Ishi - Possibly Multi-ethnic

Possibly Multi-ethnic

In 1996, M. Steven Shackley of UC Berkeley announced work based on a study of Ishi's arrowheads and those of the northern tribes. He had found that arrowheads made by Ishi were not typical of those recovered from historical Yahi sites. Because Ishi's production was more typical of arrowheads of the Nomlaki or Wintu tribes and markedly dissimilar to those of Yahi, Shackley suggested that Ishi may have been only half Yahi and of mixed ancestry, related to another of the tribes. He based his conclusion on a comparative study of the arrowheads which Ishi made and others held by the museum from the Yahi, Nomlaki and Wintu cultures. Among Ishi's techniques was the use of what is now known in flintknapping circles as an Ishi stick, used to run long pressure flakes. As it was a traditional technique of the Nomlaki and Wintu tribes, the finding suggests Ishi may have learned the skill directly from a male relative from one of those tribes. Also small groups, they lived close to the Yahi lands and were traditional competitors and enemies of the Yahi.

In 1994 Shackley had heard a paper by Jerald Johnson, who noted morphological evidence that Ishi's facial features and height were more typical of the Wintu and Maidu. He theorized that under pressure of diminishing populations, members of groups that were once enemies may have intermarried to survive. To further support this, Johnson presented oral histories from the Wintu and Maidu that told of the tribes' intermarrying with the Yahi. The debate on this has not been definitively settled, however, and the possibility of establishing the circumstances of his birth probably died with him.