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Click the Brandenburg Flag for a German translation Für eine deutsche Übersetzung dieser Seite einfach die Brandenburger Flagge anklicken |
And there I was and I am still here
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Ishi |
In the summer of 1911, a barefoot man walked out of the woods in Northern California and into the small town of Oroville. When asked for his name, he said, “I have none, because there were no people to name me." It turned out that he was the last surviving member of the Yahi tribe, a Native American nation that was believed to have been completely wiped out by gold diggers forty-six years earlier. It turned out that a small group survived and kept hiding in the forest for all these years. Now, the last survivor came out of hiding. He was given the name Ishi, which is Yahi for man, and was brought to the Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley. Here, anthropologists found a translator and asked Ishi to tell them the story of his life. Ishi talked. Nobody knew yet what he was talking about because they didn’t want to interrupt the story with a translation. It was recorded on wax cylinders – the recording device of the time. Ishi talked for 23 hours. The anthropologists were excited; waiting to hear the translation, waiting to hear the story of the last “wild man” and of his life in the woods. They were in for a surprise. Ishi started with the day when the Great Spirit created the Yahi. For 22 hours and 59 minutes, he told the story of his people. Then, he arrived at the day when he was born and after that, there was only one more sentence: “And there I was and I am still here.”
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Ishi knew that the story of his people - their history, their legends, their songs – would die with him. So he made sure that the most important thing he had to say was told first –
the story that nobody else could tell. His own story did not get lost, because after he came out of the woods, he made friends who made sure that it was told. Today, Ishi’s recordings
are registered in the US Library of Congress and California school kids learn about Ishi, about the violent end of his nation and about his efforts to preserve their legacy. Ishi left a message for me. Several times, I thought about writing my story. Now I know, that would be the wrong story to write. If my story is worth being told, somebody will tell it. The story I have to tell is the one nobody else can tell. I am the last one who knows how my grandmother’s hair smelled and how my grandfather’s voice sounded. I got the story bug and maybe even a little bit of a talent to tell stories from my grandfather. He told me countless stories about his youth – like the day in 1908, when he could feel the shock wave from the Tunguska Meteor impact from 4,000 miles away or the story about his involuntary ocean voyage as a prisoner of war from Southern France to Texas. These are the stories I have to tell before they will disappear with me. Telling my stories, I will leave to my grandchildren. They will tell a more honest story anyway. |
 Grandpa
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