This is a strange but true story from "The American Experience"--a wonderful series produced by PBS television. In most ways, it is very typical of one of their stories--with nice narration (in this case by Linda Hunt), photos, various experts and evocative music.
The story begins in 1911. Out of the blue, a man who is later named 'Ishi' wanders in from the California wilderness. It seems he'd been a member of an extremely small American Indian tribe, the Yahi--so small that it was assumed they'd been wiped out decades earlier. However, a tiny number hid following a massacre of most of their members and they avoided all contact with white settlers. Now that he's alone and the rest of his family died, Ishi just walked into a town and was soon quite the celebrity. An anthropologist befriended him and learned to speak his language--but what happened next is really weird. Ishi went to live at a UC Berkeley's new anthropology museum and was sort of like a living exhibit where he lived out the rest of his life!
The film is quite strange and a bit sad. Well worth seeing though it made me feel a bit sad about this lonely guy--especially since people of his day talked about him and treated him so patronizingly--such as referring to him as 'simple-minded' and calling him a 'wild man'! So, first you wipe out most of his people, then you treat him like HE isn't civilized!