Discrepancies in Ishi's early life

Some differences between Ishi's early life and its portrayal in the HBO movie The Last of His Tribe:

According to the book Ishi: The Last of the Yahi, Ishi's people weren't totally innocent and peaceful. (Ishi belonged to the Yahi subgroup of the Yana people.) They fought against the neighboring Winton Indians:Rugged, strong, and fierce fighters, the Yana terrified their enemies, most especially the Winton who had the dubious honor of being the primary target for Yana raiding. In a somewhat bitter irony, the Winton, who first drove the Hokan-Yana people from their Sacramento homeland long ago, were now the recipients of Yana terror. And it was primarily the Wintu who influenced white settlers' perception of the Yana with tales of being victimized by "wild Indians" who swooped down upon them, carrying off captives and raiding their villages. Though the conflict was a mutual affair, the picture painted by the Wintu was one of a fierce, war-like people who must be eradicated from the region. The image was to remain in the minds of many settlers who took up the task with less than honorable enthusiasm.And:As more ranchers sought pasture land, and more families cleared claims and hunted game, Yahi survival became that more tenuous. Hunger often drove Yahi to take cattle or sheep. Anger often drove ranchers to take Yahi. They were hunted down, killed, kidnapped, and enslaved. Scalping suddenly became a home business. Villages were attacked without provocation, leaving 30 or 40 dead at a time. Despite the enormity of the enemy's numbers, the Yana resisted. In a spirited last stand that rivaled the defenders of the Alamo, of all the Yana it was the Yahi who offered the greatest resistance. They raided the ranches and farms; they killed whites and ransacked cabins. Stories of murdered children (a few were true) spread wildly across the new settlements, inciting vigilante groups to seek their own justice. Murder for murder. Raid for raid. Brutal retaliation was the name of the game. Diseases ran rampant. The Yahi declined with horrid rapidity. It was among the bloodiest wars of the western frontiers and the outcome was never really in doubt.

In the movie, the first part of Ishi's life seems to been fairly calm and "normal" except for the occasional murderous onslaught of white men. In reality, Ishi went into hiding at age 5 and spent an unimaginable 46 years avoiding contact. As Jeff Miller explains:The flood of white settlers that swept over California during the Gold Rush pushed these and other native peoples aside and introduced a raft of infectious diseases that decimated thousands. Those who survived to protest the intrusion often were killed, put on reservations or enslaved. And those who attacked whites were hunted down in reprisal raids. Indeed, it was just such a raid and ensuing slaughter of Yahi at Mill Creek in 1865 that seems to have precipitated the retreat of Ishi's family group into the dense thickets and lava cliffs of Deer Canyon, southwest of Mt. Lassen.

What happened next has been pieced together from "wild Indian" sightings east of the Sacramento Valley, linguistic and other anthropological evidence, and Ishi's fragmentary description of his day-to-day life. Death and capture continued to shrink the core group of Yahi through the late 1800s. As the survivors retreated deeper into the wilderness, they became masters of concealment, preserving and adapting traditions to what became a daily struggle for food and winter stores.

In the movie, it seems Ishi led a traditional life until his mother and sister died. Then he left the wilderness for civilization and was soon captured. In reality, he may have foraged on the outskirts of white society for several years. As Laurence A. Marschall writes:[E]ven before he set foot in San Francisco, Ishi was no unspoiled innocent. He wore garments of factory-made cloth, foraged for food near homesteads and general stores, and even spoke a few words in the language of his neighbors (Maidu and perhaps Spanish).In fact, he may have done this even before his family died. As Thomas Curwen wrote in the LA Times, 3/28/04:His life and his family's were filled, by necessity, with scavenging and improvising: picking up Spanish words, using iron nails for harpoon tips, window glass for arrowheads, stealing canned food, sacks of flour and livestock.

Ishi may not have been the last Yahi after all. According to Miller:Only recently, for example, did an analysis of Ishi-fashioned arrowpoints by Steven Shackley, a research archaeologist at the Hearst Museum of Anthropology, suggest that Ishi was likely of mixed Indian ancestry. Far from being the last of the Yahi, Ishi may have been one of the first offspring of what were once native enemies.

The most likely candidates appear to be Indians of the Sacramento Valley, primarily Wintu and Nomlaki. These tribes produced blades with long concave bases and side notches, similar in shape and style to Ishi's handiwork. Arrowheads from historic Yahi sites are short and squat, with contracting stems and basal notches. It seems then that as the onslaught of whites proceeded up the river valleys of the Mt. Lassen foothills, these tribes were forced to intermarry to survive. If true, Ishi, who never spoke of his ancestors because of his religious beliefs, would be the ultimate survivor, adapting to environments with more subtlety and skill than the prevailing views of the day thought possible of an "average American savage."

Conclusion:  None of the movie's changes and omissions are terribly significant. But they all contribute to a romanticized picture of Ishi as a "noble savage."

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.