I’ve been asked by several readers to begin this blog to share information about the historical/fiction data in my book, “The Killing of Ishi.”
Ishi, a Northern California Yahi Indian, is portrayed by biographer Theodora Kroeber as…”the last wild Indian in North America”.
He earned that title the hard way. Born along Mill Creek just a few years after the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, California, Ishi’s band was repeatedly attacked by self-appointed militiamen wanting to remove all Indians from the land. The fighting was often brutal with neither side giving any quarter. In the early 1850’s when the massacres began, the Yahi numbered only about 400 or so. They were the smallest tribe of the Yana Nation which numbered 4000, though the Yahi warriors were regarded by all other tribes as the most ferocious. By 1871 there were barely 15 Yahi left. Almost all the other Yana had been killed by the militiamen under the leadership of co-Captains R. A. Anderson and Hiram Good.
In his book, “The Geometry of Genocide”, author Bradley Campbell estimated that in the last half of 1865 Anderson and Good killed two thousand Indians. I assume that they were helped by their fellow militiamen. By my count Anderson personally killed well over 115 Indians during a twenty year period from 1851 to 1871. In just one hour of one battle Anderson was widely celebrated for killing 9 Yahi warriors with an old flintlock rifle; no small feat because the Indians were doing their best to kill him. Sadly, most of his other victims were not warriors but mostly women and children, unlike Hiram Good, who steadfastly refused to ever kill a woman or child. However, Good was quite comfortable shooting any male Indian of warrior age, armed or not.
Every encounter with militiamen, prospectors, cowboys or drifters resulted in Indians being killed. One prospector killed so many that he made a bed blanket from their scalps.
The surviving Yahi retreated to the deepest part of the wilderness and went into complete hiding for the next 37 years. Only four survived into the 20th century; Ishi, his mother, sister and one elderly warrior. They managed to survive by hiding some 500 feet up a sheer canyon wall living on a small, slanting two acre plot. In 1908 their campsite was accidentally found by a survey party. Ishi last saw his sister and her companion run to a hidden trail leading down the canyon and they were never again seen. His carried his mother away from their camp and she died shortly thereafter.
For the next two and a half years he lived completely alone, hiding in the wilderness, setting snares for small game, shooting big game with his bow, living in caves, constantly searching for his sister. In 1911 he was captured crouching by a slaughterhouse in Oroville, Ca.
In a period of three days Ishi went from the stone-age to the industrial age.
Next week’s blog will cover his successful transition to urban life in San Francisco where he quickly earned celebrity status.
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