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Ishi in Three Centuries. Edited by Karl Kroeber and Clifton Kroeber. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Pp. xx + 416, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, maps, figures, tables, notes, appendix, suggested readings, index. $49.95 cloth)
Without Theodora Kroeber's classic Ishi in Two Worlds, first published in 1961, memory of this most famous of all California Indians would be limited to but a few diligent historians and anthropologists. Now, forty years later, our appreciation of the significance of Ishi's life is enriched with the publication of Ishi in Three Centuries, a collection of essays edited by two of Theodora's sons, Karl and Clifton.
The impetus for the creation of this volume was a disclosure that rocked the world of human-science scholarship. In the late 1990's, scholars discovered that Ishi's brain had not been interred with his ashes after his death from tuberculosis in 1916 but instead had been sent to the Smithsonian Institution, where it had remained undisturbed over seven decades. Pressured by contemporary California Indians and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the Smithsonian turned Ishi's brain over to the Pit River Rancheria in California, and in August...