Yahi
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The Yahi were a group of Native Americans who lived in Northern California in the Northern Sierra Nevada, on the western side of the range.
The Yahi are the southern portion of the Yana. They were hunter-gatherers who lived in small groups without centralized political authority. The noun stem Ya- means person and the noun suffix is -hi [xi] in the southern dialects and -na in the northern. They were reclusive, fiercely defending their diminishing territory of mountain canyons.
Ishi
Main article: Ishi
The most famous Yahi, indeed the only one known to us, was Ishi, the last member of his tribe. ([ʔísχi], where the noun stem [ʔís-] means "man, person".) Ishi emerged from the mountains near Oroville, California on August 29, 1911 after the last of his family died, having lived his entire life outside of the European-American culture. Known as the "last wild Indian", Ishi was taken to the University of California in San Francisco for study and for his protection, where under the auspices of Alfred Kroeber he lived in and near the Museum of Anthropology in evident contentment until his death from tuberculosis in 1916. His language was recorded and studied in 1911 by Edward Sapir, who had previously done work on the northern dialects.
See also
Bibliography
- Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America. Theodora Kroeber, Foreword by Karl Kroeber.
- Ishi the Last Yahi: A Documentary History. Robert F. Heizer (Editor), Theodora Kroeber (Editor).
- Yana Texts. Edward Sapir. University of California Publications in American Archaology and Ethnology 9:1-235 (1910).