You know me, man. I love the outcasts and underdogs. And this guy was both. He was the last wild man in North America, and the last of his people. I did a whole research paper on him and that inspired me to do the bronze.
Ishi was the last of the Yahi people of Northern California. No one knows what his real name was. Ishi just means 'man' in the Yahi language. When the anthropologists asked him what his name was, he wouldn't tell them, because in his culture, you didn't give your name. You had to be introduced by another member of the tribe.
But his people had been destroyed - massacred by soldiers and settlers, most of them, or killed by diseases they had no immunity to - so there was no one to give his name. Think about what that means. His name is gone, and his identity, his family, his culture and his way of life are gone with it. It's like he was erased as a human being.
After he was captured, the anthropologists took him to San Francisco. I think at first they figured he was like a lab rat. Like an object they could study. But after he learned to communicate with them, they found out he was a thoughtful, intelligent man. He made peace with his new life and his new world. He literally went from the Stone Age to the 20th century overnight, and he did it with dignity.
In the bronze, I showed him with a spear and a fish. In the wild, strong and proud and free. But there's some shadow there, too. He knows he's the last of his people, and at the end there won't be anyone to remember him, or to sing his death song.
- GIB SINGLETON