National Archive Adds Recordings of the "Last" Yahi, Ishi, Who Lived at UCSF (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

National Archive Adds Recordings of the "Last" Yahi, Ishi, Who Lived at UCSF

By Jeffrey Norris on April 7, 2011
USA

Some of California’s past glories live on in historical memory –
Grizzly bears, for instance, and the Native American civilizations
that ruled for millennia before the arrival of white explorers and
settlers.

The Library of Congress raised the profile of one such nugget of
California history Tuesday, adding songs and stories in the unusual,
long-extinct language of the Yahi. The recordings were saved for
posterity a century ago when a lone Yahi named Ishi shared the songs
and stories with University of California anthropologists at the
campus that is now known as Parnassus Heights at UCSF.

Ishi, the last known speaker of the Yahi language, is immortalized in
nearly six hours of recordings on 148 wax cylinders made between 1911
and 1914 by UC anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Thomas Waterman. The
Yahi language was unusual in that different dialects were used,
depending on whether one was speaking to a man or a woman.

Access full article below:
http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2011/04/9683/national-archive-adds-recordings-last-yahi-ishi-who-lived-ucsf