Who was Ishi?
Q: Who was Ishi?
A: Ishi was the last known member of the Native American Yahi people from California in the United States.
Q: What does "Ishi" mean?
A: Ishi is an adopted name given to him by anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, which means "man" in the Yana language.
Q: How did Ishi come out near the foothills of Lassen Peak in Northern California?
A: In 1911, aged 50, he came out near the foothills of Lassen Peak in Northern California.
Q: Why did Ishi not have a name?
A: Because there were no other Yahi to speak his name for him, according to their culture and tradition.
Q: Where did Ishi live after coming out near Lassen Peak?
A: He lived most of his remaining five years in a university building in San Francisco.
Q: What kind of media has discussed and shown his life?
A: His life was shown and discussed in many films and books. A popular biography was Ishi in Two Worlds published by Theodora Kroeber in 1961.
Q: What did anthropologists do with Ishi when they found him? A: Anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley both studied him and hired him as a janitor.
