A Clash of Cultures
In the predawn hours of August 9, 1911, in a small village near Oroville, California, the people were awakened by dogs barking at an exhausted, emaciated, fearful man crouched by a fence in the corral of the local slaughterhouse. The man was Ishi, an American Indian who had lived alone in the wild the past two years after white men had killed the rest of his Yahi tribe. This dramatic moment became headline news. Reporters and the curious poured into Oroville from across the country to see the "last wild Indian". Ishi's tribe, part of the Yana nation, had lived in the foothills of Mount Lassen for centuries, only slightly above the Stone Age culture.
As the white man poured into California in search of gold and to establish farms and ranches, they claimed the land, gradually forcing the Indians into smaller and smaller territories in which it became difficult for them to find sufficient food for survival. Needing food, the Indians raided the white man's cattle. The white man hunted and killed the thieving Indians until Ishi was the only survivor. Near starvation, Ishi wandered into the white man's territory. He expected to be killed, but he was treated well.
Professors Waterman and Kroeber, anthropologists with the University of California, accepted responsibility for Ishi and became his friends. He was given a home at the Museum of Anthropology where he demonstrated how to make fire, flint stone arrowheads, bows, arrows and spears for the visitors. He was a gentle, shy and timid man and deeply lonely, but preferred companionship. He made friends easily, wore the white man's clothing, learned English, was invited into private homes and frequently visited the sick people in the nearby hospital.
Ishi died of tuberculosis on March 25,1916. His last words were, "You stay, I go." Ishi's life is symbolic of the overall conflict between the American Indians and the white men who took possession of their land, causing destruction of the Indian's way of life.
Scientific evidence supports the theory that human life on Earth began somewhere in Africa and spread both east and west around the globe. After millions of years the Indians arrived in the Americas from the West by walking from Asia across the dry land at that time of the Bering Strait. The whites arrived later from the East by boat: When they met, their cultures were divergent by centuries of evolution, each culture very strange and misunderstood by the other. The Indians had no more of an idyllic life than the whites. In many ways they were the same, with the capacity for both good and evil. Before the white man came there were both peaceful and war-like Indians, sometimes killing and driving their neighbors off their land in search of better conditions for themselves.
More Indians are living in America today than in the days of Columbus, but their way of life has vanished. It is a tragic story and a sad commentary on human nature, but when two widely divergent cultures come into conflict, the more powerful will prevail over the less powerful. It has happened many times throughout the millennia of recorded history.