Ishi - Legacy

Legacy

• The anthropologist Theodora Kroeber, also the wife of Alfred Kroeber, popularized Ishi's story in her book Ishi in Two Worlds (1961). She worked with her husband's notes and comments to create the story of a man she had never met, publishing it after Alfred's death.
• Robert F. Heizer and Theodora Kroeber edited Ishi the Last Yahi: A Documentary History (1981), which contained additional scholarly materials.
• In 2003, anthropologists Clifton and Karl Kroeber, sons of Theodora and Alfred Kroeber, edited Ishi in Three Centuries, the first scholarly book on Ishi to contain essays by Native Americans. Native writers, such as Gerald Vizenor, had been commenting on the case since the late 1970s.
• The Duke University anthropologist Orin Starn updated Ishi's story in his book, Ishi's Brain: In Search of America's Last "Wild" Indian (2004). He recounted his quest for the remains of the last of the Yahi, while interpreting what Ishi meant to Americans then and modern Indians today. (In 2000 Ishi's brain was reunited with his cremated remains.)
• The Ishi Wilderness Area in northeastern California, believed to be the ancestral grounds of his tribe, is named in his honor.
• Due to a campaign by Gerald Vizenor, the courtyard in Dwinelle Hall at the University of California, Berkeley was renamed "Ishi Court".
• Ishi is revered by flintknappers as probably one of the last two native stone tool makers in North America. His techniques are widely imitated by knappers, and ethnographic accounts of his toolmaking are considered to be the Rosetta Stone of lithic tool manufacture.
• Krober and Waterman's 148 wax cylinder recordings (totaling 5 hours and 41 minutes) of Ishi speaking, singing, and telling stories in the Yahi language were selected by the Library of Congress as a 2010 addition to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".