"American Indians Want Return of Brain Shipped Off to Smithsonian," by Michelle Locke, Associated, April 5, 1999.
An earthenware container containing the ashes of Ishi, the last Yahi Indian, is shown in its resting place at the Olivet Memorial Park in Colma, CA, March 30, 1999 (AP Photo/Ragan).
An Indian known as Ishi is shown in this July 1912 portrait made in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology/UC Berkeley Regents, E.H. Kemp)
In a simple black jar set atop mottled stone, the ashes of a man believed to be the last of his tribe lie surrounded by the silence of the dead. Chiseled into the surface of the container are the words: ``Ishi. The Last Yahi Indian. 1916.'' In another quiet room 3,000 miles away, Ishi's brain floats in formaldehyde, part of the Smithsonian Institution's anthropological collection. American Indians want Ishi restored in whole to his tribal homeland. ``I think we're breaking new ground due to the fact that, as far as history is written, there's no descendant to the Yahi tribe,'' says Art Angle of the Butte County Native American Cultural Committee, which is requesting the return of Ishi based on a claim of cultural affinity. Smithsonian officials say they're willing to return the brain ‹ but not until they have determined who has a legitimate claim, likely to be a complex task because the Yahi were long ago wiped out by settlers and disease. And while Ishi was long described as the last Yahi, other theories about his ancestry may complicate the repatriation. On Monday, the Legislature tackles the matter with a hearing exploring what became of the man known as ``the last Wild Indian in North America.'' ``The revelation that Ishi's brain was separated from his body prior to cremation and sent to the Smithsonian Institution is a continuing affront to Native Americans and ought to be an embarrassment to the state of California,'' says state Sen. Patrick Johnston, one of the conveners of the hearing.
Ishi walked out of the past and into post-Gold Rush California early one August morning in 1911. He was found, emaciated and near starvation, crouching against a slaughterhouse fence near Oroville, in Butte County, and soon drew the attention of University of California anthropologists. One of them was Alfred Kroeber, a revered Berkeley figure whose name is today emblazoned on the anthropology department building. Ishi was soon installed at the university's anthropology museum in San Francisco. There, according to a 1961 book written by Kroeber's wife, Theodora, he settled into an odd but apparently congenial routine. He made friends with UC researchers, did light work as assistant to the head janitor and became a kind of living exhibit, making spears, bows and arrows as fascinated visitors watched. The middle-aged Ishi never told his name. Anthropologists came up with Ishi, which means ``man'' in a local Indian dialect. By all contemporary accounts, Ishi was happy in his life at the university. But civilization and alien germs proved too much for him. He died in 1916 of what doctors believed was tuberculosis. Researchers knew Ishi did not want to be autopsied. He had once wandered into a hospital dissection room and been horrified, believing bodies should quickly be burned to release the soul. Kroeber, who was in New York when Ishi died, wrote a letter ordering that Ishi's body should be cremated. ``If there is any talk about the interests of science, say for me that science can go to hell,'' he declared. Unfortunately, others couldn't resist the chance. Ishi's body was autopsied, the brain removed.
For years, the whereabouts of Ishi's brain was a mystery. In 1997 the Butte County committee began trying to locate Ishi's remains for proper burial in his tribal homeland near Mount Lassen. A separate investigation started by the UC-San Francisco discovered that Kroeber, despite written objections to an autopsy, had sent the brain to the Smithsonian. The findings, published in February, prompted some soul-searching. UC-Berkeley anthropology professors called the affair ``a troubled chapter of our history'' and acknowledged ``our department's role in what happened to Ishi, a man who had already lost all that was dear to him.'' Smithsonian spokesman Randall Kremer says the museum won't be hurried into abandoning its process. ``We owe it to the individual tribal representatives and we owe it to the American people because this specimen is part of the national collection,'' he says. ``In a sense it already belongs to not only the tribal representatives but all Americans.'' But others say the saga of Ishi has gone on too long. ``We shouldn't get too righteous given the considerable defilement that occurred, perhaps inadvertently, perhaps intentionally, over 83 years,'' Johnston says.
Set into a glassed-in niche, the pot holding Ishi's cremated remains is a rustic contrast to the ornate bronzed and engraved containers favored by most of the residents of the Olivet Memorial Park Columbarium. Whether Ishi's ashes stay here is unclear. Angle wants to reclaim Ishi's ashes as well as his brain, a venture Johnston is exploring. Johnston believes it's time California owned up to its past. ``The romanticization of the Old West and the Gold Rush era ignores the brutal reality that Indians were forced from their homelands and often killed,'' he says. ``For a cemetery, a university, a museum or a government to stand on Western protocol as a way to evade the rightful return of the heritage of Indians to their descendants is a wrong that should not be allowed to stand.''
An earthenware container (left) containing the ashes of Ishi, the last Yahi Indian, is shown in its resting place at the Olivet Memorial Park in Colma, Calif., Tuesday, March 30, 1999 (AP Photo/Susan Ragan). An Indian known as Ishi is shown in this July 1912 portrait (right) made in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology/UC Berkeley Regents, E.H. Kemp)
Ishi's brain returns home. The last of Yahi a living museum in the Bay Area
by Sol Cranfill, Redding Record Searchlight, August 11, 2000
More than 80 years after he died, Ishi's brain is back home. Accompanied by a Smithsonian Institution official, a half-dozen American Indians ‹ from the Pit River tribe and Redding Rancheria ‹ flew to Redding from Washington, D.C., on Thursday with the brain. Ishi's ashes are already in Redding. The arrival of his brain, which was stored for years in a stainless steel tank in the Smithsonian's warehouse in Maryland, means one of the nation's most well-known Indians can finally be laid to rest. In the early part of the 20th century, Ishi ‹ often called the last of the Yahi ‹ was captured in Butte County and jailed before he was used as a live museum exhibit in San Francisco and studied by University of California anthropologist Alfred Kroeber. When he died in 1916, Ishi's brain was removed before the rest of his body was cremated. Until a week or so ago, Ishi's ashes were kept in a Hopi pottery vessel in Colma, said Thomas W. Killion, director of the repatriation office of the Smithsonian Institution. It took a court order, which state Attorney General Bill Lockyer helped secure, to get the ashes returned. It took an act of Congress, though, Killion said, to get Ishi's brain returned. He said repatriation legislation, passed in 1989, opened the door to the return of Indian remains. Ishi's brain and ashes will be buried today in a private ceremony in the foothills of Lassen Peak. "Before the weekend, he will be back with his people," said Mickey Gemmill, Redding Rancheria spiritual leader and a delegate who flew to the Smithsonian on Monday. "The reason Ishi was returned is that we're his closest relatives," he said. Group members spent more than a year trying to prove their link to Ishi to the state and federal governments. They said they felt morally, legally and spiritually obligated to return Ishi so that his spirit could finally go home. Delegate Floyd Buckskin said it is as important to him to get Ishi buried on his native soil as it is for families of slain U.S. soldiers to get their loved ones returned home.
The story of Ishi matters to many more people than just Indians, they said. "Ishi in California is symbolic because he is a historical figure," delegate Barbara Murphy said. In 1961, anthropologist Kroeber's wife, Theodora, published a book about Ishi that was translated into 18 languages and became part of the history taught to California schoolchildren. The members of the delegation said they sensed a deep duty to the famous Indian. "Getting Ishi home was a basic human right," Gemmill said. "It makes my heart feel good," said Leon Benner, Redding Rancheria tribal chairman, after the trip. The group said it wants to soon help others return some of the thousands of other Indian remains still in museums and universities across the nation. "This was just a start," Benner said. "I look forward to the day when we have so many remains that we don't have a place to put them," Murphy said. In the meantime, the group is planning a formal ceremony in Lassen Volcanic National Park to honor Lockyer and others who helped them to accomplish their mission. Though a date has not yet been set, the public is invited.
