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Imagine You’re the Last Living Member ofYour Race
A look at the life of the last member of the Yahi people
As the sun peaks from the horizon, your mother scoops you into her arms and runs. Your father runs fast, his arms are pumping, you hear cracks of gunfire, your father calls to your sister, and she replies from behind you. The whole village is running toward the river as people shoot at you. You’re three years old and life is changing.
Everybody’s in the river, hearing the splashing sounds as they try to cross.
Your father arches his back, thrusting his chest forward, and falls, he’s been shot in the chest and drifts downstream with others. Bullets will cause many to fall into the water. You look down, bodies are floating with the current.
40 Yahi are massacred, and the river runs red with their blood.
33 Yahi survived the massacre at Mill Creek in California.
You move around until you start a camp with the 32 others remaining, hunters are around. You have to keep moving.
16 more of your friends and relatives are killed by farmers.
11 of your friends are killed.
There are 5 Yahi left.
Your mother, your sister, two others, and you — now a man.
You build a shelter with your mom and your sister and the two others who were people killed at the river.
Build more shelters with the other survivors, and now there is a small village built from things you could find in the area. Four shelters in all.
You all live together. The last of the Yahi people. You and the others who survived the massacre at Three Knolls on Mill Creek.
Some of the white men killed your people for killing their livestock, and some of them killed your people for killing their people. Your people were starving. Your people were pushed from place to place. Looking for food. The murder of three white men meant the murder of fifty Yahi. More and more Yahi are gone. But the white men keep coming.
You and four others live together hunting, occasionally stealing livestock.
