Hunting, far more than gathering, appears to have been the focus of much
ritual activity. This suggests that for the Washo the importance of ritual
may have increased in proportion to the element of chance inherent in the
activity undertaken. Gathering was a surety, assuming of course that there
was a harvest to gather. With the wide variety of plants available within
the Washo territory during the spring, summer, and fall it seems highly
unlikely that the failure of one species of plant created a serious
problem. This, of course, was not true of the pine nut. A failure of the
pine-nut crop was a harbinger of a starvation winter. The gathering of
pine nuts, in contrast to the gathering of other plants, was the subject
of a great deal of ritual and, in some degree, of ceremonialism uncommon
to most Washo gathering activities. This will be dealt with later in the
paper.