Washo Religion Part 2

"These dreams keep coming for four, sometimes eight, years to get you to be a good doctor. But during all this time you don't get no song. But they do give you your water. It tells you some certain place up in the mountains where there is a spring. You mebbe think there isn't no spring there, but there is. Then it tells you where to gather tobacco. Later it will tell you to make a rattle out of coc.o.o.n. Mebbe at first you only make a rattle with one coc.o.o.n.

Later it says for you to add more. Finally it will give you a song. You dream this song. But you don't really remember it. You just begin singing it like you had known it all the time. For a while you may get a new song every year. Sometime you have a dream that tells you how to handle your paraphernalia. Sometime a dream tells you that you have to be all alone in your house. I don't know what happens in there but some of them doctors, I think, go over to visit the dead for a little while.

"After you been dreaming for a long time maybe you try to cure somebody but you don't ask for nothing. You never tell them dreams or what your spirit is but other doctors, they know. If your dreams are right you can cure people and then you can ask for something [payment]. The real Indian way was to doctor for four nights. Then he'd lay out all his stuff and give it a drink by sprinkling water on it. Then he'd shake his rattle and sing and touch the patient with his hands. He'd talk to the sickness, like he knew it ... like maybe he was friends to it ... he'd say 'now you behave and don't bother this person no more. If you don't behave I'm gonna take you out and show you to everybody and then you'll be embarra.s.sed!' Then he'd suck at the patient (some of these young doctors suck on a stick with a feather on it that they pointed at the sick person, but the old ones didn't do that), and get out the sickness, it would be a feather or a stone. Sometime that sickness come out and go into the doctor so hard they can't get it out and have to get another doctor to help him. Sometimes it hit them so hard that they defecate. I seen them doctors just fill their pants. If it's real tough they get all stiff and fall over. Sometimes fall right in the fire and their clothes all burn off but it don't burn them none. You can't touch them then or it will kill them. But when they begin to shake a little and that rattle begins to go then you can pick them up. If he can, the doctor will vomit out the sickness. When it's out he puts it in his hand and rubs it with dirt and throws it away toward the north; that kills it."

This recital of the process of becoming a doctor shows clearly the ideal situation, the receiving of powers, unsought, from supernatural sources, the guardian spirit watching over its protege's career, providing him with the wherewithal in the form of songs, spells, and paraphernalia. In fact, however, it would appear that the process of becoming a shaman was far more a conscious and voluntary act on the part of an individual than would be supposed from the foregoing story.

Doctoring power clearly seems to have remained within certain families.

The informant who gave the foregoing account was himself the son of a woman curer and a famous doctor and the nephew of another doctor. From his childhood he was familiar with the procedures of curing, with stories about dreams, spirit visitations, trips to the afterworld, mysterious and sacred locations. He somewhat proudly admitted that as a boy he "used to shake that rattle" himself. In short, until his shamanistic education was interrupted by white man's schooling, he was a shaman's apprentice.

This view is supported by the statements of other informants: "Of course them people that is from a doctor family, they have dreams and get curing power," said one rather a.s.similated woman of about seventy-five. Another informant, a man of sixty, who repeatedly indicated his fear of "power"

but at the same time was reputed to be an important curer in the peyote church said: "If you come from a family of dreamers there ain't nothing you can do. You're trapped by it."

Young shamans appear to have undergone a period of informal apprentices.h.i.+p under an older doctor. Although there appears to have been no special requirement that a shaman have an a.s.sistant, it was not uncommon for a younger man to help out. According to one informant, when Blind Mike, one of the well-known doctors in historic times, was becoming a doctor, his teacher required him to smoke four hand-rolled cigarettes in a row without allowing the smoke to escape from his lungs. This was not considered an exercise in legerdemain but a way to develop the younger man's control over his power.

Each doctor received instruction from his spirit familiar as to what paraphernalia he should gather but there was a great deal of uniformity in the outfits of Washo doctors. The following description is of the kit of my informant's uncle, who practiced until the first decade of this century, and it includes some items clearly postwhite in origin.

"I don't know what all doctors had but I'll tell you what my old uncle had 'cause I seen it lots of times. [At this point another Indian entered the house, obviously curious, and my informant stopped talking until the visitor left.] He had eagle feathers and magpie feathers. He had a rattle with six or eight coc.o.o.ns on a stick wrapped in weasel skin and humming bird feathers. He had a tobacco pouch of tree-squirrel hide. He also had a stone. It looked like a big tooth with a cavity in it. He told me how he got that stone. He was walking to town [Genoa, Nevada] one day and he heard something whistle. He kept on walking but it whistled again.

So he went looking for what was making that noise and he found that stone setting by a fence post. I heard that stone whistle sometimes when he was doctoring. He also had a tie made out of beadwork. Lots of times a doctor would pay some woman to make him a real fine basket or some bead work because that's what his power told him to do."

Washo doctors often worked together on "tough" cases. One such was the treatment of what seems to have been an infected elbow by my informant's uncle and Blind Mike. The first step in the process was to blow smoke in a circle around the painful area so that the sickness couldn't move. This was followed by singing, rattling, and sucking until something bright began to come out. It was, according to witnesses, as bright as a star, so bright in fact that even Blind Mike could see it. The bright object proved to be (if we can trust descriptions) the stone and setting of a cheap ring which was removed from the sore arm. It is interesting to note that while this process was successful my informant seemed to consider the cure less than one-hundred-per-cent effective because the woman who was being treated died two years later.

Doctors were privy to a number of secrets which were not common knowledge among most Washo. Such a secret was the cave reputed to be inside Cave Rock at Lake Tahoe. This cave was a retreat for shamans who went there to commune with their spirits or to secrete a particularly important piece of paraphernalia. The cave could be entered through a narrow opening on the landward side, but most shamans preferred a more dramatic entrance. By standing on a certain rock and singing a special song they were lowered through the water and then lifted into the cave. The last doctor to attempt this was Blind Mike. He was directed to go to the cave in a dream.

However, he permitted his wife to accompany him and when she saw him begin to sink into the water she screamed with fear. The rock stopped sinking with Mike only knee deep in the water. Since that time no one has attempted to enter the room. This promontory is the center of Water Baby habitation and is reported to be the upper end of a tunnel which extends under the mountains to Genoa so that Water Babies can move freely from the lake to the valley. The rock also marks the eastern end of a road of white sand reported to cross the lake bottom. On the northwest end of the road was located a bed of plants, probably wild parsnips, which doctors gathered for medicine. The wild parsnip was poisonous but doctors ate it to demonstrate their power. They also chewed it into a paste and spread it on rattlesnake bites.

Another spot familiar to doctors was a mysterious hole in the mountains near Blue Lake. The hole could be located by following a spiraling path of white quartz toward the center. According to the Washo tale, if a man dropped even as much as a hair into this hole it made a great roaring sound. Suzie d.i.c.k, a Washo woman, whose claim of being one hundred years'

old is borne out by white residents, insists that as a fifteen-year-old girl she went to see this hole and was terrorized by a huge hand which reached up out of the darkness and tried to seize her.

Vaguely known to most Was...o...b..t familiar to doctors was a cave situated south and west of Gardnerville where ready-made grinding stones were to be found. These, depending on the informant, were made by old Indians or were put there by "nature" for the use of the Washo.

Noncurative Use Of Power (2567-2593)

Indian doctors often used their power in spectacular displays, apparently to impress patients. Often these displays were compet.i.tive.

In the words of one informant: "Them old doctors used to see who had the most power. They'd stick four or five sticks in the ground, each one farther away than the last one, and see how many they could knock down."

Then, disconcertingly, he added: "You can read about that in Kroeber. He tells about some other Indians who did that but I guess he didn't know the Washo did it too." This informant considered Professor Kroeber as an authority second only to himself in matters pertaining to Indians.

Divining And Rainmaking (2553-2556, 2566)

There were no doctors with rainmaking power among the Washo. However, anyone, particularly a man deemed to be a leader, might encourage rain during the summer. The rite, which is still observed occasionally by individuals, consists of soaking a pine-nut cone in water and placing it on the ground in the pine-nut hills. Modern Washo look upon this more as a prayer, but in the past it may have been considered as a spell.

The ancient matriarch Suzie d.i.c.k steadfastly insists that less rain falls in the Carson Valley than in neighboring valleys because "n.o.body is talking to G.o.d anymore around here." While she talked she pointed to the clouds hanging over Washo and Antelope valleys and to the cloudless sky overhead.

Older white residents speak of Indian rainmakers, which is a source of much amus.e.m.e.nt among the Washo. Until a few years ago an Indian, who still lives in Dresslerville, used to take advantage of the gullibility or generosity of white ranchers by performing "rain dances" on their property in return for handouts of food. The Washo generally frowned on this, but because white men were the victims of the fraud it was considered harmless.

The father of the false rainmaker was a diviner of stolen articles. His method was to sit and smoke until the location of the desired article was revealed to him.

Objects Of Power

Eagle and magpie feathers were considered to be the most powerful items of a shaman's paraphernalia. Doctors are reported to have captured eagles and even to have tried to raise them to obtain feathers (223-231) The tail feathers were the most prized. Eagle feathers were extremely valuable and could be traded for anything including "a woman or a sack of pine-nut flour or anything worth a lot." Ideally the eagle was tied up until the shaman removed three tail feathers. The doctor then tied a string of beads to the bird's leg and released it as a messenger to the spirits.

Description of eagle-down costumes suggest that birds were stripped of many more feathers than the ideal three. In historic times individuals have attempted to contain eagles. One old man in Woodfords is well known for having kept them on cradle-boards for easy transport, but such experiments usually ended in failure. Magpie feathers were considered less powerful than eagle feathers but still were highly prized. Today they are gathered by chance-taken from dead birds on the highway or picked up where they were shed.

In the past, eagle and magpie feathers were important parts of the dress of warriors. Magpie feathers were used to make a feather cap with a single feather suspended from the top. Informants recall their elders' describing eagle feathers' being suspended individually from the upper arms and thighs of particularly powerful warriors.

Modern peyotists have lost none of the traditional Washo feeling about these feathers. The ceremonial fans of road chiefs, believed the only persons capable of handling the immense power, are made of eagle feathers.

Other peyotists favor the less powerful but nonetheless potent magpie feather (d'Azevedo and Merriam 1957).

Tobacco, as the foregoing accounts ill.u.s.trate, played an important part in Washo shamanism. It appears to have been used as an offering to the spirits. In addition it is clear that it was felt to have special power of its own. Today older men smoke sparingly and are often somewhat embarra.s.sed to be offered a cigarette casually during conversation. In prewhite times the tobacco was a native variety gathered and dried by the shaman. Today Bull Durham appears to have replaced the wild variety as "Indian" tobacco. The Indians seemed delighted to see me rolling a cigarette; they acted as if I were mastering what they felt was a particularly Indian art. Bull Durham is also important in peyote ceremonialism because it is "real Indian tobacco."

Incense cedar plays an important role in modern peyote meetings. It is dried and thrown into the fire to create a fragment smoke which is considered beneficial. Meeting officials fan it into the atmosphere and "rub" themselves in the smoke to obtain power or purification. This has a connection with traditional Washo ritual, but the relations.h.i.+p is unclear and the aboriginal practices obscure. One group of Washo, which was a.s.signed a special place in the large camp circle formed during the pine-nut dances held at Double Springs Flats in the late nineteenth century, is said to have special rights in connection with cutting cedar.

Modern informants do not have a clear picture of what the rights were or what the customs surrounding cedar were. One informant did say that if the cedar "bunch" found anyone else with cedar they would say "you aren't supposed to have that" and would make fun of them. She could offer no further details or explanations.

Sorcery And Witchcraft (2562-2564)

There is no real distinction in the Washo mind between a doctor and a sorcerer or witch. Particularly powerful doctors were able to kill their enemies. One of the most feared bits of paraphernalia was an obsidian point found by a doctor. These large points were not made by Washo and are apparently remnants of some previous cultural occupation in the area. If a Washo finds one point up he carefully knocks it over with a long stick before touching it. These points are called mankillers, but I was unable to learn exactly how they were used. They are still viewed with a certain amount of awe, and the finding of a large point in a sandpit in Smith Valley was known in Woodfords, fifty miles away.

Sorcery was used to explain the abandonment of an ancient campsite at Dangberg's Hot Springs. This site is a trove of grinding stones, points, and other Washo artifacts. Formerly there were numerous skeletons in the area, according to both Indian and white informants. However, the site has not been occupied in historic times because of the following incident.

"One winter there was a lot of Washos camped around the hot springs. My old aunt was camped there. There was this northern Washo [from Sierra Valley] came into the camp. n.o.body know'd him and n.o.body would feed him. But my old aunt fed him. But he was mad at them people so he went to Markleville and made a lot of medicine. [Why he went to Markleville is unclear. This is the site of another hot springs, a fact which may figure in the magic used.] After he made medicine for a while he kind of spit on his fingers and pointed at Dangberg Hot Springs. Right where he pointed all the gra.s.s got brown; you can still see that line of brown if you know where to look, and a lot of Indians died. n.o.body ever went back there. My old aunt she didn't die."

Only one Washo disputed this story. She, a very progressive old woman and sometime Christian, attributed the deaths to an epidemic and "didn't think" the doctor was responsible.

Witchcraft and sorcery among the present-day Washo is a difficult subject to investigate. Even among themselves it is treated with extreme indirection and veiled hints. In discussing the problem with d'Azevedo I found that we were in agreement that a number of killings reported among these people could probably be attributed to revenge for, or prevention of, antisocial use of power.

One woman, now dead, was described as probably a witch. The wife of the diviner mentioned earlier was considered a powerful and dangerous woman.

She was useful to the community because she knew prayers and songs for the pine-nut celebration, but dangerous, particularly if she met you at night.

One informant describes the att.i.tude of the rest of the community toward her.