Chapter 6

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.