The discovery made national news.

It also created an immediate problem.

Who had the right to receive it?

If Ishi truly had no direct descendants and no surviving Yahi political entity existed as a federally recognized tribe, repatriation rules required institutions to determine the closest culturally affiliated Native communities.

The bureaucratic difficulty exposed another flaw in the old “last of his tribe” story.

Institutions had used Ishi’s supposed aloneness to define him.

Now that same aloneness threatened to complicate his return.

Native representatives rejected the idea that he existed outside continuing Indigenous relationships.

Maidu groups in Butte County had already organized around the repatriation effort.

The Smithsonian investigated broader linguistic, geographic, and cultural connections.