Ishi: The last Yahi Indian

Ishi: The last Yahi Indian Tribe who taught and his skills of hunting have been wide spread throughout western worlds till now.

Ishi in 1914

Ishi (c. 1860 – March 25, 1916) was the name given to the last member of the Yahi, in turn the last surviving group of the Yana people ofBiography of Ishi

n August 1911, Ishi, the last surviving member of the Yahi Indian tribe, walked out of the foothills near Mount Lassen — leaving behind his Stone Age world — and entered twentieth-century California society. From 1911-1916, Ishi resided at the Anthropology Museum of the University of California Affiliated Colleges on Parnassus Heights in San Francisco (now the site of UCSF), sharing knowledge about his culture and beliefs with Anthropologists Alfred L. Kroeber and Theodore T. Waterman, as well as Surgeon Saxton T. Pope. Soon, Dr. Pope was joined by archery-enthusiast Arthur Young.

Graciously collaborating with the anthropologists, Ishi provided insight about his language, a dialect presumed lost until his emergence from the Mill Creek region of California. Free to return to his homelands, Ishi chose to remain at the museum as a living interpreter of his culture. Exposed to a society hosting diseases foreign to the Yahi, Ishi contracted tuberculosis and died on March 25, 1916, at the medical college on Parnassus. Ishi left behind a legacy of invaluable information about his people, and provided a shining example of a courageous human spirit bridging the divide between two worlds.

Ishi and archery

Ishi, like other California Indians of his time, was an excellent archer. Among his closest friends at the university was Saxton Pope, a physician called in to care for him. Pope was particularly fascinated by the bows and arrows Ishi made, and by the practice of archery. Ishi taught Pope how to make the equipment and the two hunted together in the mountains of California. After Ishi’s death, Pope continued with the archery that Ishi had taught him and went on to write the book Hunting with the Bow and Arrow, which became influential in the development of modern-day archery and archery hunting. Ishi’s arrow heads were made from obsidian, although when making arrowheads for the public he often used the bottoms of beer bottles.

Today, an annual archery tournament called the “Ishi Tournament” is held in the Yuba-Sutter community, about 40 minutes from Oroville. The tournament is open to both youth and adults, testing their skills in comparison to Ishi’s archery skills. Two awards can be earned during the tournament:

• The Ishi Certificate is awarded to any archer who can hit all 30 arrows to a 20 yrd. target, get a score of at least 99 to a 40 yrd. target, and have one arrow reach 100 yrds.
• The American Ishi Degree is awarded to any archer who can match Ishi’s 1914 archery scores or better. This award only goes to an average of 1-3 people a year, due to its complexity.

Miyamoto Musashi- The legendary samurai warrior

Miyamoto Musashi (宮本 武蔵, Miyamoto Musashi?) (c.1584–June 13 (Japanese calendar: May 19), 1645), also known as Shinmen Takezō, Miyamoto Bennosuke, or by his Buddhist name Niten Dōraku[1], was a famous Japanese samurai, and is considered by many to have been one of the most skilled swordsmen in history. Musashi, as he is often simply known, became legendary through his outstanding swordsmanship in numerous duels, even from a very young age. He is the founder of the Hyōhō Niten Ichi-ryū or Niten-ryū style of swordsmanship and the author of The Book of Five Rings (五輪書, Go Rin No Sho?), a book on strategy, tactics, and philosophy that is still studied today.

The details of Miyamoto Musashi’s early life are difficult to verify. Musashi himself simply states in Gorin no Sho that he was born in Harima Province.[2] Niten Ki (an early biography of Musashi) supports the theory that Musashi was born in 1584: “[He] was born in Banshū, in Tenshō 12 [1584], the Year of the Monkey.”[3] The historian Kamiko Tadashi, commenting on Musashi’s text, notes: “[...]Munisai was Musashi’s father…he lived in Miyamoto village, in the Yoshino district [of Mimasaka Province]. Musashi was most probably born here.”[4] His childhood name was Bennosuke 弁之助.

Musashi gives his full name and title in Gorin no Sho as “Shinmen Musashi no Kami Fujiwara no Genshin.”[5] His father, Shinmen Munisai 新免無二斎, was an accomplished martial artist and master of the sword and jutte.[6] Munisai, in turn, was the son of Hirata Shōgen 平田将監, a vassal of Shinmen Iga no Kami, the lord of Takeyama Castle, in the Yoshino district of Mimasaka Province.[7] Hirata was relied upon by Lord Shinmen, and so was allowed to use the Shinmen name. As for “Musashi,” Musashi no Kami was a court title, making him the nominal governor of Musashi province. “Fujiwara” was the lineage from which Musashi claimed nominal descent.

More details here