Chapter III: Part 3

I had all but given up the pursuit of information on the bear, being convinced that my informants either honestly did not know any more (the bear having been relatively rare in this area for a good many years) or were unwilling to discuss something of an extremely sacred nature, when a chance remark suggested at least part of the explanation.

A pioneer white resident who had lived in Alpine County, California, for ninety years casually mentioned that every Indian man who was buried during his boyhood was wrapped in a bearskin shroud. This, coupled with an earlier mention of “rough” men having bearskins, suggests that the killing of a bear represented the ultimate in Washo bravery and the possession of the skin conferred extra powers on the owner. The rifle made such acquisitions much less hazardous and in the late nineteenth century it had become common for Indians to own a bearskin cloak, which became their most prized possession and was buried with them.

Stewart’s element lists show no evidence of any formalized bear cult among the Washo. However, Smith’s notes, which Stewart used, report a bear shaman who impersonated a bear (2558). Certainly the bear was one of the spirits who could give power to a man destined to become a shaman. Bear shamanism is reported only for the Fish Spring Valley Paiute by Steward and for the Tago and Wada Northern Paiute by Stewart. These three groups constitute the only ones having formalized bear ceremonialism of any sort in the Basin. The bear dance and a note about impersonating bears (Steward 1941, pp. 266, 322) suggest that formalized bear ceremonialism came into the Basin from the Rocky Mountains via the Ute and Bannock. However, Kroeber reports awe of the bear, special euphemisms for them, and ritualized secrecy about hunting them among the Miwok which seem more closely related to Washo behavior. Bear impersonators among the Battle Mountain Paiute were credited with invulnerability in war, which is reminiscent of the use of a bear-hide cloak by Washo “rough men.” Although it is not possible to make any conclusive statement about the role of the bear in the supernatural life of the Washo, it seems clear that the animal is held in special awe and esteem by modern Indians.

Fishing (252a-296)

Fishing appears to be far less subject to ritualization among the Washo than was hunting. Here again there may be a correspondence between the amount of ritual and the degree of certainty involved in obtaining the desired food. The Washo area is rated by Rostlund as being one of the higher fish-producing areas in North America. Certainly the many lakes, streams, and rivers were the source of great amounts of fish every year. Indians who could at most be described as only middle-aged, recount the tremendous numbers of fish which swept up the streams from Lake Tahoe during the spawning season. While the numbers may have varied from year to year, the large number of fish plus the intensive fishing methods employed by the Washo almost guarantee a large catch.

However, d’Azevedo reports that Northern Washo describe some degree of ritualism connected with fishing (d’Azevedo personal communication). Dreamers are said to have predicted the day of the spawning run. Dances were held and prayers said, suggesting a rather attenuated first-fish ceremony for some of the Washo (2618). Other Washo report “big times,” which included dancing and prayer, during the spring gathering on the lake. However, in the actual catching of fish there was much less ritual.

Some fishermen carried a fishing medicine composed of dried larvae of the _Ephydra hians_ (Say), called _kutsavi_ by the Paiute (Heizer 1950) and _matsi babaša_ by the Washo. These larvae were obtained from the Mono Lake Paiute in trade or as gifts. They were considered good food and are still eaten by some Washo. However, in addition they were credited with having great powers to lure fish and were rubbed on harpoons, hooks, and lines. Perhaps this material was considered a fish medicine because these larvae are said to be generated from the scales of a giant fish. This leviathan is reported to have traveled through all the lakes in the Sierran area looking for a lake large enough in which to live. At Mono Lake it scraped some scales into the water before it left to find a permanent home in Lake Tahoe (Steward 1936). Whether the Washo share this story with the Owens Valley Paiute, I do not know, but Mono Lake, because of its saline water and its lack of any fish life, is thought of with some fear and awe. Today I get the impression that some Washo still keep a bit of this material with their fishing gear, although they are apt to rationalize it as a lure rather than real medicine. It should be remembered that hook-and-line or spear fishing accounted for a much smaller percentage of the total annual take than did trapping, damning, netting, or other communal methods which entailed no ritual.

Miscellaneous Concepts About Hunting And Fishing

A number of ritual activities cluster around hunting and fishing. Perhaps the most important is the requirement that women, particularly menstruating women, avoid the hunting and fishing equipment. If a woman touched such gear the owner would bathe it and pray “I’m giving you a bath to wash away the bad luck.” (2354-2378).

A further restriction placed on menstruating women was that they must not eat meat during their periods. To do so meant bad hunting for the man who killed the game.

The meat from the neck of a deer and the intestinal organs were forbidden to vigorous young people. If a man ate neck meat his aim would be bad (360-368). Neck meat was reserved for children and the old. In actuality it would seem that only the children and the almost decrepit ate such meat. One of my informants who is seventy-five, thus certainly qualifying for old age, has never tasted either neck meat or internal organs. To do so apparently would be an admission of loss of vigour which no Washo oldster wishes to make. Menstruating women today will eat meat purchased from a butcher but refrain from eating venison or other game taken by someone they know, for fear of spoiling his luck. Menstrual taboos also hold today in regard to touching firearms or fishing poles, although at least some Washo women own fishing poles, and in the early part of this century a woman who lives at Carson City was reputed to be a great hunter. In times past, certain women are reported to have made excellent bows but not to have used them.

Stewart reports dances to bring deer which none of my informants remembered. However, even in his time the dances were said to be “mainly for pleasure,” which suggests the sacred nature of such dances has gradually faded out of the consciousness of most modern Washo, particularly as deer hunting has become entirely an individual enterprise and is no longer central to Washo subsistence.

Gathering

As stated earlier, there appears to have been much less ritual involved in gathering activities, perhaps because there was much less chance of failure than in hunting. However, Stewart reports that sometimes dances were held to make seeds grow (2619-2621). Such gatherings appear to be remembered, if at all, by living Washo only as social occasions.

The fall pine-nut dance was clearly part of the ritual of the pine-nut harvest (2617, 2622). The pine nut was central to Washo winter survival, and its production was a matter of extreme concern. Even today the pine-nut harvest becomes a paramount interest among all the Washo during the last part of the summer. Speculations as to its size, wishes for rain, and survey trips into the pine-nut hills become common, and according to one informant: “If we have a couple of bad years somebody will say, ‘We ought to have a pine-nut dance,’ and then we’ll have one.”

The following account of the pine-nut dances of the past was given to me by a man, now almost blind, of between seventy-five and eighty. His father claimed to be chief of the Washo through an affinal relationship to the famous Captain Jim, and my informant maintains the claim, stoutly denied by all other Washo except his relatives and admitted by them only when they are forced to depend on his hospitality. The account is one of a well-regulated four-day ceremony of the first fruit. However, it will become apparent as other information is presented that it is a highly idealized version. It is valuable, however, because it includes a number of sacred elements of obvious importance.

“This prayer(11) fella [Captain Jim] lived at Double Springs all
year round. He would have a dream telling him when to have a
meeting. He was what you would call a religious man. He would get
someone he could trust and send out a long, tanned string of hide
with knots in it. For every day until the meeting there was a knot
and every day the messenger untied a knot so the people would know
how many days they had until the meeting.

“All the men came and hunted for four days, and the women would
start gathering pine nut. They would hang up the game to let it
dry.

“The prayer wouldn’t eat meat during those four days but he could
drink cold water, and some lady would cook him pine nut.

“Every night they would have a dance. On the fourth day everybody
would bring the food they had and put it in front of the prayer,
and then he would pick some man who was fair [just] and the food
was divided a little before sunrise. If you have a small family
you get less, if you have a big family you get more.(12)

“Then the prayer makes a prayer something like this: ‘Our father I
dream that we must take a bath and then paint. Even the childrens
... [we must] wash away the bad habits so we won’t get sick from
the food we have in front of us!’

“Then everybody go to the river ... no matter if there was a
little ice on the water, and take a bath. If they was not near the
river they bathed the kids from baskets at Double Springs. The
prayer he prayed for pine nut, rabbit, and deer.”

Suzie Dick, an ancient Washo woman who claims to have reached the century mark in 1959, recalls that Captain Jim was her mother’s sister’s son and that she called him brother. He was a big man in a figurative if not a literal sense. He wore eagle feathers on his head and arms. He had red trousers made out of a blanket with feathers on the sides of the legs. As she remembers him at these ceremonies: “He would scare you to death.” The assembled Washo brought pine nuts, deer meat, megal [Indian tea], and much other food. Captain Jim prayed and gave a sermon, urging everyone to drink water and avoid liquor, and supervised four nights of dancing.

Judging from the age of these two informants, these meetings, which they claim were attended by all the Washo, were held between 1880 and 1900. Most Washo agree that these large meetings were the way “they did it in the old days.” However, “the old days” appear not to be aboriginal but the late nineteenth century, when the Washo experienced a brief period of semi-unity and prosperity.

Rupert, the psychologically oriented shaman comments, “Hell, them northern Washo didn’t come down to Double Springs very much. They got their pine nuts southeast of Reno. Captain Jim he was only a big man to them Carson Valley Washo. He didn’t have nothing to say to the northern bunch.”

Despite this, it seems clear that during the last part of the nineteenth century large numbers of Washo from the various areas did, in fact, gather at Double Springs prior to the pine nutting. It seems equally clear that this was distinctly a postwhite phenomenon and that in aboriginal times such gatherings were much smaller.

The essential elements of these pine-nut ceremonies are clear. There was a gathering of a number of bands, usually at the prompting of a dreamer who knew certain prayers and songs which would insure a successful harvest. There was a sharing of food among the celebrants, as well as dancing and ceremonial bathing. Such affairs were held in Sierra Valley and at Double Springs and probably at a number of other places in the pine-nut hills.

The large celebrations at Double Springs appear to have taken on a distinctly nativistic or revitalistic cast. Informants remember Captain Jim’s exhortations to abstain from white man’s whiskey, to treat each other as brothers and sisters, to eat Indian food, and to apply themselves to the business of hunting and gathering. He himself refused to wear new white clothing but accepted only used garments. It was during this period that Washo received individual pine-nut allotments based on their traditional picking grounds.

Mooney (1896), whose information on the Washo was filtered through the Paiute, reports the Washo during this period as a shattered remnant of a former society eking out an existence in the dump heaps of white settlements in Nevada. The fact that the Washo did not respond to the Ghost Dance seems in his mind to support his notions about the condition of the tribe. However, among older informants this period is invariably recalled as an almost golden age. Although the implications of movements such as the Ghost Dance were not clear in Mooney’s time, it seems more than likely that the Washo failed to join the movement because they were not suffering the social and cultural dislocation of the Paiute, Plains tribes, or California Indians and, in fact, may have been undergoing a process of social unification under Captain Jim. This unification appears to have had its primary symbolization in the ritual activity which surrounded earlier ceremonies concerned with pine-nut harvesting. The use of a hide string to summon people to the meeting appears earlier as a war signal used by a threatened band to entreat other Washo (often not too successfully) to come to their aid.

With the death of Captain Jim, the large gatherings at Double Springs appear to have ceased. In the words of one informant, “When he died all them things like the knotted string and that stuff died with him.”

After his death the pine-nut dances continued to be held in various places in Washo country—Sugar Loaf Mountain, Genoa, and Sierra Valley being the most frequently mentioned. Jim’s daughter (or sister’s daughter) who was married to the claimant Captain Pete and was the mother of the present claimant, Hank Pete, staged a number of dances around Genoa until her death. This action is of interest in view of the fact that she was considered a dangerous woman and a poisoner. It suggests that there was in fact no clear distinction between doctors and witches or sorcerers. Her knowledge of pine-nut prayers and songs made her essential in the ceremony despite the fear the Washo may have had of her.

Since her death in the early 1940’s, pine-nut dances have been less frequent. Only one woman among the Washo is reputed to know all the songs, although I suspect that several others are in possession of this knowledge but refuse to come forth and serve as leaders, in keeping with Washo reluctance to assume responsible roles.

After a number of years without a dance, the custom was revived in the early 1950’s at Dresslerville. The dances were staged because previous crops had been poor and it was felt a dance would increase the harvest.

These dances, supervised by the woman who knew the songs, were not considered too successful because both Indian dances and white men’s dances were conducted. Indian dances were held outside the community house while younger couples danced in the white manner inside. The prayers, bathing, and dreams played a very minor role, although food was supplied. From the accounts these dances sounded extremely secular with an emphasis on the recreational aspects, particularly dancing. However, the consensus that the ceremonies were not successful because of the introduction of white-style dancing suggests that the Indian dances still retain some of their former sacred character. It was agreed that a dance might be held today or in the future if the crops were poor. Here again the present economic situation of the Washo tends to limit these affairs to weekends. The impossibility of holding four-day dances however, is not considered serious by most Washo. Several informants stoutly denied that there was any requirement that the dance last four days. They implied that those who insisted on this were simply trying to make it sound more important (note that using the figure four makes something more important). Their accounts report that the dances might last from one or two days to a week during which time games were played, dances held, and the ritual described earlier carried out. However, there is no doubt that the dances were important to the success of the harvest and the well-being of the harvesters. One informant recalls that: “Sometimes them pine nuts was ripe before the dance. If we picked them then [before the dance], we took a bath every day before we started picking but we didn’t have to do that after the dance.”

The following incident illustrates the attitude most conservative Washo have toward the pinyon pine. D’Azevedo (personal communication) accompanied an elderly woman to her pine-nut allotment where she discovered that illegal Christmas-tree cutters had topped a number of trees, which she believed destroyed their ability to bear. Her response was of sorrow rather than anger. She sat under her trees for a long time apologizing to her father, from whom she had inherited the plot, and to the spirits of the trees.

There seems to have been little ritual involved in other gathering activities, except for the dances to make the seeds grow mentioned in the element lists (2621). This practice must have been occasional and relatively old, because it is no longer part of the memories of older informants.

MISCELLANEOUS RITUAL

Although modern informants do not remember taboos dealing with hair combing and scratching during menstruation, they do recall being warned against combing their hair at night. “My father used to say that if we did it we’d marry out of the tribe. Mike (her husband) used to tell the same thing to our girls but they didn’t listen and every one of them married out of the tribe.”

The dried body of a bat, described as having several different kinds of hair (Lowie 1939, p. 332) was a powerful gambling charm. Professional Indian gamblers, who traveled about the country participating in the hand game, often carried one. Bat power was considered extremely dangerous if one did not know how to use it. “My daughter found a bat in a field one day, but an old Indian said that if she didn’t know how to treat it, it would eat up her children.” Women especially were afraid of bat-talismans and of living bats. The Washo believe that a bat charm is also a powerful love medicine and that a woman once touched by such a charm is powerless in the hands of its owner. “You touch a woman with that thing and it hypnotizes her. She follow the guy and die if she don’t go with him. I don’t believe I ever heard of a Washo use one. We’d be too afraid. But them Paiutes and Shoshones use it.”

Except for the painting of a girl during her puberty dance, painting of the face and body had little part in Washo ritualism, although its social significance may have been important (Lowie 1939, p. 304). However, certain other customs of dress and adornment appear to have had religious significance. Eagle feathers and magpie feathers, as well as a bearskin robe, conferred power. A similar notion may explain the use of the skin of the agile and wise long-tailed weasel as a binding for hair braids.

The hooting of an owl or singing of birds at night was considered as a warning of danger or an omen of death.

INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY

The Washo have been exposed to Christianity from two main sources. Missionary groups have maintained representatives from time to time at one or another of the Washo colonies. A church dominates the appallingly dreary landscape of Dresslerville. Weather and neglect have caused the building to deteriorate. Permanent missionizing efforts apparently have been abandoned. One church group carries on a summer Bible class for children and sewing classes for women. Funerals are generally conducted by a Christian minister, but this appears to be a sop to white opinion rather than the result of any real desire on the part of the Washo to become Christians. At best they seem to have simply incorporated Christian services as another source of power. It is less than surprising that a people whose main religious emphasis seems to have been on curing or subsistence ritual should have found white doctors useful but white ministers a rather mysterious and superfluous bit of white culture.

The other main source of Christian ideas has been the peyote cult, which includes a roughly Christian version of God and Christ visualized as the father and the brother. The cross, pictures of Christ, and references to Jesus play a role in peyote ceremonialism. Other investigators (d’Azevedo and Merriam 1951; Stewart 1944) have noted a shift toward Indian tradition in the Washo peyote cult, with an attending reduction of Christian ideas. The attitude of one Washo woman sums the question up quite well: “I think them peyote people [she was not a peyotist but had encouraged her son to attend a meeting to cure a back injury] believe more what they doing than the white preacher.” Her own religion is summed up in her actions. In addition to sending her son to peyote meetings, she had taken her granddaughter to the shaman and is a regular attendant at the church sewing school. She was also the person who waited until the minister left the church to repeat ancient funeral prayers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

_Abbreviations_

AA: American Anthropologist BAE: Bureau of American Ethnology SI-MC: Smithsonian Institution, Miscellaneous Collections UC: University of California Publications UC-AR: Anthropological Records UC-PAAE: American Archaeology and Ethnology

Barrett, Samuel A.
1917. The Washo Indians. Bull. Milwaukee Pub. Mus., Vol. 2, No. 1, pp.
1-52.

Cartwright, W. D.
1952. A Washo Girls’ Puberty Ceremony. Pro. 30th Int. Cong. of
Americanists, pp. 136-142. London.

Dangberg, Grace
1927. Washo Texts. UC-PAAE 22:391-443.

d’Azevedo, Warren L., and A. P. Merriam
1957. Washo Peyote Songs. AA 59:615-641.

Freed, Stanley A.
1960. Changing Washo Kinship. UC-AR 14:349-418.

Heizer, Robert F.
1950. Kutsavi, A Great Basin Indian Food. Kroeber Anthro. Papers, No. 2
(Fall), pp. 35-41.

Kroeber, Alfred L.
1907. Religion of the Indians of California. UC-PAA 4:319-356.

Kluckhohn, Clyde, and Dorothea Leighton
1947. The Navaho. Cambridge; London.

Lowie, Robert H.
1939. Ethnographic Notes on the Washo. UC-PAAE 36:301-352.

Mooney, James
1896. The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. BAE 14th
Ann. Report, Part 2, pp. 641-1136.
1928. Aboriginal population of America North of Mexico. SI-MC 80, No. 7,
Washington, D. C.

Siskin, E. E.
MS The Impact of the Peyote Cult Upon Shamanism Among the Washo Indians.
Ph.D. Diss. 1941. Yale Univ.

Steward, Julian H.
1936. Myths of the Owens Valley Paiute. UC-PAAE 34:355-440.
1941. Culture Element Distribution, XIII: Nevada Shoshone. UC-AR
4:209-360.

Stewart, Omer C.
1941. Culture Element Distribution, XIV: Northern Paiute. UC-AR
4:361-446.
1944. Washo-Northern Paiute Peyotism. UC-PAAE 40:63-142.

Whiting, Beatrice Blyth
1950. Paiute Sorcery, New York.

FOOTNOTES

1 W. L. d’Azevedo, basing his opinions on extensive field work in the
area, contends that early estimates of Washo population were
incorrect and that modern figures based on these estimates are
inaccurate. A contemporary estimate, made by a resident journalist
in 1881, was somewhat over 3,000.

2 This statement should not be considered as an indication of
matrilineality in Washo society. Freed and d’Azevedo, who have done
extensive work in kinship and social organization of this group,
seemed to agree that the Washo were loosely bilateral with certain
formalized patrilineal elements. However, because of fragile
marriages, many Washo have had a longer and closer association with
their mothers’ families than with their fathers’, or with those of
any of their mothers’ subsequent husbands.

3 Kluckhohn reports that the payment for joining a coven of Navajo
witches is often the life of a relative (1947, p. 131).

4 This story very closely parallels one recorded by James Hatch among
the Yokuts. Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, No. 19, Fall,
1958.

5 Regular Indian doctors were forbidden to treat members of their own
families, a prohibition which appears not to have extended to a
non-shamanistic curer.

6 Captain Jim is the only Washo whom the Washo generally accept as
having been a leader of the entire tribe. Other claimants to the
title of chief of the Washo are contemptuously discounted. There
were in the past a number of men, usually considered leaders of a
“bunch” who were called “captains” or, less often, “chiefs” because
they dealt with the white population. The entire institution of
captain may well be a post-white development.

7 The willingness of the Washo to send gravely ill persons to the
hospital seems in part motivated by the wish to avoid a death in the
house.

8 The concern for these particular graves may be in part motivated by
the fact that they are a focal point in a Washo land claim. Because
of California law concerning cemeteries, the Indians contend that
the tourist camp presently on the site is there illegally and that
the land is theirs. Thus far the camp operator has been enjoined
from removing or desecrating the graves, but the Indians’ claim has
not been considered.

9 This statement was made to point out to me that in other times only
special people, inspired by dreams, would have suggested a rabbit
hunt.

10 This kind of a statement was common and whenever it was made
suggestions of special power were made explicit later in the
conversation, or were implied by the attitude of the informant.

11 Used in an adjectival sense. In the reference below prayer is used
nominally.

12 No matter how reluctant aged Washo may have been to discuss other
aspects of the past, they became eloquent about any occasion on
which food was plentiful. They describe in minute detail the kinds
and amount of food at a feast although they cannot remember the
time, place, or those present.