I WAS SAD TO READ THAT...

                I was sad to read, more specifically, about, "Ishi, the Last of His People," on the Zooming In section, on page 38.  It was a little heart breaking to read about his story, and how he wound up staggering into a corral of a slaughterhouse.  It was depressing to hear that he looked so emaciated and distraught.  He was the last member of the Yahi tribe, located in Northern California.  The Yahi tribe were "pushed into extinction by the intrusion of more powerful, farming, herding, and "civilized" societies, (38)." 

 "It was a very old story, played out for over 10,000 years since the Agricultural Revolution placed Paleolithic cultures on the defensive, inexorably eroding their presence on the earth. The tragic story of this individual allows us to put a human face on that enormous and largely unrecorded process, (38)."

What made me so sad about this story, was that clearly he was the last of his tribe, and he was most likely so lost and confused.  He refused to tell them his name, so they called him Ishi, which meant "person" in his language.  Ishi was taken to a museum, by a group of Anthropologists (instead of someone who could help save him, which is even more sad), to analyze this person who clearly they thought was some sort of rabid creature. 

"In the mid-nineteenth century, the Yahi consisted of about 300 to 400 people living in a rugged and mountainous area of northern Cali fornia. There they hunted, fished, gathered acorns, and otherwise provided for themselves in a fashion familiar to gathering and hunting peoples the world over. But the 1849 California gold rush brought a massive influx of American settlers, miners, and farmers that quickly pushed the Yahi to the edge of extinction, (38)."

It is a little disheartening that the evolution of our world has led to extinction of others.  That even though we are growing and learning something new everyday, this requires other parts of life to die out.  It is sad to see that we could not preserve simpler cultures, and tribes, in this case.