The Yahi were a group of Native Americans who lived in Northern California in the Northern Sierra Nevada, on the western side of the range.
The Yahi are closely related to the Yana, or may have been a subgroup of the Yana. They were hunter-gatherers who lived in small groups without centralized political authority. The word Yahi means person in the Yahi language, which is part of the Hokan language group.
The most famous Yahi was Ishi, the last member of his tribe. Ishi emerged from the mountains near Oroville, California on August 29, 1911, having lived his entire life outside of the European-American culture. Known as the "last wild Indian", Ishi was taken to Berkeley for study, where he lived until his death in 1916.
Although the Yahi had successfully avoided relocation, their numbers had been decimated by frequent skirmishes with vigilantes.
At the turn of the century, the Yahi were popularly characterized as a Stone Age culture.
After the Gold Rush, as they were dispossessed from their land and their way of life disrupted, the Yahi began to adopt new materials and tools: glass supplanted obsidian for arrowpoints, cotton fabric was used for clothing and utensils, iron nails formed the points of salmon spears and awls.
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