Customer Reviews

Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America, Deluxe Illustrated Edition

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This book is one of two I routinely give to people who move to northern California. The other one is The Ohlone Way, by Malcolm Margolin. Ishi was the lone survivor of a doomed tribe of Yahi Indians on the slopes of Mt. Lassen. Other members of his tribe were murdered by a planned campaign of genocide during the settling of the West. When Ishi stumbled out of the hills of his birth in 1911, he landed in the 20th Century, huddled in the corner of a cattle corral on a ranch, dressed in rags, starving, desperately lonely, and probably certain he would be killed. Instead, a wise sheriff in Oroville called on some anthropologists from Univ of CA in Berkeley, and Ishi eventually came under the benevolent but somewhat demeaning (he was made the centerpiece of a museum exhibit) protection of Alfred Kroeber. It is Kroeber's wife who wrote this touching, heartwarming, illuminating and ultimately tragic history of Ishi's life in the 'modern' world.
Most moving for me was a long middle section that recounted a magical summer when Ishi took Kroeber and his teenage son back to Mt. Lassen and showed them his native territory. They lived together as unspoiled and free Native Americans for the summer, hunting deer, swimming in cold streams, living in huts and caves, building fires, making bows and arrows... An experience that was destined never to be repeated.
Wonderful archival photographs supplement the imminently readable text.
Don't miss this very special and quintessentially Californian piece of history. But there's no rush: this book is destined to remain in print forever.

Imagine this: it's the 20th century, we have electricity, movies, telephones, trains, cars, the latest audio recording devices, indoor plumbing, and access to the usual luxuries and amenities of our western world. Then one day - here in the United States, out of our own country - a man appears out of the wilderness, almost magically transferred from the stone age to the steel age. Truth is said to be stranger than fiction, and the story of Ishi is one such example. Ishi was the last of the Yahi Indians, living in Northern California under a cloak of fear, secrecy, and evasion from white men, carrying on this lifestyle for the better part of four decades. In this thoroughly researched book, Theodora Kroeber tells Ishi's story. She covers the historical and geographical background of the Yahi Indians, how their lives began to change and their numbers decimated with the coming of the caucasions in the mid- 19th century, and how Ishi and the few remaining people of his tribe lived until Ishi was the last one left. She then tells us about the man himself, the last (happy) five years of his life in San Francisco, and the adjustments and learning Ishi went through in his new home. The author does a superb job of comparing and contrasting Ishi's stone age world with the steel age world, without the tedious prose often involved in such writing. This book is highly readable and strongly recommended.

I've read this excellent book three times now, and each time it is rewarding. My family has vacationed near the area where Ishi walked out of the woods, and his story became even more real and more tragic to me when I saw the beautiful land that his people lost. Kroeber has provided an important last glimpse of a Native American living in the old way. In addition to the obvious issue of our decimation of indigenous peoples, the book also raises important questions about the treatment given Ishi when he came to live in white culture.

This book tells a true story of a common science fiction theme, How would a Stone Age person acclimate himself to modern civilization, if suddenly transported there. Ishi was the last remnant of a California hunter-gatherer tribe. He was starving and near death when discovered by a California rancher. Thus began his journey from primitive beginnings, to journalistic sensation, to scientific curiosity, and finally as a working member of society in the California of the 1920's. and `30's. As the subject of scientific study, Ishi shows that basically people everywhere and for all time are the same, but it is the differences that of course makes it interesting. One example is that at first anthropologists thought Ishi could not count above the number ten. It was later found that he saw no reason to count abstractly. He had a numbering system that extended quite high when physical objects were present. One of the most shocking revelations for Ishi, were not the buildings, cars, trains or machinery of modern life, but the number of people that existed. This is a man who had never seen a crowd of people, he had watched his remote lingering tribe-members die off when he was a child . A hunter-gather lifestyle can only support a sparse population. From Ishi's perspective the largest crowd and perhaps the world consisted of those fifty tribe members when he was a young boy. The book gives a humorous account of Ishi's shock of seeing a crowded San Francisco Beach on a hot summer day. The book is very well written, an easy read and very entertaining. It is surprising that this book is not more popular.

This was one of the most fascinating and thought provoking books I have ever read. It is a beautifully written book that brings with it an entire range of emotions from rage and disgust, to hope and forgiveness.

I thought that the best part about this book was the look into Ishi's Yahi and Yana culture, and its overview of California indian tribes in general. The myth that the Californian indians were a simple and childlike race subsisting on what they could dig from the ground is thoroughly debunked by this book.

California's varied geography produced one of the most culturally diverse places on planet earth prior to white settlement. Interestingly, this belief that California is made up of many sub-states still exists, and books have been written about the various regional differences within California. The same was true for the aboriginal tribes, and Kroeber brings amazing facts to light about this. According to Kroeber, California was made up of 250 distinct tribes, many with their own languages, culture, and customs. Of the six super-languauge groups of North American Indians, 5 were represented in California. According to best estimates, these five language groups divided themselves into 113 distict spoken languages. Only Sudan and New Guinea have comparable cultural and linguistic diversity. One fact that floored me was that the Yahi language was bifurcated between a male and female dialect. Males and females used these dialects when they were in groups of their own sex. When a male reached puberty, he was taken from the care of his mother and other women, and lived in almost an exclusively male world were he learned the male dialect and hunting skills.

Kroeber opens the book with this linguistic/cultural look at California indian culture just prior to white migration, and goes into great detail about Ishi's tribal culture in particular. (We even get a lesson on the term "glottochronology" which is the study of the roots of a particular language). About a third of the book is this background, and I found it to be absolutely fascinating.

The book also spends considerable time on the extermination of the Northern California indians and Ishi's tribe in particular. Of course, these accounts are horrible and no less disturbing than accounts of the Jewish holocaust. The indians were seen as varmits, and they were exterminated with the same attitude that the wolves, grizzlies, and other unwanted wildlife were exterminated. Of course, this was not the attitude of all whites, but not enough of them stood up to stop the carnage.

Beyond the stories of human slaughter, racism and genocide, the greatest tragedy was that cultures, which existed with amazing complexity and richness for centuries, were obliterated and replaced with a white mono-culture within 15 - 20 years.

The last third of the book deals with Ishi's discovery and how he lived his remaining days under the care of the authors husband, an anthropologist at UC Berkeley. The relationship between the anthropology department at Berkeley and Ishi was one of the only beneficial outcomes of the collision between Anglo and Native cultures. Ishi (not his real name, but a pseudonym he adopted after capture) is given a room at the anthropology museum and is made assistant janitor to help cover his living expenses.

It is during this time that he imparts his language and culture to save it from oblivion and to provide future generations, like myself, the ability to learn about Yahi life. Ishi is also treated with respect and dignity, and despite a life of mistreatment, Ishi shows no resentment or bitterness towards white society.

I believe the main injustice done to Ishi by Berkeley was that after his death they allowed the removal of his brain for study, in direct violation of his cultural beliefs about keeping the body whole for cremation. His brain was sent it to the Smithsonian Institute where it was kept in storage for almost 100 years. This was unnescesary, and it has taken almost an entire century to return his brain and provide final dignity to this man.

This poignant portrayal of the most dramatic culture clash in American history reads like a literary bio-drama. Theodora Kroeber's exhaustive research and respectful treatment of aboriginal heritage provide accurate details of a successful Indian culture, which so-called Civilization had effaced from the earth by 1911. Starting with the geology and anthropology of the Yana and Yahi tribes (north of San Francisco Bay), she recreates their vanished lifstyle.

Part One describes the relatively peaceful existence of local native American tribes who learned to coexist both with Nature and each other. But the advent of the white man destroyed the fragile ecological and social balance which had existed for centuries, as Yankees and Hispanics gradually encroached on Indian territory--scorning their customs as "savage." Ishi's tribe was hated and ultimately hunted into extinction. Himself the last survivor, he staggered into a frontier town, gaunt, ragged and in mourning-- expecting instant death. Having lost touch with the last human beings who understood his pre-Columbian world, he had nothing to live for.

Part Two compassionately depicts his amazing metamorphosis from the last wild man to Mr. Ishi. He never revealed his true Indian name to any white man, but accepted the generic word, "Ishi" as his new name which simply means, Man. He emerges as a surprisingly gentle person, who adapted successfully to life in the modern world. Making friends with selected Americans, learning to live and almost thrive in the municipal jungle, he earned respect and admiration for his "primitive" skills. In fact Ishi left indelible memories upon those who were privileged to know him well and enjoy his company. His sentimental jouurney back into his past and former territory was well documented in photographs and (now disintegrated) film. What a privilege it must have been to observe this calm and dignified man demonstrate lost customs and survival skills.

From warrior to janitor/custodian this honorable man maintined his human dignity in all aspects of 20th century life, until his untimely death from TB five years later. In fact Ishi-made artifacts are treasured in Bay Area museums. One wonders if we of the modern world could adapt so well or philosophically to conditions so foreign as a trip through generations of Western achievement; how would we cope if we were transported forward in time by several centuries? Ishi adapted with grace and courtesy, inadvertantly causing us to wonder who the real "savages" are/were. But this book is not a racist guilt trip--rather it proves a personal odyssey which can teach and touch us all.

This is an incredibly well-written account of a solemn, sad, stone age man, calling himself Ishi, who wandered one day out of the forest into 20th century California civilization. For background information -- the author, Theodora Kroeber, was the wife of one of the men privileged to be Ishi's friends, Alfred Kroeber. Dr. Alfred Kroeber was a very important American anthropologist early in this century -- a student of Franz Boas, and a parent, with Theodora, of the writer Ursula K. (for Kroeber) LeGuin. Theodora Kroeber, at any rate, was in an excellent position to tell Ishi's story from the inside, and she does a fantastic job of it.

Perhaps it's significant that this, the most impactful account of Ishi, was written NOT by an anthropologist, but by an anthropologist's wife. She was able to think simply as a non-"objective" fellow human being, and she talks about Ishi with great warmth and sympathy. Think for a moment of what it might be like to be wholly unacquainted with even the rudest, most fundamental elements of civilization, and to need to fit in. Ishi met this challenge, in his own time, and in his own way. You will never forget his story.

I would just like to add, very quickly, that even today Ishi's story is sometimes lived out anew. In Massachusetts, several public schools have taken in students from tiny villages in the Sudan. These students are learning for the first time in their lives of such things as writing, money, and shoes. Stairs, of all things, are very confusing to some of them. I don't even want to think about what they make of such overwhelmingly powerful modern developments as the atom bomb, shopping malls, or Britney Spears.

Ishi's story is timeless, yet timely for all who choose to ponder it. This book is amazing. One billion thumbs up.

"Ishi in Two Worlds" tells the tale of an Indian man who was used to living a normal (to his people) way of life and then was pushed into the full brunt of modern American life by a cruel accident. This book looks at how it is the story of a man who dwelled in two worlds, how he spent most of his life in the ways and sphere of the Yahi Indians, and how, after his tribe's eradication, he was forced to live in modern civilization, in the context of the modern American university among well-meaning anthropologists who wished to study and learn from him.

"Ishi in Two Worlds" is rather dense for me, a thirteen year old in the 8th grade, but once I started reading, I could hardly put this book down. I loved reading this book, and watching how Ishi changed over time, but at the same time, didn't really change at all. (If that makes any sense.)

I would highly suggest this book to anybody over the age of 13, especially if you are interested in learning about the last wild Indian (or to be more politically correct, Native American) This book is a great read, and it will provide a great look at a very specific piece of California history.

At the beginning of the 20th century a half-starved 50-year-old Indian was found in a remote farm in California. He was the last surving Yaki Indian. Before the arrival of white settlers there had been probably more than 2000 Indians of that tribe in the area. They were wiped out in less than 80 years by the diseases carried by europeans, the reduction of their natural environment and periodical retaliatory expeditions organized by band of vigilantes to revenge a stolen cow or horse or the killing of one white settler. The last surviving Yaki was lucky enough to be "adopted" by the curators of the Museum of Berkeley University. There the Indian lived happily for 5 years, working as janitor and a sort of living exhibit. The anthropologist studied him and his world, and he studied the world of whites, showing a remarkable degree of adaptability to modern American society. He was called Ishi (=man) by the staff of the museum because he always refused to say his own name. Loved by everybody and friend of everybody, he died of the tubercolosis that his natural defence did not recognize. The story was written 50 years after his death by the daughter of the museum's director through the notes of her father (she had never met Ishi). Even being a perfectly scientific book, it has the power of moving of a novel and contains a terrible caveat for the modern man.

I could write an enormous review, but I want to keep it very simple.
Just read the book!
The most intriguing part is when Ishi walked out of nowhere into "civilization".
AWESOME, AMAZING, GREAT, WONDERFUL.