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In a carnival atmosphere, Ishi, the ''wild man'' caught the imagination and attention of thousands of onlooker and curiosity seekers. News of his discovery reached two professors of anthropology at the University of California, Alfred L Kroeber and T. T. Waterman. Both men had an interest in the human saga being plyed out in Oroville for several reasons. Beyond the obvious general anthropological interest, they had been searching for the lost ''wild man'' that had bee sited three years earlier by the surveyor crew a few miles north of Oroville...in the Deer Creek region. They wondered if this could be him.
Two days after Ishi's discovery, Waterman was on a train to Oroville to assume responsibility for the ''wild man.'' Kroeber and Waterman became guardians of Ishi, the last Yahi. For nearly five years Ishi lived at the university's museum while teaching the professors whatever he was able to communicate about the Yahi people..There was no other speakers of his tongue so communication was difficult and tedious. Kroeber persevered and managed to learn and communicate in ''conversational'' Yahi, while Ishi learned about life in 20th century America.
The bond that developed between Kroeber and Ishi was, by all accounts, a close one. They both came to depend upon one another, not only for the pursuits of study they were engaged in, but on a personal level. For Ishi, this relationship must have been especially precious, for he had been alone for so long. Yahi tradition prevented Ishi from speaking his own name or the names of the dead. Kroeber named him "Ishi'' which is Yahi for 'man.'
Kroeber finally got Ishi to agree to take him to see the country of which Ishi spoke. The results of the 1914 excursion to Yahi country are invaluable. In a strange way Kroeber was actually recording the past through living history in the present for the future.
The record of Yahi history...its people, language, beliefs, etc., that we now have is the result and gift of Ishi's survival and entrance into the modern world. Though he had been cruelly left behind as the sole survivor of his people. Had the world not known Ishi, the Yahi would have passed away, remembered as nothing more than the fierce, troublesom ''Mill Creek Indians'' who had a brief and violent appearance on the stage of American expansion.
But the only source of Yahi life could not stay forever. After battling several illnesses during the course of his years at the museum, Ishi eventually contracted tuberculosis. What the ''Bounty Hunters'' and the "Indian Killers'' could not do, kill Ishi, the white mans disease did. He was exhausted, unable to fight this one last battle. While his friend Professor Kroeber was away in New York, Ishi died on March 25th, 1916 in this bed. The curel ironey of this, his only friend in the world, Professor Kroeber, was not to be at his side.
The last Yahi had departed this world. There was no one left to sing his death song. the ''Last Warrior'' of the Yahi tribe had joined his ancestors. Will a man from an earlier era...walk out to face the uncertainty of the modern world, and unlock for us, mysteries of our own past. Or was Ishi truly the "The Last Indian Standing.'
This my friends, is the result of ''Manifest Destiny''. A living, breathing, loving, tribe that bore no ill will to anyone. Wiped from the face of the earth. If we do not learn from this, then we as a country, and a people, will follow Ishi. That is the question that faces us.
informatioin for this article taken from freerepublic, and various other sources.
