Perhaps the institutional habits of anthropology overrode the personal feelings he had expressed.

Whatever the reasoning, the result was clear.

A man who had already spent years being studied as a living anthropological subject became a collection object after death.

His brain remained at the Smithsonian for decades.

For much of the twentieth century, many people assumed that Ishi had been cremated whole.

The truth sat inside accession records and correspondence.

This part of the story did not become widely known until researchers and Native activists began searching for his remains in the late twentieth century.

When they did, the disappearance narrative surrounding Ishi was reversed again.

The institutions had long portrayed him as a man without a surviving people.

But it was Native people who organized to bring him home.