What happened in 1911 was not the moment Ishi encountered modern America.

It was the moment modern America finally saw one of the people who had spent years escaping it.

That is the first major reversal.

The second came in the museum.

The public believed it was preserving a dying culture by watching Ishi demonstrate it.

But the spectacle itself reflected the unequal system that had made him culturally isolated.

The third came after his death.

The institution that described him as a friend violated his wishes, removed his brain, and turned part of his body into scientific property.

The fourth came eighty-four years later.

Living Native communities reclaimed the remains of the man whom earlier America had defined by having no people left.