Ishi, the Last Aborigine: The Effects of Civilization on a Genuine Survivor of Stone Age Barbarism

“Kroeber’s ‘Ishi, the Last Aborigine’ invites some reflections on the imperfections of civilization.” – Twentieth Century Magazine, 1912

Ishi (1861 –1916) was the last known member of the Native American Yahi people from the present-day state of California in the United States. The rest of the Yahi (as well as many members of their parent tribe, the Yana) were killed in the California genocide in the 19th century. Ishi, who was widely acclaimed as the “last wild Indian” in America, lived most of his life isolated from modern American culture. In 1911, aged 50, he emerged near the foothills of Lassen Peak in Northern California.

Ishi, which means “man” in the Yana language, is an adopted name. The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber gave him this name because in the Yahi culture, tradition demanded that he not speak his own name until formally introduced by another Yahi. When asked his name, he said: “I have none, because there were no people to name me,” meaning that there was no other Yahi to speak his name on his behalf.

Ishi was taken in by anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley, who both studied him and hired him as a research assistant. He lived most of his remaining five years in a university building in San Francisco.

In 1912, anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber (1876 –1960) published a 12-page article titled, ” Ishi, the Last Aborigine: The Effects of Civilization on a Genuine Survivor of Stone Age Barbarism.” It is this article that has been republished here for the convenience of the interested reader. (Republished from: The World’s Work, Vol. 24, Doubleday, Page & Co., 1912)

Of Ishi, Kroeber concludes that “the strange history of this survivor from the past seems to show that intelligence is not the monopoly of civilization, and that lack of civilization is perhaps due not so much to want of sense and ability as to lack of knowledge and precedent. Ishi has as good a head as the average American; but he is unspeakably ignorant.”