The Killing of Ishi

Ishi believed he was the only surviving warrior of a Stone Age tribe to have lived into the 20th Century. He was born into the Yahi tribe and survived numerous attacks by frontier Indian fighters, who had only one goal--to kill every Indian to make California safe for settlement. In 1864, R.A. Anderson, Hiram Good, and their pioneer Guards, reportedly killed over two thousand Indians just in Northern California alone. So successful were the Guards that by 1871, there were only twelve Yahi left. Ever fearful, the remaining tiny band hid 500 feet up a sheer canyon wall on a sloping ledge to avoid detection. Only four lived into the 20th Century. Their camp was accidentally discovered in 1908 by power company surveyors led by local cowboys. Ishi, fearing for his life, fired an arrow at one of the cowboys, grazing his head and knocking his hat off. This was the last arrow fired in three hundred years of Indian warfare, ending the American Holocaust The next morning their hidden camp was accidentally found by the survey party. Historically, Ishi's sister, and her male companion, ran off together to escape the intruders. Ishi never saw them again. In 1911 after living alone in the wilderness for three years, Ishi walked out of the brush and into a corral at the Ward slaughter house in Oroville, California. Three butchers, accompanied by four snarling dogs, attacked and held him, not sure of who or what he was. After capture, Ishi became an overnight celebrity, going from the Stone Age to the Industrial Age and became a National celebrity living the rest of his life at the University in Berkeley. Along the way, the strangeness of modern conveniences and technology of the times continually astounded him. In this fictionalized continuation of the story into modern times, Ishi's sister and companion had actually lived to continue the Yahi bloodline, high in the Oregon mountains. The possibility is real given the vast wilderness areas of the Pacific Northwest even today. Author, James Callahan, illuminates a web of circular warfare between the settlers and the Indians, ending with Ishi's celebrity status and his death in 1916. He adds a surprising twist with the Yahi descendants hiding in Central Oregon until discovered by modern-day, camouflaged cameras set out to document the return of stalking timber wolves.