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Wild Men: Ishi and Kroeber in the Wilderness of Modern America
When Ishi, "the last wild Indian," came out of hiding in August 1911, he was quickly whisked away by train to San Francisco to meet Alfred Kroeber, one of the fathers of American anthropology. When Kroeber and Ishi came face to face, it was a momentous event, not only for each man but also for the cultures they represented. Each stood on the brink--one was in danger of losing something vital while the other was in danger of disappearing altogether.Ishi was a survivor, and he viewed the bright lights of the big city with a mixture of awe and bemusement. What surprised everyone is how handily he adapted himself to the modern city while maintaining his sense of self and his culture. Kroeber was professionally trained to document Ishi's culture and his civilization. What he didn't count on was how deeply working with the man would lead him to question his own profession and his civilization--how it would rekindle a wildness of his own. Although Ishi's story has been told before in film and fiction, Wild Men is the first book to focus on the depth of Ishi and Kroeber's friendship. Exploring what their intertwined stories tell us about Indian survival in modern America and about America's fascination with the wild, this text is an ideal supplement for courses on Native American history, the U.S. West, and the history of California.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
378 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 1, 2010
To those who have read and loved Theodora Kroeber's Ishi: the last Yahi, Wild Men furthers that topic by interweaving additional information about Ishi, his time in Northern California, his impact on contemporaries of the era, and his relationship with Alfred Kroeber, Theodora's husband.
It also discusses how there is a desire for wildness, a wildness that Ishi represented to 20th century Americans.
I also learned that 'Ishi' was not his birth name but one given to him by Alfred Kroeber. It means 'man' in Ishi's language.
I recommend Sackman's book
It also discusses how there is a desire for wildness, a wildness that Ishi represented to 20th century Americans.
I also learned that 'Ishi' was not his birth name but one given to him by Alfred Kroeber. It means 'man' in Ishi's language.
I recommend Sackman's book
July 30, 2015
One of the best books that I've read. It must have been a very hard write as the story is wrought with the sadness of losing: ones family, ones race, ones home, ones understanding of life, ones understanding of the world, and in the beginning of the book realizing a complete loss of their world.
Picture that you lived in a forest and every man, plant and animal was destroyed except you. Someone unfamiliar picks you up and tries to find what you are all about while integrating you back into your world which appears destroyed wherever you tread. Picture yourself now in the same world in which you are the only one who knows that it's fake and destroyed. If you can accept that then you are ready to read ISHI!
There will be no more ISHI's from North American for many millenium's.
The explanation of the relationship Kroeber and Ishi are superb and I cried through most of this book.
A book about Ishi was required reading for a project I worked on that was promoted my the Cherokee tribe. Reading this book was the most important part of my project!
Picture that you lived in a forest and every man, plant and animal was destroyed except you. Someone unfamiliar picks you up and tries to find what you are all about while integrating you back into your world which appears destroyed wherever you tread. Picture yourself now in the same world in which you are the only one who knows that it's fake and destroyed. If you can accept that then you are ready to read ISHI!
There will be no more ISHI's from North American for many millenium's.
The explanation of the relationship Kroeber and Ishi are superb and I cried through most of this book.
A book about Ishi was required reading for a project I worked on that was promoted my the Cherokee tribe. Reading this book was the most important part of my project!
March 7, 2011
Excellent and overly sad story about the very end of a culture...
If you have not read this you will most likely remain ignorant of the worlds greatest loss. If you do read this and don't get it then that is also a loss to the world....
If you have not read this you will most likely remain ignorant of the worlds greatest loss. If you do read this and don't get it then that is also a loss to the world....
August 2, 2019
When I first picked up this book, I didn't have high hopes. It was my nephew's book from college that my sister had decluttered when he graduated. If I remember anything about college, it is that the assigned reading was usually pretty dry and boring. I'm so happy I was pleasantly surprised. This book shows people how horrible the situation was for the Native Americans as the white settlers expanded westward through North America. The book begins by describing how groups of men would periodically go out to exterminate the Native Americans living in northern California.
I would have given this book five stars if the main text had been as expressive as the Afterword. The author touches your heart by describing the how the Native Americans view nature as not 'wilderness', but a home where they lived in harmony with Nature. It was only the white man that thought of it as wilderness.
The main story of Ishi and Kroeber was interesting but I felt it was a little too 'matter-of-fact'. Even when Ishi died, I did not get a good sense of what Kroeber's relationship was with him. I would imagine he was saddened and grieving, but it's not really expressed in the text. It was an engrossing read, but it was hard to connect with the main characters through so much presentation of the facts.
I would have given this book five stars if the main text had been as expressive as the Afterword. The author touches your heart by describing the how the Native Americans view nature as not 'wilderness', but a home where they lived in harmony with Nature. It was only the white man that thought of it as wilderness.
The main story of Ishi and Kroeber was interesting but I felt it was a little too 'matter-of-fact'. Even when Ishi died, I did not get a good sense of what Kroeber's relationship was with him. I would imagine he was saddened and grieving, but it's not really expressed in the text. It was an engrossing read, but it was hard to connect with the main characters through so much presentation of the facts.
August 16, 2022
this book started very strongly in establishing the foundation of Ishi & Kroeber's relationship, but the ending seemed abrupt and switched to the author's POV with analysis and opinion. The ending didn't seem relate well (for me) with Ishi's impact on the people he encountered, especially Kroeber.
January 8, 2022
I really liked this book. It takes you through the history of Ishi and Kroeber, which you can probably gather from the title. While I read it for class, I still found myself incredibly invested in the characters and storyline. Additionally, this book opened my eyes to the injustices and commodification of "the other." And, interestingly enough, I ended up producing a paper about how trains and museums are weapons of settler colonialism. This was also one of the first pieces of literature that I have read that actually speaks towards the reality of Native American oppression, commodification, and genocide.
April 3, 2015
When I grew up in California I read both of Theodora Kroeber's Ishi books, both for school and for pleasure. This book retells Ishi's story, juxtaposed with Alfred Kroeber's personal history and details of the contextual history of the era.
This is a neat idea, but I wasn't impressed by the execution. Certain very important details are glossed over -- for example, Ishi's choice to come out of the wilderness and throw himself at the mercy of a white civilization which had always been antagonistic toward him and his tribe in the past. Why did he come out at the time and place he did? Maybe Kroeber himself never found out, but it seems to me a pretty important question if we are trying to understand Ishi as a human being, rather than some kind of artifact. In Sackman's long-winded epilogue, he says:
An understandable reservation, even admirable, but it makes for rather dry reading, and doesn't much illuminate his subject. Of course a historian doesn't want to put words in the mouth of a historical person, but I would think speculation about motives and cultural reasoning would be part of the job. Sackman tries to do this from time to time, imagining for example how Ishi's first train ride must have appeared to him. But I felt he shied away from applying this kind of examination to the more important junctures in Ishi's and Kroeber's story.
I came away with a lot of questions about Kroeber as well. What was behind his decision to leave so much of the work with Ishi to others? We know he had something of a professional breakdown at one point, anguished that anthropologists sometimes harm human beings for the sake of examining cultures. That's pretty heavy stuff. But everything after Ishi's death comes in the Epilogue, along with pages and pages and pages of repetitive philosophical stuff about Indians and their landscape and -- oh, I don't know what; to be honest, I couldn't finish it.
I was also annoyed when Sackman ran off on tangents that had nothing to do with the story, like the history of the movie industry in Niles Canyon.
This book has an interesting topic and a good heart, and the modern perspective on the factors surrounding the history of Kroeber and Ishi is welcome. But I'm sorry to say the poor execution made a weak tea of it.
This is a neat idea, but I wasn't impressed by the execution. Certain very important details are glossed over -- for example, Ishi's choice to come out of the wilderness and throw himself at the mercy of a white civilization which had always been antagonistic toward him and his tribe in the past. Why did he come out at the time and place he did? Maybe Kroeber himself never found out, but it seems to me a pretty important question if we are trying to understand Ishi as a human being, rather than some kind of artifact. In Sackman's long-winded epilogue, he says:
And yet there was a limit to just how far I could go in representing the point of view of each man. It's hard -- as well as perilous and presumptuous -- to get inside the head of another, especially when the other is a real person who lived in the past. Doing so involves a kind of violation, and I was particularly sensitive about this with regard to Ishi.
An understandable reservation, even admirable, but it makes for rather dry reading, and doesn't much illuminate his subject. Of course a historian doesn't want to put words in the mouth of a historical person, but I would think speculation about motives and cultural reasoning would be part of the job. Sackman tries to do this from time to time, imagining for example how Ishi's first train ride must have appeared to him. But I felt he shied away from applying this kind of examination to the more important junctures in Ishi's and Kroeber's story.
I came away with a lot of questions about Kroeber as well. What was behind his decision to leave so much of the work with Ishi to others? We know he had something of a professional breakdown at one point, anguished that anthropologists sometimes harm human beings for the sake of examining cultures. That's pretty heavy stuff. But everything after Ishi's death comes in the Epilogue, along with pages and pages and pages of repetitive philosophical stuff about Indians and their landscape and -- oh, I don't know what; to be honest, I couldn't finish it.
I was also annoyed when Sackman ran off on tangents that had nothing to do with the story, like the history of the movie industry in Niles Canyon.
This book has an interesting topic and a good heart, and the modern perspective on the factors surrounding the history of Kroeber and Ishi is welcome. But I'm sorry to say the poor execution made a weak tea of it.
October 8, 2016
My husband read this and recommended it. A balanced, though sad, look at Ishi and Kroebler.
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June 13, 2014301.2092 S1217 2010
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews