1 thought on “Knap That”

1. As you mention here, Ishi’s collaboration with anthropologists sparked academic interest in knapping. Ishi is often called the “Last Yahi.” The Yahi tribe, a subpopulation of Northern California’s Yana people, had about 400 people in the 1840s. However, after the beginning of the Gold Rush in 1849, miners flocked to the area, violently clashing with Native Californians and driving them from their homelands at the base of the Sierra Nevadas. Ishi survived a number of massacres of his tribesmen, before escaping a 1908 raid as its only survivor. When Ishi finally ventured out of the wilderness in search of food in August 1911, he attracted the attention of anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley. One such anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber, dubbed him “Ishi,” meaning “man” in the Yana language. While living in San Francisco, he worked closely with two influential students of Franz Boas: Kroeber, a cultural anthropologist, and Edward Sapir, a linguist. Thanks to the preservation of Ishi’s cultural knowledge, American anthropologists gained new understanding of Yahi history, religion, language, and, yes, knapping. Learn more about this fascinating individual here: http://history.library.ucsf.edu/ishi.html

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