Customary observances are as strongly developed as farther north along
the Pacific slope. This entire western coast region thus forms a unit
that differs from the interior and eastern parts of the continent, in
which such observances are usually a less conspicuous feature than
public and tribal ceremonies. By far the most important of the
customary observances in California are those relating to death. Next
come those connected with birth and sexual functions. Beliefs and
practices centering about the individual's name are of importance
particularly in so far as they are connected with the customs relating
to death. There are restrictions and superstitions as to food, but
these are not more numerous than seems generally to have been the case
among the North American Indians, and certainly of much less importance
than in the Pacific island world and Australia.
Death was considered to cause defilement and almost everywhere brought
after it purification ceremonies. In the Northwestern region these were
particularly important, and among such tribes as the Hupa and Yurok the
observance of religious purification from contact with the dead, the
most essential part of which was the recitation of a certain formula,
was the most stringently exacted religious custom. The method of
disposing of the dead varied locally between burial and cremation,
cremation being practiced over at least half of the state. Air burial
and sea burial were nowhere found. Mourning, which consisted primarily
of singing and wailing, began immediately upon death and continued for
about a day, sometimes longer by the immediate relatives of the
deceased. Among some tribes this mourning commenced with full vigor
some time before impending death, often during the full consciousness
of the patient and with his approval. Mutilations on the part of the
mourners were not practiced to any great degree, except that the hair
was almost universally cut more or less, especially by the women. Among
many tribes the widow, but she only, cut or burned off all her hair.
Mourning observances were almost always carried further by the women
than men. Among some tribes of the Sierra Nevada the widow did not
speak from the time of her husband's death until the following annual
tribal mourning ceremony, except to one attendant, or, in cases of
actual necessity, to women only. In the Sierra Nevada was found also
the custom of the widow smearing her face and breast with pitch, which
was not washed or removed until this annual ceremony. Except in the
case of the Northwestern tribes, who possessed more elaborately
constructed houses of wood, the house in which a death had occurred was
not used again, but was burned. Objects that had been in personal
contact or associated with the deceased were similarly shunned and
destroyed. The name of the dead was not spoken. Even the word which
constituted his name was not used in ordinary discourse, a
circumlocution or newly coined word being employed. It is certain that
this stringently observed custom has been a factor in the marked
dialectic differentiation of the languages of California. The mention
of the name of the dead, whether intentionally or accidentally, in some
cases aroused feelings of fear connected with his spirit, but more
generally was objected to as causing grief, which appears to have been
actually and often intensely felt on such occasions. In Northwestern
California the naming of the dead could be compensated for only by the
payment of a considerable sum. Practically the only form of curse or
malediction known, other than an occasional indirect allusion to the
object of the malediction as being in the condition of a corpse, was a
reference to his dead relatives. Some property, but more rarely food,
was buried with the dead. The idea that such articles were for his use
in the world of the dead was not so strong a motive for such acts as,
on the one hand, the feeling that the objects had been defiled by
association with him, and on the other, the desire to give expression
to the sincerity of the mourning by the destruction of valuables. On
the whole, however, the immediate observances of death paled in
importance before the annual communal mourning ceremony, which was
everywhere, except in the Northwestern region, one of the most deeply
rooted and spectacular acts of worship.
Observances connected with sexual functions, including birth, are next
in importance after those relating to death. The menstruating woman was
everywhere regarded as unclean, and excluded especially from acts of
worship. Not infrequent was the conception that she contaminated food,
especially meat; in other words those varieties of food which were at
once more highly prized and at the same time, through being obtained
with less regularity and only through special and skilled exertions,
regarded as most directly under the control and influence of
supernatural powers. Among many tribes, as elsewhere in America and
other continents, she was excluded from the living-house as well as
from the ceremonial chamber, and confined to the menstrual hut. As
elsewhere in North America, the custom in this regard however varied
from tribe to tribe, the menstrual hut not having been used in some
localities even in purely aboriginal times. Not only was seclusion, as
a means of preventing contact and association, frequently required of
the woman for the protection of others, but her refraining from all but
the most necessary activity was sometimes deemed essential for her own
good.
All these observances were greatly intensified at the time of a girl's
first menstruation, a condition for which most of the languages of
California possess a distinctive and often unanalyzed word. The girl at
this period was thought to be possessed of a particular degree of
supernatural power, and this was not always regarded as entirely
defiling or malevolent. Often, however, there was a strong feeling of
the power of evil inherent in her condition. Not only was she secluded
from her family and the community, but an attempt was made to seclude
the world from her. One of the injunctions most strongly laid upon her
was not to look about her. She kept her head bowed and was forbidden to
see the world and the sun. Some tribes covered her with a blanket. Many
of the customs in this connection resembled those of the North Pacific
Coast most strongly, such as the prohibition to the girl to touch or
scratch her head with her hand, a special implement being furnished her
for the purpose. Sometimes she could eat only when fed and in other
cases fasted altogether. Some form of public ceremony, often
accompanied by a dance and sometimes by a form of ordeal for the girl,
was practiced nearly everywhere. Such ceremonies were well developed in
Southern California, where a number of actions symbolical of the girl's
maturity and subsequent life were performed. Certain tribes, however,
including at least one in the Northwestern area and certain of those in
the Sierra region, did not practice public ceremonies of this type.
Religious customs connected with birth consisted in part of observances
before the birth of the child, in part of observances relating to it
after birth, and especially of restrictions imposed on one or both of
its parents after birth. Practices affecting the child itself, or the
mother before its birth, related in great part to food. In the
Northwest the newly born child was fed for a number of days only on a
soup of vegetable substance resembling milk. The newly born child was
washed, often repeatedly, among many tribes. The mother after a birth
was regarded as more or less defiled, though this feeling usually did
not approach in intensity those connected with either death or the
woman's periodical functions. Either the mother or both father and
mother were usually enjoined from activity for some time after a birth,
the motive being not only protection of the child but of themselves.
This idea is especially developed among the Yokuts of the southern San
Joaquin valley. The couvade in its strict form, with restrictions and
observances which are imposed entirely upon the father to the exclusion
of the mother, does not seem to be found.
Observances regulating or restricting the use of food were in the main
connected with the customs relating to death, sexual functions, and
birth. That is to say it was primarily the persons affected by these
occurrences, and next to these such as were engaged in acts of intense
worship or shamanistic practices, who were prohibited from using
certain or all foods. As already stated, animal food rather than
vegetable, and meat rather than fish, and among meat that of the deer
and elk, the largest of the game animals, were particularly subjected
to restriction. In Northwestern California the idea was very deeply
rooted that the deer when killed and eaten are not destroyed, but come
to life again and report to their fellows their treatment in the hands
of the hunter. Any violation of the numerous stringent observances
regarding deer meat are therefore known to all the deer, who, as their
capture is always a voluntary act on their part, are in position to
utterly destroy his luck in the chase if not placated by certain spoken
formulae. In Southern California young people, or in some cases the
hunter himself, must not eat his game. Fasting is less frequently and
less rigorously practiced by the California tribes than by those of
most other parts of North America. This is in keeping with the
generally lower pitch of intensity of their religious feeling. Many
public ceremonies are not accompanied by any requirement of abstention
from food. In the Northwestern region it is only the principal priest,
in whom the most sacred part of the ceremony is vested, who fasts. On
the other hand there is a general feeling in this region that not only
acts of a religious nature but ordinary work cannot be well performed
after eating. Among the men of Northwestern California breakfast was
therefore habitually slight or entirely omitted. Perhaps the greatest
development of the practice of fasting in North America occurs in
connection with the acquisition of shamanistic power. Shamanism is
fully as important among the California Indians as elsewhere, but
differs in that it is more frequently regarded as an obsession,
something that of its own accord comes upon a man rather than something
that it is sought to acquire by actions. Much of the incentive for
fasting among other Indians is therefore lacking, and when the practice
is observed it is usually less rigorous. In Northwestern California,
for instance, a person engaged in almost any supernatural or religious
practice abstains from drinking water; but as to practical effect this
provision is done away with through his being allowed to drink thin
acorn soup at will.
In Northwestern California there is a special development of spoken
formulae, whose content is little else than a myth and which constitute
not only the basis and essential element of public ceremonies but are
connected with almost all customary observances. To such an extent have
these formulae, locally called "medicines," grown into the mind of
these Indians as being what is most sacred and most efficacious in all
aspects of religion, that they partly supplant shamanism, which is a
less important feature of religious life here than elsewhere in the
state, where the characteristic features of this peculiar ritual by
formula are almost absent. Not only purification from death and other
defilement, but luck in hunting and fishing, in gambling, escape from
danger, success in felling trees and making baskets, in the acquisition
of wealth, in short the proper achievement of every human wish, were
thought to be accompanied by the proper knowledge and recitation of
these traditional myth-formulae, usually accompanied by only the
smallest amount of ritualistic action.