Book Review: Ishi's Brain

---

Identity crisis
Scholar re-examines the life and lasting controversy of Ishi

Reviewed by Elizabeth Corcoran
Sunday, February 8, 2004

Ishi's Brain: In Search of the Last "Wild" Indian

By Orin Starn

NORTON 352 PAGES; $25.95
Great legends are allegories, stories that impart a deep moral lesson even if they have to fudge the facts to do so. Over the decades, the story of Ishi, typically billed as "California's last wild Indian," grew to legendary proportions. Now, "Ishi's Brain: In Search of the Last 'Wild' Indian," by Orin Starn, an anthropologist at Duke University, aims to strip away the moralistic veneer of the Ishi legend.

Told like a detective story, "Ishi's Brain" is a compelling, and at times, agonizing story of human fallibility, of conflicting good intentions gone awry.

First the history: In 1911, a half-naked, starving man stumbled into the yard of a slaughterhouse outside of Oroville (Butte County), about 150 miles northeast of San Francisco. He did not understand any language spoken to him including a local Indian tongue, Maidu. Someone suggested that he might have belonged to a tribe that, many years earlier, was believed to be responsible for raids on white townspeople.

The day after he was found, the town paper ran a banner headline: "Aboriginal Indian, the last of the Deer Creeks, captured near Oroville." Alfred Kroeber, of the University of California at Berkeley, immediately sent a colleague to Oroville to take custody of the Indian. (At the time, American Indians were considered wards of the state, receiving citizenship only in 1924.) The anthropologist ascertained that the Indian spoke a dialect of Yana. The scientist consequently dubbed the language "Yahi," and named the Indian "Ishi," which sounded like "I'citi," his word for "man." He appeared to be the last surviving member of his tribe.

Kroeber moved Ishi into quarters in his new museum by Golden Gate Park. Ishi became friendly with the museum staff, demonstrated how to chip arrowheads for tourists and recounted songs and stories into early audio recording devices for the Berkeley anthropologists. In March 1916, he died of tuberculosis.

Against Ishi's expressed wishes, a doctor autopsied his body, removing and preserving his brain. The body was later cremated in a private ceremony and the ashes stored in a black Pueblo Indian pot at the Olivet Memorial Park in Colma. In 1961, Kroeber's wife, Theodora, published "Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America." Told with all the flourish and moral underpinnings of a legend, it became a best-seller. As Starn points out, even though Theodora vividly described the massacres of the Yahi people, Ishi's forbearers, she wanted her story to be about healing: Ishi survived thanks to the kindness of her husband, Alfred, and other white protectors. Once settled at the museum, Ishi embraced these people as his "intimate friends," Theodora wrote. But Theodora was loose with facts and omitted some key points, including the fate of Ishi's brain.

Starn spent about two years poking around into the history of Ishi. Even Starn's library research takes on an air of suspense with the rich mosaic of detail he provides: "I decided to take one more look at the Bancroft Library. The Bancroft closed at three, which only left me forty-five minutes before the doors shut for good until after the New Year. ... I checked my bag, signed the register, and showed my ID as now required to enter the library's oak-paneled reading room."

At last, Ishi's pickled brain is found. It is floating around in a vat of preserving solution (along with 32 other brains) in a Maryland warehouse maintained by the Smithsonian Institution. No one was happy. Indian tribes were angry that the Smithsonian still had the brain. Officials at the Smithsonian were vexed by the uproar over a specimen that had been forgotten for decades. Sorting out the legitimate heirs to the brain of someone billed as the "last" of his kind was fraught with tension. Leaders of one tribe, the Maidu, had set Starn on the trail of the brain. But another tribe, the Pit River Indians, claimed closer linguistic ties to Ishi. The Pit River Indians won and then snubbed the Maidu by not inviting them to the burial ceremony.

Starn does not shirk from describing these clashes. Many of his characters' decisions are flawed by ambition. Ishi, too, comes under scrutiny. Starn locates a couple of Indians who can understand some of the songs that Ishi recorded decades ago. They are dismayed. "He shouldn't have sung those songs," explains an elderly woman. "They were given by the spirit to the medicine man." Why would Ishi choose those songs? Starn wonders. He recalls hearing a story told by Indians that cast Ishi as a malevolent shaman expelled by his tribe.

But even as he seeks to correct the historical record, Starn, like Theodora, wants to be a peacemaker. He wants us to understand everybody's motives -- the doctor who chose to dissect Ishi; Kroeber, who packed off the brain to a distant museum; Theodora, who sugar-coated the story; the Smithsonian officials, who tarried over the decision to repatriate Ishi's remains; the Indian tribes who clashed over the right to bury the brain. By leaving the nuances and complexities in the story, Starn has completed the transformation of Ishi -- from man, to legend, and now, at last, back into mortal man again.

Elizabeth Corcoran is a contributing editor to Forbes.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/02/08/RVGQ94K8721.DTL
©2006 San Francisco Chronicle

Sphere: Related Content

Telling Tales

(originally published in the Burlingame Mother’s Club Newsletter)

Once upon a time, there was a mother who loved taking walks. When her first child was born, she strapped him into a Snuggli and walked for hours. As he grew a bit bigger, she would nestle him into a stroller and go for leisurely jogs. He grew sturdy and strong and she eagerly looked forward to the day when they would stroll, hand in hand, around their neighborhood.

But soon it was clear there was a problem: he just didn’t want to walk. It wasn’t that he couldn’t. The child could run like a squirrel when the mood struck him. But rather than walk with his mother, the boy would throw himself on the sidewalk and howl. The mother pleaded with her son to walk. She promised him cookies. She got mad and threatened to walk off. Nothing worked. Then one day, she had an idea. She began telling him a story: “Once upon a time, there was a baby caterpillar with twenty legs…”

No one can resist the tug of a story. And every parent—really, anyone at all—has a treasure trove of stories locked in their head. All we have to do is get them out.

Everyone tells us that children love to hear their mother sing, whether or not she can carry a tune. What they forget to tell us is that every child craves to hear stories told by their parents—“with your own mouth,” as my littlest one likes to say.

True confession: I started telling my first son, Matthew, stories when he was very small to coax him to go for walks. I’d start the story—then begin strolling. It was magic: instead of fussing, he would trot alongside, eager to hear every twist. Now, at age 7, he’s a great walker and has an insatiable love of stories.

Although I’ve been a journalist all my adult life, I have had no formal training in making up stories for children. Over the past few years, however, I’ve conjured up hundreds of stories to amuse and distract my boys. Story telling, I’ve realized, is much like cooking: You can, of course, whip up a simple story from scratch. You can make up a fine story using “prepackaged” materials. And, with a bit of practice, you can weave a gourmet tale with more parts than a nine-course meal. Like cooking, the only prerequisite is utter confidence.

Here is the list of ingredients and a few of the short-cuts I use to make up stories. Although it may seem like a bit of work at the beginning, you’ll discover that as you tell more stories, your cupboard will become packed with characters, plots and twists that will make story telling a cinch.

Ingredients:

1. Characters: You only need two or three characters for a good story. The logical star for many of your stories, of course, is your child! (Who doesn’t want to be the hero of a story?) Beloved stuffed animals are another good bet. Other sorts of creatures—lions, dragons, witches—are also favorites.

Once upon a time, there was a baby caterpillar with twenty legs.

2. The plot: Seize the moment. Every child likes to hear stories about familiar stuff. There’s nothing more familiar than the situation at hand. Heading off to the park? Then tell a story about a character going to the park. Bedtime? Tell a story about a character going to bed.

More than anything else, he wanted to walk to a nearby park where there was a tree with leaves so delicious they tasted like candy. “Please, Mommy,” he said, “can’t we go for a walk to the park?”

3. Conflict: Every good story has an element of conflict. And every good mother encounters plenty of conflict every day. Is your child fighting bedtime? Refusing to eat green vegetables? Does she insist on wearing the same pink socks day after day, whether or not they’re clean? Even better: flip-flop the situation. Maybe your character is begging to do something that your child resists.

“Oh,” sighed his mother. “Aren’t you tired from playing all day? Are you sure you really want to go to the park?”

“Oh, yes,” said the little caterpillar. “I’ve got lots of energy!”

4. The comic twist: Here’s where you can be really creative. You’ve described a character and situation in your story. Now add an element of absurdity. The crazier, the better. Why not a story about an animal who really, really wants to go to bed—but spaceships, dinosaurs and a licorice-wielding wizard keep stopping it from getting to sleep? Or, a creature who loves peas and hates candy—but is forced to eat only candy, all day and all night, by a wicked witch?

So, the mother caterpillar inched her way to the closet and started to pull out all the little caterpillar’s shoes. You have to remember that the little caterpillar wore 20 shoes at once. First the mother put on a pair of blue shoes and laced them up, one on the right, one on the left. Then she put on a red pair of shoes, one on the right, one on the left. Then she put on a pair of shoes with blinking lights in the heel, one on the right, one on the left…[you get the idea. Somehow, little kids often think such repetition is pretty funny. Ask your child to start adding examples to the list.] By the time the caterpillar’s mommy had laced up the very last shoe, which had pink and green polka dots, the little caterpillar had fallen fast asleep. The mother caterpillar gave a great big sigh—then started to unlace each and every shoe—and finally put the little caterpillar to bed.

5. The resolution: personally, I love happy endings. If your child is the star of the story, then let them do something heroic. If the story is about a creature, then invent an ending where the creature has a “great idea” and creatively solves a problem, or learns a lesson, or makes a friend or somehow winds up with a smile on its face. If you’re really stuck, ask your child what he or she thinks should happen. Chances are, the answer will surprise and delight you.

The next day, the little caterpillar had a great day, going to caterpillar school, learning what it would take to become a butterfly, playing with his friends and nibbling on tasty leaves. Toward the end of the day, the little caterpillar once again begged his mother to take him to the park.

“Oh please, Mommy!” said the little caterpillar. “Please, please, please! ”

“Oh dear, my darling little fluff ball. I’d love to take you to the park but I’m afraid that by the time we get on all your shoes, you’ll fall asleep again!”

[You can, of course, drag it out and go through the shoe scene all over again. Or not. Hey, it’s your story.]

All of a sudden, the little caterpillar had a Great Idea. “Mommy, look! Haven’t we seen that boy in the park before?”

Sure enough, the mother caterpillar looked up and saw a little human boy who looked very familiar. The caterpillars had often seen him in the park playing very near the tree with the tasty leaves. Even better—the backpack that he always carried with him was lying on the ground nearby.

“Let’s go!” said the mother caterpillar. In a few moments the pair had wiggled into the backpack and was soon on the way to the park. But the mommy hadn’t forgotten the little caterpillar’s shoes. She pulled out her own sack, filled with all twenty pairs. “Okay,” she said, as they bumped along in the little boy’s backpack. “Let’s start with a red shoe on your right foot…”

Premixed ingredients: Don’t hesitate to borrow story themes from tried and true fairy tales like Goldilocks, little red riding hood, the three little pigs or your own personal favorites. (The three little pigs is a wonderful story for improvisation. Ever hear the story of the three little elephants and the mean, nasty mouse?)

Even better: tell your child a story about something that happened to you when you were a child. This is obviously a different kind of story: you are the central character, the events are true. But every child is fascinated by the image of Mom or Dad as a kid. You can tell them how “life was different” in the days before videos and computers. You can share stories about ups or downs that you faced that might be similar to something they are confronting. Tell them about your favorite pet, your scariest Halloween or the best birthday you ever had.

There are lots of garnishes you can add, of course—everything from using your voice to sound like different characters or acting out some of the parts. Most important: let your child help tell the stories. You’ll be amazed at the tales you’ll hear.

--end—

Sphere: Related Content