The Long Concealment

After the massacre of their largest villages and a failed effort at a treaty in 1870, the survivors had really only two options. They could go on the warpath and face immediate extinction or they could go into hiding. For twelve years, from 1872 to 1884 nothing was seen of the Yahi indians. No horses or stock were hunted, no cabins were rifled, not a footprint or even a wisp of smoke from a fire was seen. The concealment was complete. Then in 1884 the raids began again. By this time most of their hunters were dead. Hunting and gathering had become increasingly risky and scantier in returns. More whites continued to invade their lands with roads and ranches. In April of 1885 a rancher by the name of Norvall came home and heard noises coming out of his cabin. As he watched four indians climbed out of his window. One of the indians was Ishi, another boy an old man and a young woman.They were wearing some of his old clothing and not much else. Rather than retaliate, he signalled for them to keep the clothes and leave. That fall he found two Yana baskets on his table. He treasured these gifts and later donated them to the Ishi Museum. In 1894 the raiding came to a sudden end. What was believed to be the five surviving Yahi began their last retreat to Deer Creek. They established an almost inaccessible camp called "Wowunopo mu tetna" Grizzly Bear's Hiding Place. The ancient site of a grizzly bear den) The site was on a ledge about 500 feet above the creek. Their dwellings could not be seen from any direction. And no one entered the canyon. The Yahi could go all the way from their ledge to the creek under a very heavy cover of laurel. They were essentially invisible to anyone outside of their canyon. Only faint trails connected the four houses. The camp was very well organized with a living house, a smoke house (so well covered that the smoke was dispersed and never seen), a store house and finally a village toilet. The five Yahi living in the Grizzly Bear site wee Ishi, his mother, a sister (or possibly a cousin who was accepted as a sister, an older man and another younger man. The village was a great place for the survivors. The fishing was very good in the streams. Ishi could harpoon or net the fish from the creek. They could also hunt wild animals that wandered into the brushy canyon. Not far from the Living House was a work room where Ishi chipped his arrowheads and spear points. There was enough obsidian and glass flakes from years of chipping to fill one of the large carrying baskets. A small trail let from this room another 50 to 70 feet downstream to the village toilet. The survivors would remain here for 12 years. During those year the younger man died. Leaving Ishi, his mother (who was very frail), another frail older man and Ishi's sister/cousin. Their peace would end in 1908. The Oro Light and Power Company was contemplating the building of a dam at the junction of Deer and Sulphur creeks. They sent engineers into the canyon to survey for a flume. In the evening of November 9, 1908, two engineers were walking back upstream toward their camp at the Speegle homestead. As they quietly walked beside the noisy stream, they came onto a sandbar and there before them on a rock in the middle of the stream stood a naked Ishi fishing with a harpoon. They quickly returned to camp and reported the encounter. A surveyors guide named Merle Apperson investigated. He was working his way through the canyon when an arrow whizzed past, narrowly missing him. He fled and reported the incident. About 10:00 the same morning, the crew walked directly into the village. The young woman fled with the old man and Ishi fled into the forest. The crew found Ishi's mother hiding under a pile of skins and rags. Her white hair was cropped close to her scalp (a sign of mourning). She was paralyzed and her swollen legs were wrapped with strips of buckskin. In a very cruel way they took all of the tools, utensils, clothing, food, etc. and left the camp empty except for the old woman. Apperson returned to the camp early the next morning but found the old woman gone. We don't know how long Ishi was able to keep his mother alive. But it is unlikely that she could have survived for long in the difficult conditions of constant moving and hiding. Ishi never saw his sister or the old man again. He assumed they had died by drowning or by animal attack. Otherwise he would have found them fairly easily. For most of the years from 1908 to 1911 Ishi was probably alone. In the next post we will discuss his capture in Oroville and his years in the Museum of California in San Francisco California.