10-05-2025
Tehama County Museum Lecture
The Tehama County Museum will host its third lecture on Saturday, May 10 in its 2025 Lecture Series. The presentation will feature Steve Schoonover speaking on 'Before Ishi: The Life and Death of the Yahi,'.
Schoonover will be speaking about his book by the same title, which he describes as an effort to unravel the history of the Yahi from the myths that have been woven around Ishi.
The presentation will begin at 1 p.m. in the Marty Graffel Annex of the Museum at 275 C St., in the City of Tehama.
The Museum will be staffed and open to the public from 1-4 p.m. Admission to both the museum and the presentation is free and donations will be greatly appreciated.
Schoonover is a long-time Northern California newsman, spending about 40 years with the Chico Enterprise-Record. A resident of Chico since 1963 and a 1975 graduate of Chico State University.
His book is an attempt to reconstruct the history of the Yahi Indians of Northern California, a history the author feels was mangled by a common infatuation with the myths surrounding Ishi, the 'last survivor of the tribe.' The focus on Ishi has allowed the Yahi's remarkable adaptation to a hostile environment to be ignored. The author also believes the facts of the destruction of the tribe have been replaced with yarns which have been widely accepted, even though in his view, they don't make any sense.
For decades, Schoonover, aided by his wife and fellow reporter, Laura Urseny, have been in search of Ishi's heritage and the fate of his people, the Yahi. They 'backpacked in 1995 from the Sacramento Valley floor near Red Bluff to Childs Meadow, in a bid to replicate the Yahi annual migration.'
Schoonover's dogged investigation of the historical record challenges claims made in books about Ishi, and paints a nuanced picture of gruesome violence against native populations in the mid-1800s in Butte, Tehama and Shasta counties. He attempts to burst the 'Ishi myth,' that he was starving, that he and the Yahi were part of the Mill Creek Indians, 'the last survivor of a tribe that had terrorized Northern California for years.
The book focuses on the life of the Yahi and surrounding tribes, and the coming of white settlers.
There will be opportunities to ask questions at the end of the presentation.
The Tehama County Museum may be reached by phone at (530)384-2595, and by email at tcmuse@
