Compiled, edited, and with an informative introduction by mythologist Karl Kroeber (Mellen Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University) Creation Myths Of Primitive America is part of the outstanding "ABC-CLIO Classic Folk and Fairy Tales" series. An absolutely fascinating anthology of creation Native American myths and legends focusing on how the world, plants, animals, and humans came into existence and interact with each other. These ancient stories are accurately and entertainingly retold, offering contemporary readers with a veritable treasure trove of insights into how the various Native American peoples perceived and interpreted the greater world around themselves. Creation Myths Of Primitive America is an essential and highly recommended resource for academic and community library Native American Studies and Mythology/Folklore collections.

This was one of the most fascinating and thought provoking books I have ever read. It is a beautifully written book that brings with it an entire range of emotions from rage and disgust, to hope and forgiveness.

I thought that the best part about this book was the look into Ishi's Yahi and Yana culture, and its overview of California indian tribes in general. The myth that the Californian indians were a simple and childlike race subsisting on what they could dig from the ground is thoroughly debunked by this book.

California's varied geography produced one of the most culturally diverse places on planet earth prior to white settlement. Interestingly, this belief that California is made up of many sub-states still exists, and books have been written about the various regional differences within California. The same was true for the aboriginal tribes, and Kroeber brings amazing facts to light about this. According to Kroeber, California was made up of 250 distinct tribes, many with their own languages, culture, and customs. Of the six super-languauge groups of North American Indians, 5 were represented in California. According to best estimates, these five language groups divided themselves into 113 distict spoken languages. Only Sudan and New Guinea have comparable cultural and linguistic diversity. One fact that floored me was that the Yahi language was bifurcated between a male and female dialect. Males and females used these dialects when they were in groups of their own sex. When a male reached puberty, he was taken from the care of his mother and other women, and lived in almost an exclusively male world were he learned the male dialect and hunting skills.

Kroeber opens the book with this linguistic/cultural look at California indian culture just prior to white migration, and goes into great detail about Ishi's tribal culture in particular. (We even get a lesson on the term "glottochronology" which is the study of the roots of a particular language). About a third of the book is this background, and I found it to be absolutely fascinating.

The book also spends considerable time on the extermination of the Northern California indians and Ishi's tribe in particular. Of course, these accounts are horrible and no less disturbing than accounts of the Jewish holocaust. The indians were seen as varmits, and they were exterminated with the same attitude that the wolves, grizzlies, and other unwanted wildlife were exterminated. Of course, this was not the attitude of all whites, but not enough of them stood up to stop the carnage.

Beyond the stories of human slaughter, racism and genocide, the greatest tragedy was that cultures, which existed with amazing complexity and richness for centuries, were obliterated and replaced with a white mono-culture within 15 - 20 years.

The last third of the book deals with Ishi's discovery and how he lived his remaining days under the care of the authors husband, an anthropologist at UC Berkeley. The relationship between the anthropology department at Berkeley and Ishi was one of the only beneficial outcomes of the collision between Anglo and Native cultures. Ishi (not his real name, but a pseudonym he adopted after capture) is given a room at the anthropology museum and is made assistant janitor to help cover his living expenses.

It is during this time that he imparts his language and culture to save it from oblivion and to provide future generations, like myself, the ability to learn about Yahi life. Ishi is also treated with respect and dignity, and despite a life of mistreatment, Ishi shows no resentment or bitterness towards white society.

I believe the main injustice done to Ishi by Berkeley was that after his death they allowed the removal of his brain for study, in direct violation of his cultural beliefs about keeping the body whole for cremation. His brain was sent it to the Smithsonian Institute where it was kept in storage for almost 100 years. This was unnescesary, and it has taken almost an entire century to return his brain and provide final dignity to this man.

This book tells a true story of a common science fiction theme, How would a Stone Age person acclimate himself to modern civilization, if suddenly transported there. Ishi was the last remnant of a California hunter-gatherer tribe. He was starving and near death when discovered by a California rancher. Thus began his journey from primitive beginnings, to journalistic sensation, to scientific curiosity, and finally as a working member of society in the California of the 1920's. and '30's. As the subject of scientific study, Ishi shows that basically people everywhere and for all time are the same, but it is the differences that of course makes it interesting. One example is that at first anthropologists thought Ishi could not count above the number ten. It was later found that he saw no reason to count abstractly. He had a numbering system that extended quite high when physical objects were present. One of the most shocking revelations for Ishi, were not the buildings, cars, trains or machinery of modern life, but the number of people that existed. This is a man who had never seen a crowd of people, he had watched his remote lingering tribe-members die off when he was a child . A hunter-gather lifestyle can only support a sparse population. From Ishi's perspective the largest crowd and perhaps the world consisted of those fifty tribe members when he was a young boy. The book gives a humorous account of Ishi's shock of seeing a crowded San Francisco Beach on a hot summer day. The book is very well written, an easy read and very entertaining. It is surprising that this book is not more popular.

This is an incredibly well-written account of a solemn, sad, stone age man, calling himself Ishi, who wandered one day out of the forest into 20th century California civilization. For background information -- the author, Theodora Kroeber, was the wife of one of the men privileged to be Ishi's friends, Alfred Kroeber. Dr. Alfred Kroeber was a very important American anthropologist early in this century -- a student of Franz Boas, and a parent, with Theodora, of the writer Ursula K. (for Kroeber) LeGuin. Theodora Kroeber, at any rate, was in an excellent position to tell Ishi's story from the inside, and she does a fantastic job of it.

Perhaps it's significant that this, the most impactful account of Ishi, was written NOT by an anthropologist, but by an anthropologist's wife. She was able to think simply as a non-"objective" fellow human being, and she talks about Ishi with great warmth and sympathy. Think for a moment of what it might be like to be wholly unacquainted with even the rudest, most fundamental elements of civilization, and to need to fit in. Ishi met this challenge, in his own time, and in his own way. You will never forget his story.

I would just like to add, very quickly, that even today Ishi's story is sometimes lived out anew. In Massachusetts, several public schools have taken in students from tiny villages in the Sudan. These students are learning for the first time in their lives of such things as writing, money, and shoes. Stairs, of all things, are very confusing to some of them. I don't even want to think about what they make of such overwhelmingly powerful modern developments as the atom bomb, shopping malls, or Britney Spears.

Ishi's story is timeless, yet timely for all who choose to ponder it. This book is amazing. One billion thumbs up.