Chapter II: Part 2

Although there appears to be only a single practicing shaman among the Washo today (and he certainly not a practitioner of the old school), it would be a mistake, in my opinion, to claim that Washo shamanism is a thing of the past. Few, if any, Washo over forty have not attended a shamanistic curing ceremony and many have been patients. Even those Indians who have rejected shamanism as old fashioned—or in deference to white attitudes—give one the impression of “protesting too much” in their denial of old beliefs. The woman who took her granddaughter to Rupert, the curer, is among the most progressive of the Washo. She is a nominal Christian, active in an informal way as a representative of her people before white authority, and is most apt to deny supernatural explanations of historic incidents. Nonetheless she has faith in the power of this modern shaman and in the cures reported for the old-time shamans.

One factor in the decline of the shaman as a principal in curative activities was the rise of the peyote cult in the mid-1930’s (Stewart 1944). The cult was introduced by a Paiute who gathered a number of Washo followers. His cult or “way” has since been superseded by a strictly Washo group, following the Teepee Way (d’Azevedo 1957). The Teepee Way is an illustration of the effect an ethnographer can have on the lives of his subjects. A casual remark by an ethnographer that the peyote ceremonies carried out by the Paiute leader were not like those he had seen elsewhere motivated a Washo to drive to Idaho to find out for himself. This trip resulted in the formation of the new cult and the near dissolution of the group headed by the Paiute. Washo peyotism has incorporated much of the curing emphasis of Washo shamanism and much of the symbolism as well. The peyote button is reminiscent of the poison parsnip taken by old-time doctors (d’Azevedo 1957). The powerful eagle feather is reserved for the use of road chiefs just as it was the special symbol of the shaman or powerful warrior. The fans carried by most peyotists are often composed of magpie feathers. Curative peyote meetings are often conducted by a special chief, reputed to have very potent curing powers, who does not conduct the regular peyote meeting. Even in regular meetings one of the main emphases is on curing ailments of both the body and spirit.

Led by an assimilated Washo, known by other Indians as a “white man’s Indian,” the shamans brought suit against the peyotists urging they be arrested and their meetings banned. They charged, among other things, that peyote meetings were occasions of sexual license. Such open accusations and the bringing of white men into a strictly Indian matter created a great deal of antagonism toward the shamans among the Washo, whether or not they were committed to peyote.

Peyote curing differs only in detail from shamanistic curing as these two stories may illustrate.

“Had these gallstones and them white doctors operated and they got
a lotta little stones but pretty soon it was back. So I decided to
pray. You know whenever an Indian wants to pray the first thing he
turns to is water and tobacco. So every night when I went to the
john [toilet] I’d roll a cigarette and pray to that Peyote. I’d
say, ‘I don’t want to be sick so you got to help them white
doctors. You got to get all those little stones together in one
place.’ That Peyote is a good medicine. I used to go to meetings
and it helped me before. So every night I prayed to the Peyote to
get them stones in one place. Then I went to the hospital and they
operated and got out the biggest gallstone they ever saw. It would
hardly go in a fruit jar. I told that Peyote that the job was too
big for it all alone that it should just help them white doctors
and get all them stones in one place.”

Another informant, mentioned earlier as a peyote chief with special curing power, recounts the events leading up to the death of his former wife of cancer of the kidneys.

“Yeah I had a couple of meetings for Onie. I helped her too.
Except she would not do the things I told her to do. I made that
cancer move around from her back where it hurt a lot. I got it
around in front where it didn’t hurt her so much. But she wouldn’t
keep doing the things I told her to do.”

These two incidents reveal traditional attitudes transferred into a new framework of curing. In the first place, illness is a corporeal object which can be manipulated—moved and (if one’s power is sufficient) removed. Secondly, peyote is viewed as a manifestation of a spiritual power. The informant with gallstones did not attend meetings to have his ailment cured; rather, he used water and tobacco, traditional adjuncts to shamanistic curing. Moreover he did not take peyote for his illness; he simply prayed to Peyote in a manner very similar to praying to a spirit guardian for assistance.

Other shadows of the shamanistic past seem to lie heavily on the minds of modern Washo peyotists. In his discussion of peyotism, d’Azevedo (1957, pp. 624-626) describes in some detail the attitudes about the assistance or interference that one peyote singer or drummer may receive from another. The statements of his informants, although couched in different terms, are reminiscent of many I heard dealing with competitions between shamans.

For several years peyotists were a powerful factor in the tribal council, and they were not loath to play upon the connection between peyote and poison parsnips in the minds of their cotribalists. The peyote button is considered to be a powerful agent and as such potentially dangerous. Therefore a man who could deal with this agent, just like a shaman who could eat the poison parsnip with impunity, was a man to be listened to and followed.

Despite a belief in and a dependence on shamanistic curing or its latter-day counterpart, the peyote curing session, most Washo are willing patients of white doctors. This suggests that perhaps the old views are disappearing under the scientific certainty of Western medicine. Quite the reverse seems true, however. Every failure of white medicine strengthens the Indians’ belief that the real source of curing power is a gift from nature. Every success is attributed to assistance the white men have received from Indians’ power. When asked the direct question: “Why aren’t there so many Indian doctors today?” my informant answered: “Well, Indians just don’t need all that power today. The white doctors know a lot of things and can cure sickness pretty good. In the old days we didn’t know them things so we had to have them real powers.” This attitude, that nature provided whatever was necessary for Washo survival, crops up in other contexts which I will discuss later in this paper. Far from disappearing, the old notions seem to be maintaining a strong hold on the minds of the Washo. As the number of active peyotists dwindle (d’Azevedo and Merriam 1957), one gets the impression that the shamanistic forms may again become a more important part of Washo life.

DREAMS AND DREAMERS (2566)

Mentioned almost as frequently as doctors are dreamers, whom the Washo view as distinct from shamans. The so-called antelope shaman and rabbit boss fall into this category rather than that of doctor.

Dreamers were gifted with a power to foretell special classes of events in dreams. All Washo believe dreams are likely to foretell the future, and they are alert to find meanings in any dreams they have. Certain persons, those thought of as “dreamers,” are reported to have special gifts of this nature.

There are apparently no dreamers among the Washo today, in the sense that the term was used in times past. That is, no one is especially singled out as having infallible dreams foretelling certain classes of events. It may be that the breakdown of the band structure, which was related to economic exploitative activity, in effect, forced everyone to dream for himself. In the past, dreamers were particularly important in setting the time and place for activities which were carried out by large groups, such as hunting, fishing, pine-nut gathering, and war. With the disappearance of the last seminomadic bands in the middle 1920’s, as well as with the reduced importance of hunting and fishing as group activities, persons having dreams which directed group actions were no longer useful. Today, dreams appear to occur to a number of individuals, and those felt to be of social significance usually deal with catastrophe or other foreboding subjects. The following stories were told to me by the widow under the shadow of witchcraft. When I asked her if she thought any of her friends would tell me their dreams, she replied: “No I don’t think no Washo would tell you their dreams. But I’m not superstitious about them things and I’ll tell you these two dreams I had.”

“One summer I was up at the Lake [Tahoe] with my husband and I had
a dream that the gambling house at Dresslerville [a structure
known officially as the community center] was on fire. There was
kids inside and they was screaming but there wasn’t no water. I
saw the men all around with buckets but they couldn’t do nothing
because there wasn’t no water. I told my husband about the dream
the next morning and he said I should take a bath and pray. That’s
what we do to keep a bad dream from happening.”

The following winter the community center did in fact burn down. A young Indian in a rage after having an argument with his father hurled a bottle of kerosene against a wood stove. The resulting fire could not be extinguished because the Dresslerville pump was not working. Whether the dream was really a prophecy after the fact I do not know. It is significant in any case that the prophecy appeared in the form of a dream. My informant’s second dream foretold the violent death of a young Indian woman. The prophecy came true two years later.

Her statement that other Washo would be reluctant to discuss their dreams was all too true, confirming the importance that dreams play in their daily lives. A number of tangential remarks suggest that the belief that dreams confer advance knowledge of the future and that they confer power is still common among the Washo. One informant said, in talking about “old-time dreamers”: “Today a lot of people will say they had a dream about something, and act real big. I just tell them they are crazy. They aren’t real dreamers. They couldn’t have a dream about their girl friend.”

Until very recent times a dream was justification for almost any group activity. The most common motivation for such events as a pine-nut dance, a war party, or a rabbit or antelope drive was usually that “So-and-So had a dream.” An announcement would be made and others would gather for the event.

These dreams are clearly different from the visitations of spirits to prospective shamans, which occurred repeatedly and were kept secret. Dreamers, on the other hand, publicly reported individual dreams. Being a dreamer appears to have been one of the important factors in attaining positions of leadership, informal as such positions were among the Washo. The almost legendary Captain Jim,(6) who was acknowledged as a leader by all the Washo in the late nineteenth century, is considered to have been a dreamer by many of the Washo. Those informants who remember the big times at Double Springs Flat, in which a large number of the Washo of the day participated prior to the pine-nut harvest, usually begin their accounts with the statement that Jim would have a dream and announce the date of the meeting. Various parts of the ceremony were also validated by dreams. It is equally clear that although Jim was an honored leader and had dreaming power he was not considered a doctor.

Negative testimony also indicates the importance of dreaming in Washo life. It is to the advantage of certain individuals to deny the “chieftainship” of Captain Jim; they vehemently deny that he was a dreamer but insist that he was simply a good man who was trusted by the Washo. “That Jim was just a good old guy that everybody obeyed because they liked him and the whole group selected him. He wasn’t no more of a dreamer than I am,” is the way one claimant for the Washo chieftainship put it. However, his own claim was based on his relationship to a man who was a rabbit boss and who dreamed when it was time to hunt rabbits.

Clearly the Washo believed and still believe that dreams make one privy to the future and provide important insights on which one can base decisions. The specific uses to which dreams can be put change with the situation. Antelope dreaming is no longer important because there are no antelope. Rabbit dreamers no longer exist because the rabbit drive has lost much of its importance in Washo life. Conversely, dreams dealing with modern problems appear to be taken seriously.

One informant often dreams of snakes and evidences a great fear of them. The Washo view this behavior as a rational response to a real warning and consider the man’s caution as good judgment in the face of repeated warnings.

RITUAL ACTIVITIES

Few, if any, Washo activities do not contain an element which we can describe as religious, supernatural, or magical. This element is most commonly revealed by specifically ritualized behavior carried on while a regular course of action is being taken by a Washo. The following sections will deal with this ritualized behavior and the rationale for it offered by the Washo.

Conception And Contraception

Apparently the Washo have no specific ritual to encourage conception. They are extremely fond of children and desire as many as possible. No Washo has ever heard of, or will admit having heard of, infanticide among the Washo, although they have heard of the practice among other Indians. The birth of an illegitimate child, despite the attitude of whites, is greeted with as much joy as that of a legitimate child.

However, it is believed that conception can be prevented by manipulation of the afterbirth. When the afterbirth is expelled it is wrapped in a piece of deer hide or cloth and buried. It is always placed right side up if a woman desires to continue bearing children. If she wishes not to have children it is buried upside down. If at a later time she wishes to become pregnant, she will turn the earth where the upside-down afterbirth was buried. Informants say that not many people do this any more, mainly because younger women go to the hospital to have their babies, but that many people know how and some may still do it.

Certain Indians are reported to be able to prevent the birth of children without the knowledge of the woman concerned. This requires the cooperation of a woman who has just had a child and who will give the magician the afterbirth. It is then buried or hidden upside down and the woman concerned will not become pregnant. The method of transferring the influence of the afterbirth from the real mother to the victim was not explained, and in fact the practice was revealed with a good deal of reluctance.

Birth (2178-2293)

Informants report that the baby was not touched, either by the mother or her attendants, until the afterbirth was expelled. The birth and recuperation were carried out in a pit filled with warm ashes. A slow birth was blamed on the belief that the mother had slept too much or been lazy during her pregnancy.

The mother was not allowed to eat salt until the baby’s umbilicus dropped off, usually in two or three days. The umbilicus was dried and hung on the right side of the cradleboard to insure that the baby would be right-handed.

The baby’s hair was cut about thirty days after its birth. Until that time the mother was not permitted to eat meat or to leave her bed of ashes. However, one of my informants who had borne eight children claimed never to have spent more than two weeks in her lying-in bed. She did insist that “in the old days” women adhered to the traditional thirty-day period.

A pregnant woman was not permitted to eat eggs with double yolks, or double fruit, lest she have twins. No special action was taken if twins were born, however.

During her confinement a woman was not supposed to rub the sweat from her face. She might dab the sweat off, but to rub it would cause her to be wrinkled in her old age. One informant assured me that this was the truth and pointed to her own relatively unwrinkled face as proof.

When a child loses a milk tooth, it is taken up and thrown into the brush. At that time an admonition is shouted to “some little animal with sharp teeth,” that it should exchange the milk tooth for a good permanent one (2295a-2301)

Puberty: Girls (2305-2352)

Aside from the “big times” which will be described later, the girls’ puberty dance was the most important ceremonial gathering among the Washo. This custom has survived with tenacity and it is still considered a matter of real concern if for some reason a girl does not have “her dance.”

Although much of the activity at a girls’ dance is clearly social throughout the occasion, there is a series of ritual actions which must be carried out. The following account is an idealized version of the “old way.” Other accounts will describe variations which have developed in the past years.

Certain statements which I make will appear to be at variance with Stewart’s Culture Element Distribution Lists. However, I am inclined to think that the absence of traits in the memory of my own informants represents a pattern of change rather than inaccuracies on the part of earlier investigators. With minor exceptions, differences between statements made today and Stewart’s lists take the form of traits marked present in the lists which are unknown to my own informants. Moreover, most of these differences are to be found in the hair-combing and scratching complex and suggest that the taboos on hair combing were abandoned some time between the childhood of his informants, who were in their seventies in 1936, and that of my own informants, who are in their seventies today (1959).

The parents of my informants must not have known or not enforced combing taboos, while the parents of Stewart’s informants must have considered them proper and so instructed their children. We can speculate, on this basis, that the taboo on hair combing and scratching was abandoned by the Washo some time in the first half of the century. Whether this can be credited to the influence of the white man or to a continuing pattern of change is a matter for further investigation.

The account of the entire puberty complex which follows was given to me by a seventy-five-year-old Washo woman who is generally consulted whenever a family plans to hold the girls’ dance.

“When a girl is about ten she is told what is going to happen to
her. When her first period comes [she is not specially confined]
people tell her to be active and not to be lazy. She drinks only
warm water. In the old days anything that she gathered anyone
could come along and take. She couldn’t eat meat or salt but Washo
don’t think eggs are the same as meat.”

(This last statement was in response to direct questions and does not reflect special Washo traits. In fact, all food appears to have been forbidden for four days.)

The family of the girl immediately prepares as much food as possible to feed the guests. One informant remembers in his youth that a family of a girl eligible for a dance would light a large fire part way up on Job’s Peak to announce the event.

The dance itself is carried out at night. Singing and hand-clapping accompany the dancing, which may go on all night. During the dance the girl carries a wand about six or seven feet long. The wand is made of a very light wood, often elderberry, and painted red with a native pigment.

In the past, groups camped about Dresslerville staged their dances at the base of a prominent hill nearby. During the night the girl was required to run to the top of the hill and light four fires; this practice has been discontinued for many years, however, apparently as a result of white accusations that the Indians started range fires and also to avoid attracting curious whites.

About dawn one of the girl’s male relatives ran forward and snatched the stick from her. He then ran with it into the hills and hid it in an upright position in some out-of-the-way place.

The elderberry wand is a device used to insure the girl’s continued agility and lightness of foot. As long as the hidden stick remains unbroken the girl will remain straight and agile.

After the stick was taken away, an older female relative took a small amount of ash on a whisk of sage, and dusted the nude girl on the head, arms, and legs. This ritual was accompanied by an informal prayer that the girl not suffer pains in her head, arms, or legs. She was told: “I am doing this early in the morning so that you will get up early in the morning and work hard.” The whisk was then thrown into the crowd, along with a gift, which today is usually a bit of money. Food or beads were apparently used in the past.

After the dusting, a basketful of water was brought forward and the girl was bathed. The basket was then thrown into the crowd. This was considered a high point of the celebration. After she was bathed, a few dabs of native pigment were placed on her chest and face.

The ceremony above was described as the “real way to do it ... the way they did it in the old days.”

The Carson Valley Record Courier reports a puberty dance held in the summer of 1919 in which at least some of these activities were observed (although the reporter thought he was attending a betrothal dance) Some two-hundred Indians were in attendance. There were no fires, only lanterns and flashlights. The participants had taken up a collection and purchased watermelon, ice cream, cake, pie, bread, and meat for the feast. The food was served (to the surprise of the reporter) on a long table with plates. About midnight two girls appeared in the center of the dancing circle carrying long wands.

In 1926 Lowie witnessed a girls’ dance near Minden and was obviously unimpressed. The crowd gathered slowly and gradually began to dance. He makes no mention of either the wand or the ash-dusting ritual, nor does he give us details of the feast. The bath was given from a tin can, and he does not report a basket’s being thrown (Lowie 1939, pp. 305-308).

One suspects that dances held today are somewhat more elaborate than those of three or four decades ago, possibly as a response to increasing awareness and pride in the fact of Indianness. Certainly every girl expects to have her dance, just as a debutante expects to have a coming-out party. When death in the family made it inadvisable to hold a dance on a girl’s first menstrual period, everyone agreed that it was indeed a shame. The girl went through her four-day fast and a small party was held for her when her second period occurred. One informant insisted that in the “old days” a dance was always held on the occasion of a girl’s second period but that this had long since been abandoned (Cartwright, 1952, confirms).

The basket plays an important part in the ceremony and it would be considered improper if there were no basket to be thrown to the crowd. It is best if the basket is well made and can actually hold the ceremonial bath water. If such a basket cannot be obtained, and they are growing rarer as the older basket makers die, the bath is poured from a bucket, but a less fancy basket is still thrown to the crowd. The bath and dusting are now given to the girl while clad in her slip, in deference to white notions of modesty which are strictly observed by the Washo. The painting is carried out only if native pigment is available. The wand is left unpainted unless native pigments are available.

The ritual of seizing and hiding the wand is carried out perfunctorily. During a recent dance the girl’s uncle took the wand but simply carried it to the grandmother’s house, intending to take it to the mountains later. However, the stick remained with the grandmother, who was somewhat concerned about it. It was kept in an upright position, and she constantly reminded the man that he should take it. He regularly promised that he would, the next time he came to visit, but just as regularly forgot it. It may well be that as an adult and an important peyote chief, he was reluctant to carry out what he considered an old Indian superstition.

There is no indication now that the girls’ puberty dance is dying out among the Washo. It may well be changing in form and developing into more of a party. As the number of persons who know white dances increases, these may replace Indian dances. There is some suggestion of this in other ceremonial activities. And of course the fact that future generations of Washo girls will attend integrated Nevada public schools and associate with white students with different aspirations for approaching adulthood may have important effects on the future of the girls’ dance.

Pine-nut flour seems to have taken on an important symbolic role in latter-day dances. We see no mention of this food in 1919 or 1926. Today it might be considered proper to delay holding a dance if it was not possible to get enough pine-nut flour to feed the crowd.

Puberty: Boys (2379-2386, 369-374)

The approaching maturity of a boy cannot be measured in dramatic physiological terms, and puberty is considered to occur about when a boy’s voice changes. The ritual for boys is less important than that for girls.

The emphasis for a boy is on his developing ability as a hunter. Although hunting is far less important today than it was even in the recent past, few Washo go through the winter without depending on rabbit or deer for meat. The pursuit of the squirrel, ground squirrel, gopher, and other small game appears to be minimal, but certainly this food is not spurned, if available. One of the common legal conflicts with the white man stems from out-of-season hunting during the winter by Washo men filling out the family larder.

Young boys were encouraged to hunt with bow and arrow as soon as they could. Quite often such training was carried out by an older male relative—a grandfather or an old uncle. Expeditions of old men and young boys after chipmunk and squirrel appear to have been common, freeing able-bodied men for major hunting while the experienced, but less able, older men instructed the boys.

However, all the game taken by a boy was taboo to his immediate family. This included young deer and does which he might kill. Such game was given to another family, usually related. The boy was also forbidden to eat his own take. The taboo included any fish the boy caught.

When a boy killed a buck deer considered by his father or other male relative to be big enough, he went through a simple ceremony. One informant said that in the old days a boy was required to crawl under the antlers of his kill. His father or older male relative then gave him a bath, and from that time he was considered a man and the taboo on his kill was lifted from himself and his family.

My informant, a mother of four sons now over forty, stated that all her sons had gone through the taboo period and were bathed by their father when they killed their first big buck. Until very recently she received meat from some relatives with a young son who hunted frequently.

Whether or not the young Washo are still observing this taboo and ritual I was unable to determine. However, in certain conservative families it seems probable that at least minimal ritual is observed.

Marriage (2018-2051)

Marriage is entirely a social institution, and no religious elements appear to have entered into it. Traditionally the ceremony, if there was any at all, consisted of a “chief” (respected man) throwing a blanket over the shoulders of a couple at a dance. Ceremonial gatherings, such as the pine-nut dances and the girls’ dances were important in the selection of marriage partners, inasmuch as boys and girls came together at these gatherings to engage in flirtation, affairs, and courtship. Dreamers at the “big times” are reported by informants to have exhorted married couples to be good to each other and not fight (see also Lowie 1939, p. 303).

Death (2389-2453)

No amount of social dislocation or cultural impact alters the constant fact of death. Each generation faces this inevitability. It is less than surprising then that changes in attitudes and rituals surrounding death among the Washo have changed very slowly. The only changes which appear to have developed in Washo death customs are those imposed by direct intervention of the whites or as unavoidable consequences of changes in other aspects of the culture.

In the past, when a person died the house in which he expired was abandoned by his family. Of course, if the death occurred in the spring or summer such abandonment was simple; during these seasons the Washo usually lived in simple brush shelters. A winter death was a more serious matter; it was during this season that the Washo lived in the gal’sdaɲl—a structure made to last through the winter and until the next winter, when it was reoccupied. Valley Washo often made these winter homes of brush or tules. In the foothills and mountains, bark slabs and tree limbs were utilized. If an occupant died, this home must be abandoned and was often burned down, and the immediate family moved to another campsite. Thus a family which suffered no deaths during the winters might spend several years in a single campground, whereas a less fortunate family might have to move every winter, or even oftener than that.

A few Washo began building simple rectangular board and batten houses in the 1890’s. Most of the others continued to live in gal’sdaɲ¿l made of boards and scrap, begged, stolen, or purchased from the lumber mills which were quite numerous in the area at the beginning of the century. In the 1920’s, when most of the Washo moved into the “colonies” established for them by the government, the native-style houses were abandoned in favor of the wooden homes built by the government. No longer permitted to move about the country at will, and frankly unwilling to abandon the more comfortable white-style houses, the Washo adjusted their death customs. The most common adjustment was to prepare for an impending death by shifting seriously ill persons into an adjoining structure, often a shack built in the native manner or a shed or lean-to. This structure could be burned down without loss when its inhabitant died.(7)

The Washo viewed this destruction of a house occupied by a dead person as simply preventing his spirit from bothering the living.

Most Washo death customs display a conscious attempt to avoid association with the dead. Barrett reports that cremation was practiced, and the bones placed in a stream to prevent their desecration. However, this appears to have been only one of the disposal customs and is not well remembered by Washo living today. The burning or burying of the personal possessions of the dead was common. Certain prized possessions were interred with the body, which was usually wrapped in a shroud of matting, deerskin, or bearhide and placed in a fissure or cave in the mountains. Although there are a number of locations known by both Indians and local whites as old burying grounds, all my informants agreed that in the “real old days” there was no special cemetery and that these burial spots have developed since the coming of the white man. This may well have been as a result of direct white interference with native funeral customs and an insistence that Indians concentrate their burials. Some of these sites have become traditional among the Washo.

The dispute between the widow and the sister mentioned earlier was an argument as to whether the deceased would be buried in one of these sites or in the cemetery at Stewart, Nevada.

A white man who has lived in the area for ninety years, reported that as a boy he often came across caches of belongings of dead Indians in the mountains. Today, prized possessions are either crowded into the casket with the body or burned or secreted in some remote area of the Sierra.

Funeral ceremonies were apparently simple. The body was wrapped and carried into the hills to be interred. Prayers in the form of a short speech were directed toward the dead. “We are burying you because you are dead. It’s not because we are mad at you or don’t like you. But you are dead. Please don’t come back and bother us.”

Widows traditionally cut their hair in mourning, a custom which is still practiced. Stewart reports that mourners painted their faces black. My informants denied this, but one elaborated: “I remember when I was a little girl old Indians who had lost someone would cry a lot and let the tears run down their faces and not wash their faces until they were real dirty and black with fire smoke.” Crying at a funeral was expected and in fact positively sanctioned. At a funeral conducted while I was present the sheriff arrested a drunken Washo who was wailing quite loudly. The Indians were all bitter about this because: “All of us cry at a funeral whether we are drunk or not. That’s the way the Washo do it.” (This funeral was that of a murder victim and the sheriff was present because he feared there might be a reprisal attempt.)

A newspaper report of a funeral in Genoa, Nevada, in the late 1880’s records that the Indians had borrowed a wagon from a white man to transport the corpse (that of a well-known Indian woman) to the burying ground. The wagon was followed by a large crowd of weeping mourners.

Modern funerals usually take place under the auspices of a funeral director, and generally services are performed by a Christian minister from the Stewart Indian agency. After the white minister has left, it is usual for an older Indian to approach the casket and repeat the old funeral prayers. The reason for waiting until the minister leaves is to avoid hurting his feelings. My informants said the prayers made the older Indians feel more comfortable. It is usually not necessary to burn the deceased’s home, but his belongings are disposed of. There is an increasing tendency to tend graves and put flowers on them. The cemetery at Stewart appears to be well decorated with flowers. Two old Indian graves near Lake Tahoe are regularly visited and jars of flowers placed on them.(8)

When the husband of one of my informants died, following a twelve-year illness spent in a secondary house, she went to visit a daughter living near Lake Tahoe. When she returned to Dresslerville her two sons had torn down the shed and disposed of all their father’s possessions. In deference to their mother’s rather modern views about funerals, nothing had been placed in the casket.

While I was in Dresslerville an Indian of about forty put the torch to the house in which his mother and father had lived. The house had been unoccupied since their deaths. While the house burned no effort was made to extinguish the fire or to call the fire department. A nearby rancher saw the fire and summoned the fire department, but the Indians refused to tell the firemen how the fire had started. The local newspaper reported it had been burned to drive away evil spirits. This upset my informants, one of whom said that the sight of the house simply made the man sad. She elaborated that the Washo felt they were helping God wipe out the tracks of a dead person. The Washo claim that after a death there is always a rain or sand storm which wipes out the tracks of the deceased.

After the Washo return home from a funeral, they immediately wash their faces and hands. They would not feel safe in handling food or children until this ritual had been carried out.

The behavior of the dead is a matter of concern for most Washo (2606-2609a). Ideally, the spirit is supposed to go up and to the south where dead Indians are. This land of the dead is guarded by a number of men with bows. Some shamans were able to make the trip to the land of the dead (2541-2544). If they could elude these guards, they were sometimes able to recover the spirit of a recently dead person and return it. If, however, the spirit has partaken of the water of a spring immediately behind the guards, it can never be recovered. The by-now-familiar uncle of my informant once visited the land of the dead and reported that there were lots of Indians there playing games and having a good time. If murder victims were present they were with the celebrants, but the spirits of the killers were segregated and were not having a good time.

Ghosts, however, wander over the land. They are generally malevolent. If they feel they have been badly used in life, or are not properly honored after death, or have not been given the things they wanted when buried, they may wreak vengeance on the living. To prevent this, homes were abandoned, prayers were said, and names of the dead were not used. In discussing a recent murder, one of the most progressive of the Washo was extremely reluctant to give the name of the victim, and, when she finally did, she whispered it. One of the difficulties encountered by government agents when pine-nut lands were allotted to the Washo was a refusal to name the ancestors on whom the allotment claim was based.

Ghosts are often said to come in the form of whirlwinds or dust devils, and most Washo will avoid looking at a whirlwind. At night, a sudden puff of warm air is thought to be a ghost passing nearby.

RITUAL IN SUBSISTENCE

Hunting, far more than gathering, appears to have been the focus of much ritual activity. This suggests that for the Washo the importance of ritual may have increased in proportion to the element of chance inherent in the activity undertaken. Gathering was a surety, assuming of course that there was a harvest to gather. With the wide variety of plants available within the Washo territory during the spring, summer, and fall it seems highly unlikely that the failure of one species of plant created a serious problem. This, of course, was not true of the pine nut. A failure of the pine-nut crop was a harbinger of a starvation winter. The gathering of pine nuts, in contrast to the gathering of other plants, was the subject of a great deal of ritual and, in some degree, of ceremonialism uncommon to most Washo gathering activities. This will be dealt with later in the paper.

Hunting

_Deer_ (1-27).—Deer were hunted in a number of ways. Barrett reports, and old informants confirm, that hunting parties of as many as thirty or forty men were formed in the old days to go to the western slope of the Sierra in pursuit of deer. The large number may have been necessitated by the possibility of meeting hostile Miwok or Maidu. My own informants claimed that these large parties often set fire to the forest to drive the deer into the open, and that the large number of men was needed to cover the escape routes.

More common, apparently, were small groups of five or six men, usually relatives, who went into the deer country together. Their technique was to drive along a single deer run toward one of their number who was considered the best shot. This method was very common after the introduction of firearms, particularly repeating firearms.

Finally, any Washo man might hunt singly. Often groups of five or six men went hunting together but each did his own stalking.

Whatever the technique, hunting magic was an individual affair which did not require any ceremonial activities.

A single hunter, before the days of firearms, often stalked in the antlers and hide of a deer. Washo were often superstitious about using the real antlers and made artificial sets from manzanita branches. This fear of using real antlers appears related to the treatment which was accorded to the bones of deer. These, once the meat had been completely stripped off, were submerged in a stream to prevent their being eaten by dogs or wild animals. Perhaps the best account of the magic involved in stalking is the following by an aged informant, reputed to have “hunting medicine.”

“We never had no poison arrow for bear or deer but had something
just as good. We took red paint and mixed it with marrow from a
deer leg and rubbed it on the shaft and point of the arrow.
Arrowheads for war were little but those for big game like deer or
bear were pretty big.”

When I asked my informant the Washo word for this mixture he evaded the question.

“I don’t think they had a word for it. They didn’t talk about it,
just used it. If you used it you had to carry some medicine to
work against it, ’cause if you got a scratch of that mixture and
didn’t have this other stuff [the counter agent], you was a goner.

“A long time ago one man would hunt. Some of them fellas was
superstitious about using real deer horns, so they would make
horns of manzanita and then cover up with a deer hide. They’d move
along ... taking a long time, just like a deer. That old buck
would try to get to the side away from the wind to smell you, but
you kept circling around so he wouldn’t smell you. Finally you
could get real close, maybe only three, four feet ... going around
making sounds just like a deer. Sometimes them bucks would really
believe you and want to fight and then it was dangerous. When you
was close you shot that arrow into the deer right behind the
shoulder blade. That way when he jumped, the shoulder blade comes
back and breaks off the shaft. The man would grab the shaft and
suck off the blood. Then he’d make a little fire on a flat stone
and when it was hot he’d sweep off the fire and spit that on the
stone and it would bubble up and disappear. Then you’d go after
the deer and you’d find him laying there with blood bubbling out
of his nose just like that blood bubbled on the stone.”

Other rituals related to hunting dealt with the loss of hunting luck. To regain one’s luck in hunting, a sweat lodge was built, consisting of a temporary brush shelter (688-759).

To insure luck it was common in the old days to bathe and rub the leaves of a certain mountain plant over one’s body. Other Washo carried a plant on their persons while hunting, to insure luck. I was unable to get my informant to give me the Washo name of this plant. Certain other special medicines are reported. One man, it is hinted, has a medicine which he rubs on his gun to insure good aim. Old hunters are said to have obtained medicine from the Miwok which would put deer to sleep. Today this medicine is a subject of esoteric humor between my informant and his son-in-law. The latter insists that the bear has a medicine which will put his father-in-law to sleep because he came upon the old man asleep under a tree one day when he should have been hunting. Although the Washo depended on ritual to assist them in hunting, it is clear that they considered a successful hunter the possessor of power beyond simple magic. Like curers or dreamers, certain hunters obviously had been blessed by spirits and were able to outthink and outsmart animals and therefore were particularly good hunters. At least some of the Washo who hunt today attempt to give the impression that their success is based on something more than luck or skill.

_Antelope_ (27a-75).—There are no Washo alive today who can remember antelope surrounds. It appears that most of the Washo territory was not inhabited by antelope, lying as it does between the northern and southern ranges of the Nevada herds. However, small herds did range in the eastern portion of Washo country, but the appearance of firearms and livestock eliminated the antelope completely in this area. One informant, himself seventy-five, remembers stories about the hunts, told to him by a very old brother-in-law who remembered the antelope songs.

Another informant, generally a good source of hunting information, admitted that he did not know anything about the subject. He had never hunted antelope, nor had his father or uncles.

The signal to hunt was a dream announcing the presence of antelope to a dreamer, who acted as leader of the hunt. The entire process was considered to be magical by this informant who said:

“There was really no corral. Mebbe just a few piles of brush. The
people just danced around and sang, and that kept them antelope
there like they was hypnotized. They could keep them right there
all night that way. After they held them all night they’d start to
slaughter at sunrise. They’d sing: ‘We aren’t doing this for
meanness or for fun but we want you for fine food,’ or something
like that. I heard the song once but I never learned it all. I
wish I had, now.”

This informant was certain that the Washo did not expect a person to die as a result of the exercise of antelope charming. He had heard of other tribes which believed this, and he thought it peculiar (Steward 1941: 218-220). This explanation compares favorably with the culture element distribution lists presented by Stewart, which reported none of the traits usually considered as part of the shaman complex in antelope hunting common among Basin Shoshone and Paiute. (Stewart 1941; Steward 1941.)

_Rabbits_ (92-96).—The pursuit of the jack rabbit appears to have been changing in its importance during the past century. Several informants recall being told in their youth by old men that often only the hides were stripped from rabbits to make blankets, but that most of the meat was discarded because other game was plentiful. However, firearms and agriculture soon put an end to antelope hunting, and the trans-Sierran region, like most of the nation, suffered a steady decline in the number of deer. All informants agree that in their own youth trips to California after deer were necessary because there were almost no deer east of the Sierra. All Indians agree that the deer population in Nevada today is far greater than it was in the early years of this century. The decrease in antelope and deer forced a greater dependence on the jack rabbit as a source of food as well as fur. The communal nature of the rabbit hunt may have made possible a gradual transference of ritual traits from the antelope complex to the rabbit hunt.

Traditionally the Washo drove rabbits into nets, a method common in the Basin. Stewart’s notes, taken from informants in their seventies in 1936, make no mention of any supernatural aspect of the rabbit drive. Evening dancing during the rabbit drive was denied. There was, however, a special leader who directed the hunt. In later times these men were credited with dreaming power, as this quotation illustrates: “Jack Wallace would dream where the rabbits were and when it was time for hunting he would send out a call.” The man mentioned was described as the last of the real dreamers. This power made him extremely influential among the Washo, and his descendants are considered among the claimants for the “chieftainship.” There appear to have been formalized prayers which were said before the hunt by a man with power over rabbits.

Today, rabbit hunts are invariably held on Sunday. In the words of one informant: “Nowadays anybody can just say ‘Let’s have a hunt this Sunday.’(9) They have to hunt on Sunday because most of the men have jobs during the week.”

The disintegration of the ritualized aspects of rabbit driving is not complete, however, and many Washo prefer to hunt with a certain man who lives in the Indian colony at Carson City. While no one will openly claim that he has supernatural power, it seems clear that his presence is important to other Indians. His role is that of leader or captain who superintends the order and discipline of the line of hunters who today sweep a wide area, armed with shotguns. D’Azevedo, who was fortunate enough to take part in a hunt in 1955, states that prior to the hunt this man withdrew from the group. When he asked what the leader was doing he met evasion, and he concluded that perhaps the man was praying. In the period covered by the memory of my oldest informants, dances were often staged nightly during the rabbit drives. The dancing is invariably described as “just for fun” and probably was more social than religious, but such dancing appears to have been part of other ceremonial or semiceremonial occasions such as the girls’ dances, first-fish ceremonies and the pine-nut dances. It seems clear that whatever tendency there was to shift the ritualized aspects of antelope hunting to rabbit drives has been stemmed by a growing dependence of the Washo on wage labor which precludes their response to dream-inspired hunts.

_Bear_ (298, 2558-2561).—Bear hunting appears never to have been a subsistence activity among the Washo. Many informants stoutly deny that bear meat was ever eaten, although bear were hunted. No Washo ever gave a direct answer to the question of why they hunted bear if they didn’t eat the meat. Others stated that the bear might be eaten in extreme starvation conditions but was never eaten regularly.

On the other hand, almost all Washo men were able to describe in detail the method of hunting and they obviously enjoyed telling bear-hunting stories. The following story told to me by one of the eldest men in Dresslerville, who claims it was told to him by a very old man, is consistent with the stories told by other informants.

“There was hardly any Washo who kill bear. But I know this much
... the man who went in there and did it tells me ... bears have
their own home in the rocks ... a hole going in the rocks. Go in
there naked with a knife or arrow in one hand and burning pitch in
other ... light scares him out [the bear], then other men shoot
the bear in the mouth with poison arrow [see deer hunting for
reference to poison] ... get sick for four or five days, maybe a
week. Then the man goes back in. Hardly any Indians could do
this.(10) I’ve heard that they cook it and eat it ... not only
here but up north. After they get the rifle they get to killing
bears around here but hardly ever hear of dividing up the bear
meat.”

This last remark appears to be significant as all informants emphasized that Indians shared food equally. Thus a statement made voluntarily that bear meat was not shared suggests different attitudes about bears.

Another informant adds the detail that when the bear left his lair, the companions of the man who entered the den would block the entrance so the bear could not return. The first man to place an arrow in the animal could claim it and get the hide. This informant also added at this point: “It’s funny that the fella who went inside was _just an ordinary fella_ [emphasis mine].” He also insisted that after a bear was killed the hunting party painted their faces black. Other informants claimed not to know of this or said such painting was done when a mink was killed but they did not know why.

One traditional story (Dangberg) sheds a bit more light on the bear. In this tale a group of Washo were camped near a band of Paiute who challenged the Washo to fight. Instead of fighting, the Washo drove a bear from its den and killed it and thus defeated the Paiute.