View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE

provided by UC Hastings Scholarship Repository (University of California, Hastings College of the Law)

Hastings Environmental Law Journal Volume 7 Article 5 Number 3 Spring 2001

1-1-2001 Obscura Gerald Vizenor

Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/ hastings_environmental_law_journal Part of the Environmental Law Commons

Recommended Citation Gerald Vizenor, Ishi Obscura, 7 Hastings West Northwest J. of Envtl. L. & Pol'y 299 (2001) Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_environmental_law_journal/vol7/iss3/5

This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Environmental Law Journal by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WEST  NORTHWEST

Ishi was never his real name. Ishi is a simulation, the absence of his trib- al names. He posed at the borders of the cam- era, the circles of photographers and specta- tors, in the best backlighted pictures of the time. Ishi was never his real name, and he is not the photographs of that tribal man captured three generations ago in a slaughterhouse in northern California. He was thin and wore a canvas shirt then, a man of natural reason, a Ishi Obscura lonesome hunter, but never the stout pretense of a wild man lost and found in a museum.  Two tribal men were captured, two pronouns in By Gerald Vizenor a museum, one obscure and the other endured in silence. Ishi the obscura is discovered with a bare chest in photographs; the tribal man named in that simulation stared over the cam- era, into the distance. Ishi is not the last man of stone. He is not the obscure other, the mortal silence of sav- agism and the vanishing race. The other pro- noun is not the last crude measure of uncivi- lization; the silence of that tribal man is not the dead voice of racial photographs and the vanishing pose. He came out of the mountains in an undershirt; later, he was redressed in Western clothes in the museum, and then he was told to bare his chest for the curious writ- ers and photographers. Ishi told stories to be heard, not recorded and written; he told stories to be heard as the sounds of remembrance, and with a sense of time that would never be released in the man- nered silence of a museum. Overnight he became the last of the stone, the everlasting unknown, the man who would never vanish in the cruel ironies of civilization. Ishi was given a watch "which he wore and kept wound but not set," wrote in Ishi in Two Worlds. He understood time by the sun and other means, but his "watch was an article of pride and beauty to be

 “Ishi Obscura” is reprinted from Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance. Copyright 1994 by Gerald Vizenor. Vizenor is a Professor of American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Reprinted with permission of the Author.

299 WEST 

NORTHWEST Gerald Vizenor Volume 7, Number 3

worn with chain and pendant, not a thing of 6, 1911. He "feared people" and "wandered, utility." alone, like a hunted animal. . . . The man is as This tribal survivor evaded the barbarians aboriginal in his mode of life as though he in the mountains, the summer tourists, and the inhabited the heart of an African jungle, all of unnatural miners in search of precious miner- his methods are those of primitive peoples." als; now, as a captured portrait he endures the Ishi became the absence of his stories of remembrance of their romantic heirs. The gaze survivance, the wild other to those he trusted of those behind the camera haunts the unseen in silence. There were other names in the margins of time and scene in the photograph; mountains. The motion of the aboriginal and the obscure presence of witnesses at the simu- the primitive combined both racialism and lation of savagism could become the last postmodern speciesism, a linear consideration epiphanies of a chemical civilization. that was based on the absence of monotheism, He was invited to return to the mountains material evidence of civilization, institutional and asked by his admirers to start a fire in the violence, and written words more than on the natural way; he was reluctant at first, but then presence of imagination, oral stories, the he showed his reentry students, an anthropol- humor in trickster stories, and the observation ogist and a distinguished medical doctor, how of actual behavior and experience. to hunt with various bows and arrows. He Miller wrote that hunting "has been his heard the rush of mountain water, the wind only means of living and that has been done over stone, and he told stories the bears were with bow and arrow of his own manufacture, sure to hear, but he could have told his stu- and with snares. Probably no more interesting dents even more about the violence of civiliza- individual could be found today than this tion. The miners were the real savages; they nameless Indian." Indeed, the simulation and had no written language, no books, no man- pronoun of absence in the stories of sur- ners of providence, no sense of humor, no nat- vivance. ural touch, no museums, no stories in the Ishi smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and blood, and their harsh breath, even at a great looked past the camera, over the borders of distance, poisoned the seasons. They were the covetous civilization, into the distance. The agents of civilization. witnesses and nervous photographers, he Ishi came out of the mountains and was might have wondered, were lost and lonesome invited to a cultural striptease at the centerfold in their own technical activities. Whatever they of manifest manners and the histories of dom- valued in the creation of the other they had inance; he crossed the scratch line of savagism lost in the causal narratives of their own lives. and civilization with one name, and outlived Susan Sontag wrote in On Photography that the photographers. His survivance, that sense photographs are "experience captured, and the of mediation in tribal stories, is heard in a camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its word that means "one of the people," and that acquisitive mood." The camera captures oth- word became his name. So much the better, ers, not the experiences of the photographer; and he never told the anthropologists, the presence of the other is discovered in a sin- reporters, and curious practitioners his sacred gle shot, the material reduction of a pose, the tribal name, not even his nicknames. The other vanishing pose, and then invented once more tribal pronoun endured in silence. He might in a collection of pictures. The simulation of a have said, "The ghosts were generous in the tribe in photographs. silence of the museum, and now these men The tribes have become the better others, pretend to know me in their name." Trickster to be sure, and the closer the captured experi- hermeneutics is the silence of his nicknames. ences are to the last wild instances in the "Ishi is the absence," he might have said. world, the more valuable are the photographs. "He was the last of his tribe," wrote Mary Nothing, of course, was ever last that can be Ashe Miller in the Call, September seen in a picture. Nothing is last that are sto-

300 WEST 

Spring 2001 Ishi Obscura NORTHWEST ries of remembrance; nothing is last because and die in this house." Tuberculosis ended his the last is the absence of stories. life five years later. The camera creates an instance that never Alfred Kroeber, the anthropologist who existed in tribal stories; the last and lost was cared for Ishi, wrote that "he never swerved not in tribal poses but in the remembrance of from his first declaration." He lived and worked the witnesses who died at the borders of their in the museum. "His one great dread, which he possessions behind the camera. To be heard overcame but slowly, was of crowds." Ishi said, was once a course of survivance in tribal imag- "hansi saltu," when he saw the ocean and the ination; now, however, the tribes must prove crowded beach for the first time. The words with photographs the right to be seen and were translated as "many white people." heard as the other. Mere presence is never the Kroeber, an eminent academic humanist, is last word at the borders and margins of civi- seldom remembered for his nicknames. Ishi, lization; the sounds of stories, the human on the other hand, remembered the anthropol- touch of humor and silence, and visions must ogist as his "big chiep," which was his common be documented with photographs. Simulations pronunciation of the word "chief." Ishi used the are the outset and bear our tribal presence at tribal word "saltu," or "white man," a word that the borders. could be used as a nominal nickname com- Sontag argues that "there is something mensurate with his own — Big Chiep Kroeber, predatory in the act of taking a picture. To pho- the anthropologist, and Ishi, the mountain tograph people is to violate them, by seeing man who told survivance stories. them as they never see themselves, by having Ishi was captured and possessed forever by knowledge of them they can never have; it the camera, not the agencies of a wild govern- turns people into objects that can be symboli- ment. The sheriff secured "a pathetic figure cally possessed." crouched upon the floor," the Oroville Register The absence of the tribes is sealed, not reported on August 29, 1911. "The canvas from real, in a photograph; the absence is a simula- which his outer shirt was made had been tion, the causal narratives of museum con- roughly sewed together. His undershirt had sciousness, and the remorse of civilization. evidently been stolen in a raid upon some Photographs are the discoveries of the absence cabin. His feet were almost as wide as they of the tribes. Tribal stories, on the other hand, were long, showing plainly that he had never are mediations, and more is heard, seen, and worn either moccasins or shoes. In his ears remembered in oral stories than in a thousand were rings made of buckskin thongs." pictures. Sheriff Webber "removed the cartridges "The primitive notion of the efficacy of from his revolver" and "gave the weapon to the images presumes that images possess the Indian. The aborigine showed no evidence that qualities of real things," wrote Sontag, "but our he knew anything regarding its use. A cigarette inclination is to attribute to real things the was offered to him, and while it was very evi- qualities of an image." The simulation super- dent that he knew what tobacco was, he had sedes the real and remembrance. never smoked it in that form, and had to be Ishi told an interpreter, "I will live like the taught the art." white people from now on." The Bureau of Alfred Kroeber confirmed the newspaper Indian Affairs had promised him protection, report and contacted the sheriff who "had put but he would remain with his friends in the the Indian in jail not knowing what else to do museum. The ironies of "protection" have with him since no one around town could weakened the language of government. Ishi understand his speech or he theirs," wrote would not hear the promise of the miner, but Theodora Kroeber in Alfred Kroeber: A Personal he had no reason at the time to be suspicious Configuration. "Within a few days the of an agency created to represent his interests. Department of Indian Affairs authorized the "I want to stay where I am, I will grow old here, sheriff to release the wild man to the custody

301 WEST 

NORTHWEST Gerald Vizenor Volume 7, Number 3

of Kroeber and the museum staff. . . ." Ishi was tion. They were not insensitive, to be sure, but housed in rooms furnished by Phoebe their studies and museums would contribute Apperson Hearst. She had created the to the simulations of savagism. At the same Department and Museum of Anthropology at time, some of these educated men were liberal the University of California. nihilists, and their academic strategies dis- Alfred Kroeber wrote in The Worlds' Work praised civilization. These men who represent- that at "Eleven o'clock in the evening on Labor ed civilization would find in the other what Day, 1911, there stepped off the ferry boat into they had not been able to find in themselves or the glare of electric lights, into the shouting of their institutions; the simulations of the other hotel runners, and the clanging of trolley cars became the antiselves of their melancholy. on Market Street, San Francisco, Ishi, the last "The bourgeois literary scholar who strikes wild Indian in the United States." a pose and stigmatizes boredom as a cross the Kroeber named the lonesome hunter and aristocracy has to bear forgets that it was bore- natural philosopher who had survived the bar- dom that engendered literature," wrote Wolf barian miners in the mountains. Ishi is a mod- Lepenies in Melancholy and Society. "Bourgeois ern nickname, not a sacred name. "Ishi belongs melancholy signifies a form of loss of world to the lost Southern Yana tribe that formerly which is considerably different from that lived in Tehama County, in northern California. entailed in aristocratic melancholy. The latter This tribe, after years of guerilla warfare, was resulted from a loss of world, the former from practically exterminated by the whites by mas- having relinquished a world that had never sacre. . . ." been possessed." He wrote in the San Francisco Call, December Ishi trusted his new world, and those who 17, 1911, that when "Ishi, the last 'uncontami- honored him were bettered in their careers. He nated' aboriginal American Indian in the had been liberated from violence and starva- United States, left the Oroville jail, which had tion in the mountains; a wild transformation been the first home civilization was able to from the silhouette of the hunted to the heuris- offer him, for his new abiding place at the tic pleasure of a museum. University of California Museum of Kroeber wrote that he "put on weight rap- Anthropology at the Affiliated Colleges in San idly after coming within reach of the fleshpots Francisco he brought with him much primeval of civilization and their three times a day recur- and tribal lore of the most ancient of arts which rence. In a couple of months he had gained will prove as romantic to the student of the between forty and fifty pounds." future as it is fascinating to the twentieth-cen- At the University of California a week later, tury American of today." "the unknown refused to obey orders" for the Kroeber pointed out that "he has percep- first time. "He was to be photographed in a gar- tive powers far keener than those of highly edu- ment of skins, and when the dressing for the cated white men. He reasons well, grasps an aboriginal part began he refused to remove his idea quickly, has a keen sense of humor, is gen- overalls," reported Mary Ashe Miller in the San tle, thoughtful and courteous and has a higher Francisco Call. "He say he not see any other peo- type of mentality than most Indians." ple go without them," said the tribal translator Thomas Waterman, the linguist at the Sam Batwi, "and he say he never take them off museum, administered various psychological no more." tests at the time and concluded in a newspaper Miller wrote that the "battery of half a interview that "this wild man has a better head dozen cameras focused upon him was a new on him than a good many college men." experience and evidently a somewhat terrifying These college men, however, were the one. He stood with his head back and a half same men who discovered and then invented smile on his face, but his compressed lips and an outsider, the last of his tribe, with their con- dilated nostrils showed that he was far from siderable influence and power of communica- happy. . . .His name, if he knows it, he keeps to

302 WEST 

Spring 2001 Ishi Obscura NORTHWEST himself. It is considered bad form among abo- Two Worlds by Theodora Kroeber. The tattoo, an riginal tribes, I am told, to ask anyone's name, intentional retouch or accidental stain on the and it is seldom divulged until a firm basis of negative, has never been explained. The simu- friendship is established." lated tattoo, or negative stain, enhances the Theodora Kroeber wrote that "Ishi was image of a naked savage. photographed so frequently and so variously Saxton Pope, the surgeon at the medical that he became expert on matters of lighting, school near the museum, was a student of trib- posing, and exposure. . . . Photographs of him al archery and other tribal activities. He took were bought or made to be treasured as Ishi to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show when it mementos along with family pictures and cam- was in the city. "He always enjoyed the circus, era records of a holiday or an excursion." horseback feats, clowns, and similar perform- You hear his name now in the isolation of ances," he wrote in "The Medical History of his photographs. You must imagine the lone- Ishi." Later, a "warrior bedecked in all his paint some humor in the poses that pleased the and feathers, approached us. The two Indians curators in the natural light near the museum looked at each other in absolute silence for at the University of California. Their dead voic- several minutes. The Sioux then spoke in per- es haunt the margins of our photographs. You fect English, saying: "What tribe of Indian is were not the last to dream in his stories. You this?" I answered, 'Yana, from Northern were not the last memories of the tribes, but California.' you were the last to land in a museum as the "The Sioux then gently picked up a bit of simulations of a vanishing pose in photo- Ishi's hair, rolled it between his fingers, looked graphs. critically into his face, and said, 'He is a very Ishi may have undressed above the waist high grade of Indian.' As we left I asked Ishi to pose for the photograph supervised by what he thought of the Sioux. Ishi said, 'Him' s Joseph Kossuth Dixon, or one of his assistants, big chiep. . . .'" in connection with an incredible enterprise to Ishi was a winsome warrior of survivance, capture the last images of a vanishing race: the not a religious leader or a warrior chief on the Rodman Wanamaker Expedition of Citizenship road to complement the tragic simulations and to the North American Indian in 1913. representations of tribal cultures. His personal Dixon outfitted a private railroad car and power was more elusive than the political traveled to many tribal communities and poses of a tribal leader. He was never obligat- museums around the country. Later that year ed to speak as a leader or the last hunter of his he published a portrait of Ishi and more than a tribe; otherwise, his stories might not have hundred other photographs from his collection been heard, not even in the museum. His sto- in The Vanishing Race. ries were his survivance, and not an obligation "The Wanamaker expeditions took place at to be a tribal leader. He had a natural smile but a time when the sense of national guilt about he never learned how to shake hands. what had been done to the Indians was rising," Pierre Clastres wrote in Society Against the wrote Charles Reynolds, Jr. in American Indian State that a tribal chief must "prove his com- Portraits from the Wanamaker Expedition of 1913. mand over words. Speech is an imperative "The Indians were seen as noble savages whom obligation for the chief." The leader "must sub- the white man had turned into a vanishing mit to the obligation to speak, the people he race." Ishi and Bluff Creek Tom are the only two addresses, on the other hand, are obligated "noble savages" who are not dressed to the only to appear not to hear him." neck in the collection of photographs. Some tribal leaders were captured as Ishi posed for this "given" photograph, one proud warriors in photographs; they were of the few with his chest bared. The apparent heard, overhead as simulations too much, and tattoo on his chest does not appear in any translated without reason, and out of season; other photographs of him published in Ishi in their stories were lost to manifest manners,

303 WEST 

NORTHWEST Gerald Vizenor Volume 7, Number 3

and lost at inaugurations and postmodern per- to be written and recorded. formances in wild west shows. The simulated "The Rodman Wanamaker Expedition of leaders lost their eminence in the discourse of Citizenship to the North American Indian con- tribal power, "because the society itself, and cluded in December 1913 with a ceremony on not the chief, is the real locus of power." the Staten Island site where ground had been Clastres overturns the rustic notions of broken for the Indian memorial ten months tribal leaders with a new sense of political earlier," wrote Charles Fergus in Shadow Catcher, responsibilities in communities. "The chief's a novel based on the unusual photographic obligation to speak, that steady flow of empty expedition. speech that he owes the tribe, is his infinite "At the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915, debt, the guarantee that prevents the man of in San Francisco, former president Theodore speech from becoming a man of power." Roosevelt opened the exhibit of expeditionary Ishi was never heard as a tribal leader. He photographs, and Joseph Dixon lectured three bared his chest and posed for photographs, times a day for five months to more than a mil- but he was never decorated as a warrior. His lion citizens. Prints were sold from the three portrait was published with a collection of Wanamaker expeditions, perhaps the first pho- other simulated tribal people. He posed for tographic print sales on record," wrote Fergus friends and photographers, but he was never in the epilogue. "Dixon's illustrated book, The invited to bare his chest at a wild west show. Vanishing Race, was also selling briskly; it has "En route to the inauguration of President been reprinted several times over the years, Wilson in 1913, thirty-two chiefs stopped in with critics favorably comparing his photo- Philadelphia for the day to be entertained at graphs to the famous Indian portraits of the Wanamaker Store," wrote John Wanamaker Edward S. Curtis." in American Indian Portraits. The special luncheon The Wanamaker photographs were forgot- of warriors was followed by a "war dance" in a ten in a few years' time; the collection landed private corporate office. in an attic and later in museums and archives. Ishi lived and worked in a museum. He Those behind the cameras have vanished, but never wore leather clothes or feathers, and he the last wild man and other tribal people cap- was not invited to pose at the presidential tured in photographs have been resurrected in inauguration. He was not a chief, but as a trib- a nation eager to create a tragic history of the al survivor he could have been seen and heard past. as a leader. In a sense, he had more power than The Indian agent James McLaughlin, wrote those who were invited to the inauguration as Fergus, "was instrumental in persuading decorated warriors. Tribal power is more com- Franklin Lane, Secretary of the Interior under munal than personal and the power of the spo- President Wilson, to speed the granting of citi- ken word goes with the stories of the survivors, zenship to qualified Indians." The tribes were and becomes the literature of survivance. discovered, captured, removed to reservations, Ishi was at "ease with his friends," wrote and photographed as outsiders in their own Theodora Kroeber. He "loved to joke, to be land. Ishi died eight years before he might have teased amiably, and to tease in return. And he become a citizen of the mountains he remem- loved to talk. In telling a story, if it were long or bered and told in many, many stories. involved or of considerable affect, he would "McLaughlin designed tokens of citizenship perspire with the effort, his voice rising toward that were presented in 1916 and 1917. These a falsetto of excitement." His stories must have consisted of a purse. . . a leather bag, a button." come from visual memories, and he should be Ishi and then his photograph ended in a honored for more than his stories, his humor, museum. The photographers were lost on the and survivance: he should be honored because margins; those who gazed at his bare chest and he never learned how to slow his stories down waited to shake his hand would vanish three

304 WEST 

Spring 2001 Ishi Obscura NORTHWEST generations later in a lonesome and melan- choly civilization. Ishi has become one of the most discover- able tribal names in the world; even so, he has seldom been heard as a real person. Ishi "looked upon us as sophisticated children," wrote Saxton Pope. "We knew many things, and much that is false. He knew nature, which is always true," and his "soul was that of a child, his mind that of a philosopher." Theodora Kroeber wrote that "Ishi was liv- ing for the summer with the Waterman family where Edward Sapir, the linguist, would be coming in a few weeks to work with him, recording Ishi's Yahi dialect of the Yana lan- guage. . . .They noticed that he was eating very little and appeared listless and tired. Interrupting the work with Sapir, they brought Ishi to the hospital where Pope found what he and Kroeber had most dreaded, a rampant tuberculosis." Ishi died at noon on March 25,1916. Kroeber was in New York at the time and wrote in a Ietter, "As to disposal of the body I must ask you as my personal representative to yield nothing at all under any circumstances. If there is any talk about the interests of science, say for me that science can go to hell. We propose to stand by our friends. . . . We have hundreds of Indian skeletons that nobody every comes near to study. The prime interest in this case would be of a morbid romantic nature." Four days later the San Mateo Labor Index reported that "the body of Ishi, last of the Yana tribe of Indians, was cremated Monday at Mount Olivet cemetery. It was according to the custom of his tribe and there was no ceremo- ny." Saxton Pope created a death mask, "a very beautiful one." The pottery jar that held the ashes of Ishi was placed in a rock cairn.

305