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By Jove! with a night like this what a lark it will be!" The meaning of this was as clear as my crystal paper weight, and between the door where Mr. Chalmers bade Zura good-night and the lodge where I aroused the sleeping Ishi to his duty of custodian my thoughts went around like a fly-wheel on full duty.
It was the same diameter as the arrow, only tapering a trifle toward the front end, and usually was about six inches long. This was carefully shaped into a spindle at the larger end and set in the recently drilled hole of the shaft, using glue or resin for this purpose. The joint was bound with chewed sinew, set in glue. The length of an arrow, over all, was estimated by Ishi in this manner.
He smelled man; he smelled turkey feathers; and he smelled paint. What sort of animals do you think he imagined the arrows to be? This reminds me that Ishi always said that a white man smelled like a horse, and in hunting made a noise like one, but apparently he doesn't always have horse sense. I saw this exemplified upon one occasion.
About this time I became an instructor in surgery at the University Medical School, which is situated next to the Museum. Ishi was employed here in a small way as a janitor to teach him modern industry and the value of money. He was perfectly happy and a great favorite with everybody. From his earliest experience with our community life he manifested little immunity to disease.
Unquestioningly they obeyed and adored her, but Ishi to whom no woman was a princess and all of them nuisances stood proof against Zura's every smile and coaxing word. Love of flowers amounted to a passion with the old gardener. To him they were living, breathing beings to be adored and jealously protected. His forefathers had ever been keepers of this place.
Baali means Lord, and Ishi means husband, and so the change in relation is that of a female slave who is liberated and married to her former master. We could not have a more perfect analogy. Relatively to the Universal Spirit the individual soul is esoterically feminine, as I have pointed out in "Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning," because its function is that of the receptive and formative.
By placing one end of his bow at the corner of his open mouth and tapping the string with an arrow, the Yana could make sweet music. It sounded like an Aeolian harp. To this accompaniment Ishi sang a folk-song telling of a great warrior whose bow was so strong that, dipping his arrow first in fire, then in the ocean, he shot at the sun.
The interior of the box was filled with bovine liver. This represented animal tissue minus the bones. At a distance of ten yards I discharged an obsidian-pointed arrow and a steel-pointed arrow from a weak bow. The two missiles were alike in size, weight, and feathering, in fact, were made by Ishi, only one had the native head and the other his modern substitute.
As an Indian should go, so we sent him on his long journey to the land of shadows. By his side we placed his fire sticks, ten pieces of dentalia or Indian money, a small bag of acorn meal, a bit of dried venison, some tobacco, and his bow and arrows. These were cremated with him and the ashes placed in an earthen jar. On it is inscribed "Ishi, the last Yana Indian, 1916."
J. V. Cooke and I could shoot as well as Ishi at targets, but he could surpass us at game shooting. Ishi never thought very much of our long bows. He always said, "Too much man-nee." And he always insisted that arrows should be painted red and green.
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