page_title: Ishi
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Ishi / Biography / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Ishi's Quiver
context_page_description: Ishi was the last known member of the Native American Yahi people from California in the United States. The rest of the Yahi were killed in the California genocide in the 19th century. Ishi lived most of his life isolated from modern American culture. In 1911, aged 50, he came out 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 for him.
  Ishi was taken in by anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley, who both studied him and hired him as a janitor. He lived most of his remaining five years in a university building in San Francisco. His life was shown and discussed in many films and books. A popular biography was Ishi in Two Worlds published by Theodora Kroeber in 1961.
context_section_description: In 1865, Ishi and his family were attacked in the Three Knolls Massacre, in which 40 of their tribesmen were killed. Although 33 Yahi survived to escape, cattlemen killed about half of the survivors. The last survivors, including Ishi and his family, went into hiding for the next 44 years. Their tribe was believed to be extinct. Prior to the California Gold Rush of 1848–1855, the Yahi population numbered 404 in California, but the total Yana in the larger region numbered 2,997.
  The gold rush brought tens of thousands of miners and settlers to northern California, putting pressure on native populations. Gold mining polluted the water and killed fish. Deer left the area. The settlers brought new infectious diseases such as smallpox and measles. The northern Yana group became extinct while the central and southern groups (who later became part of Redding Rancheria) and Yahi populations dropped dramatically. Searching for food, they came into conflict with settlers, who set bounties of 50 cents per scalp and 5 dollars per head on the natives. In 1865, the settlers attacked the Yahi while they were still asleep.
  Since then more has been learned. It is estimated that with this massacre, Ishi's entire cultural group, the Yana/Yahi, may have been reduced to about sixty people. From 1859 to 1911, Ishi's remote band became more and more mixed with non-Yahi Indian representatives, such as Wintun, Nomlaki, and Pit River members.
  
  In 1879, the federal government started Indian boarding schools in California. Some men from the reservations became renegades in the hills. Volunteers among the settlers and military troops carried out more campaigns against the northern California Indian tribes during that period.
  In late 1908, a group of surveyors found the camp with two men, a middle-aged woman, and an elderly woman. These were Ishi, his uncle, his younger sister, and his mother. Three ran away while the old woman hid herself in blankets because she was sick and unable to run away. The surveyors stole from the camp, and Ishi's mother died soon after he came back. His sister and uncle never returned.
caption: Ishi's quiver of arrows (Richard Burrill, 2011).
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