ISHI in two Worlds

A biography of the last wild Indian in North America

Theodora Kroeber

Published by Universtity of California press, Deluxe, Illustrated Edition, hardcover with dustjacket.
dustjacket some damage


The Author Speaks for Herself
It was late in August, 1960, when I wrote Finis to my biography of lshi. Only then did Alfred Kroeber, my husband and principal live informant about lshi, read the manuscript through. He declared himself satisfied.

He died in October, 1960, without having seen the book, published a year later. I shall always be grateful that Kroeber read the final manuscript; he knew that a permanent account of his friend lshi was at last on record.

For me, the writing of lshi' s biography was responsibility, not pleasure.
I was relieved when it was completed-as weIl done as I could do it- and was content to forget the long, now finished task. I could not know that ahead of me lay the real experience of lshi: the greatest human experience of my life.

lt came by way of letters, telephone caIls, announced and unannounced visitors. Men. Women. Young. Old. Children. Not "important" people in the worldly or the academie meaning. Few bookish or intellectual ones among these people from all stations of life and levels of education, background, interests, and cultures.

All sorts of people came, wanting sometimes to question, more often to talk, to express complex reactions, to philosophize, to wonder, even to cry-shamelessly, men and women-to put into words their feeling for lshi's humanity. His humor. His understanding. His patience.

His beauty. His tragedy.
Before this great need to share feeling with me-and it continues to this day! I feel humble; grateful to them, to lshi. And by way of them and lshi I declare myself confident of the goodness and humanity of the men and women and children of my time and place.

Theodore Kroeber