The Anthropology Of Genocide - WNLibrary

coming to our senses 361
When Kroeber returned to Berkeley he inexplicably arranged for Ishi’s brain to
be shipped to the Smithsonian Institution for curation. The man to whom the brain
was directed, Ales Hrdlicka, was a prominent physical anthropologist of the old
school, a man obsessively dedicated to collecting and measuring brain “specimens”
from various orders of primates, human “exotics” (like Ishi), and from Western “geniuses”
(like John Wesley Powell, the first chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology).
Kroeber knew that Ishi reviled the white man’s science of collecting skulls and
body parts. But perhaps he thought that it was too late for such “sentimental” reservations.
Ishi was dead, and the damage to his remains had been done and was irreversible.
Perhaps he believed that the science to which he had unreservedly dedicated
his life might be able to benefit from the tragedy of his friend and informant’s
death. If so, it was a triumph of science over sentiment. In any event, Kroeber wrote
to Hrdlicka on October 27, 1916: “I find that with Ishi’s death last spring, his brain
was removed and preserved. There is no one here who can put it to scientific use.
If you wish it, I would be pleased to deposit it in the National Museum collection.”
Hrdlicka replied on December 12, 1916, that he would be “very glad” to receive the
brain, and he would have it “properly worked up.” There is no evidence, however,
that Ishi’s brain was ever included in any physical anthropological or scientific study.
It was simply forgotten and abandoned in a Smithsonian warehouse, kept in a vat
of formaldehyde with several other brain “specimens.”
Alternatively, Kroeber’s behavior was an act of disordered mourning. Grief can
be expressed in a myriad of ways, ranging from denial and avoidance to the rage
of the Illongot headhunter (Rosaldo 1989). According to Theodora Kroeber (1970),
her husband suffered greatly at the news of his friend’s death and at the violence
done to his body. He fell into a long depression, and he went into a flight pattern
that lasted seven years. Kroeber characterized this unsettling period in his life (from
1915 to 1922) as his hegira—a dark period of journey, soul-searching, and melancholia.
It was marked by seemingly bizarre symptoms: physical disequilibrium, nausea,
vertigo, strain, and exhaustion. His condition was similar to what used to be
called neurasthenia. Freud’s essay on mourning and melancholia comes to mind
with respect to Kroeber’s “swallowed grief ” concerning the deaths in close succession
of his first wife and his friend and key informant, both from the same disease.
Immediately after Ishi’s death, Kroeber again left California in order to take
up a temporary position at the Museum of Natural History in New York. But he
also went to New York in order to enter a classic psychoanalysis with Dr. Jelliffe, a
former student of Anna Freud. Kroeber recognized that the signs were of his own
disequilibrium. With the death of Henriette, Kroeber’s personal life was shattered.
With the death of Ishi his professional life seemed meaningless. And so, at the age
of forty, Kroeber was for the first time questioning his choice of career and his longterm
professional goals. And when Kroeber returned to Berkeley he began a practice
in psychoanalytic therapy at the Stanford Clinic. Later he opened a private
office in San Francisco.