Wild Men: Ishi and Kroeber in the Wilderness of Modern America (New Narratives in American History)
Sackman adds to the extensive writings on Ishi, the last survivor of the Yahi tribe of Northern California, by delving into the unique relationship between the “wild” man and Alfred Kroeber, head of the Museum of Anthropology at Berkeley. With the Sierra Club, Kroeber and Ishi took nature walks around San Francisco, and Ishi shared his knowledge of the artifacts at the museum with his mentor, who had him installed there as a janitor. Three years after emerging from the wild in 1911, Ishi joins Kroeber and others for a three-week tour of his former homeland, which proved to be an emotional visit as it now seemed to be a strange and lonely place. The Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915 is a symbolic moment as Ishi appears with a Blackfeet group as their guest of honor, and Kroeber bristles at ethnographic displays he described as of the “cheap show variety.” The encounter between these two men “embodied the whole story of the American frontier,” Sackman maintains, a story still debated today. --Deborah Donovan