"This year marks the 100th anniversary of the public debut of a man called Ishi. Ishi was Native American, a Yana from the Deer Creek area, about 150 miles northeast of Berkeley. And for the past century he’s been known as “the last wild Indian in North America.”

In some ways, he’s famous: The anthropology department building at UC Berkeley is named for Alfred Kroeber, the scholar who worked closely with Ishi, and Dwinelle Hall’s outdoor enclosure is named Ishi Court. UC Berkeley’s anthropology community held a conference in September dedicated to Ishi’s memory, and the California Museum in Sacramento has a yearlong exhibit featuring some of his possessions.

So, who was Ishi? And how could Ishi have been the so-called “last Indian” when close to a million Native Americans live in California today? Reporter Terria Smith – who is also California Native American – tells us Ishi’s story.

TERRIA SMITH: Imagine spending three years alone in the woods of California. You’ve lost your entire family, and all of your close friends, to war, disease, and starvation. Every day you fish and hunt to feed yourself, and try to avoid being spotted by other people. Then, one day, you wander into a place that’s slightly foreign. A town. And everything changes.

This is the story of Ishi, perhaps one of the world’s most famous Native Americans of California Indians. He was first found 100 years ago on August 28, 1911, near an Oroville slaughterhouse. The sheriff took Ishi to the jail, saying it was “for his own safety.” Ishi was barefoot and wearing hide and canvas clothes. It wasn’t long before curious Looky Lou’s started coming to see the “wild man.” Many years later, this episode was dramatized in a TV movie called “Ishi: The Last of His Civilization.”"

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One hundred years with Ishi, the "last wild Indian" of North America (KALW 12/6)