Ishi: Man of Peace

On August 29, 1911 early in the morning a man was found outside a slaughterhouse in Oroville, California. He was an Indian man at the limit of exhaustion and fear, nearly starved. His hair had been burned short and he was naked except for a scrap of old canvas he carried. He was a middle aged man who, for several days, had been on an aimless trek leaving his home land for probably the first time in his life. He walked without hope, indifferent to whether he lived or died. He staggered from grief and loneliness. When he was found by the men at the slaughterhouse he was promptly put in jail. The man came to be known as Ishi.

He was the last living Yana Indian. His entire race, but for him, wiped from the face of the earth they loved. Ishi had spent his entire life trying to live in peace. As the white man flocked to California by the tens of thosuands, seeking gold and riches the Yana Indians were declared a nuisance standing in the way of an" advanced "civilization. The Yana Indians had been living in peace for hundreds of years, with all the surrounding tribes sharing the available natural rsources peacefully. The Yana had no weapons of war. Their arsenal was no more than the tools by which they lived, bow and arrow, spear, knife, harpoon, rock and sling. They lived a good life. They had no crime, no rape, no murder, no thieves. They were a people of integrity and high moral standards. The elderly were respected and their knowledge was sought out by the young. They had learned how to live successfully and peacefully over the centuries.

The "civilized" whites who came after the riches of California placed a bounty on the Indians of Northern California and hunted them for sport. A party of bounty hunters would approach an Indian camp at night and open fire on them as they began to rise for the day. Quite sporting for such a civilized race, you know.

Ishi lived his ENTIRE LIFE in hiding always covering his footsteps and living in fear searching for peace.

After Ishi's capture he expected to be put to death but instead he was sent to the anthropology department at the University of California to be studied. Professors Kroeber and Waterman and Dr. Saxton Pope befiended Ishi as he lived at the University for the last few years of his life. They all became very close friends and even went on camping trips back to the area where Ishi had spent so many years hiding. Ishi taught his new friends all about the way of life his people once knew. He taught them how to make bow and arrows and to hunt with them. Without his teaching the art of making bows and arrows as he did, those skills would likely have died with him.

He died in 1916 of tuberculosis and so departed the last wild Native North America. He looked upon the white man as a sophisticated child, smart but not wise. Whites knew many things but much that was false.

Ishi knew nature which is always true. He was kind. He had courage and self restraint and self discipline and though all had been taken from him there was no bitterness in his heart. He had the soul of a child and the mind of a philosopher.

He finally found peace.

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