Yahi Man (Ishi) Can! Traditional Cache

Theme: Ishi (1860 – March 25, 1916) was the pseudonym of the last primitive member of the Yahi people. Pseudonym because Ishi means man in the Yahi dialect of Yana; his real name was never known because it was taboo in Yahi society to say one's own name. Ishi is believed to be the last Native American in Northern California to have lived most of his life completely outside the European American culture before he emerged from the forest in 1911. He emerged from the wild near Oroville, California, leaving his ancestral homeland in the foothills near Lassen Peak. Prior to the California Gold Rush, the Yahi population numbered approximately 400. In 1865, Ishi and his family were victims of the Three Knolls Massacre (40 killed), from which approximately 30 Yahi survived. The remaining Yahi escaped but went into hiding for the next 40 years after cattlemen killed about half of the survivors. The Yahi completely avoided contact from that point on. The last remaining Yahi lived in the most uninhabitable canons in Northern California. Places not even cattle would go into. In order to avoid contact and survive; they used tunneling through the brush, camouflaged their huts like their surroundings, and walked on rocks to avoid giving any sign of their existence. Eventually Ishi's mother and other companions died, and he was discovered by a group of Butchers in their corral at Oroville on August 29, 1911. After being noticed by townspeople, Ishi was taken into custody by a local sheriff for his own protection. The so called "wild man" caught the imagination and attention of thousands of onlookers and curiosity seekers. He was then moved to the Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley where he lived the remainder of his life in evident contentment, until his death from tuberculosis in 1916. While at the Museum Ishi was studied closely and befriended by the anthropologists Alfred L. Kroeber and Thomas Talbot Waterman, helping them reconstruct Yahi culture by identifying material items and showing how they were made. He also provided information on his native Yana language which was recorded and studied by Edward Sapir, who had previously done work on the northern dialects. Ishi, like other California Indians of his time, was an excellent archer. Among his closest friends at the university was Saxton Pope, a physician called in to care for him. Pope was particularly fascinated by the bows and arrows Ishi made, and by the practice of archery. Ishi taught Pope how to make the equipment and the two hunted together in the mountains of California. Ishi‘s story was a truly remarkable one and well documented in several books. Just a few years back Ishi’s body was returned to the Yahi of the Redding Rancheria (Win River), believed to be his nearest remaining relatives for a ceremonial burial. Ishi once may have very well visited this very spot in his travels.

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FTF: teco_mac found Yahi Man (Ishi) Can! (Traditional Cache) at 2/10/2009 Log: Thanks for the FTF! Samespecies and RedStrike this is truely an awsome cache, one of the best! A very interesting location, and very cleaver hide and great swag too! I took the prize and left a travel coin. TFTC

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