento, California, a couple of hours south of Ishi’s original home. I’ve visited the museum at Berkeley where he lived the “civilized” portion of his life. My work touches peripherally on NAGPRA and repatriation of Native American objects to their rightful owners.
This is to frame my comment that I still learned a lot from Ishi’s Brain . It’s a nicely told account of an anthropologist’s efforts to learn what happened and to help the people who wanted to set it right. Orin Starn talked to many people with inside knowledge about the main players - Alfred and Theodora Kroeber, Smithsonian Institution anthropologists, and Ishi himself. The takeaway lesson for me is this: Historical events are never as straightforward as we want them to be, and it’s still worth the effort to find out as much of the truth as we can.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ishi’s Brain is a hybrid of two distinct styles. On the one hand, it is a first person narrative written in a less formal prose. Starn engaged in a great deal of self disclosure about what Ishi meant to him as a child, about the challenges he faced in trying to do the research on which the book was based, and about his own opinions about what he found out about Ishi and what had happened to his brain after his death. This personal element as well as the timely inclusion of conversations which he had with people and quotations of some of the writings about Ishi made the book engaging.

On the other hand, IB features elements of what one would expect to see in a study done by an academic anthropologist like the author. He reviewed dozens of primary and secondary sources. He also critiqued some well known and highly regarded sources for omissions and/or discrepancies. Although footnotes were not provided in the text, there were about 30 pages of them at the end of the book. In assimilating and integrating all of the information he gleaned Starn provided a great deal of background and contextual information about a variety of relevant topics. These included the history of Ishi's Yahi tribe and other California Native American tribes which were in proximity to his; the brutal extermination which Native Americans suffered at the hands of prospectors during the Gold Rush of the 1840’s-50’s and by settlers during from 1860 until the 1880’s; the anthropologist who became Ishi’s caretaker, Alfred Kroeber, and other individuals involved with Ishi during and after his life; the significance and dynamics of the efforts of late 20th century Native Americans to regain the cultural artifacts and remains of deceased Indians; how the Smithsonian Museum which has thousands of NA artifacts interacted with the tribes; and the complex nature of the identities and lifestyles of 21st century Native Americans in California.

I agree with those Goodreads reviewers who criticized the author for sometimes going too far astray in his musings about some of these issues. But I also think that this tendency made for a rich and multifaceted presentation.

For those interested this is a link to an interview with Starn around the time that the book was published in 2004:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=...

[Pamela · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was OK but frustrating I think the book wasn’t what Stars had set out to write, that it meandered to side stories & I never felt there was a particular argument or too many arguments being made. Not a good book for HIST2010 when you need your monograph to trust their sources, either. Worth reading but part of a whole series of Ishi books I imagine.

[Frances Starn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible book with so much breadth & depth about Native American life and how its been interpreted & entangled in American culture. I truly learned so much from reading this. Well researched & well considered.

[Rennie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Less about Ishi and what his tribe experienced than I had expected and overall the book was long-winded and somewhat boring.

[Benjamin Brandt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to read it for class. Narrative heavy and an ok read but j wasn’t too engaged

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Theodora Kroeber's Ishi in Two Worlds for a class on the Literature of Ethnography; this is the modern counterpoint, and I'm excited to read it for myself.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Orin Starn uses to good effect the mix of history and personal narrative that are becoming common lately.

The questions he raises along the way are the questions that have come to dominate anthropology recently, questions of identity, authenticity, hybridism, inequality. They are questions that can strike at the heart of what anthropologists propose to do - understand other people(s) - and they are hard to answer. There is value, in fact, in just raising or acknowledging them.

But Starn also tries out a few answers, if never explicitly. In detailing the debate between blood or culture defining identity, he clearly prefers culture, as he acknowledges intermarriage and "fractional" Indians as true Indians. He also seems to recognize the legitimacy of constructed culture, at least for Indians, as they reclaim and recreate traditions, practices that lapsed for at least a generation, often without clear direction. But even without a definitive idea of the proper structure or content, the rituals we see performed are unquestionably authentic in Starn's telling.

And why wouldn't they be? These answers conform, of course, to the ideas of modern cultural anthropologists. Culture is created as it is performed, an endless, messy feedback loop of tradition and innovation, intentional and otherwise.

[SJ Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starn, an anthropologist from Duke, had long been interested in the story of Ishi, the last of the Yahi and chose to write a very nice book re-telling Ishi's tale. Starn points out that previous work (a book and films) had been plagued with "white man's guilt" and did not always present an accurate re-telling of Ishi's background, reasons for turning himself in to white authorities, and what happened to him after he died.
This story is about more than one Native American or even Native Americans in California, but about the negative affects that the colonization of the Americas by Europeans had on Native peoples already living here. Starn does not shy away from describing how Native California peoples were treated by Euro-Americans and how many Native Americans were treated as exotic freaks of nature and put on display in museums and side shows. Although, Ishi fared a bit better than other indigenous people who were turned over to museums, he faced the consequences of interactions with white scientists after his death.
This is a very interesting book that scientists and non-scientists alike can digest and turn to for a very accurate and well-written account of Ishi, the overall treatment of Native Californians after contact, and how Native peoples today are actively negotiating the lasting affects of colonialism and their place in American society.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a well written and interesting account of the life of Ishi, famous as the last surviving "wild" Indian of northern California, and about the efforts of various people and groups to learn more about Ishi, and to repatriate his remains to groups that desired to give them a proper burial. It is also a detective story about the efforts of the author and others to learn the truth about what had happened to Ishi's brain after his death, and why.

Starn does a pretty good job of exploring the motivations of scientists and physicians who seem to have both befriended and exploited Ishi after he surrendered himself to white society following the deaths of the last of his tribal companions. Starn also relates his involvement in the repatriation efforts, and the conflicts and personalities that played parts in the effort.

This is well worth the read if you are at all interested in the uglier parts of American history and America's sense of manifest destiny.

[Dawn Mateo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best anthropological book I have ever read about Ishi. I love doing my own research to further my knowledge in a subject that is less than 50 miles from my home. I learned of Ishi a few years back in college, so I already had a small interest in the subject and the legend.It was thrilling for me to open maps and realize I have been very near to every place spoken about in the book (that is, in Northern California) I was ASTOUNDED at how well Starn researched his information, not a stone was left unturn. I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone who has interest in local history (again, north eastern california.) I can't stop raving about this book! If I could give it 10 stars I would!!!!

[Ess Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the history of Ishi and the journey of his brain through the academic and scientific worlds was interesting, this book felt too long by a third. I felt that the sections written about the Indian tribes involved in the reclamation efforts was clumsy. The history of anthropology was handled nicely, the detective-novelesque portions of the book were interesting, but the discovery of the smoking gun in the archives was anti-climactic and happened far too early, leaving a lot of pages to slog through with very little reward.

[Peggy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling and thoughtful, this is the story of Ishi, the last "wild" Indian, and his life after he was captured (or turned himself in) in 1916. Although I've been familiar with Ishi since I read about him as a teenager, this book adds a lot to my understanding of the man, the anthropologists who studied him, and the way we now regard Native Americans. The writing is personal, as the author tells how he became involved in the Ishi story, and sought to examine it without the mythologies of either the noble savage or the evil whites.

[D · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is so poorly written but full of things I want to know about. It is interesting enough for me to keep turning the pages. I wish there was more about Ishi though. The further the story goes, the lamer the book gets. This book bore such little information on the actual subject matter, but am still glad I got around to finishing it.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an incredible account of what happened to Ishi in California, and I really enjoyed the parts that were about Ishi himself - however, towards the end of the book, the author descends into a somewhat narcissistic account of his interaction with California tribes, which includes gossip and unrelated information. He should have ended the book 100 pages before he did.

[Betsy McGee · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the book is not strictly about Ishi, the last "wild indian", it's a great story about what repatriation means for Native American tribes. It's also a great story about some of the clumsy first steps American Anthropology made.

[Meredith]

interested in native americans...this one has been interesting so far....remembering watching the tv movie made about Ishi...

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unusual (for me) foray into nonfiction. This one was recommended by a work friend, and it's very readable so far, even to little ol' fiction-oriented me.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ishi's story gets a modern update, along with the interesting history of anthropology in America.

[Emmy D. Wells · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great story. Informative and compelling.

[Kathy Choi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great professor of mine! Interesting read on a somewhat obscure topic.