192: The Last of His People. Lassen Volcanic National Park.

National Park After Dark

Audioboom Studios

True Crime, Places & Travel, Wilderness, Society & Culture, Sports

4.8 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2023

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today we tell the story of Ishi, the last surviving member of the Yahi people. The Gold Rush of California brought on the mass murder of Ishi's people and indigenous groups throughout the state. After years of surviving alone in the foothills of Lassen Volcanic, he came out of hiding, certain he would be killed just as his family had been.

Interactive native land map: native-land.ca

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Resources:
Ishi in Two Worlds by Theodora Kroeber.
https://history.library.ucsf.edu/ishi.html
https://www.nps.gov/lavo/learn/tribes.htm
https://www.notesfromthefrontier.com/post/ishi-the-last-wild-indian

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	It's beautiful coastlines, desert vistas or mountainous landscapes could be anything but beautiful.
0:12.0	We recreate in them, raise our families in them, and travel across
0:16.4	the country and world to see them. We're certainly not the first to see the value
0:22.4	that California has to offer.
0:25.0	In some points in history, you might say the first were the settlers of the 1848 Gold Rush.
0:31.4	People saw the monetary value of California and gold, and rushed to be there.
0:37.0	But in that you would be gravely forgetting the people that resided there first.
0:41.7	The indigenous communities who saw the real value in
0:45.2	California's landscapes, the ones who lived off that land and thrived there for
0:50.3	thousands of years. The value of California wasn't measured in gold to them, but was a
0:56.2	tribal homeland until that homeland was dismantled in California's little known genocide.
1:04.0	Where in just 20 years, 80% of California's indigenous communities were wiped out,
1:10.0	where California became a state and then spent 1.7 million dollars to murder
1:17.2	16,000 natives in cold blood to commemorate. 100,000 Native peoples died during the California Gold Rush in the first two years alone.
1:28.5	The indigenous communities, despite the odds and extensive attempts to eradicate them from existence in California,
1:35.6	today have the largest population in the country, with 109 federally recognized tribes.
1:42.3	And stories like that of Ishi, the last truly wild native,
1:47.6	serve as a reminder of their perseverance and strength throughout time.
1:55.0	Welcome to National Park after dark. You're going to do. As depressing as that intro was, I am so thrilled that you are finally doing this story because I know it's been a long time coming.
2:26.0	It has been and I actually found this story so of course I found a book for this we're back on the book train.
2:32.0	I found this book it's called
2:33.7	Ishi and Two Worlds a biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America by
	...

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