Ishi’s Brain:
In Search of America’s Last “Wild” Indian

By Orin Starn; W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.; New York, NY; 2004; 320 pages; $25.95 clothbound

Reviewed by Debra Utacia Krol (Salinan/Esselen)

When Ishi, the last of the Yahi tribe of northern California, emerged from the Sierra foothills in 1911, society was captivated with this sole surviving “Stone Age” Indian. But did Ishi really represent the last Indian unsullied by modern life, as famed anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and his writer wife Theodora wanted the public to believe? After Ishi’s body was laid open for examination following his death from tuberculosis in 1916 (in direct opposition to the old Yahi’s wishes), was his brain pickled and trundled off to Washington in the name of science? And was Ishi really the last of his tribe?

Anthropologist Orin Starn attempts to solve these and other mysteries as he searches for the elusive truth behind the legend of Ishi. He takes the readers along on a mind-bending trip into the motivations of people like Theodora Kroeber, whose overly romanticized biography of Ishi contains errors that jump-start Starn’s quest; Maidu activist Art Angle, who began the quest to reclaim Ishi’s ashes and brain for reburial; and Ishi himself.

Through the painstaking search through old papers, letters, rumor and innuendo, Starn learns that Kroeber did send the brain to the Smithsonian. He also details the politics of the Smithsonian’s stunning decision to return the brain, not to the Maidus, but to a collateral group of Indians related to Ishi by blood but not necessarily affinity.

Starn’s narrative is an unvarnished, fascinating and haunting look at Victorian America’s obsession with salvage anthropology, the continuing (and in this case, justified) mistrust of government and university institutions by California Indians, the promise and the shortcomings of federal repatriation law, and the world of a man whose only sin was being born too late.