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.