And now the same society that had driven his family into hiding became fascinated by him.

The Jail Became A Spectacle

The Oroville jail was meant to protect Ishi from the crowd, but it also became the first stage of his public life.

People arrived simply to look at him.

Photographers wanted pictures.

Journalists searched for an angle that would turn the stranger into a story their readers could immediately understand.

The language used in newspapers reflected the assumptions of the era.

Ishi was described as primitive, wild, prehistoric, or untouched by civilization.

Writers compared him to a surviving specimen of a vanished age.

The descriptions said as much about white America as they did about Ishi.