OBJECT history wrote of his “gentlemanliness, which lies outside of all training and is an expression of inward spirit.” Though he was always the subject of intense and even obsessive study, inaccurate preconceptions, and frequently demeaning commentary, they believed that he formed genuine friendships in his new environment, particularly with surgeon Saxton Pope, with whom he shared a fondness for archery. Kroeber, Waterman, and Pope took him back to his ancestral territory for a three-week visit in 1914 for research (and more than a few staged photo ops). He willingly returned with them to San Francisco. Ishi suffered health issues throughout his stay at the museum and was hospitalized several times before ultimately succumbing to tuberculosis on March 25, 1916. Kroeber was absent at the time of his death, but Waterman, Pope, and others attempted to inter him in a way they felt to be consistent with his wishes, that being cremation. Edward Gifford, the museum’s acting director, recorded, “In the coffi n were placed one of his bows, fi ve pieces of dentalium, a box full of shell bead money which he had saved, a purse full of tobacco, three rings, and some obsidian fl akes, all of which we felt sure would be in accord with Ishi’s wishes.” Perhaps indicative of the fundamental imperfection of their relationships, the poignancy of this farewell was marred by the removal of Ishi’s brain, which was separated during autopsy, preserved for study, and eventually sent to the National Museum in Washington, DC. It was not until 2000 that it was released to Yana representatives of the Redding Rancheria and the Pit River tribe, reunited with his ashes, and the entirety fi nally deposited in Yahi traditional lands. Many of the tools, worked points, and other artifacts created by Ishi remain at the museum, now known as the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. Others were given away or sold during his time at the museum. Some have found their way into other museum collections and a scant few are known in private collec- tions. The present example was owned by Charley Shewey (1911– 2002), a military and commercial pilot, expert fl intknapper, and avid collector of fl aked stone artifacts, both ancient and contemporary. His collection held a total of fi fteen Ishi pieces: fourteen points in glass and obsidian and one green glass scraper. Given the extreme rarity of Ishi’s objects in private hands, this was an extraordinary grouping and one that he prized highly. Exactly how he obtained these is not documented. One anecdotal source says that he got some from a former employee of the anthropology museum, who had received them directly from Ishi; another that he obtained some, perhaps through trade, during a 1967 visit to the museum’s Berkeley site (then known as the Lowie Museum) to examine examples of Ishi’s work that were preserved there; and still another that he acquired examples from an undetermined “Ishi museum” in Stockton, California. After Shewey’s death, the majority of his Ishi works were bought by Wyoming-based dealer and collector Jeb Taylor, who has published on Ishi as well as on High Plains archaeology. These, including the projectile point that sold at Skinner, have since been dispersed to a number of collections. In the 1980s, Shewey lent four Ishi projectile points to Pete Bostrom of Lithic Casting Lab, who created molds from them and has been producing high-quality casts of them ever since. Available to scholars and hobbyists around the world, these have been instrumental in allowing an unusually large number of people the opportunity to appreciate, study, and even reproduce Ishi’s sophisticated lithic techniques. His distinctive style is popularly known as an Ishi point. FIG. 6 (above): Thomas Talbot Waterman demonstrating a phonetic machine, 1914. Photo: Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Below, left to right FIG. 7: Ishi drilling fi re. Northeastern California, 1914. Gelatin silver print. 10.2 x 12.7 cm. Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, inv. 15-6277. FIG. 8: Ishi with Saxton Pope, 1914. Photo by Leo Eloesser. Gelatin silver print. FIG. 9: Alfred L. Kroeber, c. 1911. Photo: The George and Mary Foster Anthropology Library, UC Berkeley.
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