Ishi may best be remembered as the last Yahi Indian of California, but he is now also the first of his tribe with an online bibliography of resources about his life.

The UCSF Library and Center for Knowledge Management announced yesterday that it added the Ishi home page to GALEN II - the digital library of UCSF.

Librarians and archivists at the UCSF library believe this online bibliography will provide a useful launching point for the exploration of Ishi's life and legacy.

Produced by UCSF Archives and Special Collections, the website provides descriptions of primary and secondary sources available for research throughout the University of California and affiliated institutions.

In August of 1911, Ishi walked out of the foothills near Mount Lassen — leaving his Stone Age world for 20th century California society. From 1911 through 1916, he lived at the Anthropology Museum of the University of California Affiliated Colleges on Parnassus Heights in San Francisco (now the site of UCSF). Ishi discussed his culture and beliefs with anthropologists Alfred L. Kroeber and Theodore T. Waterman, as well as surgeon Saxton T. Pope. Graciously collaborating with the anthropologists, Ishi provided insight about his language, a dialect presumed lost until his emergence from the Mill Creek region of California.

Free to return to his homelands, Ishi chose to remain at the museum as a living interpreter of his culture. Exposed to a society hosting diseases foreign to the Yahi, Ishi contracted tuberculosis and died on March 25, 1916, at the medical college on Parnassus. Ishi left behind a legacy of invaluable information about his people, and provided a shining example of a courageous human spirit bridging the cultural divide between two worlds.

The Ishi home page describes the archival and manuscript collections available, which include Ishi's patient records from the University of California, the records of the Anthropology Department at UC Berkeley, and the personal and professional papers of Alfred L. Kroeber. In addition, links are made to other Internet resources such as the UC Berkeley Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, where Yahi artifacts and tools created by Ishi as well as photographs documenting his life can be studied. The page also provides a comprehensive overview of the resources found in MELVYL®, the online catalog for the University of California.

1st appeared 8/13/97