232 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
Ishi-identified by Anglos in 19n as the last of the Ya hi people
of Northern California-died in 1916, the University of California
at Berkeley anthropologist who had studied him and his culture,
Arthur Kroeber, insisted on an Indigenous traditional burial and
no autopsy, according to Ishi's wishes. When asked about the cause
of science, Kroeber said: "If there is any talk about the interest of
science, say for me that science can go to hell. ... Besides I cannot
believe that any scientific value is materially involved. We have hun
dreds of Indian skeletons that nobody ever comes to study."34
Despite Kroeber's stance, Ishi's brain was removed and preserved
and sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. As anthro
pologist Erik Davis observes, the bodies have never had scientific
value. Rather, they have become a fetish, "a marker of value, the
power of which derives specifically from the obscuring of the refer
ent to which it originally referred. It is my claim that Indian identity,
and its material form, the dead Native body, has functioned for a
very long time, and with increasing power, as a fetish marking the
possession of land by those who have conquered it already."35
The "Kennewick Man" phenomenon of the 1990s revealed much
about the pathology Davis references. In 1996, a nearly complete
skeleton and skull were found on a riverbank on traditional land
of the Umatilla Nation near Kennewick, Washington. The county
coroner determined that the bones were ancient-at least nine thou
sand years old-and therefore Native American. Under NAGRA
they should be handed over to the Umatilla authorities. But a local
archaeologist, James C. Chatters, asked to examine the remains.
Several weeks later Chatters called a press conference at which he
proclaimed the remains to be "Caucasoid" and with a story to tell.
Up to that moment, little attention had been paid to the find, but
with Chatters's claims it became a public sensation fueled by head
lines such as "Europeans Invade America: 20,000 BC" (Discover),
"Was Someone Here before the Native Americans?" (New Yorker),
"America before the Indians" (US News and World Report), and
"Hunt for the First Americans" (National Geographic). The archae
ologist had made a series of logical conclusions from a bogus prem
ise: the remains were ancient; the skeleton and skull were said not
to resemble those of living Natives, and might be more akin to those