What happened to the Original Nations of North America?

How did the original languages of North America die?

(You can click on the picture to make it larger).

This man was the last surviving member of the Yahi people, north of San Francisco.

His family, and his entire community, was dead. They had been hunted, for sport, by white settlers.

He was found in 1911, frightened, and near starvation.

He was taken to the University of California at Berkeley.

He made sound recordings of the Yahi language and Yahi songs.

He recorded everything he could remember about Yahi history and civilization.

The most qualified experts in Native American languages had a hard time understanding what he was saying.

He died in 1916. No one ever knew his real name.

You can find a film about this man at: http://www.jedriffefilms.com/ishi.htm

The Yahi people were part of the Yana nation of Native Americans.

When a settler named James Marshall discovered gold in 1848, gold-miners ran straight to Yana territory, and got busy killing Indians.

By 1865, there were fewer than 50 Yahi people left in the world. The Three Knolls Massacre of 1865 left only 30 survivors. The remaining Yahi retreated after the 1865 massacre and hid themselves in the mountain wilderness for over 40 years.

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Now let's look back a few hundred years.

This is what North America looked like in 1492, before the European settlers arrived:

On the map, you can see where the largest Native American nations were living.
You can click on the picture to make it larger.

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