10/26/2026
This is the story I named my "Ishi" basket after.
The Yana and Yahi people once lived in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains, but when settlers flocked to the area during the Gold Rush, their numbers plummeted due to disease and violent clashes. In 1865, settlers massacred the Yahi tribe, leaving barely a dozen survivors. More than 50 years later, a starving Yahi man showed up at a farm near Oroville. Because he wouldn't speak his own name according to his tribe's customs, anthropologists referred to him as Ishi. Scientists at Berkeley introduced Ishi to modern society and learned as much as possible about his lost culture — until he died from tuberculosis in 1916.
Learn more about Ishi, the Yahi man known as the "last wild Indian": https://inter.st/hdtc
