{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_31429/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_31429","id":"gutenberg_31429","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31429","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Archaeology & Anthropology","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Washoe Indians -- Religion"],"text":"Washo Religion\n\n                                    By\n\n                              James F. Downs\n\n                  University of California Publications\n\n                         Anthropological Records\n\n                       Vol. 16, No. 9, pp. 365-386\n\n      Editors (Berkeley): J. H. Rowe, R. F. Millon, D. M. Schneider\n\n                 Submitted by editors September 16, 1960\n\n                           Issued June 16, 1961\n\n                             Price, 75 cents\n\n                      University of California Press\n\n                         Berkeley and Los Angeles\n\n                                California\n\n                        Cambridge University Press\n\n                             London, England\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nPreface\nIntroduction\nMythology\n   Water Babies\n   The Giants\n   The Coyote And Other Figures\nCuring And Shamanism (2469-2541)\n   Noncurative Use Of Power (2567-2593)\n   Divining And Rainmaking (2553-2556, 2566)\n   Objects Of Power\n   Sorcery And Witchcraft (2562-2564)\n   War Power\n   Summary Of Shamanism\nDreams And Dreamers (2566)\nRitual Activities\n   Conception And Contraception\n   Birth (2178-2293)\n   Puberty: Girls (2305-2352)\n   Puberty: Boys (2379-2386, 369-374)\n   Marriage (2018-2051)\n   Death (2389-2453)\nRitual In Subsistence\n   Hunting\n   Fishing (252a-296)\n   Miscellaneous Concepts About Hunting And Fishing\n   Gathering\nMiscellaneous Ritual\nInfluence Of Christianity\nBibliography\nFootnotes\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThis paper is the result of two and one-half months\u2019 field work among the\nWasho Indians of California and Nevada supported by the Department of\nAnthropology of the University of California and the Woodrow Wilson\nFoundation. In it I have tried to describe the religious beliefs and\nritual activities of the Washo as they can be examined today. Where\npossible I have attempted to reconstruct the aboriginal patterns and trace\nthe course of change between these two points in time.\n\nA second purpose has been to supplement the culture element distribution\nlists prepared by Omer C. Stewart in 1936 (Stewart 1941). In a number of\ninstances his findings were at variance with those of Smith, whose notes\nStewart incorporated; I have been able to resolve some of the differences\nbetween Stewart and Smith. Where my own research has led me to disagree\nwith the statements in the culture element distributions I have discussed\nthe problem. In general my own work simply expands the rather sparse\ndescriptions of the element lists (Stewart 1941, pp. 366-418). The culture\nelement distribution list numbers which refer to traits dealt with in the\nvarious sections are indicated in parentheses following the headings.\nWhere a trait or complex is dealt with in detail it is indicated by\nparentheses in the text. Statements not otherwise attributed are the\nresult of my own field work.\n\nI am indebted to Mr. W. L. d\u2019Azevedo, who encouraged me to carry on field\nwork among the Washo and who has made his own field notes and knowledge\navailable to me. I have indicated information attributable to d\u2019Azevedo by\nplacing his name in parentheses in the text; where his name appears with a\ndate, the reference is to a work published by him.\n\nI also wish to express my thanks for the suggestions made by J. H. Rowe,\nR. F. Millon, and D. M. Schneider, who read this article before it went to\npress, and to acknowledge the final reading given the manuscript by the\nlate A. L. Kroeber.\n\nIn addition, my thanks are owed to Mr. Frank Yapparagari, Mrs. Juanita\nSchubert, and Mrs. Lois Buck of Gardnerville and Minden, Nevada, to Mr.\nRichard Shulter of the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, Nevada, and to\nMrs. E. M. Keenan of Paradise, California, who assisted in various ways in\nthe progress of the investigation. Last, to the various members of the\nWasho tribe, who with patience and good humor bore the probing into their\nlives, my deepest gratitude.\n\nJames F. Downs\n\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nThis paper will devote itself to a description of the religious life of\nthe Washo Indians living in the communities of Sierraville, Loyalton, and\nWoodfords, in California, and Reno, Carson City, and Dresslerville,\nNevada. Smaller numbers are scattered throughout the area which was their\naboriginal range, roughly from the southern end of Honey Lake to Antelope\nValley and from the divide of the Pinenut Range in Nevada, almost to\nPlacerville, California.\n\nA short ethnography by Barrett dealing in large part with material\nculture, Lowie\u2019s Ethnographic Notes, and Stewart\u2019s Element Lists\nconstitute almost the only general references on Washo culture. Various\nother writers have dealt with specialized questions such as linguistics\n(Kroeber, Jacobson), peyotism (Siskin, d\u2019Azevedo), and music (Merriam).\n\nMost of the statements about the Washo give the impression that they have\nlong been on the edge of oblivion (Mooney, Kroeber, etc.), and population\nestimates have been well under one thousand for the past fifty years.\nHowever, I find myself in agreement with d\u2019Azevedo(1) that the Washo are a\nvigorous and continuing cultural entity. My own rather impressionistic\nestimate of population is that there are perhaps two thousand Indians in\nthe area who consider themselves as Washo and form a part of a viable\ncultural unit.\n\nMy own field work was devoted to an attempt to trace the patterns of\nchange among these people since the entrance of the white man into their\narea. To this end I spent a great deal of time with older informants, but\nmy work was not exclusively \u201csalvage ethnography.\u201d Many aspects of Washo\nculture have changed dramatically in the past century; this is\nparticularly true in the area of material culture and subsistence\nactivities. On the other hand, I was impressed by the tenacity of the less\nmaterial aspects of the culture. The always-difficult-to-define world view\nor ethos of the Washo, which so clearly separates them from other\ncultures, is very much an entity expressed in the attitudes and actions of\nthe Washo Indians, whether they are oldsters who can remember many aspects\nof the \u201cold days\u201d or children who have not yet entered the newly\nintegrated schools of Nevada. This continuity seems most clearly expressed\nin the area which we subsume under the title \u201cReligion.\u201d Almost all Washo,\neven the youngsters, are familiar with, or at least aware of, Washo\nmythology, attitudes about ghosts, spirits, medicine, and a number of\nritual actions and beliefs which are common elements in Washo life today.\n\nThis is not to imply that Washo religious activity has not been affected\nby the tremendous changes which have taken place in western Nevada and\neastern California. I suggest that rather than disappearing under the\nwithering rationalism of civilization the religion of the Washo has simply\naltered and expanded to serve the Washo in new situations.\n\nIn this work I take the broadest possible definition of religion,\nconceiving it as any institutionalized activity or attitude which reflects\nthe Washo view of the cosmos. In so doing I have included a number of\ncategories which may not generally be considered suitable for inclusion\nunder the heading of religion. Stewart, for instance, includes shamanism,\ncuring, special powers of shamans, miscellaneous shamanistic information,\nguardian spirits, destiny of the soul, ghosts or soul, and jimsonweed. My\nown work includes some of these specifically, incorporates some under\nother headings, and treats a number of subjects not included in the list\ngiven above.\n\nThe reason for this approach is practical rather than theoretical or\nphilosophical. As anthropological definitions of religions are extremely\nvaried and the activities described as religious under various definitions\ncover a greater or narrower range, it seems valuable to include as many\nactivities as possible in a purely descriptive work.\n\nThe goal of this paper is to make as much information as possible about\nthe religious and ritual activities of the Washo available to scholars who\nmay be interested in religion. The inclusion of as many fields of activity\nas possible permits them to select information which they feel pertinent\nto their interests.\n\nWherever possible I have tried to include direct quotations from\ninformants as well as information about their behavior and attitudes, so\nthat my own interpretations and conclusions can be examined by others in\nlight of the information on which they are based.\n\nStatements made by informants are indicated by quotation marks. I did not\nhave a recording device available and did not attempt to record entire\ninterviews verbatim. However, whenever informants indicated that they\nconsidered their statements important I took them down word for word. If I\nfelt some passing remark to have significance, I asked the informant to\nrepeat it and often read it back to him for verification. Other stories,\nparticularly those of a mythological nature, or semilegends, or\nexperiences which were important to individual informants, were repeated\nvoluntarily on almost every occasion of our meeting. Whenever statements\nare presented in quotation marks the material was gathered in this manner.\n\nThis paper contains material from a number of sources. Statements of fact\nor interpretations taken from published anthropological or historic works\nare indicated by citations in the customary manner. Information based on\nconversations or other private communications with other investigators is\nso designated. All statements of fact which are not credited to these two\nsources are taken from my own field notes and represent statements of my\ninformants.\n\n\n\n\n\nMYTHOLOGY\n\n\nWasho mythology has been presented in the form of interlinear texts by\nDangberg (1927) and in Lowie\u2019s Ethnographic Notes (1939, pp. 333-351).\nThere are two versions of the creation myth, one describing the creation\nof Paiute, Washo, and Diggers from the seeds of the cattail by the Creator\nWoman, and the second attributing the creation of Indians to the Creation\nMan, who formed the three groups from among his sons to keep them from\nquarreling. Lowie also reports the common theme of several previous\ninhabitations of the earth. The most important myth, or at least the one\nwhich is still commonly told and seems to be the favorite among the Washo,\ndevotes itself to the adventures of Damalali (short-tailed weasel) and\nPewetseli (long-tailed weasel). These heroes are responsible for many of\nthe natural features of the region so references to this myth are rather\nfrequent. The Coyote, in the form of a rather malevolent and stupid\ntrickster, and the Wolf, a generally patriarchal and protective figure,\nappear in several myths, as do cannibalistic giants and a giant bird, the\nan.\n\nFigures which appear only incidentally in the myths as recounted are\nelaborated almost infinitely in what might best be termed folk fantasy.\n\n\n\n\nWater Babies\n\n\nMost prominent of these figures are the Water Babies (Stewart 1941, p.\n444, 2574). In the mythology, Water Baby figures as the creature\nresponsible for the many lakes of the eastern Sierra. Killed and scalped\nby the rascally Damalali, Water Baby commands the waters of the area to\nrise until the weasel returns the scalp to avoid drowning. The waters left\nin mountain valleys as the flood receded formed the lakes.\n\nThe Water Baby is not confined to mythology. My informants were able to\ndescribe the appearance of a Water Baby in detail, to supply me with\npopulation figures, and to recount an almost endless series of incidents\nin which Water Babies were involved.\n\nAll informants agreed that the Water Baby is a creature about one and\none-half feet tall, gray in color, with extremely long black hair which\nnever touches the ground but which floats along behind the Water Babies\nwhen they walk. In general, these creatures look like small humans.\nHowever, they are boneless, cold to the touch, and damp.\n\nBetween two and three thousand Water Babies live in the Sierra, according\nto one informant. They inhabit lakes, streams, marshes, ponds, springs,\nand irrigation ditches. They speak a language of their own but are always\nable to speak Washo. With a single exception, every Washo of middle age\nand over to whom I talked claimed to have at least heard Water Babies\ncalling from some body of water in the night. Several others claimed to\nhave seen Water Baby footprints (one even reporting that the footprints he\nhad seen were those of a female because the tracks were clearly those of\nhigh heeled shoes!). One informant steadfastly claimed to have seen a\nWater Baby, at least fleetingly, in 1956.\n\nTwo distinct attitudes about these creatures are displayed by the Washo.\nMost informants openly admitted being afraid of Water Babies. If they\nheard one they remained in their houses or attempted to avoid contact.\nThey claimed that if a person saw a Water Baby by accident, at the very\nleast he would be struck unconscious and greater harm, in the form of\nsickness, might be inflicted on him or on one of his relatives. The\ngeneral attitude was that Water Babies were best left alone because they\nwere extremely powerful.\n\nThis attitude is perhaps summed up best by one of my informants, a rather\nsophisticated Washo who has lived in cities for long periods and who is an\nactive leader in the tribe\u2019s legal battle with the federal government. He\nis also a devoted peyotist who often conducts curing ceremonies and is\nconceded to have a curing power. He said, \u201cIf they ever get up a bunch to\ntrap one of them [Water Babies], I don\u2019t want to have nothing to do with\nit.\u201d When I asked why not, he replied: \u201cWhy hell, if you make one of them\nthings mad they\u2019ll flood the world. I just don\u2019t want nothing to do with\nthem. I ain\u2019t that desperate.\u201d I asked, \u201cdesperate for what?\u201d and he\nreplied \u201cfor power. I like to dream about womens [sic] and things like\nthat, not about Water Babies and that funny stuff.\u201d\n\nThis last statement clearly indicates the other attitude about Water\nBabies; they are often guardian spirits of Washo who have special power,\nparticularly shamanistic curing power. Another informant expressed this\nother attitude about these creatures. He is about seventy, attended\nStewart Indian School for ten years and lived among the Hopi for ten\nyears. He boasts a stone and cement-block home, the only such dwelling\nowned by a Washo. He has learned to bead baskets and during most of the\nyear earns a reasonable income from this. His seeming adjustment to white\nculture is confounded when his philosophic position is examined. He can\nonly be termed a mystic who interprets the world in Indian terms. Exposure\nto such influences as the writings of Kroeber and Huxley has only\nconfirmed his essentially Indian viewpoint. Both his parents were famous\nIndian doctors and his maternal uncle, who was also his mentor,(2) was a\nfamous shaman. My informant implied that his uncle\u2019s spirit (wegeleyo),\nfrom which his power was derived, was the Water Baby, and his own\ncarefully guarded statement implied that the creature was potentially his\nown spirit. His view of the Water Baby was quite the reverse of other\ninformants. \u201cSome people think the Water Baby will hurt them, but he\nwon\u2019t. If they see him by accident he won\u2019t do nothing. But if he has\ngiven you his power and you see him\u2014then wham, he maybe knock you right\ndown.\u201d This appears to have been his way of describing a seizure by the\nWater Baby, which although a fearful experience, usually resulted in the\ngift of additional power. There was, however, general agreement among\ninformants that the Water Baby could, if he gave his power to a person,\ndemand repayment with the lives of his prot\u00e9g\u00e9\u2019s close relatives or entire\nfamily.(3)\n\nThe various powers and activities of the Water Babies are perhaps best\ndescribed in the following stories recounted by informants:\n\n\n    1. \u201cOne time my Dad was sick. He called in two, three doctors and\n    they said he had to give a basket to the Water Babies at Lake\n    _I\u0161medel_. There is an island in this lake and my Dad was supposed\n    to go out to that island and leave a basket. I was too young then\n    but he took my brother. They went up there and my Dad just started\n    walking out to the lake and the water never got any deeper than\n    there (pointing to his knees). He walked right on that water. He\n    left that basket and came back and he got well. Them Water Babies\n    helped him walk on the water. My brother saw it happen.\u201d\n\n    2. \u201cThere is this deep pool up in the mountains. There is a kind\n    of black sucker live there but no Indians ever caught them because\n    that was a Water Baby place and they was Water Baby food. Womens\n    used to sit on a platform of logs and weave baskets there [special\n    baskets for the Water Babies, apparently, such as the one used as\n    offering in the story above]. One time I took another fella like\n    you [anthropologist] up there but when we got there we couldn\u2019t\n    find nothing but sand with a little water bubbling up in the\n    middle. He wouldn\u2019t believe me. I showed him where them womens had\n    sat but I think he thought I was lying. I guess them Water Babies\n    did something.\u201d\n\n    3. \u201cThere is this women called Frances. She was up at Blue Lake\n    with her husband following him along the edge of the lake. It was\n    kind of dark. She saw them little footprints right on top of her\n    husband\u2019s in the sand.\u201d\n\n    4. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what happened to me right in this house about\n    two years ago. I was in bed in that room there and I felt these\n    little hands creeping under the covers. I brushed \u2019em away but\n    they just come back. They tried to feel me down here [indicating\n    his genitalia]. I yelled for my mother and she come in and said\n    something and something went zip (waving arm violently to indicate\n    direction) right out of that window. We looked out that way [to\n    the south], that\u2019s toward Walker Lake. Everything was kind of hazy\n    blue.\u201d\n\n\nIn light of Washo views about receiving shamanistic power, it would appear\nthat my informant was suggesting that this visitation was a Water Baby\nmaking its patronage known.\n\n\n    5. \u201cMy old uncle had been doctoring up by Genoa. He had a tough\n    one and fallen in the fire and burned all his pants off and was\n    walking wearing his coat like a skirt. He got by Wally\u2019s Hot\n    Springs when he felt like he wanted a bath. Them Water Babies must\n    have been working on him. He went over by the creek and started to\n    lean over and then he passed out and fell into the water and there\n    was a Water Baby. That Water Baby said, \u2018come on,\u2019 and he took him\n    down to Water Baby country. The chief of the Water Babies lived in\n    a big house made out of that black shining rock [obsidian]. But\n    they didn\u2019t go there. The Water Baby said \u2018we got some girls that\n    want to give you something,\u2019 and he took my uncle to a place and\n    there was five girls there. They all sat around my uncle and sang\n    him a song and told him that it was his song from now on. Then the\n    Water Baby took my uncle back and then he said it was like waking\n    up from a dream and there he was laying in the creek down under a\n    bunch of cattails.\u201d(4)\n\n    6. \u201cThere was this white man up here fishing. He caught a Water\n    Baby but he didn\u2019t know what it was. He thought it was some kind\n    of fish and took it to San Francisco and they put it that place\n    where they have a lotta fish [aquarium]. Captain Jim went all the\n    way down there to tell the mayor that they had better let that\n    Water Baby loose, but nobody would pay no attention to him. Well\n    you know they had a big earthquake down there and the water came\n    up around everything. When it was all over that tank where they\n    had the Water Baby was empty.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nThe Giants\n\n\nWasho mythology features several creatures which may each have contributed\nto the wild men I will describe in this section. Both Lowie and Dangberg\nreport myths in which a giant, Hangawuiwui, is the principal figure.\nAlthough the myths do not describe him, my informants generally picture\nhim as a colossus who hops on a single leg from the top of one mountain to\nanother. He has a single eye to match his single limb and a proclivity for\ngobbling up Indians. Several miles southwest of Gardnerville, in the hills\noverlooking Double Spring Flats, a cave is known by the Washo as\nHangawuiwui a\u0272\u00bfl (the place where Hangawuiwui lives). Present-day Indians\ntell a number of stories about this giant and display a certain uneasiness\nwhen they are near places he is supposed to haunt.\n\nAnother kind of giant appears in a myth reported by Lowie. These beings\nappear to be considerably more human than Hangawuiwui. Traditionally they\ncamped south of Pyramid Lake and terrorized the Paiutes. However, when one\nof their number attempted to take fish from a Washo the tribe rallied and\nrouted the giants in a battle near Walker Lake. The giants did not have\nbows and arrows. They fortified themselves behind rock walls and threw\nstones.\n\nAccording to my informant on the subject, the mountains are still the home\nof a tribe of \u201cwild men.\u201d These people have managed to hide the location\nof their camps so that no one knows where they live. My informant felt\nthat they were in fact some kind of Indian. Despite the mythological\nability of the Washo to defeat the giants, modern stories about them\nsuggest they have a great deal of supernatural power in addition to their\nphysical prowess.\n\nThe following stories were told to me as contemporary or relatively recent\noccurrences:\n\n\n    1. \u201cThere is these wild fellas up in the mountains. I guess you\n    call them giants. One time there was an old man who had set up a\n    blind to hunt chipmunks, like I told you yesterday. He was up in\n    the pine-nut hills and he had killed four chipmunks. One of these\n    fellas come along and he snatched up a chipmunk and he ate it.\n    Then he snatched another and ate it. He tried to grab another but\n    the old man wrestled with him and stopped him from getting the\n    chipmunk and then he got away. He tussled with that wild man and\n    got away. But a long time after when he was real old and went\n    around with a long stick [staff], he went out walking and he\n    didn\u2019t come back. They went out looking for him and found his\n    tracks leading up the foot of Job\u2019s Peak and they ended there. His\n    stick was stuck in the ground and at the end of his tracks it\n    looked like something had snatched him up.\u201d\n\n\nWhen I asked if the wild men had gotten him my informant said he thought\nso. The theme of a wild man\u2019s attempting to take part of a catch from a\nWasho recalls the myth as reported by Lowie, although in the version he\nrecorded the incident occurred between Wadsworth and Sparks and the final\nbattle took place at Walker Lake, whereas my informant changed the locale\nto the Carson Valley area.\n\n\n    2. \u201cMy old grandfather had this happen to him. He was hunting up\n    by the Lake [Tahoe], In them days hunters just carried little thin\n    rabbit skin blankets. They covered up their front and put their\n    back to the fire. My old grandfather was just laying there when he\n    noticed the fire going down (maybe that wild man did something to\n    the fire). Pretty soon he saw a big shadow. He was pretty scared\n    and just laid there. Pretty soon he felt a hand feeling his feet\n    and in between his toes and up his leg and all around his hole\n    [anus]. Pretty soon it reached his face and tried to put his\n    finger in my grandfather\u2019s mouth. My grandfather bit that finger\n    real hard and the wild man yelled and ran away.\u201d\n\n\nI asked if the wild men still existed and my informant replied: \u201cSure.\nThey are up there in the mountains. They are pretty smart and you can\u2019t\nsee them. But us Washo can hear them talking. We can understand their\nlanguage. I have thought a lot about it and they should have called some\nWasho over to Oroville when they caught that fella over there. I read\nabout it in the newspaper when I was younger. I know they had a lot of\nthem California Indians come up there but they couldn\u2019t understand him.\nI\u2019ll bet a Washo could have understood him.\u201d I asked if he thought it had\nbeen a wild man and he nodded in affirmation.\n\nThe \u201cwild man\u201d of course was the now-famous Ishi, the last of the Southern\nYana who wandered half starved into a slaughterhouse in Oroville in 1911.\n\n\n\n\nThe Coyote And Other Figures\n\n\nWasho myths contain a number of tales about a bumbling, not very bright,\ngenerally malevolent Coyote, who as a companion of Wolf seems to devote a\ngreat deal of time to eating Indians and to sexual misadventures.\n\nModern Washo seem less willing than their forebears to weave Coyote into\ntales but are no less conscious of his malevolent presence. Peyotists\noften see visions or dream of Coyote (d\u2019Azevedo and Merriam 1957), and\nquick asides about Coyote\u2019s influence are apt to come up in conversation\neither as tentative jokes or in seriousness. One tale of a modern\noccurrence involving Coyote did come my way through the kindness of Warren\nd\u2019Azevedo. His informant was the brother-in-law of my own informant and,\nlike his kinsman, a semimystic, very conscious of his Indianness and\ncredited by other Washo with powers beyond those of an ordinary man in\nhunting.\n\n\n    \u201cI was staying in this shack with the guy who owned it. One night\n    he didn\u2019t come home but I kept hearing something walking around\n    that shack. The next morning when that guy came home he was all\n    tired out and there was Coyote tracks all around that shack. I got\n    my gun and told that guy to stay away from me\u201d (d\u2019Azevedo).\n\n\nThe A\u0272, a huge man-eating bird described in Lowie\u2019s myth number 13, is no\nlonger alive, but according to several informants the creature\u2019s bones or\nat least the island on which it nested can be seen by people flying over\nthe lake because they are only a bit below the surface. Washo insist that\nwhite airplane pilots see the shape of the island daily but keep silent\nbecause they don\u2019t want to confirm an Indian story. One day on a trip\naround Lake Tahoe my Indian companion, a sometime leader among the Washo\nasked: \u201cIf we get that money from our claim do you think one of them\narcheologist fellas could go down under the water and find that there a\u0272\nbird\u2019s skeleton?\u201d\n\nThe foregoing paragraphs illustrate the tenacity with which Washo\nmythology has maintained itself among these people. The entirety of many\nof the myths is no longer part of the repertoire of every adult Washo, but\nvariations, on-the-spot reconstructions, and the introduction of\nmythological themes into contemporary stories of a secular nature are\ndefinitely part of the oral literature of the Washo.\n\nIt is interesting to note that some aspects of Washo mythology appear to\nhave more viability than others. Thus the Water Baby remains an important\nand vital aspect of modern Washo life, as does the Coyote. The twin\nweasels have lost much of their appeal, as has the giant Hangawuiwui. The\ngiants of the mountains are acknowledged to be alive today but are seldom\nreferred to, whereas Coyote and Water Baby are almost always mentioned and\nspoken of as living entities even by the most progressive Washo.\n\nExcept for the making of offerings to nature, which may be defined as\npurely religious, other religious or ritual activities dealing with what\nwe would call the supernatural are so integrated with other aspects of\nWasho life as to be almost inseparable. Thus in describing the religious\nactivities of the Washo I will proceed through various phases of their\nlife, pointing out the ritual actions which are part of Washo behavior in\nspecific situations.\n\n\n\n\n\nCURING AND SHAMANISM (2469-2541)\n\n\nThe Washo word da\u00bfman\u00bfli\u00bf has a wide range of meanings which include\nalmost all people with supernatural powers, including curers of several\norders. The terms which they use when discussing the subject in English\nare somewhat more precise and will be used in this paper.\n\nThe Washo make a distinction between curers (2594-96) and Indian doctors.\nThe latter, as will be shown, are true shamans whereas the former are\nsomewhat less powerful. Curers appear to be women who have certain powers\nrevealed to them in dreams. Such persons are usually members of what the\nWasho describe as a \u201cdoctor family.\u201d An informant described the activities\nof such a curer:\n\n\n    \u201cMy mother was a curer. She just smoke and talk. You would meet\n    her on the way to town mebbe and say \u2018I don\u2019t feel good\u2019 and she\u2019d\n    just sit down and smoke and talk [pray?] a little and then mebbe\n    tell you what was wrong and what you should do.\n\n    \u201cAlong about the first war I got sick and couldn\u2019t make no water\n    at all. My mother smoked and then spread ashes all over my belly\n    and talked some and after that I passed a lot of blood and got\n    better.\u201d(5)\n\n\nFar more important than the curers, however, were the Indian doctors. Such\nmen were never exclusive specialists and were apparently expected to share\nin the work of hunting and fishing with less gifted men. With the\nintroduction of money by the whites, shamans appear to have approached\nsomething like specialization, charging fees of up to twenty dollars a\nsession for their services.\n\nUntil the middle 1930\u2019s there were a number of shamans among the Washo\n(Stewart 1944). However, with the introduction of the peyote cult, which\namong the Washo is concerned with curing, the shaman was superseded. Today\nonly a single Washo practices shamanistic curing. Interestingly enough\nthis man, now seventy-five, was an informant of Lowie\u2019s in the 1920\u2019s, and\nat that time Lowie described him as a sophisticated young Washo, somewhat\nmystic and with shamanistic ambitions (Lowie 1939).\n\nThis man, Henry Rupert, spent ten years in the Indian school at the\nStewart Agency and after graduation worked for a number of years in a\nprinting plant in Reno. When questioned about the old days he was a fair\ninformant, seldom offering more information than was asked for and clearly\nenjoying the business of making a white man work for every scrap of\ninformation. He was also given to dropping subtle hints and waiting with\nstolid indifference to see if I had been alert. He did not deny his\nshamanistic practices but was less than willing to discuss them in detail.\n\nHis equipment, he admitted (but refused to show me), consisted of a\nbutterfly-cocoon rattle, an eagle-bone whistle, and a feather headband. \u201cI\ndon\u2019t really do nothing but help nature,\u201d he said. When I replied that\nonly some people know how to help nature he was gratified and smiled. \u201cOh\nwell, it\u2019s all psychological anyway,\u201d he answered, confirming Lowie\u2019s\ndescription of him as a sophisticate.\n\nHe is noted for his rather atypical practice of tending a garden, which\nconsists mostly of fruit trees, and for his open liking for old-fashioned\nfoods, which he collects, including fly grubs and locusts. I was not able\nto observe his curing procedures, but they were described to me by another\ninformant, a seventy-five-year-old woman, considered one of the most\nprogressive of the residents of Dresslerville.\n\n\n    \u201cI took my granddaughter to Rupert after the white doctors didn\u2019t\n    do nothing for her. He don\u2019t doctor in the real old Indian way [a\n    phrase I later learned meant that he did not hold a series of four\n    one-night sessions but only a short ceremony]. He don\u2019t give you\n    nothing, just sings and prays and talks over you for a while. He\n    has a rattle and a whistle and a band on his head. After we went\n    to him my granddaughter got well.\u201d\n\n\nAnother informant, the man who was cured by his mother\u2014curiously another\ngraduate of the Stewart School and outwardly a progressive Indian\u2014was a\nveritable fountain of shamanistic knowledge. His father and maternal uncle\nwere both well-known shamans. Although he insisted that he had no\nparticular power himself, other Indians generally claimed that he had\ncertain hunting medicines which assisted him in taking game. There is\nlittle doubt that he believed he had been approached by spirits offering\nhim shamanistic power. His life story was a long recital of ailments and\nmystic occurrences. The ailments, coupled with his attitude about\nspiritual power, suggested strongly that his suffering had been due to a\nrejection of the power offered (Whiting 1950). He supplied the following\naccount about the process of becoming a shaman.\n\n\n    \u201cYoung fellows sometimes have dreams but usually they don\u2019t pay no\n    attention to them. But when you get older and keep having dreams\n    you begin to pay attention. Maybe you see a bear or a rattlesnake\n    or Water Baby or anything. It tell you that you are going to be a\n    doctor. The next morning you go out and bathe and pray. This thing\n    keeps coming [in your dreams]. It may take any form, a skeleton or\n    an animal but you know it\u2019s always the same thing as the first\n    time, just taking different shapes.\n\n    \u201cThese dreams keep coming for four, sometimes eight, years to get\n    you to be a good doctor. But during all this time you don\u2019t get no\n    song. But they do give you your water. It tells you some certain\n    place up in the mountains where there is a spring. You mebbe think\n    there isn\u2019t no spring there, but there is. Then it tells you where\n    to gather tobacco. Later it will tell you to make a rattle out of\n    cocoon. Mebbe at first you only make a rattle with one cocoon.\n    Later it says for you to add more. Finally it will give you a\n    song. You dream this song. But you don\u2019t really remember it. You\n    just begin singing it like you had known it all the time. For a\n    while you may get a new song every year. Sometime you have a dream\n    that tells you how to handle your paraphernalia. Sometime a dream\n    tells you that you have to be all alone in your house. I don\u2019t\n    know what happens in there but some of them doctors, I think, go\n    over to visit the dead for a little while.\n\n    \u201cAfter you been dreaming for a long time maybe you try to cure\n    somebody but you don\u2019t ask for nothing. You never tell them dreams\n    or what your spirit is but other doctors, they know. If your\n    dreams are right you can cure people and then you can ask for\n    something [payment]. The real Indian way was to doctor for four\n    nights. Then he\u2019d lay out all his stuff and give it a drink by\n    sprinkling water on it. Then he\u2019d shake his rattle and sing and\n    touch the patient with his hands. He\u2019d talk to the sickness, like\n    he knew it ... like maybe he was friends to it ... he\u2019d say \u2018now\n    you behave and don\u2019t bother this person no more. If you don\u2019t\n    behave I\u2019m gonna take you out and show you to everybody and then\n    you\u2019ll be embarrassed!\u2019 Then he\u2019d suck at the patient (some of\n    these young doctors suck on a stick with a feather on it that they\n    pointed at the sick person, but the old ones didn\u2019t do that), and\n    get out the sickness, it would be a feather or a stone. Sometime\n    that sickness come out and go into the doctor so hard they can\u2019t\n    get it out and have to get another doctor to help him. Sometimes\n    it hit them so hard that they defecate. I seen them doctors just\n    fill their pants. If it\u2019s real tough they get all stiff and fall\n    over. Sometimes fall right in the fire and their clothes all burn\n    off but it don\u2019t burn them none. You can\u2019t touch them then or it\n    will kill them. But when they begin to shake a little and that\n    rattle begins to go then you can pick them up. If he can, the\n    doctor will vomit out the sickness. When it\u2019s out he puts it in\n    his hand and rubs it with dirt and throws it away toward the\n    north; that kills it.\u201d\n\n\nThis recital of the process of becoming a doctor shows clearly the ideal\nsituation, the receiving of powers, unsought, from supernatural sources,\nthe guardian spirit watching over its prot\u00e9g\u00e9\u2019s career, providing him with\nthe wherewithal in the form of songs, spells, and paraphernalia. In fact,\nhowever, it would appear that the process of becoming a shaman was far\nmore a conscious and voluntary act on the part of an individual than would\nbe supposed from the foregoing story.\n\nDoctoring power clearly seems to have remained within certain families.\nThe informant who gave the foregoing account was himself the son of a\nwoman curer and a famous doctor and the nephew of another doctor. From his\nchildhood he was familiar with the procedures of curing, with stories\nabout dreams, spirit visitations, trips to the afterworld, mysterious and\nsacred locations. He somewhat proudly admitted that as a boy he \u201cused to\nshake that rattle\u201d himself. In short, until his shamanistic education was\ninterrupted by white man\u2019s schooling, he was a shaman\u2019s apprentice.\n\nThis view is supported by the statements of other informants: \u201cOf course\nthem people that is from a doctor family, they have dreams and get curing\npower,\u201d said one rather assimilated woman of about seventy-five. Another\ninformant, a man of sixty, who repeatedly indicated his fear of \u201cpower\u201d\nbut at the same time was reputed to be an important curer in the peyote\nchurch said: \u201cIf you come from a family of dreamers there ain\u2019t nothing\nyou can do. You\u2019re trapped by it.\u201d\n\nYoung shamans appear to have undergone a period of informal apprenticeship\nunder an older doctor. Although there appears to have been no special\nrequirement that a shaman have an assistant, it was not uncommon for a\nyounger man to help out. According to one informant, when Blind Mike, one\nof the well-known doctors in historic times, was becoming a doctor, his\nteacher required him to smoke four hand-rolled cigarettes in a row without\nallowing the smoke to escape from his lungs. This was not considered an\nexercise in legerdemain but a way to develop the younger man\u2019s control\nover his power.\n\nEach doctor received instruction from his spirit familiar as to what\nparaphernalia he should gather but there was a great deal of uniformity in\nthe outfits of Washo doctors. The following description is of the kit of\nmy informant\u2019s uncle, who practiced until the first decade of this\ncentury, and it includes some items clearly postwhite in origin.\n\n\n    \u201cI don\u2019t know what all doctors had but I\u2019ll tell you what my old\n    uncle had \u2019cause I seen it lots of times. [At this point another\n    Indian entered the house, obviously curious, and my informant\n    stopped talking until the visitor left.] He had eagle feathers and\n    magpie feathers. He had a rattle with six or eight cocoons on a\n    stick wrapped in weasel skin and humming bird feathers. He had a\n    tobacco pouch of tree-squirrel hide. He also had a stone. It\n    looked like a big tooth with a cavity in it. He told me how he got\n    that stone. He was walking to town [Genoa, Nevada] one day and he\n    heard something whistle. He kept on walking but it whistled again.\n    So he went looking for what was making that noise and he found\n    that stone setting by a fence post. I heard that stone whistle\n    sometimes when he was doctoring. He also had a tie made out of\n    beadwork. Lots of times a doctor would pay some woman to make him\n    a real fine basket or some bead work because that\u2019s what his power\n    told him to do.\u201d\n\n\nWasho doctors often worked together on \u201ctough\u201d cases. One such was the\ntreatment of what seems to have been an infected elbow by my informant\u2019s\nuncle and Blind Mike. The first step in the process was to blow smoke in a\ncircle around the painful area so that the sickness couldn\u2019t move. This\nwas followed by singing, rattling, and sucking until something bright\nbegan to come out. It was, according to witnesses, as bright as a star, so\nbright in fact that even Blind Mike could see it. The bright object proved\nto be (if we can trust descriptions) the stone and setting of a cheap ring\nwhich was removed from the sore arm. It is interesting to note that while\nthis process was successful my informant seemed to consider the cure less\nthan one-hundred-per-cent effective because the woman who was being\ntreated died two years later.\n\nDoctors were privy to a number of secrets which were not common knowledge\namong most Washo. Such a secret was the cave reputed to be inside Cave\nRock at Lake Tahoe. This cave was a retreat for shamans who went there to\ncommune with their spirits or to secrete a particularly important piece of\nparaphernalia. The cave could be entered through a narrow opening on the\nlandward side, but most shamans preferred a more dramatic entrance. By\nstanding on a certain rock and singing a special song they were lowered\nthrough the water and then lifted into the cave. The last doctor to\nattempt this was Blind Mike. He was directed to go to the cave in a dream.\nHowever, he permitted his wife to accompany him and when she saw him begin\nto sink into the water she screamed with fear. The rock stopped sinking\nwith Mike only knee deep in the water. Since that time no one has\nattempted to enter the room. This promontory is the center of Water Baby\nhabitation and is reported to be the upper end of a tunnel which extends\nunder the mountains to Genoa so that Water Babies can move freely from the\nlake to the valley. The rock also marks the eastern end of a road of white\nsand reported to cross the lake bottom. On the northwest end of the road\nwas located a bed of plants, probably wild parsnips, which doctors\ngathered for medicine. The wild parsnip was poisonous but doctors ate it\nto demonstrate their power. They also chewed it into a paste and spread it\non rattlesnake bites.\n\nAnother spot familiar to doctors was a mysterious hole in the mountains\nnear Blue Lake. The hole could be located by following a spiraling path of\nwhite quartz toward the center. According to the Washo tale, if a man\ndropped even as much as a hair into this hole it made a great roaring\nsound. Suzie Dick, a Washo woman, whose claim of being one hundred years\u2019\nold is borne out by white residents, insists that as a fifteen-year-old\ngirl she went to see this hole and was terrorized by a huge hand which\nreached up out of the darkness and tried to seize her.\n\nVaguely known to most Washo but familiar to doctors was a cave situated\nsouth and west of Gardnerville where ready-made grinding stones were to be\nfound. These, depending on the informant, were made by old Indians or were\nput there by \u201cnature\u201d for the use of the Washo.\n\n\n\n\nNoncurative Use Of Power (2567-2593)\n\n\nIndian doctors often used their power in spectacular displays, apparently\nto impress patients. Often these displays were competitive.\n\nIn the words of one informant: \u201cThem old doctors used to see who had the\nmost power. They\u2019d stick four or five sticks in the ground, each one\nfarther away than the last one, and see how many they could knock down.\u201d\nThen, disconcertingly, he added: \u201cYou can read about that in Kroeber. He\ntells about some other Indians who did that but I guess he didn\u2019t know the\nWasho did it too.\u201d This informant considered Professor Kroeber as an\nauthority second only to himself in matters pertaining to Indians.\n\n\n\n\nDivining And Rainmaking (2553-2556, 2566)\n\n\nThere were no doctors with rainmaking power among the Washo. However,\nanyone, particularly a man deemed to be a leader, might encourage rain\nduring the summer. The rite, which is still observed occasionally by\nindividuals, consists of soaking a pine-nut cone in water and placing it\non the ground in the pine-nut hills. Modern Washo look upon this more as a\nprayer, but in the past it may have been considered as a spell.\n\nThe ancient matriarch Suzie Dick steadfastly insists that less rain falls\nin the Carson Valley than in neighboring valleys because \u201cnobody is\ntalking to God anymore around here.\u201d While she talked she pointed to the\nclouds hanging over Washo and Antelope valleys and to the cloudless sky\noverhead.\n\nOlder white residents speak of Indian rainmakers, which is a source of\nmuch amusement among the Washo. Until a few years ago an Indian, who still\nlives in Dresslerville, used to take advantage of the gullibility or\ngenerosity of white ranchers by performing \u201crain dances\u201d on their property\nin return for handouts of food. The Washo generally frowned on this, but\nbecause white men were the victims of the fraud it was considered\nharmless.\n\nThe father of the false rainmaker was a diviner of stolen articles. His\nmethod was to sit and smoke until the location of the desired article was\nrevealed to him.\n\n\n\n\nObjects Of Power\n\n\nEagle and magpie feathers were considered to be the most powerful items of\na shaman\u2019s paraphernalia. Doctors are reported to have captured eagles and\neven to have tried to raise them to obtain feathers (223-231) The tail\nfeathers were the most prized. Eagle feathers were extremely valuable and\ncould be traded for anything including \u201ca woman or a sack of pine-nut\nflour or anything worth a lot.\u201d Ideally the eagle was tied up until the\nshaman removed three tail feathers. The doctor then tied a string of beads\nto the bird\u2019s leg and released it as a messenger to the spirits.\nDescription of eagle-down costumes suggest that birds were stripped of\nmany more feathers than the ideal three. In historic times individuals\nhave attempted to contain eagles. One old man in Woodfords is well known\nfor having kept them on cradle-boards for easy transport, but such\nexperiments usually ended in failure. Magpie feathers were considered less\npowerful than eagle feathers but still were highly prized. Today they are\ngathered by chance\u2014taken from dead birds on the highway or picked up where\nthey were shed.\n\nIn the past, eagle and magpie feathers were important parts of the dress\nof warriors. Magpie feathers were used to make a feather cap with a single\nfeather suspended from the top. Informants recall their elders\u2019 describing\neagle feathers\u2019 being suspended individually from the upper arms and\nthighs of particularly powerful warriors.\n\nModern peyotists have lost none of the traditional Washo feeling about\nthese feathers. The ceremonial fans of road chiefs, believed the only\npersons capable of handling the immense power, are made of eagle feathers.\nOther peyotists favor the less powerful but nonetheless potent magpie\nfeather (d\u2019Azevedo and Merriam 1957).\n\nTobacco, as the foregoing accounts illustrate, played an important part in\nWasho shamanism. It appears to have been used as an offering to the\nspirits. In addition it is clear that it was felt to have special power of\nits own. Today older men smoke sparingly and are often somewhat\nembarrassed to be offered a cigarette casually during conversation. In\nprewhite times the tobacco was a native variety gathered and dried by the\nshaman. Today Bull Durham appears to have replaced the wild variety as\n\u201cIndian\u201d tobacco. The Indians seemed delighted to see me rolling a\ncigarette; they acted as if I were mastering what they felt was a\nparticularly Indian art. Bull Durham is also important in peyote\nceremonialism because it is \u201creal Indian tobacco.\u201d\n\nIncense cedar plays an important role in modern peyote meetings. It is\ndried and thrown into the fire to create a fragment smoke which is\nconsidered beneficial. Meeting officials fan it into the atmosphere and\n\u201crub\u201d themselves in the smoke to obtain power or purification. This has a\nconnection with traditional Washo ritual, but the relationship is unclear\nand the aboriginal practices obscure. One group of Washo, which was\nassigned a special place in the large camp circle formed during the\npine-nut dances held at Double Springs Flats in the late nineteenth\ncentury, is said to have special rights in connection with cutting cedar.\nModern informants do not have a clear picture of what the rights were or\nwhat the customs surrounding cedar were. One informant did say that if the\ncedar \u201cbunch\u201d found anyone else with cedar they would say \u201cyou aren\u2019t\nsupposed to have that\u201d and would make fun of them. She could offer no\nfurther details or explanations.\n\n\n\n\nSorcery And Witchcraft (2562-2564)\n\n\nThere is no real distinction in the Washo mind between a doctor and a\nsorcerer or witch. Particularly powerful doctors were able to kill their\nenemies. One of the most feared bits of paraphernalia was an obsidian\npoint found by a doctor. These large points were not made by Washo and are\napparently remnants of some previous cultural occupation in the area. If a\nWasho finds one point up he carefully knocks it over with a long stick\nbefore touching it. These points are called mankillers, but I was unable\nto learn exactly how they were used. They are still viewed with a certain\namount of awe, and the finding of a large point in a sandpit in Smith\nValley was known in Woodfords, fifty miles away.\n\nSorcery was used to explain the abandonment of an ancient campsite at\nDangberg\u2019s Hot Springs. This site is a trove of grinding stones, points,\nand other Washo artifacts. Formerly there were numerous skeletons in the\narea, according to both Indian and white informants. However, the site has\nnot been occupied in historic times because of the following incident.\n\n\n    \u201cOne winter there was a lot of Washos camped around the hot\n    springs. My old aunt was camped there. There was this northern\n    Washo [from Sierra Valley] came into the camp. Nobody know\u2019d him\n    and nobody would feed him. But my old aunt fed him. But he was mad\n    at them people so he went to Markleville and made a lot of\n    medicine. [Why he went to Markleville is unclear. This is the site\n    of another hot springs, a fact which may figure in the magic\n    used.] After he made medicine for a while he kind of spit on his\n    fingers and pointed at Dangberg Hot Springs. Right where he\n    pointed all the grass got brown; you can still see that line of\n    brown if you know where to look, and a lot of Indians died. Nobody\n    ever went back there. My old aunt she didn\u2019t die.\u201d\n\n\nOnly one Washo disputed this story. She, a very progressive old woman and\nsometime Christian, attributed the deaths to an epidemic and \u201cdidn\u2019t\nthink\u201d the doctor was responsible.\n\nWitchcraft and sorcery among the present-day Washo is a difficult subject\nto investigate. Even among themselves it is treated with extreme\nindirection and veiled hints. In discussing the problem with d\u2019Azevedo I\nfound that we were in agreement that a number of killings reported among\nthese people could probably be attributed to revenge for, or prevention\nof, antisocial use of power.\n\nOne woman, now dead, was described as probably a witch. The wife of the\ndiviner mentioned earlier was considered a powerful and dangerous woman.\nShe was useful to the community because she knew prayers and songs for the\npine-nut celebration, but dangerous, particularly if she met you at night.\nOne informant describes the attitude of the rest of the community toward\nher.\n\n\n    \u201cShe used to come around at night and knock on your door and say\n    she was lost. She came here one night and pounded on the door with\n    her cane but we wouldn\u2019t let her in. After she went away my\n    husband rolled up a newspaper and set it on fire and ran it along\n    the inside of the door where she had knocked. I don\u2019t know why he\n    did that except we was afraid of her.\u201d\n\n\nStewart also reports this attitude toward the same woman (1941, p. 444;\n2562).\n\nThe woman who told me this story is herself under the shadow of indictment\nfor witchcraft. Curiously enough the same phrase, \u201cI am afraid of her,\u201d\nserves as an accusation. She and her sister-in-law quarreled over the\ndisposal of her husband\u2019s body two years ago. Since that time they have\nnot spoken, and the sister-in-law has been proclaiming her fear.\n\n\n\n\nWar Power\n\n\nThe Washo have not engaged in real hostilities with the Miwok or Maidu for\nwell over a century and Paiute hostilities appear to have taken the form\nof occasional defensive skirmishes; thus the details of war magic are\nvague. However, Washo tradition repeatedly mentions a month-long period\nduring which doctors gathered and made medicine against the enemy before\nlaunching a campaign. Usually this took place at Woodfords, which was the\nsite of a large earth lodge dance house copied after Miwok structures and\ndescribed as \u201cwhere the young mens learned them Miwok dances.\u201d (A second\ndance house is known to have existed in Sierra Valley; attributed to the\nMaidu, it fell into disuse after the death of its owner.)\n\n\n\n\nSummary Of Shamanism\n\n\nAlthough there appears to be only a single practicing shaman among the\nWasho today (and he certainly not a practitioner of the old school), it\nwould be a mistake, in my opinion, to claim that Washo shamanism is a\nthing of the past. Few, if any, Washo over forty have not attended a\nshamanistic curing ceremony and many have been patients. Even those\nIndians who have rejected shamanism as old fashioned\u2014or in deference to\nwhite attitudes\u2014give one the impression of \u201cprotesting too much\u201d in their\ndenial of old beliefs. The woman who took her granddaughter to Rupert, the\ncurer, is among the most progressive of the Washo. She is a nominal\nChristian, active in an informal way as a representative of her people\nbefore white authority, and is most apt to deny supernatural explanations\nof historic incidents. Nonetheless she has faith in the power of this\nmodern shaman and in the cures reported for the old-time shamans.\n\nOne factor in the decline of the shaman as a principal in curative\nactivities was the rise of the peyote cult in the mid-1930\u2019s (Stewart\n1944). The cult was introduced by a Paiute who gathered a number of Washo\nfollowers. His cult or \u201cway\u201d has since been superseded by a strictly Washo\ngroup, following the Teepee Way (d\u2019Azevedo 1957). The Teepee Way is an\nillustration of the effect an ethnographer can have on the lives of his\nsubjects. A casual remark by an ethnographer that the peyote ceremonies\ncarried out by the Paiute leader were not like those he had seen elsewhere\nmotivated a Washo to drive to Idaho to find out for himself. This trip\nresulted in the formation of the new cult and the near dissolution of the\ngroup headed by the Paiute. Washo peyotism has incorporated much of the\ncuring emphasis of Washo shamanism and much of the symbolism as well. The\npeyote button is reminiscent of the poison parsnip taken by old-time\ndoctors (d\u2019Azevedo 1957). The powerful eagle feather is reserved for the\nuse of road chiefs just as it was the special symbol of the shaman or\npowerful warrior. The fans carried by most peyotists are often composed of\nmagpie feathers. Curative peyote meetings are often conducted by a special\nchief, reputed to have very potent curing powers, who does not conduct the\nregular peyote meeting. Even in regular meetings one of the main emphases\nis on curing ailments of both the body and spirit.\n\nLed by an assimilated Washo, known by other Indians as a \u201cwhite man\u2019s\nIndian,\u201d the shamans brought suit against the peyotists urging they be\narrested and their meetings banned. They charged, among other things, that\npeyote meetings were occasions of sexual license. Such open accusations\nand the bringing of white men into a strictly Indian matter created a\ngreat deal of antagonism toward the shamans among the Washo, whether or\nnot they were committed to peyote.\n\nPeyote curing differs only in detail from shamanistic curing as these two\nstories may illustrate.\n\n\n    \u201cHad these gallstones and them white doctors operated and they got\n    a lotta little stones but pretty soon it was back. So I decided to\n    pray. You know whenever an Indian wants to pray the first thing he\n    turns to is water and tobacco. So every night when I went to the\n    john [toilet] I\u2019d roll a cigarette and pray to that Peyote. I\u2019d\n    say, \u2018I don\u2019t want to be sick so you got to help them white\n    doctors. You got to get all those little stones together in one\n    place.\u2019 That Peyote is a good medicine. I used to go to meetings\n    and it helped me before. So every night I prayed to the Peyote to\n    get them stones in one place. Then I went to the hospital and they\n    operated and got out the biggest gallstone they ever saw. It would\n    hardly go in a fruit jar. I told that Peyote that the job was too\n    big for it all alone that it should just help them white doctors\n    and get all them stones in one place.\u201d\n\n\nAnother informant, mentioned earlier as a peyote chief with special curing\npower, recounts the events leading up to the death of his former wife of\ncancer of the kidneys.\n\n\n    \u201cYeah I had a couple of meetings for Onie. I helped her too.\n    Except she would not do the things I told her to do. I made that\n    cancer move around from her back where it hurt a lot. I got it\n    around in front where it didn\u2019t hurt her so much. But she wouldn\u2019t\n    keep doing the things I told her to do.\u201d\n\n\nThese two incidents reveal traditional attitudes transferred into a new\nframework of curing. In the first place, illness is a corporeal object\nwhich can be manipulated\u2014moved and (if one\u2019s power is sufficient) removed.\nSecondly, peyote is viewed as a manifestation of a spiritual power. The\ninformant with gallstones did not attend meetings to have his ailment\ncured; rather, he used water and tobacco, traditional adjuncts to\nshamanistic curing. Moreover he did not take peyote for his illness; he\nsimply prayed to Peyote in a manner very similar to praying to a spirit\nguardian for assistance.\n\nOther shadows of the shamanistic past seem to lie heavily on the minds of\nmodern Washo peyotists. In his discussion of peyotism, d\u2019Azevedo (1957,\npp. 624-626) describes in some detail the attitudes about the assistance\nor interference that one peyote singer or drummer may receive from\nanother. The statements of his informants, although couched in different\nterms, are reminiscent of many I heard dealing with competitions between\nshamans.\n\nFor several years peyotists were a powerful factor in the tribal council,\nand they were not loath to play upon the connection between peyote and\npoison parsnips in the minds of their cotribalists. The peyote button is\nconsidered to be a powerful agent and as such potentially dangerous.\nTherefore a man who could deal with this agent, just like a shaman who\ncould eat the poison parsnip with impunity, was a man to be listened to\nand followed.\n\nDespite a belief in and a dependence on shamanistic curing or its\nlatter-day counterpart, the peyote curing session, most Washo are willing\npatients of white doctors. This suggests that perhaps the old views are\ndisappearing under the scientific certainty of Western medicine. Quite the\nreverse seems true, however. Every failure of white medicine strengthens\nthe Indians\u2019 belief that the real source of curing power is a gift from\nnature. Every success is attributed to assistance the white men have\nreceived from Indians\u2019 power. When asked the direct question: \u201cWhy aren\u2019t\nthere so many Indian doctors today?\u201d my informant answered: \u201cWell, Indians\njust don\u2019t need all that power today. The white doctors know a lot of\nthings and can cure sickness pretty good. In the old days we didn\u2019t know\nthem things so we had to have them real powers.\u201d This attitude, that\nnature provided whatever was necessary for Washo survival, crops up in\nother contexts which I will discuss later in this paper. Far from\ndisappearing, the old notions seem to be maintaining a strong hold on the\nminds of the Washo. As the number of active peyotists dwindle (d\u2019Azevedo\nand Merriam 1957), one gets the impression that the shamanistic forms may\nagain become a more important part of Washo life.\n\n\n\n\n\nDREAMS AND DREAMERS (2566)\n\n\nMentioned almost as frequently as doctors are dreamers, whom the Washo\nview as distinct from shamans. The so-called antelope shaman and rabbit\nboss fall into this category rather than that of doctor.\n\nDreamers were gifted with a power to foretell special classes of events in\ndreams. All Washo believe dreams are likely to foretell the future, and\nthey are alert to find meanings in any dreams they have. Certain persons,\nthose thought of as \u201cdreamers,\u201d are reported to have special gifts of this\nnature.\n\nThere are apparently no dreamers among the Washo today, in the sense that\nthe term was used in times past. That is, no one is especially singled out\nas having infallible dreams foretelling certain classes of events. It may\nbe that the breakdown of the band structure, which was related to economic\nexploitative activity, in effect, forced everyone to dream for himself. In\nthe past, dreamers were particularly important in setting the time and\nplace for activities which were carried out by large groups, such as\nhunting, fishing, pine-nut gathering, and war. With the disappearance of\nthe last seminomadic bands in the middle 1920\u2019s, as well as with the\nreduced importance of hunting and fishing as group activities, persons\nhaving dreams which directed group actions were no longer useful. Today,\ndreams appear to occur to a number of individuals, and those felt to be of\nsocial significance usually deal with catastrophe or other foreboding\nsubjects. The following stories were told to me by the widow under the\nshadow of witchcraft. When I asked her if she thought any of her friends\nwould tell me their dreams, she replied: \u201cNo I don\u2019t think no Washo would\ntell you their dreams. But I\u2019m not superstitious about them things and\nI\u2019ll tell you these two dreams I had.\u201d\n\n\n    \u201cOne summer I was up at the Lake [Tahoe] with my husband and I had\n    a dream that the gambling house at Dresslerville [a structure\n    known officially as the community center] was on fire. There was\n    kids inside and they was screaming but there wasn\u2019t no water. I\n    saw the men all around with buckets but they couldn\u2019t do nothing\n    because there wasn\u2019t no water. I told my husband about the dream\n    the next morning and he said I should take a bath and pray. That\u2019s\n    what we do to keep a bad dream from happening.\u201d\n\n\nThe following winter the community center did in fact burn down. A young\nIndian in a rage after having an argument with his father hurled a bottle\nof kerosene against a wood stove. The resulting fire could not be\nextinguished because the Dresslerville pump was not working. Whether the\ndream was really a prophecy after the fact I do not know. It is\nsignificant in any case that the prophecy appeared in the form of a dream.\nMy informant\u2019s second dream foretold the violent death of a young Indian\nwoman. The prophecy came true two years later.\n\nHer statement that other Washo would be reluctant to discuss their dreams\nwas all too true, confirming the importance that dreams play in their\ndaily lives. A number of tangential remarks suggest that the belief that\ndreams confer advance knowledge of the future and that they confer power\nis still common among the Washo. One informant said, in talking about\n\u201cold-time dreamers\u201d: \u201cToday a lot of people will say they had a dream\nabout something, and act real big. I just tell them they are crazy. They\naren\u2019t real dreamers. They couldn\u2019t have a dream about their girl friend.\u201d\n\nUntil very recent times a dream was justification for almost any group\nactivity. The most common motivation for such events as a pine-nut dance,\na war party, or a rabbit or antelope drive was usually that \u201cSo-and-So had\na dream.\u201d An announcement would be made and others would gather for the\nevent.\n\nThese dreams are clearly different from the visitations of spirits to\nprospective shamans, which occurred repeatedly and were kept secret.\nDreamers, on the other hand, publicly reported individual dreams. Being a\ndreamer appears to have been one of the important factors in attaining\npositions of leadership, informal as such positions were among the Washo.\nThe almost legendary Captain Jim,(6) who was acknowledged as a leader by\nall the Washo in the late nineteenth century, is considered to have been a\ndreamer by many of the Washo. Those informants who remember the big times\nat Double Springs Flat, in which a large number of the Washo of the day\nparticipated prior to the pine-nut harvest, usually begin their accounts\nwith the statement that Jim would have a dream and announce the date of\nthe meeting. Various parts of the ceremony were also validated by dreams.\nIt is equally clear that although Jim was an honored leader and had\ndreaming power he was not considered a doctor.\n\nNegative testimony also indicates the importance of dreaming in Washo\nlife. It is to the advantage of certain individuals to deny the\n\u201cchieftainship\u201d of Captain Jim; they vehemently deny that he was a dreamer\nbut insist that he was simply a good man who was trusted by the Washo.\n\u201cThat Jim was just a good old guy that everybody obeyed because they liked\nhim and the whole group selected him. He wasn\u2019t no more of a dreamer than\nI am,\u201d is the way one claimant for the Washo chieftainship put it.\nHowever, his own claim was based on his relationship to a man who was a\nrabbit boss and who dreamed when it was time to hunt rabbits.\n\nClearly the Washo believed and still believe that dreams make one privy to\nthe future and provide important insights on which one can base decisions.\nThe specific uses to which dreams can be put change with the situation.\nAntelope dreaming is no longer important because there are no antelope.\nRabbit dreamers no longer exist because the rabbit drive has lost much of\nits importance in Washo life. Conversely, dreams dealing with modern\nproblems appear to be taken seriously.\n\nOne informant often dreams of snakes and evidences a great fear of them.\nThe Washo view this behavior as a rational response to a real warning and\nconsider the man\u2019s caution as good judgment in the face of repeated\nwarnings.\n\n\n\n\n\nRITUAL ACTIVITIES\n\n\nFew, if any, Washo activities do not contain an element which we can\ndescribe as religious, supernatural, or magical. This element is most\ncommonly revealed by specifically ritualized behavior carried on while a\nregular course of action is being taken by a Washo. The following sections\nwill deal with this ritualized behavior and the rationale for it offered\nby the Washo.\n\n\n\n\nConception And Contraception\n\n\nApparently the Washo have no specific ritual to encourage conception. They\nare extremely fond of children and desire as many as possible. No Washo\nhas ever heard of, or will admit having heard of, infanticide among the\nWasho, although they have heard of the practice among other Indians. The\nbirth of an illegitimate child, despite the attitude of whites, is greeted\nwith as much joy as that of a legitimate child.\n\nHowever, it is believed that conception can be prevented by manipulation\nof the afterbirth. When the afterbirth is expelled it is wrapped in a\npiece of deer hide or cloth and buried. It is always placed right side up\nif a woman desires to continue bearing children. If she wishes not to have\nchildren it is buried upside down. If at a later time she wishes to become\npregnant, she will turn the earth where the upside-down afterbirth was\nburied. Informants say that not many people do this any more, mainly\nbecause younger women go to the hospital to have their babies, but that\nmany people know how and some may still do it.\n\nCertain Indians are reported to be able to prevent the birth of children\nwithout the knowledge of the woman concerned. This requires the\ncooperation of a woman who has just had a child and who will give the\nmagician the afterbirth. It is then buried or hidden upside down and the\nwoman concerned will not become pregnant. The method of transferring the\ninfluence of the afterbirth from the real mother to the victim was not\nexplained, and in fact the practice was revealed with a good deal of\nreluctance.\n\n\n\n\nBirth (2178-2293)\n\n\nInformants report that the baby was not touched, either by the mother or\nher attendants, until the afterbirth was expelled. The birth and\nrecuperation were carried out in a pit filled with warm ashes. A slow\nbirth was blamed on the belief that the mother had slept too much or been\nlazy during her pregnancy.\n\nThe mother was not allowed to eat salt until the baby\u2019s umbilicus dropped\noff, usually in two or three days. The umbilicus was dried and hung on the\nright side of the cradleboard to insure that the baby would be\nright-handed.\n\nThe baby\u2019s hair was cut about thirty days after its birth. Until that time\nthe mother was not permitted to eat meat or to leave her bed of ashes.\nHowever, one of my informants who had borne eight children claimed never\nto have spent more than two weeks in her lying-in bed. She did insist that\n\u201cin the old days\u201d women adhered to the traditional thirty-day period.\n\nA pregnant woman was not permitted to eat eggs with double yolks, or\ndouble fruit, lest she have twins. No special action was taken if twins\nwere born, however.\n\nDuring her confinement a woman was not supposed to rub the sweat from her\nface. She might dab the sweat off, but to rub it would cause her to be\nwrinkled in her old age. One informant assured me that this was the truth\nand pointed to her own relatively unwrinkled face as proof.\n\nWhen a child loses a milk tooth, it is taken up and thrown into the brush.\nAt that time an admonition is shouted to \u201csome little animal with sharp\nteeth,\u201d that it should exchange the milk tooth for a good permanent one\n(2295a-2301)\n\n\n\n\nPuberty: Girls (2305-2352)\n\n\nAside from the \u201cbig times\u201d which will be described later, the girls\u2019\npuberty dance was the most important ceremonial gathering among the Washo.\nThis custom has survived with tenacity and it is still considered a matter\nof real concern if for some reason a girl does not have \u201cher dance.\u201d\n\nAlthough much of the activity at a girls\u2019 dance is clearly social\nthroughout the occasion, there is a series of ritual actions which must be\ncarried out. The following account is an idealized version of the \u201cold\nway.\u201d Other accounts will describe variations which have developed in the\npast years.\n\nCertain statements which I make will appear to be at variance with\nStewart\u2019s Culture Element Distribution Lists. However, I am inclined to\nthink that the absence of traits in the memory of my own informants\nrepresents a pattern of change rather than inaccuracies on the part of\nearlier investigators. With minor exceptions, differences between\nstatements made today and Stewart\u2019s lists take the form of traits marked\npresent in the lists which are unknown to my own informants. Moreover,\nmost of these differences are to be found in the hair-combing and\nscratching complex and suggest that the taboos on hair combing were\nabandoned some time between the childhood of his informants, who were in\ntheir seventies in 1936, and that of my own informants, who are in their\nseventies today (1959).\n\nThe parents of my informants must not have known or not enforced combing\ntaboos, while the parents of Stewart\u2019s informants must have considered\nthem proper and so instructed their children. We can speculate, on this\nbasis, that the taboo on hair combing and scratching was abandoned by the\nWasho some time in the first half of the century. Whether this can be\ncredited to the influence of the white man or to a continuing pattern of\nchange is a matter for further investigation.\n\nThe account of the entire puberty complex which follows was given to me by\na seventy-five-year-old Washo woman who is generally consulted whenever a\nfamily plans to hold the girls\u2019 dance.\n\n\n    \u201cWhen a girl is about ten she is told what is going to happen to\n    her. When her first period comes [she is not specially confined]\n    people tell her to be active and not to be lazy. She drinks only\n    warm water. In the old days anything that she gathered anyone\n    could come along and take. She couldn\u2019t eat meat or salt but Washo\n    don\u2019t think eggs are the same as meat.\u201d\n\n\n(This last statement was in response to direct questions and does not\nreflect special Washo traits. In fact, all food appears to have been\nforbidden for four days.)\n\nThe family of the girl immediately prepares as much food as possible to\nfeed the guests. One informant remembers in his youth that a family of a\ngirl eligible for a dance would light a large fire part way up on Job\u2019s\nPeak to announce the event.\n\nThe dance itself is carried out at night. Singing and hand-clapping\naccompany the dancing, which may go on all night. During the dance the\ngirl carries a wand about six or seven feet long. The wand is made of a\nvery light wood, often elderberry, and painted red with a native pigment.\n\nIn the past, groups camped about Dresslerville staged their dances at the\nbase of a prominent hill nearby. During the night the girl was required to\nrun to the top of the hill and light four fires; this practice has been\ndiscontinued for many years, however, apparently as a result of white\naccusations that the Indians started range fires and also to avoid\nattracting curious whites.\n\nAbout dawn one of the girl\u2019s male relatives ran forward and snatched the\nstick from her. He then ran with it into the hills and hid it in an\nupright position in some out-of-the-way place.\n\nThe elderberry wand is a device used to insure the girl\u2019s continued\nagility and lightness of foot. As long as the hidden stick remains\nunbroken the girl will remain straight and agile.\n\nAfter the stick was taken away, an older female relative took a small\namount of ash on a whisk of sage, and dusted the nude girl on the head,\narms, and legs. This ritual was accompanied by an informal prayer that the\ngirl not suffer pains in her head, arms, or legs. She was told: \u201cI am\ndoing this early in the morning so that you will get up early in the\nmorning and work hard.\u201d The whisk was then thrown into the crowd, along\nwith a gift, which today is usually a bit of money. Food or beads were\napparently used in the past.\n\nAfter the dusting, a basketful of water was brought forward and the girl\nwas bathed. The basket was then thrown into the crowd. This was considered\na high point of the celebration. After she was bathed, a few dabs of\nnative pigment were placed on her chest and face.\n\nThe ceremony above was described as the \u201creal way to do it ... the way\nthey did it in the old days.\u201d\n\nThe Carson Valley Record Courier reports a puberty dance held in the\nsummer of 1919 in which at least some of these activities were observed\n(although the reporter thought he was attending a betrothal dance) Some\ntwo-hundred Indians were in attendance. There were no fires, only lanterns\nand flashlights. The participants had taken up a collection and purchased\nwatermelon, ice cream, cake, pie, bread, and meat for the feast. The food\nwas served (to the surprise of the reporter) on a long table with plates.\nAbout midnight two girls appeared in the center of the dancing circle\ncarrying long wands.\n\nIn 1926 Lowie witnessed a girls\u2019 dance near Minden and was obviously\nunimpressed. The crowd gathered slowly and gradually began to dance. He\nmakes no mention of either the wand or the ash-dusting ritual, nor does he\ngive us details of the feast. The bath was given from a tin can, and he\ndoes not report a basket\u2019s being thrown (Lowie 1939, pp. 305-308).\n\nOne suspects that dances held today are somewhat more elaborate than those\nof three or four decades ago, possibly as a response to increasing\nawareness and pride in the fact of Indianness. Certainly every girl\nexpects to have her dance, just as a debutante expects to have a\ncoming-out party. When death in the family made it inadvisable to hold a\ndance on a girl\u2019s first menstrual period, everyone agreed that it was\nindeed a shame. The girl went through her four-day fast and a small party\nwas held for her when her second period occurred. One informant insisted\nthat in the \u201cold days\u201d a dance was always held on the occasion of a girl\u2019s\nsecond period but that this had long since been abandoned (Cartwright,\n1952, confirms).\n\nThe basket plays an important part in the ceremony and it would be\nconsidered improper if there were no basket to be thrown to the crowd. It\nis best if the basket is well made and can actually hold the ceremonial\nbath water. If such a basket cannot be obtained, and they are growing\nrarer as the older basket makers die, the bath is poured from a bucket,\nbut a less fancy basket is still thrown to the crowd. The bath and dusting\nare now given to the girl while clad in her slip, in deference to white\nnotions of modesty which are strictly observed by the Washo. The painting\nis carried out only if native pigment is available. The wand is left\nunpainted unless native pigments are available.\n\nThe ritual of seizing and hiding the wand is carried out perfunctorily.\nDuring a recent dance the girl\u2019s uncle took the wand but simply carried it\nto the grandmother\u2019s house, intending to take it to the mountains later.\nHowever, the stick remained with the grandmother, who was somewhat\nconcerned about it. It was kept in an upright position, and she constantly\nreminded the man that he should take it. He regularly promised that he\nwould, the next time he came to visit, but just as regularly forgot it. It\nmay well be that as an adult and an important peyote chief, he was\nreluctant to carry out what he considered an old Indian superstition.\n\nThere is no indication now that the girls\u2019 puberty dance is dying out\namong the Washo. It may well be changing in form and developing into more\nof a party. As the number of persons who know white dances increases,\nthese may replace Indian dances. There is some suggestion of this in other\nceremonial activities. And of course the fact that future generations of\nWasho girls will attend integrated Nevada public schools and associate\nwith white students with different aspirations for approaching adulthood\nmay have important effects on the future of the girls\u2019 dance.\n\nPine-nut flour seems to have taken on an important symbolic role in\nlatter-day dances. We see no mention of this food in 1919 or 1926. Today\nit might be considered proper to delay holding a dance if it was not\npossible to get enough pine-nut flour to feed the crowd.\n\n\n\n\nPuberty: Boys (2379-2386, 369-374)\n\n\nThe approaching maturity of a boy cannot be measured in dramatic\nphysiological terms, and puberty is considered to occur about when a boy\u2019s\nvoice changes. The ritual for boys is less important than that for girls.\n\nThe emphasis for a boy is on his developing ability as a hunter. Although\nhunting is far less important today than it was even in the recent past,\nfew Washo go through the winter without depending on rabbit or deer for\nmeat. The pursuit of the squirrel, ground squirrel, gopher, and other\nsmall game appears to be minimal, but certainly this food is not spurned,\nif available. One of the common legal conflicts with the white man stems\nfrom out-of-season hunting during the winter by Washo men filling out the\nfamily larder.\n\nYoung boys were encouraged to hunt with bow and arrow as soon as they\ncould. Quite often such training was carried out by an older male\nrelative\u2014a grandfather or an old uncle. Expeditions of old men and young\nboys after chipmunk and squirrel appear to have been common, freeing\nable-bodied men for major hunting while the experienced, but less able,\nolder men instructed the boys.\n\nHowever, all the game taken by a boy was taboo to his immediate family.\nThis included young deer and does which he might kill. Such game was given\nto another family, usually related. The boy was also forbidden to eat his\nown take. The taboo included any fish the boy caught.\n\nWhen a boy killed a buck deer considered by his father or other male\nrelative to be big enough, he went through a simple ceremony. One\ninformant said that in the old days a boy was required to crawl under the\nantlers of his kill. His father or older male relative then gave him a\nbath, and from that time he was considered a man and the taboo on his kill\nwas lifted from himself and his family.\n\nMy informant, a mother of four sons now over forty, stated that all her\nsons had gone through the taboo period and were bathed by their father\nwhen they killed their first big buck. Until very recently she received\nmeat from some relatives with a young son who hunted frequently.\n\nWhether or not the young Washo are still observing this taboo and ritual I\nwas unable to determine. However, in certain conservative families it\nseems probable that at least minimal ritual is observed.\n\n\n\n\nMarriage (2018-2051)\n\n\nMarriage is entirely a social institution, and no religious elements\nappear to have entered into it. Traditionally the ceremony, if there was\nany at all, consisted of a \u201cchief\u201d (respected man) throwing a blanket over\nthe shoulders of a couple at a dance. Ceremonial gatherings, such as the\npine-nut dances and the girls\u2019 dances were important in the selection of\nmarriage partners, inasmuch as boys and girls came together at these\ngatherings to engage in flirtation, affairs, and courtship. Dreamers at\nthe \u201cbig times\u201d are reported by informants to have exhorted married\ncouples to be good to each other and not fight (see also Lowie 1939, p.\n303).\n\n\n\n\nDeath (2389-2453)\n\n\nNo amount of social dislocation or cultural impact alters the constant\nfact of death. Each generation faces this inevitability. It is less than\nsurprising then that changes in attitudes and rituals surrounding death\namong the Washo have changed very slowly. The only changes which appear to\nhave developed in Washo death customs are those imposed by direct\nintervention of the whites or as unavoidable consequences of changes in\nother aspects of the culture.\n\nIn the past, when a person died the house in which he expired was\nabandoned by his family. Of course, if the death occurred in the spring or\nsummer such abandonment was simple; during these seasons the Washo usually\nlived in simple brush shelters. A winter death was a more serious matter;\nit was during this season that the Washo lived in the gal\u2019sda\u0272l\u2014a\nstructure made to last through the winter and until the next winter, when\nit was reoccupied. Valley Washo often made these winter homes of brush or\ntules. In the foothills and mountains, bark slabs and tree limbs were\nutilized. If an occupant died, this home must be abandoned and was often\nburned down, and the immediate family moved to another campsite. Thus a\nfamily which suffered no deaths during the winters might spend several\nyears in a single campground, whereas a less fortunate family might have\nto move every winter, or even oftener than that.\n\nA few Washo began building simple rectangular board and batten houses in\nthe 1890\u2019s. Most of the others continued to live in gal\u2019sda\u0272\u00bfl made of\nboards and scrap, begged, stolen, or purchased from the lumber mills which\nwere quite numerous in the area at the beginning of the century. In the\n1920\u2019s, when most of the Washo moved into the \u201ccolonies\u201d established for\nthem by the government, the native-style houses were abandoned in favor of\nthe wooden homes built by the government. No longer permitted to move\nabout the country at will, and frankly unwilling to abandon the more\ncomfortable white-style houses, the Washo adjusted their death customs.\nThe most common adjustment was to prepare for an impending death by\nshifting seriously ill persons into an adjoining structure, often a shack\nbuilt in the native manner or a shed or lean-to. This structure could be\nburned down without loss when its inhabitant died.(7)\n\nThe Washo viewed this destruction of a house occupied by a dead person as\nsimply preventing his spirit from bothering the living.\n\nMost Washo death customs display a conscious attempt to avoid association\nwith the dead. Barrett reports that cremation was practiced, and the bones\nplaced in a stream to prevent their desecration. However, this appears to\nhave been only one of the disposal customs and is not well remembered by\nWasho living today. The burning or burying of the personal possessions of\nthe dead was common. Certain prized possessions were interred with the\nbody, which was usually wrapped in a shroud of matting, deerskin, or\nbearhide and placed in a fissure or cave in the mountains. Although there\nare a number of locations known by both Indians and local whites as old\nburying grounds, all my informants agreed that in the \u201creal old days\u201d\nthere was no special cemetery and that these burial spots have developed\nsince the coming of the white man. This may well have been as a result of\ndirect white interference with native funeral customs and an insistence\nthat Indians concentrate their burials. Some of these sites have become\ntraditional among the Washo.\n\nThe dispute between the widow and the sister mentioned earlier was an\nargument as to whether the deceased would be buried in one of these sites\nor in the cemetery at Stewart, Nevada.\n\nA white man who has lived in the area for ninety years, reported that as a\nboy he often came across caches of belongings of dead Indians in the\nmountains. Today, prized possessions are either crowded into the casket\nwith the body or burned or secreted in some remote area of the Sierra.\n\nFuneral ceremonies were apparently simple. The body was wrapped and\ncarried into the hills to be interred. Prayers in the form of a short\nspeech were directed toward the dead. \u201cWe are burying you because you are\ndead. It\u2019s not because we are mad at you or don\u2019t like you. But you are\ndead. Please don\u2019t come back and bother us.\u201d\n\nWidows traditionally cut their hair in mourning, a custom which is still\npracticed. Stewart reports that mourners painted their faces black. My\ninformants denied this, but one elaborated: \u201cI remember when I was a\nlittle girl old Indians who had lost someone would cry a lot and let the\ntears run down their faces and not wash their faces until they were real\ndirty and black with fire smoke.\u201d Crying at a funeral was expected and in\nfact positively sanctioned. At a funeral conducted while I was present the\nsheriff arrested a drunken Washo who was wailing quite loudly. The Indians\nwere all bitter about this because: \u201cAll of us cry at a funeral whether we\nare drunk or not. That\u2019s the way the Washo do it.\u201d (This funeral was that\nof a murder victim and the sheriff was present because he feared there\nmight be a reprisal attempt.)\n\nA newspaper report of a funeral in Genoa, Nevada, in the late 1880\u2019s\nrecords that the Indians had borrowed a wagon from a white man to\ntransport the corpse (that of a well-known Indian woman) to the burying\nground. The wagon was followed by a large crowd of weeping mourners.\n\nModern funerals usually take place under the auspices of a funeral\ndirector, and generally services are performed by a Christian minister\nfrom the Stewart Indian agency. After the white minister has left, it is\nusual for an older Indian to approach the casket and repeat the old\nfuneral prayers. The reason for waiting until the minister leaves is to\navoid hurting his feelings. My informants said the prayers made the older\nIndians feel more comfortable. It is usually not necessary to burn the\ndeceased\u2019s home, but his belongings are disposed of. There is an\nincreasing tendency to tend graves and put flowers on them. The cemetery\nat Stewart appears to be well decorated with flowers. Two old Indian\ngraves near Lake Tahoe are regularly visited and jars of flowers placed on\nthem.(8)\n\nWhen the husband of one of my informants died, following a twelve-year\nillness spent in a secondary house, she went to visit a daughter living\nnear Lake Tahoe. When she returned to Dresslerville her two sons had torn\ndown the shed and disposed of all their father\u2019s possessions. In deference\nto their mother\u2019s rather modern views about funerals, nothing had been\nplaced in the casket.\n\nWhile I was in Dresslerville an Indian of about forty put the torch to the\nhouse in which his mother and father had lived. The house had been\nunoccupied since their deaths. While the house burned no effort was made\nto extinguish the fire or to call the fire department. A nearby rancher\nsaw the fire and summoned the fire department, but the Indians refused to\ntell the firemen how the fire had started. The local newspaper reported it\nhad been burned to drive away evil spirits. This upset my informants, one\nof whom said that the sight of the house simply made the man sad. She\nelaborated that the Washo felt they were helping God wipe out the tracks\nof a dead person. The Washo claim that after a death there is always a\nrain or sand storm which wipes out the tracks of the deceased.\n\nAfter the Washo return home from a funeral, they immediately wash their\nfaces and hands. They would not feel safe in handling food or children\nuntil this ritual had been carried out.\n\nThe behavior of the dead is a matter of concern for most Washo\n(2606-2609a). Ideally, the spirit is supposed to go up and to the south\nwhere dead Indians are. This land of the dead is guarded by a number of\nmen with bows. Some shamans were able to make the trip to the land of the\ndead (2541-2544). If they could elude these guards, they were sometimes\nable to recover the spirit of a recently dead person and return it. If,\nhowever, the spirit has partaken of the water of a spring immediately\nbehind the guards, it can never be recovered. The by-now-familiar uncle of\nmy informant once visited the land of the dead and reported that there\nwere lots of Indians there playing games and having a good time. If murder\nvictims were present they were with the celebrants, but the spirits of the\nkillers were segregated and were not having a good time.\n\nGhosts, however, wander over the land. They are generally malevolent. If\nthey feel they have been badly used in life, or are not properly honored\nafter death, or have not been given the things they wanted when buried,\nthey may wreak vengeance on the living. To prevent this, homes were\nabandoned, prayers were said, and names of the dead were not used. In\ndiscussing a recent murder, one of the most progressive of the Washo was\nextremely reluctant to give the name of the victim, and, when she finally\ndid, she whispered it. One of the difficulties encountered by government\nagents when pine-nut lands were allotted to the Washo was a refusal to\nname the ancestors on whom the allotment claim was based.\n\nGhosts are often said to come in the form of whirlwinds or dust devils,\nand most Washo will avoid looking at a whirlwind. At night, a sudden puff\nof warm air is thought to be a ghost passing nearby.\n\n\n\n\n\nRITUAL IN SUBSISTENCE\n\n\nHunting, far more than gathering, appears to have been the focus of much\nritual activity. This suggests that for the Washo the importance of ritual\nmay have increased in proportion to the element of chance inherent in the\nactivity undertaken. Gathering was a surety, assuming of course that there\nwas a harvest to gather. With the wide variety of plants available within\nthe Washo territory during the spring, summer, and fall it seems highly\nunlikely that the failure of one species of plant created a serious\nproblem. This, of course, was not true of the pine nut. A failure of the\npine-nut crop was a harbinger of a starvation winter. The gathering of\npine nuts, in contrast to the gathering of other plants, was the subject\nof a great deal of ritual and, in some degree, of ceremonialism uncommon\nto most Washo gathering activities. This will be dealt with later in the\npaper.\n\n\n\n\nHunting\n\n\n_Deer_ (1-27).\u2014Deer were hunted in a number of ways. Barrett reports, and\nold informants confirm, that hunting parties of as many as thirty or forty\nmen were formed in the old days to go to the western slope of the Sierra\nin pursuit of deer. The large number may have been necessitated by the\npossibility of meeting hostile Miwok or Maidu. My own informants claimed\nthat these large parties often set fire to the forest to drive the deer\ninto the open, and that the large number of men was needed to cover the\nescape routes.\n\nMore common, apparently, were small groups of five or six men, usually\nrelatives, who went into the deer country together. Their technique was to\ndrive along a single deer run toward one of their number who was\nconsidered the best shot. This method was very common after the\nintroduction of firearms, particularly repeating firearms.\n\nFinally, any Washo man might hunt singly. Often groups of five or six men\nwent hunting together but each did his own stalking.\n\nWhatever the technique, hunting magic was an individual affair which did\nnot require any ceremonial activities.\n\nA single hunter, before the days of firearms, often stalked in the antlers\nand hide of a deer. Washo were often superstitious about using the real\nantlers and made artificial sets from manzanita branches. This fear of\nusing real antlers appears related to the treatment which was accorded to\nthe bones of deer. These, once the meat had been completely stripped off,\nwere submerged in a stream to prevent their being eaten by dogs or wild\nanimals. Perhaps the best account of the magic involved in stalking is the\nfollowing by an aged informant, reputed to have \u201chunting medicine.\u201d\n\n\n    \u201cWe never had no poison arrow for bear or deer but had something\n    just as good. We took red paint and mixed it with marrow from a\n    deer leg and rubbed it on the shaft and point of the arrow.\n    Arrowheads for war were little but those for big game like deer or\n    bear were pretty big.\u201d\n\n\nWhen I asked my informant the Washo word for this mixture he evaded the\nquestion.\n\n\n    \u201cI don\u2019t think they had a word for it. They didn\u2019t talk about it,\n    just used it. If you used it you had to carry some medicine to\n    work against it, \u2019cause if you got a scratch of that mixture and\n    didn\u2019t have this other stuff [the counter agent], you was a goner.\n\n    \u201cA long time ago one man would hunt. Some of them fellas was\n    superstitious about using real deer horns, so they would make\n    horns of manzanita and then cover up with a deer hide. They\u2019d move\n    along ... taking a long time, just like a deer. That old buck\n    would try to get to the side away from the wind to smell you, but\n    you kept circling around so he wouldn\u2019t smell you. Finally you\n    could get real close, maybe only three, four feet ... going around\n    making sounds just like a deer. Sometimes them bucks would really\n    believe you and want to fight and then it was dangerous. When you\n    was close you shot that arrow into the deer right behind the\n    shoulder blade. That way when he jumped, the shoulder blade comes\n    back and breaks off the shaft. The man would grab the shaft and\n    suck off the blood. Then he\u2019d make a little fire on a flat stone\n    and when it was hot he\u2019d sweep off the fire and spit that on the\n    stone and it would bubble up and disappear. Then you\u2019d go after\n    the deer and you\u2019d find him laying there with blood bubbling out\n    of his nose just like that blood bubbled on the stone.\u201d\n\n\nOther rituals related to hunting dealt with the loss of hunting luck. To\nregain one\u2019s luck in hunting, a sweat lodge was built, consisting of a\ntemporary brush shelter (688-759).\n\nTo insure luck it was common in the old days to bathe and rub the leaves\nof a certain mountain plant over one\u2019s body. Other Washo carried a plant\non their persons while hunting, to insure luck. I was unable to get my\ninformant to give me the Washo name of this plant. Certain other special\nmedicines are reported. One man, it is hinted, has a medicine which he\nrubs on his gun to insure good aim. Old hunters are said to have obtained\nmedicine from the Miwok which would put deer to sleep. Today this medicine\nis a subject of esoteric humor between my informant and his son-in-law.\nThe latter insists that the bear has a medicine which will put his\nfather-in-law to sleep because he came upon the old man asleep under a\ntree one day when he should have been hunting. Although the Washo depended\non ritual to assist them in hunting, it is clear that they considered a\nsuccessful hunter the possessor of power beyond simple magic. Like curers\nor dreamers, certain hunters obviously had been blessed by spirits and\nwere able to outthink and outsmart animals and therefore were particularly\ngood hunters. At least some of the Washo who hunt today attempt to give\nthe impression that their success is based on something more than luck or\nskill.\n\n_Antelope_ (27a-75).\u2014There are no Washo alive today who can remember\nantelope surrounds. It appears that most of the Washo territory was not\ninhabited by antelope, lying as it does between the northern and southern\nranges of the Nevada herds. However, small herds did range in the eastern\nportion of Washo country, but the appearance of firearms and livestock\neliminated the antelope completely in this area. One informant, himself\nseventy-five, remembers stories about the hunts, told to him by a very old\nbrother-in-law who remembered the antelope songs.\n\nAnother informant, generally a good source of hunting information,\nadmitted that he did not know anything about the subject. He had never\nhunted antelope, nor had his father or uncles.\n\nThe signal to hunt was a dream announcing the presence of antelope to a\ndreamer, who acted as leader of the hunt. The entire process was\nconsidered to be magical by this informant who said:\n\n\n    \u201cThere was really no corral. Mebbe just a few piles of brush. The\n    people just danced around and sang, and that kept them antelope\n    there like they was hypnotized. They could keep them right there\n    all night that way. After they held them all night they\u2019d start to\n    slaughter at sunrise. They\u2019d sing: \u2018We aren\u2019t doing this for\n    meanness or for fun but we want you for fine food,\u2019 or something\n    like that. I heard the song once but I never learned it all. I\n    wish I had, now.\u201d\n\n\nThis informant was certain that the Washo did not expect a person to die\nas a result of the exercise of antelope charming. He had heard of other\ntribes which believed this, and he thought it peculiar (Steward 1941:\n218-220). This explanation compares favorably with the culture element\ndistribution lists presented by Stewart, which reported none of the traits\nusually considered as part of the shaman complex in antelope hunting\ncommon among Basin Shoshone and Paiute. (Stewart 1941; Steward 1941.)\n\n_Rabbits_ (92-96).\u2014The pursuit of the jack rabbit appears to have been\nchanging in its importance during the past century. Several informants\nrecall being told in their youth by old men that often only the hides were\nstripped from rabbits to make blankets, but that most of the meat was\ndiscarded because other game was plentiful. However, firearms and\nagriculture soon put an end to antelope hunting, and the trans-Sierran\nregion, like most of the nation, suffered a steady decline in the number\nof deer. All informants agree that in their own youth trips to California\nafter deer were necessary because there were almost no deer east of the\nSierra. All Indians agree that the deer population in Nevada today is far\ngreater than it was in the early years of this century. The decrease in\nantelope and deer forced a greater dependence on the jack rabbit as a\nsource of food as well as fur. The communal nature of the rabbit hunt may\nhave made possible a gradual transference of ritual traits from the\nantelope complex to the rabbit hunt.\n\nTraditionally the Washo drove rabbits into nets, a method common in the\nBasin. Stewart\u2019s notes, taken from informants in their seventies in 1936,\nmake no mention of any supernatural aspect of the rabbit drive. Evening\ndancing during the rabbit drive was denied. There was, however, a special\nleader who directed the hunt. In later times these men were credited with\ndreaming power, as this quotation illustrates: \u201cJack Wallace would dream\nwhere the rabbits were and when it was time for hunting he would send out\na call.\u201d The man mentioned was described as the last of the real dreamers.\nThis power made him extremely influential among the Washo, and his\ndescendants are considered among the claimants for the \u201cchieftainship.\u201d\nThere appear to have been formalized prayers which were said before the\nhunt by a man with power over rabbits.\n\nToday, rabbit hunts are invariably held on Sunday. In the words of one\ninformant: \u201cNowadays anybody can just say \u2018Let\u2019s have a hunt this\nSunday.\u2019(9) They have to hunt on Sunday because most of the men have jobs\nduring the week.\u201d\n\nThe disintegration of the ritualized aspects of rabbit driving is not\ncomplete, however, and many Washo prefer to hunt with a certain man who\nlives in the Indian colony at Carson City. While no one will openly claim\nthat he has supernatural power, it seems clear that his presence is\nimportant to other Indians. His role is that of leader or captain who\nsuperintends the order and discipline of the line of hunters who today\nsweep a wide area, armed with shotguns. D\u2019Azevedo, who was fortunate\nenough to take part in a hunt in 1955, states that prior to the hunt this\nman withdrew from the group. When he asked what the leader was doing he\nmet evasion, and he concluded that perhaps the man was praying. In the\nperiod covered by the memory of my oldest informants, dances were often\nstaged nightly during the rabbit drives. The dancing is invariably\ndescribed as \u201cjust for fun\u201d and probably was more social than religious,\nbut such dancing appears to have been part of other ceremonial or\nsemiceremonial occasions such as the girls\u2019 dances, first-fish ceremonies\nand the pine-nut dances. It seems clear that whatever tendency there was\nto shift the ritualized aspects of antelope hunting to rabbit drives has\nbeen stemmed by a growing dependence of the Washo on wage labor which\nprecludes their response to dream-inspired hunts.\n\n_Bear_ (298, 2558-2561).\u2014Bear hunting appears never to have been a\nsubsistence activity among the Washo. Many informants stoutly deny that\nbear meat was ever eaten, although bear were hunted. No Washo ever gave a\ndirect answer to the question of why they hunted bear if they didn\u2019t eat\nthe meat. Others stated that the bear might be eaten in extreme starvation\nconditions but was never eaten regularly.\n\nOn the other hand, almost all Washo men were able to describe in detail\nthe method of hunting and they obviously enjoyed telling bear-hunting\nstories. The following story told to me by one of the eldest men in\nDresslerville, who claims it was told to him by a very old man, is\nconsistent with the stories told by other informants.\n\n\n    \u201cThere was hardly any Washo who kill bear. But I know this much\n    ... the man who went in there and did it tells me ... bears have\n    their own home in the rocks ... a hole going in the rocks. Go in\n    there naked with a knife or arrow in one hand and burning pitch in\n    other ... light scares him out [the bear], then other men shoot\n    the bear in the mouth with poison arrow [see deer hunting for\n    reference to poison] ... get sick for four or five days, maybe a\n    week. Then the man goes back in. Hardly any Indians could do\n    this.(10) I\u2019ve heard that they cook it and eat it ... not only\n    here but up north. After they get the rifle they get to killing\n    bears around here but hardly ever hear of dividing up the bear\n    meat.\u201d\n\n\nThis last remark appears to be significant as all informants emphasized\nthat Indians shared food equally. Thus a statement made voluntarily that\nbear meat was not shared suggests different attitudes about bears.\n\nAnother informant adds the detail that when the bear left his lair, the\ncompanions of the man who entered the den would block the entrance so the\nbear could not return. The first man to place an arrow in the animal could\nclaim it and get the hide. This informant also added at this point: \u201cIt\u2019s\nfunny that the fella who went inside was _just an ordinary fella_\n[emphasis mine].\u201d He also insisted that after a bear was killed the\nhunting party painted their faces black. Other informants claimed not to\nknow of this or said such painting was done when a mink was killed but\nthey did not know why.\n\nOne traditional story (Dangberg) sheds a bit more light on the bear. In\nthis tale a group of Washo were camped near a band of Paiute who\nchallenged the Washo to fight. Instead of fighting, the Washo drove a bear\nfrom its den and killed it and thus defeated the Paiute.\n\nI had all but given up the pursuit of information on the bear, being\nconvinced that my informants either honestly did not know any more (the\nbear having been relatively rare in this area for a good many years) or\nwere unwilling to discuss something of an extremely sacred nature, when a\nchance remark suggested at least part of the explanation.\n\nA pioneer white resident who had lived in Alpine County, California, for\nninety years casually mentioned that every Indian man who was buried\nduring his boyhood was wrapped in a bearskin shroud. This, coupled with an\nearlier mention of \u201crough\u201d men having bearskins, suggests that the killing\nof a bear represented the ultimate in Washo bravery and the possession of\nthe skin conferred extra powers on the owner. The rifle made such\nacquisitions much less hazardous and in the late nineteenth century it had\nbecome common for Indians to own a bearskin cloak, which became their most\nprized possession and was buried with them.\n\nStewart\u2019s element lists show no evidence of any formalized bear cult among\nthe Washo. However, Smith\u2019s notes, which Stewart used, report a bear\nshaman who impersonated a bear (2558). Certainly the bear was one of the\nspirits who could give power to a man destined to become a shaman. Bear\nshamanism is reported only for the Fish Spring Valley Paiute by Steward\nand for the Tago and Wada Northern Paiute by Stewart. These three groups\nconstitute the only ones having formalized bear ceremonialism of any sort\nin the Basin. The bear dance and a note about impersonating bears (Steward\n1941, pp. 266, 322) suggest that formalized bear ceremonialism came into\nthe Basin from the Rocky Mountains via the Ute and Bannock. However,\nKroeber reports awe of the bear, special euphemisms for them, and\nritualized secrecy about hunting them among the Miwok which seem more\nclosely related to Washo behavior. Bear impersonators among the Battle\nMountain Paiute were credited with invulnerability in war, which is\nreminiscent of the use of a bear-hide cloak by Washo \u201crough men.\u201d Although\nit is not possible to make any conclusive statement about the role of the\nbear in the supernatural life of the Washo, it seems clear that the animal\nis held in special awe and esteem by modern Indians.\n\n\n\n\nFishing (252a-296)\n\n\nFishing appears to be far less subject to ritualization among the Washo\nthan was hunting. Here again there may be a correspondence between the\namount of ritual and the degree of certainty involved in obtaining the\ndesired food. The Washo area is rated by Rostlund as being one of the\nhigher fish-producing areas in North America. Certainly the many lakes,\nstreams, and rivers were the source of great amounts of fish every year.\nIndians who could at most be described as only middle-aged, recount the\ntremendous numbers of fish which swept up the streams from Lake Tahoe\nduring the spawning season. While the numbers may have varied from year to\nyear, the large number of fish plus the intensive fishing methods employed\nby the Washo almost guarantee a large catch.\n\nHowever, d\u2019Azevedo reports that Northern Washo describe some degree of\nritualism connected with fishing (d\u2019Azevedo personal communication).\nDreamers are said to have predicted the day of the spawning run. Dances\nwere held and prayers said, suggesting a rather attenuated first-fish\nceremony for some of the Washo (2618). Other Washo report \u201cbig times,\u201d\nwhich included dancing and prayer, during the spring gathering on the\nlake. However, in the actual catching of fish there was much less ritual.\n\nSome fishermen carried a fishing medicine composed of dried larvae of the\n_Ephydra hians_ (Say), called _kutsavi_ by the Paiute (Heizer 1950) and\n_matsi baba\u0161a_ by the Washo. These larvae were obtained from the Mono Lake\nPaiute in trade or as gifts. They were considered good food and are still\neaten by some Washo. However, in addition they were credited with having\ngreat powers to lure fish and were rubbed on harpoons, hooks, and lines.\nPerhaps this material was considered a fish medicine because these larvae\nare said to be generated from the scales of a giant fish. This leviathan\nis reported to have traveled through all the lakes in the Sierran area\nlooking for a lake large enough in which to live. At Mono Lake it scraped\nsome scales into the water before it left to find a permanent home in Lake\nTahoe (Steward 1936). Whether the Washo share this story with the Owens\nValley Paiute, I do not know, but Mono Lake, because of its saline water\nand its lack of any fish life, is thought of with some fear and awe. Today\nI get the impression that some Washo still keep a bit of this material\nwith their fishing gear, although they are apt to rationalize it as a lure\nrather than real medicine. It should be remembered that hook-and-line or\nspear fishing accounted for a much smaller percentage of the total annual\ntake than did trapping, damning, netting, or other communal methods which\nentailed no ritual.\n\n\n\n\nMiscellaneous Concepts About Hunting And Fishing\n\n\nA number of ritual activities cluster around hunting and fishing. Perhaps\nthe most important is the requirement that women, particularly\nmenstruating women, avoid the hunting and fishing equipment. If a woman\ntouched such gear the owner would bathe it and pray \u201cI\u2019m giving you a bath\nto wash away the bad luck.\u201d (2354-2378).\n\nA further restriction placed on menstruating women was that they must not\neat meat during their periods. To do so meant bad hunting for the man who\nkilled the game.\n\nThe meat from the neck of a deer and the intestinal organs were forbidden\nto vigorous young people. If a man ate neck meat his aim would be bad\n(360-368). Neck meat was reserved for children and the old. In actuality\nit would seem that only the children and the almost decrepit ate such\nmeat. One of my informants who is seventy-five, thus certainly qualifying\nfor old age, has never tasted either neck meat or internal organs. To do\nso apparently would be an admission of loss of vigour which no Washo\noldster wishes to make. Menstruating women today will eat meat purchased\nfrom a butcher but refrain from eating venison or other game taken by\nsomeone they know, for fear of spoiling his luck. Menstrual taboos also\nhold today in regard to touching firearms or fishing poles, although at\nleast some Washo women own fishing poles, and in the early part of this\ncentury a woman who lives at Carson City was reputed to be a great hunter.\nIn times past, certain women are reported to have made excellent bows but\nnot to have used them.\n\nStewart reports dances to bring deer which none of my informants\nremembered. However, even in his time the dances were said to be \u201cmainly\nfor pleasure,\u201d which suggests the sacred nature of such dances has\ngradually faded out of the consciousness of most modern Washo,\nparticularly as deer hunting has become entirely an individual enterprise\nand is no longer central to Washo subsistence.\n\n\n\n\nGathering\n\n\nAs stated earlier, there appears to have been much less ritual involved in\ngathering activities, perhaps because there was much less chance of\nfailure than in hunting. However, Stewart reports that sometimes dances\nwere held to make seeds grow (2619-2621). Such gatherings appear to be\nremembered, if at all, by living Washo only as social occasions.\n\nThe fall pine-nut dance was clearly part of the ritual of the pine-nut\nharvest (2617, 2622). The pine nut was central to Washo winter survival,\nand its production was a matter of extreme concern. Even today the\npine-nut harvest becomes a paramount interest among all the Washo during\nthe last part of the summer. Speculations as to its size, wishes for rain,\nand survey trips into the pine-nut hills become common, and according to\none informant: \u201cIf we have a couple of bad years somebody will say, \u2018We\nought to have a pine-nut dance,\u2019 and then we\u2019ll have one.\u201d\n\nThe following account of the pine-nut dances of the past was given to me\nby a man, now almost blind, of between seventy-five and eighty. His father\nclaimed to be chief of the Washo through an affinal relationship to the\nfamous Captain Jim, and my informant maintains the claim, stoutly denied\nby all other Washo except his relatives and admitted by them only when\nthey are forced to depend on his hospitality. The account is one of a\nwell-regulated four-day ceremony of the first fruit. However, it will\nbecome apparent as other information is presented that it is a highly\nidealized version. It is valuable, however, because it includes a number\nof sacred elements of obvious importance.\n\n\n    \u201cThis prayer(11) fella [Captain Jim] lived at Double Springs all\n    year round. He would have a dream telling him when to have a\n    meeting. He was what you would call a religious man. He would get\n    someone he could trust and send out a long, tanned string of hide\n    with knots in it. For every day until the meeting there was a knot\n    and every day the messenger untied a knot so the people would know\n    how many days they had until the meeting.\n\n    \u201cAll the men came and hunted for four days, and the women would\n    start gathering pine nut. They would hang up the game to let it\n    dry.\n\n    \u201cThe prayer wouldn\u2019t eat meat during those four days but he could\n    drink cold water, and some lady would cook him pine nut.\n\n    \u201cEvery night they would have a dance. On the fourth day everybody\n    would bring the food they had and put it in front of the prayer,\n    and then he would pick some man who was fair [just] and the food\n    was divided a little before sunrise. If you have a small family\n    you get less, if you have a big family you get more.(12)\n\n    \u201cThen the prayer makes a prayer something like this: \u2018Our father I\n    dream that we must take a bath and then paint. Even the childrens\n    ... [we must] wash away the bad habits so we won\u2019t get sick from\n    the food we have in front of us!\u2019\n\n    \u201cThen everybody go to the river ... no matter if there was a\n    little ice on the water, and take a bath. If they was not near the\n    river they bathed the kids from baskets at Double Springs. The\n    prayer he prayed for pine nut, rabbit, and deer.\u201d\n\n\nSuzie Dick, an ancient Washo woman who claims to have reached the century\nmark in 1959, recalls that Captain Jim was her mother\u2019s sister\u2019s son and\nthat she called him brother. He was a big man in a figurative if not a\nliteral sense. He wore eagle feathers on his head and arms. He had red\ntrousers made out of a blanket with feathers on the sides of the legs. As\nshe remembers him at these ceremonies: \u201cHe would scare you to death.\u201d The\nassembled Washo brought pine nuts, deer meat, megal [Indian tea], and much\nother food. Captain Jim prayed and gave a sermon, urging everyone to drink\nwater and avoid liquor, and supervised four nights of dancing.\n\nJudging from the age of these two informants, these meetings, which they\nclaim were attended by all the Washo, were held between 1880 and 1900.\nMost Washo agree that these large meetings were the way \u201cthey did it in\nthe old days.\u201d However, \u201cthe old days\u201d appear not to be aboriginal but the\nlate nineteenth century, when the Washo experienced a brief period of\nsemi-unity and prosperity.\n\nRupert, the psychologically oriented shaman comments, \u201cHell, them northern\nWasho didn\u2019t come down to Double Springs very much. They got their pine\nnuts southeast of Reno. Captain Jim he was only a big man to them Carson\nValley Washo. He didn\u2019t have nothing to say to the northern bunch.\u201d\n\nDespite this, it seems clear that during the last part of the nineteenth\ncentury large numbers of Washo from the various areas did, in fact, gather\nat Double Springs prior to the pine nutting. It seems equally clear that\nthis was distinctly a postwhite phenomenon and that in aboriginal times\nsuch gatherings were much smaller.\n\nThe essential elements of these pine-nut ceremonies are clear. There was a\ngathering of a number of bands, usually at the prompting of a dreamer who\nknew certain prayers and songs which would insure a successful harvest.\nThere was a sharing of food among the celebrants, as well as dancing and\nceremonial bathing. Such affairs were held in Sierra Valley and at Double\nSprings and probably at a number of other places in the pine-nut hills.\n\nThe large celebrations at Double Springs appear to have taken on a\ndistinctly nativistic or revitalistic cast. Informants remember Captain\nJim\u2019s exhortations to abstain from white man\u2019s whiskey, to treat each\nother as brothers and sisters, to eat Indian food, and to apply themselves\nto the business of hunting and gathering. He himself refused to wear new\nwhite clothing but accepted only used garments. It was during this period\nthat Washo received individual pine-nut allotments based on their\ntraditional picking grounds.\n\nMooney (1896), whose information on the Washo was filtered through the\nPaiute, reports the Washo during this period as a shattered remnant of a\nformer society eking out an existence in the dump heaps of white\nsettlements in Nevada. The fact that the Washo did not respond to the\nGhost Dance seems in his mind to support his notions about the condition\nof the tribe. However, among older informants this period is invariably\nrecalled as an almost golden age. Although the implications of movements\nsuch as the Ghost Dance were not clear in Mooney\u2019s time, it seems more\nthan likely that the Washo failed to join the movement because they were\nnot suffering the social and cultural dislocation of the Paiute, Plains\ntribes, or California Indians and, in fact, may have been undergoing a\nprocess of social unification under Captain Jim. This unification appears\nto have had its primary symbolization in the ritual activity which\nsurrounded earlier ceremonies concerned with pine-nut harvesting. The use\nof a hide string to summon people to the meeting appears earlier as a war\nsignal used by a threatened band to entreat other Washo (often not too\nsuccessfully) to come to their aid.\n\nWith the death of Captain Jim, the large gatherings at Double Springs\nappear to have ceased. In the words of one informant, \u201cWhen he died all\nthem things like the knotted string and that stuff died with him.\u201d\n\nAfter his death the pine-nut dances continued to be held in various places\nin Washo country\u2014Sugar Loaf Mountain, Genoa, and Sierra Valley being the\nmost frequently mentioned. Jim\u2019s daughter (or sister\u2019s daughter) who was\nmarried to the claimant Captain Pete and was the mother of the present\nclaimant, Hank Pete, staged a number of dances around Genoa until her\ndeath. This action is of interest in view of the fact that she was\nconsidered a dangerous woman and a poisoner. It suggests that there was in\nfact no clear distinction between doctors and witches or sorcerers. Her\nknowledge of pine-nut prayers and songs made her essential in the ceremony\ndespite the fear the Washo may have had of her.\n\nSince her death in the early 1940\u2019s, pine-nut dances have been less\nfrequent. Only one woman among the Washo is reputed to know all the songs,\nalthough I suspect that several others are in possession of this knowledge\nbut refuse to come forth and serve as leaders, in keeping with Washo\nreluctance to assume responsible roles.\n\nAfter a number of years without a dance, the custom was revived in the\nearly 1950\u2019s at Dresslerville. The dances were staged because previous\ncrops had been poor and it was felt a dance would increase the harvest.\n\nThese dances, supervised by the woman who knew the songs, were not\nconsidered too successful because both Indian dances and white men\u2019s\ndances were conducted. Indian dances were held outside the community house\nwhile younger couples danced in the white manner inside. The prayers,\nbathing, and dreams played a very minor role, although food was supplied.\nFrom the accounts these dances sounded extremely secular with an emphasis\non the recreational aspects, particularly dancing. However, the consensus\nthat the ceremonies were not successful because of the introduction of\nwhite-style dancing suggests that the Indian dances still retain some of\ntheir former sacred character. It was agreed that a dance might be held\ntoday or in the future if the crops were poor. Here again the present\neconomic situation of the Washo tends to limit these affairs to weekends.\nThe impossibility of holding four-day dances however, is not considered\nserious by most Washo. Several informants stoutly denied that there was\nany requirement that the dance last four days. They implied that those who\ninsisted on this were simply trying to make it sound more important (note\nthat using the figure four makes something more important). Their accounts\nreport that the dances might last from one or two days to a week during\nwhich time games were played, dances held, and the ritual described\nearlier carried out. However, there is no doubt that the dances were\nimportant to the success of the harvest and the well-being of the\nharvesters. One informant recalls that: \u201cSometimes them pine nuts was ripe\nbefore the dance. If we picked them then [before the dance], we took a\nbath every day before we started picking but we didn\u2019t have to do that\nafter the dance.\u201d\n\nThe following incident illustrates the attitude most conservative Washo\nhave toward the pinyon pine. D\u2019Azevedo (personal communication)\naccompanied an elderly woman to her pine-nut allotment where she\ndiscovered that illegal Christmas-tree cutters had topped a number of\ntrees, which she believed destroyed their ability to bear. Her response\nwas of sorrow rather than anger. She sat under her trees for a long time\napologizing to her father, from whom she had inherited the plot, and to\nthe spirits of the trees.\n\nThere seems to have been little ritual involved in other gathering\nactivities, except for the dances to make the seeds grow mentioned in the\nelement lists (2621). This practice must have been occasional and\nrelatively old, because it is no longer part of the memories of older\ninformants.\n\n\n\n\n\nMISCELLANEOUS RITUAL\n\n\nAlthough modern informants do not remember taboos dealing with hair\ncombing and scratching during menstruation, they do recall being warned\nagainst combing their hair at night. \u201cMy father used to say that if we did\nit we\u2019d marry out of the tribe. Mike (her husband) used to tell the same\nthing to our girls but they didn\u2019t listen and every one of them married\nout of the tribe.\u201d\n\nThe dried body of a bat, described as having several different kinds of\nhair (Lowie 1939, p. 332) was a powerful gambling charm. Professional\nIndian gamblers, who traveled about the country participating in the hand\ngame, often carried one. Bat power was considered extremely dangerous if\none did not know how to use it. \u201cMy daughter found a bat in a field one\nday, but an old Indian said that if she didn\u2019t know how to treat it, it\nwould eat up her children.\u201d Women especially were afraid of bat-talismans\nand of living bats. The Washo believe that a bat charm is also a powerful\nlove medicine and that a woman once touched by such a charm is powerless\nin the hands of its owner. \u201cYou touch a woman with that thing and it\nhypnotizes her. She follow the guy and die if she don\u2019t go with him. I\ndon\u2019t believe I ever heard of a Washo use one. We\u2019d be too afraid. But\nthem Paiutes and Shoshones use it.\u201d\n\nExcept for the painting of a girl during her puberty dance, painting of\nthe face and body had little part in Washo ritualism, although its social\nsignificance may have been important (Lowie 1939, p. 304). However,\ncertain other customs of dress and adornment appear to have had religious\nsignificance. Eagle feathers and magpie feathers, as well as a bearskin\nrobe, conferred power. A similar notion may explain the use of the skin of\nthe agile and wise long-tailed weasel as a binding for hair braids.\n\nThe hooting of an owl or singing of birds at night was considered as a\nwarning of danger or an omen of death.\n\n\n\n\n\nINFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY\n\n\nThe Washo have been exposed to Christianity from two main sources.\nMissionary groups have maintained representatives from time to time at one\nor another of the Washo colonies. A church dominates the appallingly\ndreary landscape of Dresslerville. Weather and neglect have caused the\nbuilding to deteriorate. Permanent missionizing efforts apparently have\nbeen abandoned. One church group carries on a summer Bible class for\nchildren and sewing classes for women. Funerals are generally conducted by\na Christian minister, but this appears to be a sop to white opinion rather\nthan the result of any real desire on the part of the Washo to become\nChristians. At best they seem to have simply incorporated Christian\nservices as another source of power. It is less than surprising that a\npeople whose main religious emphasis seems to have been on curing or\nsubsistence ritual should have found white doctors useful but white\nministers a rather mysterious and superfluous bit of white culture.\n\nThe other main source of Christian ideas has been the peyote cult, which\nincludes a roughly Christian version of God and Christ visualized as the\nfather and the brother. The cross, pictures of Christ, and references to\nJesus play a role in peyote ceremonialism. Other investigators (d\u2019Azevedo\nand Merriam 1951; Stewart 1944) have noted a shift toward Indian tradition\nin the Washo peyote cult, with an attending reduction of Christian ideas.\nThe attitude of one Washo woman sums the question up quite well: \u201cI think\nthem peyote people [she was not a peyotist but had encouraged her son to\nattend a meeting to cure a back injury] believe more what they doing than\nthe white preacher.\u201d Her own religion is summed up in her actions. In\naddition to sending her son to peyote meetings, she had taken her\ngranddaughter to the shaman and is a regular attendant at the church\nsewing school. She was also the person who waited until the minister left\nthe church to repeat ancient funeral prayers.\n\n\n\n\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\n\n_Abbreviations_\n\nAA: American Anthropologist\nBAE:  Bureau of American Ethnology\nSI-MC: Smithsonian Institution, Miscellaneous Collections\nUC: University of California Publications\nUC-AR: Anthropological Records\nUC-PAAE: American Archaeology and Ethnology\n\nBarrett, Samuel A.\n  1917. The Washo Indians. Bull. Milwaukee Pub. Mus., Vol. 2, No. 1, pp.\n              1-52.\n\nCartwright, W. D.\n  1952. A Washo Girls\u2019 Puberty Ceremony. Pro. 30th Int. Cong. of\n              Americanists, pp. 136-142. London.\n\nDangberg, Grace\n  1927. Washo Texts. UC-PAAE 22:391-443.\n\nd\u2019Azevedo, Warren L., and A. P. Merriam\n  1957. Washo Peyote Songs. AA 59:615-641.\n\nFreed, Stanley A.\n  1960. Changing Washo Kinship. UC-AR 14:349-418.\n\nHeizer, Robert F.\n  1950. Kutsavi, A Great Basin Indian Food. Kroeber Anthro. Papers, No. 2\n              (Fall), pp. 35-41.\n\nKroeber, Alfred L.\n  1907. Religion of the Indians of California. UC-PAA 4:319-356.\n\nKluckhohn, Clyde, and Dorothea Leighton\n  1947. The Navaho. Cambridge; London.\n\nLowie, Robert H.\n  1939. Ethnographic Notes on the Washo. UC-PAAE 36:301-352.\n\nMooney, James\n  1896. The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. BAE 14th\n              Ann. Report, Part 2, pp. 641-1136.\n  1928. Aboriginal population of America North of Mexico. SI-MC 80, No. 7,\n              Washington, D. C.\n\nSiskin, E. E.\n  MS The Impact of the Peyote Cult Upon Shamanism Among the Washo Indians.\n              Ph.D. Diss. 1941. Yale Univ.\n\nSteward, Julian H.\n  1936. Myths of the Owens Valley Paiute. UC-PAAE 34:355-440.\n  1941. Culture Element Distribution, XIII: Nevada Shoshone. UC-AR\n              4:209-360.\n\nStewart, Omer C.\n  1941. Culture Element Distribution, XIV: Northern Paiute. UC-AR\n              4:361-446.\n  1944.  Washo-Northern Paiute Peyotism. UC-PAAE 40:63-142.\n\nWhiting, Beatrice Blyth\n  1950.  Paiute Sorcery, New York.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n    1 W. L. d\u2019Azevedo, basing his opinions on extensive field work in the\n      area, contends that early estimates of Washo population were\n      incorrect and that modern figures based on these estimates are\n      inaccurate. A contemporary estimate, made by a resident journalist\n      in 1881, was somewhat over 3,000.\n\n    2 This statement should not be considered as an indication of\n      matrilineality in Washo society. Freed and d\u2019Azevedo, who have done\n      extensive work in kinship and social organization of this group,\n      seemed to agree that the Washo were loosely bilateral with certain\n      formalized patrilineal elements. However, because of fragile\n      marriages, many Washo have had a longer and closer association with\n      their mothers\u2019 families than with their fathers\u2019, or with those of\n      any of their mothers\u2019 subsequent husbands.\n\n    3 Kluckhohn reports that the payment for joining a coven of Navajo\n      witches is often the life of a relative (1947, p. 131).\n\n    4 This story very closely parallels one recorded by James Hatch among\n      the Yokuts. Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, No. 19, Fall,\n      1958.\n\n    5 Regular Indian doctors were forbidden to treat members of their own\n      families, a prohibition which appears not to have extended to a\n      non-shamanistic curer.\n\n    6 Captain Jim is the only Washo whom the Washo generally accept as\n      having been a leader of the entire tribe. Other claimants to the\n      title of chief of the Washo are contemptuously discounted. There\n      were in the past a number of men, usually considered leaders of a\n      \u201cbunch\u201d who were called \u201ccaptains\u201d or, less often, \u201cchiefs\u201d because\n      they dealt with the white population. The entire institution of\n      captain may well be a post-white development.\n\n    7 The willingness of the Washo to send gravely ill persons to the\n      hospital seems in part motivated by the wish to avoid a death in the\n      house.\n\n    8 The concern for these particular graves may be in part motivated by\n      the fact that they are a focal point in a Washo land claim. Because\n      of California law concerning cemeteries, the Indians contend that\n      the tourist camp presently on the site is there illegally and that\n      the land is theirs. Thus far the camp operator has been enjoined\n      from removing or desecrating the graves, but the Indians\u2019 claim has\n      not been considered.\n\n    9 This statement was made to point out to me that in other times only\n      special people, inspired by dreams, would have suggested a rabbit\n      hunt.\n\n   10 This kind of a statement was common and whenever it was made\n      suggestions of special power were made explicit later in the\n      conversation, or were implied by the attitude of the informant.\n\n   11 Used in an adjectival sense. In the reference below prayer is used\n      nominally.\n\n   12 No matter how reluctant aged Washo may have been to discuss other\n      aspects of the past, they became eloquent about any occasion on\n      which food was plentiful. They describe in minute detail the kinds\n      and amount of food at a feast although they cannot remember the\n      time, place, or those present.","title":"Washo Religion","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":22337}