Both versions flatten a much more uncomfortable reality.

The museum offered refuge from a society that had given him few safe alternatives.

At the same time, that refuge was built around the assumption that his culture could be observed, recorded, demonstrated, and collected.

He had survived one kind of frontier.

Now he entered another — the frontier between human relationship and scientific possession.

“Ishi” Was A Name The World Could Use — But Not The One He Had Been Given

The story of Ishi’s name has become one of the most famous details of his biography, partly because it captures loss in a single word.

When the anthropologists needed something to call him, they used “Ishi,” a Yana word generally translated as “man.”

The reason given in many accounts is that Yahi social custom prevented a person from speaking his own personal name before strangers without a proper introduction by someone else.

No such introducer remained.