Publisher's Weekly Review
Touted in his day as "the last wild Indian," Ishi, of the Northern Californian Yahi people, survived by adapting to a life housed within a San Francisco anthropological museum, where spectators paid to see him make arrowheads, until he died in 1916. Under 1990s repatriation laws, a group of Maidu Indians from the Sierra Nevada region sought to reclaim Ishi's ashes, buried in a San Francisco cemetery, but a rumor persisted that Ishi's brain had been removed during autopsy, pickled, and was still hidden somewhere. Duke University anthropologist Starn searched for the brain and here offers an unlikely narrative, informative and politicized, with easy-to-read, much-needed thumbnail histories of the Indian Wars. (As Starn notes, California Gold Rush atrocities against Native Americans are so recent that people remember them firsthand from their grandparents.) One of Starn's main accusations is that the widow of the important, early anthropologist Alfred Kroeber first made Ishi's story famous through "writerly liberties" as well as "careless research and made-up dramatic effects." Starn himself makes his own feelings and impressions central to the story, allowing himself to tell us, for example, that he "fell asleep at midnight with the motel swimming pool's blue floodlights glowing through the curtains like the beams of an alien spaceship." His search takes him from the University of Berkeley to the Cornucopia Restaurant in Oroville, Calif., to the Repatriation Office and "wet collection" in the Smithsonian Museum of National History, to an Ancestral Gathering at Mount Lassen National Park, to "Grizzly Bear's Hiding Place." For some readers, Starn-as-protagonist will ground this intellectual mystery, while others will find him distracting. But on the whole, the book satisfies as a quick review of sordid chapters in the nation's history, and a genuinely compelling investigation of how one culture's attempt to dominate another can take bizarre, persistent forms. (Feb.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Booklist Review
Anthropology professor Starn relates his and others' relentless pursuit of the story of Ishi, the last wild Indian found in northern California in 1911. Ishi was brought by the renowned anthropologist Alfredroeber to live in a San Francisco museum, where he died in 1916 from tuberculosis. His remains were cremated, with the exception of his brain, whose location remains a mystery until the author and several concerned Native American activists begin to investigate. Their goal is to repatriate Ishi's remains and bury them near his tribal homeland near Mt. Lassen. In the fall of 2000, their goal becomes a reality, but only after they succeed, first, in locating Ishi's brain in the Smithsonian, and, second, in following the convoluted paths of his possible ancestry. Starn embellishes his chronicle with a thumbnail sketch of twentieth-century American anthropological studies, and woven throughout his account are tidbits of recent Native American history, including the inception of the American Indian Movement and the boon of casino profits, which help put the Ishi saga in its historical and political context. --Deborah Donovan Copyright 2004 Booklist
Library Journal Review
What happened to Ishi's brain? The director of Duke's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Starn spent several years trying to unravel that mystery. Starn's interest in Ishi began during his childhood years in Berkeley, CA, where he learned the story of the last uncontacted Native California Indian and the last of the Yaha tribe. Ishi, who had been hiding for years in the rugged Mt. Lassen foothills, was captured in 1911 and became a living exhibit at a San Francisco museum, which was then under the direction of renowned anthropologist Alfred Kroeber. After Ishi's death in 1916, rumors spread that his brain had been removed and preserved for scientific study. Starn weaves a complex and engaging story of his personal and professional quest to find the truth. Along the way, he tells Ishi's story and the larger story of Native northern California, from prehistory to the present-day Native cultural revival. Starn does not hesitate to point out the inaccuracies and oversimplifications in Theodora Kroeber's famous 1961 biography, Ishi in Two Worlds. Suspenseful and compelling, this excellent investigative narrative will be of interest in both academic and public libraries that have collections in anthropology, Native American studies, and California history.-Elizabeth Salt, Otterbein Coll. Lib., Westerville, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
