Synopses & Reviews
OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD
The life story of Ishi, the Yahi Indian, lone survivor of a doomed tribe, is unique in the annals of North American anthropology. For more than forty years, Theodora Kroeber's biography has been sharing this tragic and absorbing drama with readers all over the world.
Ishi stumbled into the twentieth century on the morning of August 29, 1911, when, desperate with hunger and with terror of the white murderers of his family, he was found in the corral of a slaughter house near Oroville, California. Finally identified as an Indian by an anthropologist, Ishi was brought to San Francisco by Professor T. T. Waterman and lived there the rest of his life under the care and protection of Alfred Kroeber and the staff of the University of California's Museum of Anthropology.
Synopsis
OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD First published in 1961, Ishi in Two Worlds tells the life story of the last known surviving member of the Yahi people, an indigenous community decimated by invasion and genocide at the hands of white settlers during the California Gold Rush. The man, whose real name we will never know, lived for decades in the Mount Lassen foothills of the Sierra Nevada before being captured by Americans near Oroville in 1911. Anthropologists at the University of California named him Ishi, the Yana word for man, and brought him to San Francisco where he spent the rest of his life detained at the University's Museum of Anthropology under the custody of Alfred Louis Kroeber.
Theodora Kroeber's Ishi in Two Worlds offers an intimate glimpse into the remarkable life of a resilient man facing harrowing, unforgivable circumstances. Drawing from her husband's records, linguistic notes, and archival and oral histories, Kroeber presents a contested history of North American indigenous people and the atrocities of violence, abuse, and disease wrought by white men. Reckoning with the indefensible history of racism and dehumanization that led to Ishi's alienation and detention, this canonical book is critical to the history of anthropology and to the ongoing work of accountability in the field. It remains an essential historical document, and an enduring record of Ishi's incredible life.
Synopsis
An essential biography and historical document, Ishi's deeply moving life story is critical to understanding the legacies of white violence and Indigenous survival on the land we call California. First published in 1961, Ishi in Two Worlds tells the life story of the last known surviving member of the Yahi people, an indigenous community decimated by invasion and genocide at the hands of white settlers during the California Gold Rush. The man, whose real name we will never know, lived for decades in the Mount Lassen foothills of the Sierra Nevada before being captured by Americans near Oroville in 1911. Anthropologists at the University of California named him Ishi, the Yana word for man, and brought him to San Francisco where he spent the rest of his life detained at the University's Museum of Anthropology under the custody of Alfred Louis Kroeber.
Theodora Kroeber's Ishi in Two Worlds offers an intimate glimpse into the remarkable life of a resilient man facing harrowing, unforgivable circumstances. Drawing from her husband's records, linguistic notes, and archival and oral histories, Kroeber presents a contested history of North American indigenous people and the atrocities of violence, abuse, and disease wrought by white men. Reckoning with the indefensible history of racism and dehumanization that led to Ishi's alienation and detention, this canonical book is critical to the history of anthropology and to the ongoing work of accountability in the field. It remains an essential historical document, and an enduring record of Ishi's incredible life.
About the Author
Theodora Kroeber (1897and#150;1979), wife of Alfred Louis Kroeber, is also the author of The Inland Whale (California). Karl Kroeber, son of Theodora Kroeber, is Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University and coeditor, with Clifton Kroeber, of Ishi in Three Centuries (2003). Lewis Gannett was a critic for the New York Herald-Tribune.