Instead of asking Ishi to describe Yahi life inside a museum, they could travel through the actual landscape and record places, techniques, and geographical knowledge in context.

For Ishi, the journey was more complicated.

The Hearst Museum’s current account notes that he was reluctant to return and that Alfred Kroeber pressed for the trip.

That detail changes the emotional meaning of the expedition.

Deer Creek was not simply an open-air classroom.

It was the country where his family had lived.

It was also the country where relatives and other Yahi had been hunted and killed.

A stream could be both a food source and a memory.

A trail could be both geographical information and the route toward a place of loss.

A campsite could be both an ethnographic location and part of a life that no longer existed.