Even “last of his tribe” can mislead if readers imagine tribes as biological containers that disappear when one individual dies.

Native identity is political, cultural, relational, linguistic, and historical.

It cannot be reduced to a census of supposedly pure bloodlines.

The later effort to repatriate Ishi proves the point.

Native communities in Northern California did not regard him as a biological orphan with no possible relationship to living people.

They understood him inside a regional Indigenous world.

The Smithsonian eventually identified affiliated communities capable of receiving his remains.

His burial was carried out by Native people.

The “last man” returned through living Native relationships.

That ending exposes the weakness of the original myth better than any abstract argument could.