Ishi in Two Worlds Kroeber,

Ishi in Two Worlds

Kroeber, Theodora. Ishi in Two Worlds. Originally published by Berkley: University of California Press, 1961. Reprinted in 1976.

Ishi in Two Worlds tells the tale of an Indian man who was accustomed to living a traditional way of life thrust into the full brunt of modern, American civilization by a cruel accident. It is indeed a story of a man who dwelled in two worlds, for most of his life in the ways and sphere of the Yahi Indians. After his tribe's eradication he was forced to live in contemporary civilization, specifically in the context of the modern American university amongst well-meaning anthropologists who wished to study and learn from him. Despite all of the compassion they showed to him, the spectacle is occasionally painful to read about.

Ishi's tale is thus at once fascinating and uncomfortable to hear, as the reader finds him or herself a witness to Indian histories, languages and narratives that would otherwise have been lost, yet also a fly-on-the-wall observer to the personal struggle of an essentially private individual, forced to cope with a civilization he never knew existed, a civilization that has overtaken his own even though it is not necessarily superior to the Yahi's ways. At least the anthropologist under whose care Ishi found himself had some of the current postmodern or tolerant mindset of today. They wished to learn about his culture with an open mind, rather than try to change him or to condemn the Yahi practices. Still, the solitude of Ishi's final years amongst White men and women makes his struggle even painful for a 21st century reader to acknowledge.

Despite the discomfort the complicated nature of being a witness to his story may cause for the reader, Ishi's tale is still an important one, historically speaking, and thus the continued referencing of this book is valuable. Ishi was the very last surviving Yahi Indian, the lone survivor of an exterminated tribe. His tale must be told, otherwise the Yahi story would be lost forever, killed by cultural as well as population genocide. In the year of 1911, invading Whites killed all of the rest of Ishi's tribal family. The Indian was found hiding in a farm on California. He was starving and dressed in rages. A local anthropologist only identified him as one of the Yahi.

Ishi was, it soon became clear to even a casual observer, unaware of the modern technical innovations characteristic even of the early 20th century such as electricity, moving pictures, telegraphs, railroads, motorcars, the recording devices and indoor plumbing, in other words to access to even the knowledge of the kind of the usual practices and habits of the White, 'modern' world. Despite becoming aware of these things, Ishi continued to speak of his tribe with pride. This pride makes his solitude, as he spent his last years amongst whites, living under the care of anthropologists and talking about his lost way of life harsh and stark.

Theodora Kroeber was the wife of Ishi's protecting anthropologist Alfred Kroeber. She uses the insight of Ishi and the knowledge he gave her to cover the historical and geographical background of the Yahi Indians for a lay reader. The incursions of the Caucasians in the mid- 19th century into California forced the Ishi into a narrow, impoverished range of territory. She relates, through the persona of Ishi over the course of the first part of her book how the few remaining people of Ishi's tribe lived together, but in smaller and smaller numbers until Ishi was the last one of his tribe remaining.

Theodora Kroeber is particularly interested in the linguistic evolution of the California tribes. She relates how, before whites came to dominate the territories of California, the West was made up of 250 distinct Native tribes. Gradually, these diverse languages, culture, and customs began to become eradicated. Although she does not use the term, the anthropologist paints a picture of White usurpation of Indian territory a kind of cultural genocide, whether intentional or not. Clearly, Theodora Kroeber's aim in recording her dealings with Ishi is an attempt upon her part to undo this legacy of 'her' people.

Kroeber charts the course of the Ishi eradication through the eradication of the Ishi language. She notes that of the six main language groups of North American Indians, five of these were represented in the vast and expansive Western territory of what is now the state of California. According to her estimates, these five language groups divided themselves into over one hundred distinct spoken languages, an extraordinary diversity of languages on one continent, languages and cultures that are now lost to us.

One extraordinary testimony to Kroeber's achievement as an anthropologist comes through when she notes how the Yahi language was bifurcated between a male and female dialect. Males and females used these dialects when they were in groups of their own sex. How was this possible, one might ask, in a relatively small tribal community? Ishi recounted how, when a male child reached the age of adulthood, he was removed from the bosom of his mother and the maternal sphere of the other women of the tribe, so as not to learn their language. Afterwards, he lived in almost an exclusively male world were he learned the male dialect and hunting skills. This makes Theodora's status as a female as well as an anthropologist particularly striking in her relation with Ishi, causing the reader to marvel how she was able to gain his trust.

Kroeber's goal in telling the story of Yahi's tribe was to preserve Ishi's culture in memory, if not in physical fact, and to preserve the linguistic peculiarities in scholarship that she found fascination. Ishi's goal was to preserve his culture, despite its decimation, the culture that had shaped his life. She does not romanticize the divided, gendered nature of Yahi society, and shows a cool fascination with its multifaceted nature, as well as compassion for the man who taught her so much about yet. Yet the contrast between so-called civilized society and Indian life are not merely that of modernity vs. tradition.