American Indians want return of brain shipped off to Smithsonian Story-Date: 10:31 a.m. PST Sunday , April 4, 1999 American Indians want return of brain shipped off to Smithsonian By Michelle Locke Associated Press Writer COLMA, Calif. (AP) -- In a simple black jar set atop mottled stone, the ashes of a man believed to be the last of his tribe lie surrounded by the silence of the dead. Chiseled into the surface of the container are the words: "Ishi. The Last Yahi Indian. 1916." In another quiet room 3,000 miles away, Ishi's brain floats in formaldehyde, part of the Smithsonian Institution's anthropological collection. American Indians want Ishi restored in whole to his tribal homeland. "I think we're breaking new ground due to the fact that, as far as history is written, there's no descendant to the Yahi tribe," says Art Angle of the Butte County Native American Cultural Committee, which is requesting the return of Ishi based on a claim of cultural affinity. Smithsonian officials say they're willing to return the brain -- but not until they have determined who has a legitimate claim, likely to be a complex task because the Yahi were long ago wiped out by settlers and disease. And while Ishi was long described as the last Yahi, other theories about his ancestry may complicate the repatriation. On Monday, the Legislature tackles the matter with a hearing exploring what became of the man known as "the last Wild Indian in North America." "The revelation that Ishi's brain was separated from his body prior to cremation and sent to the Smithsonian Institution is a continuing affront to Native Americans and ought to be an embarrassment to the state of California," says state Sen. Patrick Johnston, one of the conveners of the hearing. ------ Ishi walked out of the past and into post-Gold Rush California early one August morning in 1911. He was found, emaciated and near starvation, crouching against a slaughterhouse fence near Oroville, in Butte County, and soon drew the attention of University of California anthropologists. One of them was Alfred Kroeber, a revered Berkeley figure whose name is today emblazoned on the anthropology department building. Ishi was soon installed at the university's anthropology museum in San Francisco. There, according to a 1961 book written by Kroeber's wife, Theodora, he settled into an odd but apparently congenial routine. He made friends with UC researchers, did light work as assistant to the head janitor and became a kind of living exhibit, making spears, bows and arrows as fascinated visitors watched. The middle-aged Ishi never told his name. Anthropologists came up with Ishi, which means "man" in a local Indian dialect. By all contemporary accounts, Ishi was happy in his life at the university. But civilization and alien germs proved too much for him. He died in 1916 of what doctors believed was tuberculosis. Researchers knew Ishi did not want to be autopsied. He had once wandered into a hospital dissection room and been horrified, believing bodies should quickly be burned to release the soul. Kroeber, who was in New York when Ishi died, wrote a letter ordering that Ishi's body should be cremated. "If there is any talk about the interests of science, say for me that science can go to hell," he declared. Unfortunately, others couldn't resist the chance. Ishi's body was autopsied, the brain removed. ------ For years, the whereabouts of Ishi's brain was a mystery. In 1997 the Butte County committee began trying to locate Ishi's remains for proper burial in his tribal homeland near Mount Lassen. A separate investigation started by the UC-San Francisco discovered that Kroeber, despite written objections to an autopsy, had sent the brain to the Smithsonian. The findings, published in February, prompted some soul-searching. UC-Berkeley anthropology professors called the affair "a troubled chapter of our history" and acknowledged "our department's role in what happened to Ishi, a man who had already lost all that was dear to him." Smithsonian spokesman Randall Kremer says the museum won't be hurried into abandoning its process. "We owe it to the individual tribal representatives and we owe it to the American people because this specimen is part of the national collection," he says. "In a sense it already belongs to not only the tribal representatives but all Americans." But others say the saga of Ishi has gone on too long. "We shouldn't get too righteous given the considerable defilement that occurred, perhaps inadvertently, perhaps intentionally, over 83 years," Johnston says. ------ Set into a glassed-in niche, the pot holding Ishi's cremated remains is a rustic contrast to the ornate bronzed and engraved containers favored by most of the residents of the Olivet Memorial Park Columbarium. Whether Ishi's ashes stay here is unclear. Angle wants to reclaim Ishi's ashes as well as his brain, a venture Johnston is exploring. Johnston believes it's time California owned up to its past. "The romanticization of the Old West and the Gold Rush era ignores the brutal reality that Indians were forced from their homelands and often killed," he says. "For a cemetery, a university, a museum or a government to stand on Western protocol as a way to evade the rightful return of the heritage of Indians to their descendants is a wrong that should not be allowed to stand." For more information, visit the NewsHound website at http://www.newshound.com or send an email to speak@hound.com.