Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Getting There & Away
Dam Blvd E)
a few blocks east of Hwy 70, a car is far and away the simplest and most cost
effective way to reach the area. There are two buses daily between Oroville and Sacra-
mento ($35, 1½ hours).
ISHI, THE 'LAST WILD INDIAN'
At daybreak on August 28, 1911, frantic dogs woke the workers sleeping inside a
slaughterhouse outside Oroville. The dogs were holding a man at bay - a Native Americ-
an, disoriented and clad in a loincloth.
The 'wild man' became a media sensation, and soon Berkeley anthropologists traveled
to Oroville to meet him. Testing out snippets of nearly lost vocabulary from native lan-
guages, they determined the man belonged to the Yahi, the southernmost tribe of the
Yana (also known as the Deer Creek tribe), believed to be extinct.
The man never revealed his true name but adopted the name 'Ishi,' meaning 'man' in
the Yana language. The anthropologists took Ishi to the museum at the university, where
he was installed as a living exhibit, sharing his story and culture until he died from tuber-
culosis on March 25, 1916, just five years after he was 'discovered.'
By Ishi's accounts, in 1870, when he was a child, there had been only 12 or 15 Yahi
people left, hiding in remote areas in the foothills east of Red Bluff. By 1908 Ishi, his moth-
er, sister and uncle were all who were left. His family died that last year, leaving Ishi alone.
With Ishi's death, newspapers pronounced the Yahi gone forever.
Anthropologists recently postulated that while Ishi's tribe had been virtually extermin-
ated by settlers by the time he was born, a few found refuge with other tribes, so some of
Ishi's kin do live on.
The site where Ishi was captured is east of Oroville along Oro-Quincy Hwy at Oak Ave,
marked by a small monument. Part of the Lassen National Forest where Ishi and the Yahi
people lived, is now called the Ishi Wilderness.
