- LOS ANGELES (AP) - The preserved brain of Ishi, an American Indian known
as "the last wild man in America," has been found in a Smithsonian
Institution warehouse more than eight decades after it vanished.
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- Methodical sleuthing by a pair of academics
solved a mystery that may finally permit a proper burial of the last survivor
of the Yahi Indian tribe.
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- The discovery, revealed Friday by the
University of California at San Francisco, has electrified Northern California
tribes who struggled for years to locate Ishi's remains.
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- "To put Ishi back together, to get
his remains back will be something that people will feel good about,"
said Larry Myer, director of the state's Native American Heritage Commission.
"It will give us a sense of healing, a sense of control."
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- In 1911, Ishi wandered out of the foothills
of the Sierra Nevada and into American legend. He had been hiding in the
wilderness for years after the last of the Yahi were thought to have been
killed by settlers or disease.
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- He became a nationwide sensation as a
living example of "the last wild man in America." Ishi lived
in a museum at UCSF, giving demonstrations of American Indian life for
throngs of visitors. He died of tuberculosis in 1916.
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- An autopsy was performed - against Ishi's
final wishes - and his brain was removed. But scientists lost track of
the brain, and Indian leaders refused to go through with a burial ceremony
without it. Ishi's body was cremated and his ashes are stored in a cemetery
in Colma, south of San Francisco.
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- Two years ago, administrators at UCSF
asked historian Nancy Rockafellar to determine whether the brain was at
the university.
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- She learned that Duke University anthropologist
Orin Starn was researching a book on Ishi and told him about the autopsy.
Starn found a file at the University of California at Berkeley that cataloged
the transfer of Ishi's brain to the Smithsonian.
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- Last month, Starn confirmed the brain
was being kept in a tank in Maryland by the Smithsonian's National Museum
of Natural History. It is one of nine American Indian brains and thousands
of skeletons collected for research.
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- "It was not uncommon to study brains
in the early 20th century," Starn said. "Some people thought
that different races had different brain sizes."
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- A Smithsonian spokesman said Friday that
the institution has been in touch with tribes in California's Butte County
to discuss repatriation.
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- Starn said he didn't think there any
"bad intent" on the part of the institution, which apparently
didn't know people were seeking the remains.
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- "I think Ishi is important as a
symbol a reminder of what happened to indigenous people during the white
takeover and conquest," Starn said. "He really was a victim of
a holocaust."
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- As the place where Ishi lived his final
years, Rockafellar said UCSF has an obligation to his memory.
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- "He captures your imagination,"
she said. "His basic humanness is what shines through in these accounts
of him left by the whites who knew him, his humanness and his resiliency."
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