Ishi's Brain: In Search of Americas Last Wild Indian

by Orin Starn

Book Overview

After the Yahi were massacred in the mid-nineteenth century, Ishi survived alone for decades in the mountains of northern California, wearing skins and hunting with bow and arrow. His capture in 1911 made him a national sensation; anthropologist Alfred Kroeber declared him the world's most "uncivilized" man and made Ishi a living exhibit in his museum. Thousands came to see the displaced Indian before his death, of tuberculosis. Ishi's Brain follows...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393326985
• ISBN13: 9780393326987
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

A Moving Anthropological Saga

The story of Ishi is fairly well known. He was the mythologized last lonely "unconquered" Indian who was captured in California in 1911, then spent the last few years of his life as either a guest or prisoner at a San Francisco museum, looked over by scientists who were friendly but had suspicious motives. Since Ishi's death, rumors had persisted that his brain was removed for scientific study, and modern California Indians yearned for the brain to be reunited with Ishi's ashes (themselves kept in a San Francisco cemetery), so Ishi could be given a proper Indian burial in his mountain homeland. The author, modern anthropologist Orin Starn, was instrumental in finding the brain in an obscure Smithsonian storeroom, and for helping with the process of repatriation. This detective work is the main impetus for this moving book. However, Starn describes much more than a dry academic detective story. While he tends to talk about himself a little too much and his philosophical explorations could use some editing, Starn fills this book with highly compelling coverage of modern cultural identity politics for all the parties involved in the Ishi saga. These include the modern California Indians and their divisive struggles to prove their ancestral connection to Ishi, modern whites who embrace stereotypical native mythology with misguided or even ulterior motives, and anthropologists (Starn's forbears) who have displayed shifting loyalties and ethics in their study of so-called "primitive" peoples. Starn also find inconsistencies in the knowledge of Ishi's life and background as espoused by caretaker anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and his wife Theodora, who wrote the famous but not entirely accurate biography "Ishi in Two Worlds." Most importantly, Starn also turns up new evidence and raises new questions about the mysterious Ishi himself, who was surely more complex and human than the semi-mythological image that surrounds his life and identity. This book is a strongly considered and moving look into the far-reaching cultural legacies of a single Indian, the decimation of his people, and the modern lives of Native Americans and all others who are concerned about these legacies. [~doomsdayer520~]

Peripatetic Scholarship and Engaging Mystery!

At its simplest, this book is a beautifully lucid and often poignant account of how the author, anthropology Professor Orin Starn, tracked down the mysterious whereabouts of the last "wild" Indian's brain some 80 years after it was excised from his lifeless body on a California autopsy table. As such, the book reads like a compelling mystery novel, one that will keep the most jaded and disinterested readers hitched to a twisting and ever-surprising cross-country chain of discovery until the very end. At its most complex, it represents a keen, engaging, and constantly balanced overview of classical anthropological history in the 20th century as Professor Starn carefully uncovers, interprets, and weighs the motives and actions of one of the field's first luminaries, Alfred Kroebur, the man responsible for Ishi's emergence as a museum curiosity and stark emblem of man's "uncivilized" nature. The book will therefore delight Native American historians, political activists, college and grad students steeped in social and culture theory, and even casual readers interested in 20th century Americana. But regardless of the reader's background or incentive, he/she will find Professor Starn's ease and clarity in recounting this captivating story an uncommon joy indeed. Highly recommended!

Eye-opening and thought-provoking

Somewhere in my early years I read Theodora Kroeber's books on Ishi and they have remained among my favorite books that I have occasionally reread. After reading Ishi's Brain, however, these books will keep their mystique but never have the same ring of truth. I was amazed to learn that I am a member of what Orin Starn calls the "Ishi cult". I had no idea there were so many people as compelled as I am by Ishi's mythology. And now I have learned that Ishi may have been far more touched by "civilization" than I had formerly believed. I recently published a novel, Treasure Forest, in which a character shapes his life according to the Ishi I believed in before reading Starn's book. Daggett grows up in San Francisco in the 30's and comes under the care of a man who had known Ishi through the museum. When Daggett runs away at age 14 to head north, it is to capture the freedom he believes that Ishi had as a lone survivor in the wilderness. My character succeeds living his own version of Ishi's life right up into his 70's, when -- I won't ruin the story for you. But as I wrote, I sometimes wondered what Ishi would have thought of the story, if he would have felt a kinship with Daggett, and I've often wondered how Ishi would have liked Daggett's underground version of Grizzly Bear's Hiding Place.I would recommend that anyone who is fascinated by Ishi read Orin Starn's book. The discoveries it shares ground the Ishi mythology in very human details, bringing it closer to our own experience, coloring it with more authenticity. I am sure it will influence me as I continue to write the rest of my novel's trilogy.

Page turner!

A wonderful read, like a super-smart mystery. Full of fascinating stories, and they are all true! It also pulls together many threads -- history and current issues facing Native Americans, stones and bones, contemporary politics, the way we think about scientific inquiry -- terrific!

Ishi's Brain we loved it

Bev and I have just discovered a fascinating new book............ a real story of intrigue, mystery, science, flawed human nature and a dozen other superlatives. Unlike The DaVinci Code This story is real and starts a long time ago and is only solved in modern times. This remarkable book should climb to the top of the best seller list. Orin Starn is a gifted writer and Professor of Antropology At Duke University. The book is written for readers like us rather than the academic world. Ishi you may recall was the "last wild indian" to come out of the stone age in the USA. You'll recall his tribe had all been murdered or died of white man's diseases. Ishi was alone and spoke a language that no one on earth understood. Ishi was "captured" studied and exploited. You'll become as excited as we are about the story, Ishe the man, and Orin the author. You will find the story riveting and a real page turner. You will want to know what became of Ishi's Brain as much as Orin did ISHI'S BRAIN BY ORIN STARN PUBLISHED BY W.W. NORTON AND COMPANY