WEBVTT - The Word For Man Is Ishi 0:00:16.115 --> 0:00:29.275 Pushkin, The Last Archive, A History of Truth. 0:00:32.515 --> 0:00:34.515 When I was a kid, there were a few books 0:00:34.555 --> 0:00:37.075 and movies that we watched all the time because my 0:00:37.195 --> 0:00:42.675 dad taught them every year. He's a professor of business ethics, 0:00:42.955 --> 0:00:45.515 just not the way you'd think. Instead of case studies 0:00:45.555 --> 0:00:49.675 about business, he teaches stories about everything. In our house, 0:00:49.875 --> 0:00:51.955 a story was never just about what she thought it 0:00:52.035 --> 0:00:56.115 was about. It was about something else entirely. For instance, 0:00:56.435 --> 0:00:59.235 if you ask most people to describe the film Blade Runner, 0:00:59.435 --> 0:01:01.195 nine times out of ten they're going to tell you 0:01:01.235 --> 0:01:04.155 it's a movie about Harrison Ford hunting robots. They might 0:01:04.275 --> 0:01:06.995 mention he's struggling with the possibility that he is also 0:01:07.075 --> 0:01:10.115 a robot. But if you ask my dad, he'd say, no, 0:01:10.515 --> 0:01:12.835 what we have here is a film about the unethical 0:01:12.915 --> 0:01:17.315 Tyrrell Corporation, the company that makes the robots. Same goes 0:01:17.315 --> 0:01:19.715 for writing giants, a film some might say is about 0:01:19.715 --> 0:01:23.635 surfing without realizing it's actually about leadership. And don't get 0:01:23.675 --> 0:01:26.675 me started about the Country Bunny and the Little gold Shoes. 0:01:26.995 --> 0:01:30.715 You thought that was a children's book. Oh No. The 0:01:30.795 --> 0:01:33.515 problem with my dad, though, is he's usually right even 0:01:33.515 --> 0:01:37.195 when he sounds totally wrong. This is particularly annoying to 0:01:37.195 --> 0:01:41.555 my mom, but eventually you get used to it. One 0:01:41.595 --> 0:01:43.715 of the big stories in the Dad canon for as 0:01:43.755 --> 0:01:46.555 long as I can remember, is a science fiction story 0:01:46.595 --> 0:01:50.075 called The Ones Who Walk Away from Omlas. It's by 0:01:50.195 --> 0:01:53.755 Ursula k Legwinn, the science fiction writer with. 0:01:53.755 --> 0:01:57.195 A clamor of bills that set the swallows soaring. The 0:01:57.235 --> 0:02:00.995 festival of Summer came to the city Omlas, right towered 0:02:00.995 --> 0:02:01.795 by the sea. 0:02:02.475 --> 0:02:04.635 This story always struck me as a rare one for 0:02:04.715 --> 0:02:08.195 my dad, because it seems pretty straightforward about what you think. 0:02:08.195 --> 0:02:09.755 It's about a utopia. 0:02:10.195 --> 0:02:12.475 How can I tell you about the people of Omolas? 0:02:13.035 --> 0:02:16.555 They were not naive and happy children, though their children 0:02:16.555 --> 0:02:19.235 were in fact happy. But I wish I could describe 0:02:19.275 --> 0:02:22.075 it better. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined 0:02:22.075 --> 0:02:23.675 it as your own fancy bids. 0:02:24.835 --> 0:02:27.555 In the story, Legwen asks you to imagine the best 0:02:27.555 --> 0:02:30.995 place you can this beautiful city by the sea, golden 0:02:31.035 --> 0:02:34.035 in the light on a feast day in summer. Whatever 0:02:34.075 --> 0:02:37.475 sounds best to you. There it is, But of course 0:02:38.115 --> 0:02:42.395 things aren't what they seem. 0:02:42.595 --> 0:02:47.075 Let me describe one more thing in a basement under 0:02:47.075 --> 0:02:50.315 one of the beautiful public buildings of Omlass, or perhaps 0:02:50.355 --> 0:02:52.675 in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes. 0:02:53.555 --> 0:02:57.635 There's a room. It has one locked door and no window. 0:02:58.515 --> 0:03:01.275 A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the 0:03:01.275 --> 0:03:04.675 board's secondhand from a cobweb window somewhere across the cellar. 0:03:05.275 --> 0:03:08.595 In the room, a child is sitting. It shuts its eyes, 0:03:08.835 --> 0:03:12.075 but it knows the door. Door is locked, and nobody 0:03:12.115 --> 0:03:17.995 will come. The door is always locked, and nobody ever comes, 0:03:18.755 --> 0:03:22.995 except that sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and 0:03:23.035 --> 0:03:26.595 a person or several people are there. One of them 0:03:26.595 --> 0:03:28.835 may come in and kick the child to make it 0:03:28.875 --> 0:03:32.635 stand up. The others never come close, but peer in 0:03:32.675 --> 0:03:34.635 at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. 0:03:36.635 --> 0:03:39.755 This is the dark secret of Omilas. The child in 0:03:39.795 --> 0:03:43.275 the basement. All the happiness in Omilas rests on that 0:03:43.395 --> 0:03:47.395 kid's suffering. It's a thought experiment. Would it be worth it? 0:03:48.955 --> 0:03:49.875 They all know. 0:03:50.075 --> 0:03:54.155 It's there, all the people of Omolas, they all know 0:03:54.355 --> 0:03:56.875 that it has to be there. They would like to 0:03:56.955 --> 0:04:00.235 do something for the child. But if it were done 0:04:01.075 --> 0:04:04.315 in that day and hour, all the prosperity and beauty 0:04:04.395 --> 0:04:09.595 and delight of Omilas would wither and be destroyed. Those 0:04:09.875 --> 0:04:13.715 are the terms. 0:04:14.955 --> 0:04:18.035 It's a very famous story taught in classrooms around the 0:04:18.035 --> 0:04:21.755 world half a century after its publication, including my dad's, 0:04:22.075 --> 0:04:24.315 which again was weird to me because, if ever there 0:04:24.355 --> 0:04:26.395 was a story that's just about what you think, it's 0:04:26.435 --> 0:04:29.355 about the ones who walk away from omelas, is it 0:04:29.835 --> 0:04:33.235 now there's a story that's just about ethics right and wrong. 0:04:33.355 --> 0:04:36.995 Your basic meat and potato stuff A pure thought experiment, 0:04:37.955 --> 0:04:42.315 or that's what I thought, until I realized it wasn't 0:04:42.355 --> 0:04:48.995 the thought experiment at all. Welcome to the Last Archive, 0:04:49.475 --> 0:04:51.435 the show about how we know what we know, how 0:04:51.435 --> 0:04:54.075 we used to know things, and why it seems sometimes 0:04:54.155 --> 0:04:57.435 lately like we don't know anything at all anymore. I'm 0:04:57.435 --> 0:05:02.155 Ben Mattapaffrey. This episode is about the story behind that 0:05:02.195 --> 0:05:06.115 thought experiment, and that story starts a little over a 0:05:06.155 --> 0:05:09.755 century ago in a small gold rush town in California. 0:05:09.995 --> 0:05:21.555 On August twenty eighth, nineteen eleven, at sundown that night, 0:05:21.875 --> 0:05:24.755 at dusk, at a slaughterhouse on the outskirts of town, 0:05:25.275 --> 0:05:27.995 a man named Ad Kessler was changing out of his 0:05:28.035 --> 0:05:28.635 work clothes. 0:05:29.795 --> 0:05:34.595 Now, I'll try to tell you as I remember it. 0:05:34.595 --> 0:05:37.155 It's pretty clear in my mind there was a young 0:05:37.195 --> 0:05:40.955 boy who hung around Kessler's crew while they worked. That evening, 0:05:41.075 --> 0:05:44.275 the kid was out in the corral and then he 0:05:44.355 --> 0:05:44.995 saw something. 0:05:47.995 --> 0:05:50.235 He was frightened and he yelled to me. 0:05:51.915 --> 0:05:51.995 Ad. 0:05:52.315 --> 0:05:53.595 He says, there's a man here. 0:05:55.035 --> 0:05:57.315 Kessler grabbed a meat hook and ran outside in his 0:05:57.395 --> 0:06:00.235 long John's and riding boots. He thought maybe there was 0:06:00.275 --> 0:06:03.395 a thief. But when he got to the corral, he 0:06:03.475 --> 0:06:08.155 saw a part clothed, barefoot man, weakend and tired, leaning 0:06:08.195 --> 0:06:11.435 against the fence. He tried to speak to the man 0:06:11.635 --> 0:06:12.555 but got no answer. 0:06:13.315 --> 0:06:16.755 At that time, I could talk pretty good Spanish, and 0:06:16.875 --> 0:06:20.275 I talked a bit Spanish, but to no response. I 0:06:20.355 --> 0:06:22.835 used a little profanity. He didn't understand that either. 0:06:24.195 --> 0:06:30.035 Kessler was puzzled, so he called the sheriff and I. 0:06:30.035 --> 0:06:32.315 Told him, I, John, I've got something out here the 0:06:32.395 --> 0:06:35.075 slaughter house. I think you should come out and investigate. 0:06:36.155 --> 0:06:39.475 The sheriff came. They handcuffed the man and they headed 0:06:39.475 --> 0:06:42.875 to the jail. They put him in a padded cell. 0:06:46.675 --> 0:06:49.195 There he was all alone. He didn't have at least 0:06:49.235 --> 0:06:51.995 idea of what was going to happen to him. Closed 0:06:52.035 --> 0:06:56.195 the door, turned the key in it, and he stood 0:06:56.275 --> 0:07:00.635 right behind them bars and looked in the morning. The 0:07:00.715 --> 0:07:08.515 jailer was out sweeping off the steps, and I asked 0:07:08.555 --> 0:07:13.715 to be sayst what happened to my boy last night? 0:07:14.915 --> 0:07:16.435 He says he never slept a wink. 0:07:18.315 --> 0:07:20.555 This tape is from a talk Ad Kessler gave to 0:07:20.595 --> 0:07:23.795 a high school class in nineteen seventy three. Big guy 0:07:23.955 --> 0:07:26.515 with a crew cut talking to a bunch of board teens, 0:07:26.915 --> 0:07:29.795 telling his big story, the one that's been punching his 0:07:29.835 --> 0:07:33.675 meal ticket for sixty two years, because that moment of 0:07:33.795 --> 0:07:37.235 encounter set in motion a whole series of events that 0:07:37.355 --> 0:07:41.155 forever changed California. It's a story that's been told in 0:07:41.195 --> 0:07:43.115 a lot of ways by a lot of different people, 0:07:43.475 --> 0:07:46.755 but Kessler is pretty ornery about his version, and his 0:07:46.795 --> 0:07:48.635 story matches the newspaper record. 0:07:49.915 --> 0:07:50.395 There is a. 0:07:50.315 --> 0:07:55.555 Book wrote by a lady, but it's not correct. What 0:07:55.595 --> 0:07:57.795 I've just told you is the facts. 0:07:59.475 --> 0:08:00.075 As it were. 0:08:04.115 --> 0:08:06.795 Word got out quick about the stranger who didn't speak 0:08:06.795 --> 0:08:11.435 any language anyone recognized. There were sinceational stories in newspapers 0:08:11.435 --> 0:08:14.955 across the state. They'd figured out the man was probably 0:08:14.995 --> 0:08:18.635 an American Indian. The most plausible theory was that he 0:08:18.675 --> 0:08:20.635 was the only survivor of a people who had been 0:08:20.675 --> 0:08:23.715 wiped out by white settlers during and after the gold Rush, 0:08:24.315 --> 0:08:27.715 killed by a genocide, though the word didn't yet exist, 0:08:28.075 --> 0:08:30.675 and if it had, they wouldn't have used it, But 0:08:30.715 --> 0:08:33.195 there is no other word for it. There had been 0:08:33.275 --> 0:08:35.715 hundreds of thousands of American Indians in the land we 0:08:35.755 --> 0:08:38.915 now know as California before the gold Rush. There were 0:08:38.955 --> 0:08:41.715 only about twenty thousand by the turn of the century. 0:08:42.635 --> 0:08:45.715 And this man's people were gone, all of them gone, 0:08:46.675 --> 0:08:51.075 save apparently for one him. 0:08:51.275 --> 0:08:54.715 People had been looking for his group, his community for 0:08:54.875 --> 0:09:00.835 some time. People knew that there were some Indigenous people 0:09:00.915 --> 0:09:04.635 in the woods in that general area who they've speculated 0:09:04.675 --> 0:09:05.555 were Yahis. 0:09:06.475 --> 0:09:09.315 Andrew Garrett is a professor of linguistics at the University 0:09:09.355 --> 0:09:12.875 of californ Ornia, Berkeley and directs the California Language Archive. 0:09:12.915 --> 0:09:17.875 There because California, before Spanish, Mexican and American settlement was 0:09:17.915 --> 0:09:21.675 full of languages, about ninety different ones, vastly different from 0:09:21.675 --> 0:09:24.715 each other. I met Garrett in his office on campus 0:09:24.715 --> 0:09:27.315 one day. There was a mountain of fresh mid terms 0:09:27.355 --> 0:09:29.795 on the table and bits and pieces of a language 0:09:29.875 --> 0:09:30.595 on the whiteboard. 0:09:31.755 --> 0:09:33.635 So there was this sense that they were out there 0:09:33.635 --> 0:09:34.595 somewhere those people. 0:09:35.875 --> 0:09:39.355 Garrett works on how languages change over time, so he's 0:09:39.355 --> 0:09:42.235 often in the archives using notes produced by the earliest 0:09:42.235 --> 0:09:46.195 anthropologists in California, and he often refers back to one 0:09:46.275 --> 0:09:51.075 in particular, Alfred Kroeber, who founded the anthropology department at 0:09:51.115 --> 0:09:56.515 Berkeley in nineteen eleven. Kroeber was working with a colleague 0:09:56.515 --> 0:10:00.395 to document the languages and cultures of indigenous people in California, 0:10:00.875 --> 0:10:04.275 especially those cultures which they believed to be vanishing. The 0:10:04.315 --> 0:10:07.515 community of people who spoke a language Kroeber called Yahe 0:10:07.675 --> 0:10:11.195 after its word for person, had lived near Oroville, but 0:10:11.355 --> 0:10:14.915 the townspeople hadn't seen them for years. If the stranger 0:10:14.915 --> 0:10:17.395 in the jail was the last member of the Yahi people, 0:10:17.875 --> 0:10:21.515 the anthropologists felt they needed to reach him, so Krober 0:10:21.555 --> 0:10:24.835 telegrammed ahead and his colleague got on a train north 0:10:24.875 --> 0:10:27.315 to the Oraville jail, where the man had been held 0:10:27.475 --> 0:10:31.315 for two days. By the time he arrived, the jail 0:10:31.435 --> 0:10:34.315 was a scene. This was the biggest thing that happened 0:10:34.315 --> 0:10:37.235 to Oroville since the gold Rush. People had been sending 0:10:37.275 --> 0:10:39.955 in food and clothes, crowding around trying to get a 0:10:39.995 --> 0:10:43.075 look at the man. The anthropologist made his way through 0:10:43.115 --> 0:10:46.115 the crowd and up to the cell. He sat down 0:10:46.195 --> 0:10:49.235 opposite the man and pulled out a vocabulary book full 0:10:49.275 --> 0:10:52.035 of Yana words, a related language to the one he 0:10:52.075 --> 0:10:55.155 thought the yah he might speak. One by one, He 0:10:55.195 --> 0:10:59.715 read the words off the list, nothing and more nothing, 0:11:00.715 --> 0:11:04.435 until he reached the Yana word for yellow pine. He 0:11:04.555 --> 0:11:07.395 set it and touched the pine bed frame in the cell. 0:11:08.155 --> 0:11:11.955 The man's face lit up a match, then more matches. 0:11:12.515 --> 0:11:15.675 The man asked the anthropologist if he was a Yahi. 0:11:16.875 --> 0:11:21.835 It was the community Kroger had been looking for. In 0:11:21.915 --> 0:11:26.235 nineteen eleven. American Indians weren't legally US citizens. They were 0:11:26.235 --> 0:11:29.395 treated like wards of this state. So Kroger asked what 0:11:29.515 --> 0:11:32.195 later became known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs for 0:11:32.275 --> 0:11:35.915 permission to take the man into custody. It came within days. 0:11:36.635 --> 0:11:40.395 The anthropologist, a Yana interpreter named Batwi, and the man 0:11:40.435 --> 0:11:43.355 boarded a train to Oakland. From there, they took the 0:11:43.395 --> 0:11:46.355 ferry to San Francisco and then the trolley to the 0:11:46.435 --> 0:11:50.075 Museum of Anthropology. They got there just before midnight. 0:11:51.035 --> 0:11:53.395 This was September nineteen eleven. They were kind of preparing 0:11:53.435 --> 0:11:56.915 to open the Anthropology Museum to the public. Indian people 0:11:56.955 --> 0:11:59.075 who came to visit often stayed there for some period 0:11:59.115 --> 0:12:03.235 of time. There were always staff members who lived there. 0:12:04.235 --> 0:12:06.915 There were apartments in the museum, and the Yahi man 0:12:06.995 --> 0:12:12.555 slept there. The next morning, Alfred Krober came to meet him. 0:12:12.875 --> 0:12:16.635 Krober was in his thirties, quiet, strong, chin, full beard. 0:12:17.115 --> 0:12:20.915 People came to call him the Dean of American anthropology. 0:12:20.955 --> 0:12:23.995 He was a cultural relativist who stood against the mainstream 0:12:24.035 --> 0:12:27.595 of anthropology, which had this kind of racialized evolutionary theory 0:12:27.635 --> 0:12:29.995 that thought cultures progressed from what they considered to be 0:12:30.075 --> 0:12:34.035 more primitive states to something that, of course resembled European civilization. 0:12:34.835 --> 0:12:37.475 Krober believed other cultures were valid in their own right, 0:12:37.915 --> 0:12:39.715 but he was also trying to make a name for 0:12:39.755 --> 0:12:43.435 his department in his new museum. In Krober's view, every 0:12:43.515 --> 0:12:46.395 person was a product of their culture, like a codex. 0:12:46.995 --> 0:12:49.435 So I think that meeting this man was to him 0:12:49.555 --> 0:12:53.875 like finding the Rosetta stone, except for one sticky fact. 0:12:54.795 --> 0:12:58.035 The man was a person, not an artifact. That's the 0:12:58.155 --> 0:13:04.435 challenge of all anthropology, studying someone without betraying their humanity. 0:13:05.315 --> 0:13:08.115 Krober needed a name to call the man by, but 0:13:08.235 --> 0:13:10.195 the man wouldn't share his name with p people he 0:13:10.315 --> 0:13:13.155 just met, so Kroeber called him by a Yahi word 0:13:13.515 --> 0:13:15.675 that meant man Ishi. 0:13:16.955 --> 0:13:21.915 Kerber he was never actually seemingly interested in present day cultures, 0:13:21.955 --> 0:13:24.635 but only in former cultures, because the form only the 0:13:24.675 --> 0:13:29.235 former cultures were uncontaminated by Europeans. So there's a way 0:13:29.235 --> 0:13:32.275 in which like having only one person as a representative 0:13:32.275 --> 0:13:34.835 of a culture is not problematic, because your goal is 0:13:35.675 --> 0:13:38.955 just to find the exemplar of the pure culture. And 0:13:38.995 --> 0:13:42.635 so I think from that perspective, the fantasy of Ishi 0:13:42.675 --> 0:13:45.875 is that he's this pure exemplar, when actually, of course 0:13:45.875 --> 0:13:46.635 he's just a person. 0:13:47.715 --> 0:13:51.115 Yeshi moved into the museum, and soon after the work 0:13:51.115 --> 0:13:55.235 of studying and preserving Yahi culture began. We'll be right 0:13:55.275 --> 0:14:03.635 back over time. The anthropologist Alfred Kroeger got to know 0:14:03.715 --> 0:14:06.515 Ishi's story, even though she didn't like to talk about 0:14:06.555 --> 0:14:09.955 his past. It depressed him, and for good reason. His 0:14:09.995 --> 0:14:12.355 hair was still burned short in mourning for his mother 0:14:12.395 --> 0:14:16.155 and sister, who died some years before. He'd lived alone 0:14:16.195 --> 0:14:19.035 in the canyons ever since then, and now he was 0:14:19.075 --> 0:14:21.635 living in a museum in San Francisco. 0:14:21.995 --> 0:14:26.635 But he was asked, supposedly multiple times by people, did 0:14:26.635 --> 0:14:28.515 he want to go back or did he want to 0:14:28.515 --> 0:14:32.195 go somewhere else, And supposedly he always said no. It's 0:14:32.235 --> 0:14:34.475 a kind of complicated question because they were The people 0:14:34.515 --> 0:14:38.715 who are reporting this are all people who benefit from 0:14:39.275 --> 0:14:41.955 him being happy where he was, you know. And well 0:14:42.035 --> 0:14:45.115 they were not neutral people. They were his white friends 0:14:45.155 --> 0:14:48.235 who you know, I think the story is good if 0:14:48.915 --> 0:14:51.115 he wasn't a prisoner from their point of view. 0:14:51.835 --> 0:14:54.915 Reportedly, she told agents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs 0:14:54.955 --> 0:14:58.235 through his Yana interpreter, quote, I will grow old here 0:14:58.315 --> 0:15:01.475 and die in this house. He worked part time as 0:15:01.475 --> 0:15:04.355 a janitor at the museum when it opened about a 0:15:04.395 --> 0:15:06.835 month after his arrival. He was at the opening night 0:15:06.875 --> 0:15:10.475 gala in a small back room. When people rehashed this 0:15:10.595 --> 0:15:13.355 history now in a critical light, they say that Ishi 0:15:13.475 --> 0:15:16.475 was a living exhibit stuck in the museum. Because he 0:15:16.515 --> 0:15:19.715 soon began to do demonstrations of Yahie culture on Sundays, 0:15:20.395 --> 0:15:23.715 he was a major draw. The San Francisco Examiner called 0:15:23.795 --> 0:15:28.755 him creepily its most interesting exhibit. He'd show crafts like 0:15:28.835 --> 0:15:33.715 making arrowheads, weaving baskets, starting fires, the things he made 0:15:33.835 --> 0:15:37.195 the museum kept in its collection. Tens of thousands of 0:15:37.235 --> 0:15:40.355 people came to those demonstrations over the course of the 0:15:40.355 --> 0:15:43.475 next year, and that was more people in one place 0:15:43.715 --> 0:15:46.875 than she had ever seen. Then there were all the 0:15:46.915 --> 0:15:50.795 ancestral remains the Museum of Anthropology kept. He'd locked his 0:15:50.875 --> 0:15:56.115 door each night, but he had some agency within a 0:15:56.115 --> 0:16:00.835 limited band. Gerald Visner, the writer, scholar, and member of 0:16:00.875 --> 0:16:03.795 the Chippawa tribe, has written a lot about how Yishi 0:16:04.075 --> 0:16:07.635 had an act of role in shaping his situation. Visner 0:16:07.835 --> 0:16:13.035 calls it his survivanceval and resistance, because is she seems 0:16:13.075 --> 0:16:16.515 to have taken most everything in stride. He made some money, 0:16:16.955 --> 0:16:19.715 memorized the street cars, and began to make his way 0:16:19.715 --> 0:16:22.675 around town. He liked to go to the movies and 0:16:22.755 --> 0:16:26.835 made friends around the city. Later people would remember him fondly, 0:16:27.195 --> 0:16:29.355 like a little boy who said Ishi had made him 0:16:29.355 --> 0:16:31.755 a bow and arrow and taught him how to shoot lizards, 0:16:32.115 --> 0:16:35.835 made him a net for catching minnows and rabbits skin moccasins. 0:16:36.835 --> 0:16:39.955 The newspapers told Ishi's story as if he time traveled 0:16:39.955 --> 0:16:43.355 from the Stone Age to the modern world, like Whenihi 0:16:43.395 --> 0:16:46.195 walked barefoot into a vaudeville show at the Orpheum Theater 0:16:46.515 --> 0:16:49.475 and supposedly called it Heaven for white people. Or the 0:16:49.555 --> 0:16:52.035 day she saw a plane in the sky and asked 0:16:52.035 --> 0:16:53.875 in a kind of amused way if a white man 0:16:53.915 --> 0:16:57.435 were flying it. He is exactly forty thousand years behind 0:16:57.475 --> 0:17:01.315 the times. One journalist wrote, some writers were disappointed to 0:17:01.315 --> 0:17:05.235 see their romantic fantasy, the uncontaminated man who never told 0:17:05.235 --> 0:17:09.195 a lie, smoking cigars and wearing shoes. It was absurd 0:17:10.395 --> 0:17:12.995 to me. It seems like he had apted unbelievably quickly. 0:17:13.315 --> 0:17:15.995 I mean, he had completely reinvented his life, and he 0:17:16.075 --> 0:17:18.955 was probably in his fifties. He was curious to try 0:17:18.995 --> 0:17:22.595 new things and willing to set limits. Once a reporter 0:17:22.675 --> 0:17:25.395 asked him to put on animal skins for a photograph, 0:17:25.515 --> 0:17:27.835 and he said he wouldn't because he didn't see anyone 0:17:27.835 --> 0:17:28.795 else wearing them. 0:17:29.275 --> 0:17:34.035 He seems to land in this particular location with a 0:17:34.115 --> 0:17:39.315 kind of intelligence and consciousness right of the situation that 0:17:39.635 --> 0:17:43.835 people around him don't necessarily understand that he has. And 0:17:43.915 --> 0:17:49.915 that makes him, you know, crafty and intelligent and wiy 0:17:50.075 --> 0:17:53.995 and smart and in all in all kinds of ways. 0:17:54.955 --> 0:17:58.555 That's Philip Delauria, a professor of history at Harvard. He 0:17:58.635 --> 0:18:02.155 specializes in Native American and American studies and is of 0:18:02.235 --> 0:18:06.115 Dakota descent. He wrote a book I love called Playing Indian, 0:18:06.435 --> 0:18:09.955 which is about how white Americans navigated national identity and 0:18:10.035 --> 0:18:13.555 their feelings about modernity through a kind of Indian cosplay. 0:18:13.915 --> 0:18:16.755 It's why the country was so fascinated by Isshi. 0:18:17.835 --> 0:18:20.515 It's why he's such an astonishing figure. He's not an 0:18:20.475 --> 0:18:23.515 astonishing figure because he survives and comes out of the 0:18:23.555 --> 0:18:25.475 woods and ends up in a museum. I think he's 0:18:25.475 --> 0:18:27.595 an astonishing figure because of the ways in which he 0:18:27.675 --> 0:18:29.715 sees his situation and acts within it. 0:18:32.475 --> 0:18:36.035 To most people, Ishi was just a symbol, a tragic fantasy, 0:18:36.675 --> 0:18:39.835 not just the last Yahi, but the last wild Indian. 0:18:40.715 --> 0:18:44.355 To white Americans, it represented the triumph of European civilization 0:18:44.715 --> 0:18:49.075 over Indigenous America. Inevitable, the kind of thing you wept 0:18:49.075 --> 0:18:53.595 over only once victory was assured. Anthropology was a kind 0:18:53.635 --> 0:18:57.315 of rearguard action, salvaging what could be salvage, to use 0:18:57.355 --> 0:19:00.795 their term in a sort of apologetic way. But some 0:19:00.875 --> 0:19:03.675 of what's complicated here is that the things they preserved 0:19:03.755 --> 0:19:06.675 were kept in institutions like Berkeley, which is on land 0:19:06.715 --> 0:19:11.435 that was taken from the alone people. Anthropologists worked within 0:19:11.555 --> 0:19:15.115 that paradox, but they weren't given to ask questions about 0:19:15.195 --> 0:19:18.395 why these cultures were disappearing or what might be done 0:19:18.675 --> 0:19:22.235 to stop it. The idea that it was already too late, 0:19:22.835 --> 0:19:25.675 it was baked into the work. The field was a 0:19:25.675 --> 0:19:30.515 puzzle box, just like Krober. He thought Eugenix was ridiculous, 0:19:30.635 --> 0:19:32.435 but he was also the head of a department that 0:19:32.475 --> 0:19:36.235 collected human remains from tribal grave sites. In one article, 0:19:36.475 --> 0:19:39.035 he calls you Shet a man in every sense, and 0:19:39.075 --> 0:19:42.635 then he compares him to a puppy Krober. 0:19:42.315 --> 0:19:45.715 And all the generations that surround him and that came 0:19:45.795 --> 0:19:49.555 after him, you know, they're all the errors of this 0:19:49.675 --> 0:19:51.955 kind of you know, this kind of doubled consciousness of 0:19:51.995 --> 0:19:55.115 the anthropologist of the time. You know, it feels like 0:19:55.155 --> 0:19:58.235 you're making a very you know, progressive kind of move 0:19:58.955 --> 0:20:01.315 while at the same time you're looking at them as 0:20:01.315 --> 0:20:04.395 objects of study. You've got a whole kind of primitivist 0:20:04.475 --> 0:20:07.515 veneer that's hard to get away from, you know. So 0:20:07.555 --> 0:20:10.595 they couldn't help. These folks couldn't help but be contradictory, 0:20:10.715 --> 0:20:13.115 you know, in their consciousness about how they were viewing 0:20:13.195 --> 0:20:17.955 Native people as vestiges and remnants of these cultures the past, 0:20:18.075 --> 0:20:21.635 and yet as opportunities for them to think in progressive 0:20:21.715 --> 0:20:24.755 and you know, theoretically enlightened kinds of ways. 0:20:25.715 --> 0:20:28.755 Is She was on stage during those demonstrations at the museum, 0:20:29.155 --> 0:20:33.115 but so was Krober. They were both performing something is 0:20:33.235 --> 0:20:37.955 She was playing Indian, Krober was playing anthropologists. Yes, she 0:20:38.115 --> 0:20:40.955 was making the most of a bad situation. But he 0:20:41.035 --> 0:20:45.995 barely spoke English, and the anthropologists barely spoke Yahi. So 0:20:46.115 --> 0:20:49.395 this story, the way I at least can tell it, 0:20:49.395 --> 0:20:51.835 it's as much about the people around Yishi as it 0:20:51.915 --> 0:20:54.635 is about the man himself. And in the style of 0:20:54.635 --> 0:20:58.035 my own family, it's about the meaning behind the story 0:20:58.075 --> 0:21:01.955 they told about him, the ethics of their relationships, the 0:21:02.035 --> 0:21:05.555 choices they made, and the ones they were about to make. 0:21:09.875 --> 0:21:12.755 Krober and his crew were working with Ishi on setting 0:21:12.755 --> 0:21:16.155 down what they could of the Ahi culture. They recorded 0:21:16.235 --> 0:21:19.875 him telling stories on wax cylinders over fifty hours of 0:21:19.915 --> 0:21:21.435 Is she telling Yahi tales? 0:21:22.115 --> 0:21:22.795 Oh the work? 0:21:26.435 --> 0:21:29.875 That's his voice, telling the story of the wood ducks, 0:21:30.195 --> 0:21:32.195 about a man who'd been turned into a wood duck 0:21:32.715 --> 0:21:43.315 looking for a wife. So wax cylinder recordings were hard 0:21:43.315 --> 0:21:46.675 to make, but Ishi spent seven hours telling this story 0:21:46.715 --> 0:21:49.635 across over one hundred different cylinders. It was one of 0:21:49.675 --> 0:21:52.995 the first stories he told, and according to the anthropologist 0:21:53.235 --> 0:21:55.915 Orin Starn, who wrote a great book about this history, 0:21:56.435 --> 0:22:00.115 wood Ducks was at that point the longest recorded performance 0:22:00.195 --> 0:22:03.155 of all time. It took a huge amount of stamina. 0:22:03.875 --> 0:22:06.235 At one point, one of Krober's colleagues went to take 0:22:06.235 --> 0:22:09.195 a phone call. When he got back, she told him 0:22:09.195 --> 0:22:12.555 it would be better they kept working without breaks. He 0:22:12.635 --> 0:22:14.835 was preserving a body of knowledge he knew would be 0:22:14.915 --> 0:22:18.235 lost otherwise. But he also had things he wouldn't reveal, 0:22:19.035 --> 0:22:20.595 just as he never revealed his name. 0:22:22.515 --> 0:22:24.955 I think when you dig down into it, it's exactly 0:22:24.995 --> 0:22:28.155 these kinds of things, of like, I know what you're doing, right, 0:22:28.435 --> 0:22:31.515 the sort of sense where the indigenous person you know says, no, 0:22:31.595 --> 0:22:34.315 I know exactly what you're doing, and I'm going to 0:22:34.395 --> 0:22:38.195 act according to my own best rights and interests in 0:22:38.235 --> 0:22:41.035 relation to what we're doing, so that what you're doing 0:22:41.075 --> 0:22:43.515 becomes what we are doing together. Right. So there's an 0:22:43.515 --> 0:22:46.795 insistence upon sort of active agency. It seems to me 0:22:46.915 --> 0:22:48.995 like there's there's a fair bit of evidence for the 0:22:49.035 --> 0:22:51.035 strategic use of anthropologists. 0:22:51.995 --> 0:22:55.795 The anthropologists met with Esch often. They worked hours and 0:22:55.835 --> 0:22:58.995 hours together. By this point they figured out how to 0:22:58.995 --> 0:23:01.755 communicate to a degree, and they were, by all accounts, 0:23:01.795 --> 0:23:02.915 friendly and easy. 0:23:02.675 --> 0:23:03.195 With each other. 0:23:03.995 --> 0:23:06.595 Is She would come over for dinner at Krover's, and 0:23:06.635 --> 0:23:09.075 from everything I've read, it seems that he and Kroger 0:23:09.275 --> 0:23:13.715 crew clothes. Ishi had a community of Berkeley acquaintances who 0:23:13.715 --> 0:23:15.995 claimed to think of him as a friend, including a 0:23:16.035 --> 0:23:19.835 man named Saxton Pope, a star surgeon at the University 0:23:19.875 --> 0:23:23.715 of California. He and Ishi hung out a lot. They'd 0:23:23.715 --> 0:23:26.395 go hunting with bows and arrows together, kind of like 0:23:26.435 --> 0:23:29.675 a grown up version for Pope of playing Indian. Ishi 0:23:29.715 --> 0:23:32.755 would visit Pope in the hospital. People thought he might 0:23:32.795 --> 0:23:34.995 have been a healer in his past life because he'd 0:23:35.035 --> 0:23:37.995 sit with sick patients and help the nurses clean their tools, 0:23:38.555 --> 0:23:41.155 but he disapproved of how the hospital handled its dead, 0:23:41.595 --> 0:23:46.155 cutting people open for autopsies. Ishi had a life in 0:23:46.195 --> 0:23:50.235 San Francisco, but in the summer of nineteen fourteen, Crober, 0:23:50.715 --> 0:23:54.515 his anthropologist colleague, and Saxton Pope proposed a trip back 0:23:54.555 --> 0:23:57.955 to the land Ischi was from. Ishi was worried about 0:23:57.995 --> 0:24:01.835