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I looked through my cookbooks and you're right, Linz! While many of the sourdough starter recipes I found include yeast as an ingredient (like the commercially packaged ones I've been buying), natural starters are made by fermenting flour and water--just as you mentioned. I learn something new every day! I'll just include a passage from Joy of Cooking I found interesting:

A natural starter contains wild yeasts instead of the commercially packaged variety... Natural starters combine flour and water and allow the wild yeasts contained in the air and flour slowly to reproduce. However, wild yeast starters can be made with a variety of ingredients. Some natural sourdough starters are made with a combination of cooked or raw potatoes to which water, salt, and cornmeal or flour are added. Some use a combination of fresh or dried hops, potatoes, and cornmeal. And some use milk, yogurt, and flour....

The traditional starter begins with a small piece of dough made from flour and water. It is fed on a daily basis with fresh flour and water until the "wild" yeasts reproduce enough so that the starter can be used to make bread. During this slow fermentation process, bacteria in the starter also reproduce and cause the starter to sour.

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It's still yeast, though, isn't it? It's just that you're not adding the little organisms separately, choosing instead to wake them up from their sleep inside the grains where they live naturally, right? (In other words, you're not outsourcing the fermentation job. )

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