Museum Refuses to Give Ishi’s Brain to Indians

If Arthur Angle’s quest to return the remains of Ishi, California’s most famous Native American, to his homeland was a made-for-television movie, the happy ending should have come Wednesday at the Smithsonian Institution.

That was where Angle led a delegation of Northern California Indians to press their claim to Ishi’s brain, stored by the museum since shortly after his 1916 death in San Francisco from tuberculosis.

Angle hoped that the Smithsonian would approve his plan to bury the brain in the remote Tehama County wilderness where the Yahi, Ishi’s now-extinct tribe, once lived.

Instead, the Smithsonian politely informed Angle’s delegation that it has no legal claim to the brain.

Not that the Smithsonian wants to keep the organ, officials there say. Nor does it object to reuniting the brain with the cremated remains of the rest of Ishi’s body, now resting in a Colma cemetery.

But the national museum must follow the letter and the spirit of federal law, which says that it can only hand over Indian remains to tribes or individuals directly descended from or culturally affiliated with them.

In Ishi’s case, that is hard to do, because his people were wiped out by California bounty hunters and disease around the turn of the century.

“The whole issue here is not whether we will repatriate the remains of Ishi, but to whom,” said Thomas W. Killion, the Smithsonian’s director of repatriation. The delegation that visited the Smithsonian on Wednesday, Killion said, are members of the Maidu tribe from Butte County and have no cultural affiliation with the Yahi.

“It’s a little bit frustrating,” Angle said in a telephone interview from Washington after meeting with Smithsonian officials. “We understand that they have to work within the law, that is their job. But we are here to do our job, and I think our job is to reunite Ishi and place him in his homeland in a proper Native American ceremony.”

The Smithsonian’s dilemma means the continuation of the bizarre saga of the starved and traumatized man in his 40s who staggered out of the wilderness into Oroville in 1911. He became famous as the last Yahi and the last California Indian to live a prehistoric life--a history studied by California schoolchildren for generations.

It was widely known that Ishi’s cremated remains were in a Colma cemetery. But the University of California--where Ishi was autopsied--said it did not know whether stories that his brain had been removed during the autopsy were true. The university could find no record of what had become of the brain.

In February, however, two researchers, one from Duke University and the other from UC San Francisco, announced that they had found letters written by Berkeley anthropologist Theodore Kroeber, who had befriended Ishi. The letters showed that Kroeber had sent the brain to the Smithsonian shortly after Ishi’s death.

The brain today rests in a climate-controlled storage facility in Suitland, Md., part of a collection of 300 human brains. Killion said the museum always knew it had the brain and scoffs at the notion that it has been “discovered.” The museum never said anything about the brain, he said, because it was never asked.

Embarrassed by the national attention the case has attracted, the Smithsonian is launching its own search for anyone truly connected to the remains. Killion intends to travel to California sometime next month to interview potential claimants.

“Everybody thinks he has no descendants, no relatives,” said Killion. “In fact, he does have people who are related enough that following the spirit of the law, we need to talk to them.”

The museum has confirmed, Killion said, that nine Americans claimed descent from the Yana--a sub-tribe of the Yahi--in the 1990 census. There also is a tribe in the Imperial Valley that belongs to the same language group as Ishi’s tribe.

Mickey Gemmill, a member of the Pitt River tribe near Redding, said that some of his ancestors were Yana. The Smithsonian has already contacted him about Ishi, Gemmill said, and told him that he and others of Yana descent may have a strong claim to Ishi’s remains.

“We believe that it is right that whatever remains the national museum has of Ishi, they should be returned and properly reburied,” Gemmill said. “They do not belong in non-Indian hands.”

But what seems like proper procedure to Smithsonian officials feels like an outrage to some California political leaders, historians and Native Americans.

“It’s a classic example of the insensitivity of government agencies and cultures toward the people we have abused,” said Phil Isenberg, a lobbyist in Sacramento representing the Alliance of California Tribes, 10 Northern California tribes that support Angle’s efforts.

“They would keep his brain in a warehouse because they can’t find proper affiliation? Give me a break!” Isenberg fumed in a telephone interview. “The reason you can’t find cultural affiliation is because we rubbed them all out!”

The California Legislature has scheduled a hearing for April 5 on questions involving the return of the brain. U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante have written letters to the Smithsonian, urging it to facilitate the brain’s return to California tribes.

“The issue really goes to the heart of the historical injustices that we have perpetrated against American Indians,” said Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). Steinberg heads the select committee on repatriation of Native American remains that will conduct the hearing.

“I am disturbed by how Ishi’s remains were handled by the University of California,” said Steinberg. “That part of him was removed and sent off to the Smithsonian is something that is just not right.”