Hunting

_Deer_ (1-27).—Deer were hunted in a number of ways. Barrett reports, and

old informants confirm, that hunting parties of as many as thirty or forty

men were formed in the old days to go to the western slope of the Sierra

in pursuit of deer. The large number may have been necessitated by the

possibility of meeting hostile Miwok or Maidu. My own informants claimed

that these large parties often set fire to the forest to drive the deer

into the open, and that the large number of men was needed to cover the

escape routes.

More common, apparently, were small groups of five or six men, usually

relatives, who went into the deer country together. Their technique was to

drive along a single deer run toward one of their number who was

considered the best shot. This method was very common after the

introduction of firearms, particularly repeating firearms.

Finally, any Washo man might hunt singly. Often groups of five or six men

went hunting together but each did his own stalking.

Whatever the technique, hunting magic was an individual affair which did

not require any ceremonial activities.

A single hunter, before the days of firearms, often stalked in the antlers

and hide of a deer. Washo were often superstitious about using the real

antlers and made artificial sets from manzanita branches. This fear of

using real antlers appears related to the treatment which was accorded to

the bones of deer. These, once the meat had been completely stripped off,

were submerged in a stream to prevent their being eaten by dogs or wild

animals. Perhaps the best account of the magic involved in stalking is the

following by an aged informant, reputed to have “hunting medicine.”

“We never had no poison arrow for bear or deer but had something

just as good. We took red paint and mixed it with marrow from a

deer leg and rubbed it on the shaft and point of the arrow.

Arrowheads for war were little but those for big game like deer or

bear were pretty big.”

When I asked my informant the Washo word for this mixture he evaded the

question.

“I don’t think they had a word for it. They didn’t talk about it,

just used it. If you used it you had to carry some medicine to

work against it, ’cause if you got a scratch of that mixture and

didn’t have this other stuff [the counter agent], you was a goner.

“A long time ago one man would hunt. Some of them fellas was

superstitious about using real deer horns, so they would make

horns of manzanita and then cover up with a deer hide. They’d move

along ... taking a long time, just like a deer. That old buck

would try to get to the side away from the wind to smell you, but

you kept circling around so he wouldn’t smell you. Finally you

could get real close, maybe only three, four feet ... going around

making sounds just like a deer. Sometimes them bucks would really

believe you and want to fight and then it was dangerous. When you

was close you shot that arrow into the deer right behind the

shoulder blade. That way when he jumped, the shoulder blade comes

back and breaks off the shaft. The man would grab the shaft and

suck off the blood. Then he’d make a little fire on a flat stone

and when it was hot he’d sweep off the fire and spit that on the

stone and it would bubble up and disappear. Then you’d go after

the deer and you’d find him laying there with blood bubbling out

of his nose just like that blood bubbled on the stone.”

Other rituals related to hunting dealt with the loss of hunting luck. To

regain one’s luck in hunting, a sweat lodge was built, consisting of a

temporary brush shelter (688-759).

To insure luck it was common in the old days to bathe and rub the leaves

of a certain mountain plant over one’s body. Other Washo carried a plant

on their persons while hunting, to insure luck. I was unable to get my

informant to give me the Washo name of this plant. Certain other special

medicines are reported. One man, it is hinted, has a medicine which he

rubs on his gun to insure good aim. Old hunters are said to have obtained

medicine from the Miwok which would put deer to sleep. Today this medicine

is a subject of esoteric humor between my informant and his son-in-law.

The latter insists that the bear has a medicine which will put his

father-in-law to sleep because he came upon the old man asleep under a

tree one day when he should have been hunting. Although the Washo depended

on ritual to assist them in hunting, it is clear that they considered a

successful hunter the possessor of power beyond simple magic. Like curers

or dreamers, certain hunters obviously had been blessed by spirits and

were able to outthink and outsmart animals and therefore were particularly

good hunters. At least some of the Washo who hunt today attempt to give

the impression that their success is based on something more than luck or

skill.

_Antelope_ (27a-75).—There are no Washo alive today who can remember

antelope surrounds. It appears that most of the Washo territory was not

inhabited by antelope, lying as it does between the northern and southern

ranges of the Nevada herds. However, small herds did range in the eastern

portion of Washo country, but the appearance of firearms and livestock

eliminated the antelope completely in this area. One informant, himself

seventy-five, remembers stories about the hunts, told to him by a very old

brother-in-law who remembered the antelope songs.

Another informant, generally a good source of hunting information,

admitted that he did not know anything about the subject. He had never

hunted antelope, nor had his father or uncles.

The signal to hunt was a dream announcing the presence of antelope to a

dreamer, who acted as leader of the hunt. The entire process was

considered to be magical by this informant who said:

“There was really no corral. Mebbe just a few piles of brush. The

people just danced around and sang, and that kept them antelope

there like they was hypnotized. They could keep them right there

all night that way. After they held them all night they’d start to

slaughter at sunrise. They’d sing: ‘We aren’t doing this for

meanness or for fun but we want you for fine food,’ or something

like that. I heard the song once but I never learned it all. I

wish I had, now.”

This informant was certain that the Washo did not expect a person to die

as a result of the exercise of antelope charming. He had heard of other

tribes which believed this, and he thought it peculiar (Steward 1941:

218-220). This explanation compares favorably with the culture element

distribution lists presented by Stewart, which reported none of the traits

usually considered as part of the shaman complex in antelope hunting

common among Basin Shoshone and Paiute. (Stewart 1941; Steward 1941.)

_Rabbits_ (92-96).—The pursuit of the jack rabbit appears to have been

changing in its importance during the past century. Several informants

recall being told in their youth by old men that often only the hides were

stripped from rabbits to make blankets, but that most of the meat was

discarded because other game was plentiful. However, firearms and

agriculture soon put an end to antelope hunting, and the trans-Sierran

region, like most of the nation, suffered a steady decline in the number

of deer. All informants agree that in their own youth trips to California

after deer were necessary because there were almost no deer east of the

Sierra. All Indians agree that the deer population in Nevada today is far

greater than it was in the early years of this century. The decrease in

antelope and deer forced a greater dependence on the jack rabbit as a

source of food as well as fur. The communal nature of the rabbit hunt may

have made possible a gradual transference of ritual traits from the

antelope complex to the rabbit hunt.

Traditionally the Washo drove rabbits into nets, a method common in the

Basin. Stewart’s notes, taken from informants in their seventies in 1936,

make no mention of any supernatural aspect of the rabbit drive. Evening

dancing during the rabbit drive was denied. There was, however, a special

leader who directed the hunt. In later times these men were credited with

dreaming power, as this quotation illustrates: “Jack Wallace would dream

where the rabbits were and when it was time for hunting he would send out

a call.” The man mentioned was described as the last of the real dreamers.

This power made him extremely influential among the Washo, and his

descendants are considered among the claimants for the “chieftainship.”

There appear to have been formalized prayers which were said before the

hunt by a man with power over rabbits.

Today, rabbit hunts are invariably held on Sunday. In the words of one

informant: “Nowadays anybody can just say ‘Let’s have a hunt this

Sunday.’(9) They have to hunt on Sunday because most of the men have jobs

during the week.”

The disintegration of the ritualized aspects of rabbit driving is not

complete, however, and many Washo prefer to hunt with a certain man who

lives in the Indian colony at Carson City. While no one will openly claim

that he has supernatural power, it seems clear that his presence is

important to other Indians. His role is that of leader or captain who

superintends the order and discipline of the line of hunters who today

sweep a wide area, armed with shotguns. D’Azevedo, who was fortunate

enough to take part in a hunt in 1955, states that prior to the hunt this

man withdrew from the group. When he asked what the leader was doing he

met evasion, and he concluded that perhaps the man was praying. In the

period covered by the memory of my oldest informants, dances were often

staged nightly during the rabbit drives. The dancing is invariably

described as “just for fun” and probably was more social than religious,

but such dancing appears to have been part of other ceremonial or

semiceremonial occasions such as the girls’ dances, first-fish ceremonies

and the pine-nut dances. It seems clear that whatever tendency there was

to shift the ritualized aspects of antelope hunting to rabbit drives has

been stemmed by a growing dependence of the Washo on wage labor which

precludes their response to dream-inspired hunts.

_Bear_ (298, 2558-2561).—Bear hunting appears never to have been a

subsistence activity among the Washo. Many informants stoutly deny that

bear meat was ever eaten, although bear were hunted. No Washo ever gave a

direct answer to the question of why they hunted bear if they didn’t eat

the meat. Others stated that the bear might be eaten in extreme starvation

conditions but was never eaten regularly.

On the other hand, almost all Washo men were able to describe in detail

the method of hunting and they obviously enjoyed telling bear-hunting

stories. The following story told to me by one of the eldest men in

Dresslerville, who claims it was told to him by a very old man, is

consistent with the stories told by other informants.

“There was hardly any Washo who kill bear. But I know this much

... the man who went in there and did it tells me ... bears have

their own home in the rocks ... a hole going in the rocks. Go in

there naked with a knife or arrow in one hand and burning pitch in

other ... light scares him out [the bear], then other men shoot

the bear in the mouth with poison arrow [see deer hunting for

reference to poison] ... get sick for four or five days, maybe a

week. Then the man goes back in. Hardly any Indians could do

this.(10) I’ve heard that they cook it and eat it ... not only

here but up north. After they get the rifle they get to killing

bears around here but hardly ever hear of dividing up the bear

meat.”

This last remark appears to be significant as all informants emphasized

that Indians shared food equally. Thus a statement made voluntarily that

bear meat was not shared suggests different attitudes about bears.

Another informant adds the detail that when the bear left his lair, the

companions of the man who entered the den would block the entrance so the

bear could not return. The first man to place an arrow in the animal could

claim it and get the hide. This informant also added at this point: “It’s

funny that the fella who went inside was _just an ordinary fella_

[emphasis mine].” He also insisted that after a bear was killed the

hunting party painted their faces black. Other informants claimed not to

know of this or said such painting was done when a mink was killed but

they did not know why.

One traditional story (Dangberg) sheds a bit more light on the bear. In

this tale a group of Washo were camped near a band of Paiute who

challenged the Washo to fight. Instead of fighting, the Washo drove a bear

from its den and killed it and thus defeated the Paiute.

I had all but given up the pursuit of information on the bear, being

convinced that my informants either honestly did not know any more (the

bear having been relatively rare in this area for a good many years) or

were unwilling to discuss something of an extremely sacred nature, when a

chance remark suggested at least part of the explanation.

A pioneer white resident who had lived in Alpine County, California, for

ninety years casually mentioned that every Indian man who was buried

during his boyhood was wrapped in a bearskin shroud. This, coupled with an

earlier mention of “rough” men having bearskins, suggests that the killing

of a bear represented the ultimate in Washo bravery and the possession of

the skin conferred extra powers on the owner. The rifle made such

acquisitions much less hazardous and in the late nineteenth century it had

become common for Indians to own a bearskin cloak, which became their most

prized possession and was buried with them.

Stewart’s element lists show no evidence of any formalized bear cult among

the Washo. However, Smith’s notes, which Stewart used, report a bear

shaman who impersonated a bear (2558). Certainly the bear was one of the

spirits who could give power to a man destined to become a shaman. Bear

shamanism is reported only for the Fish Spring Valley Paiute by Steward

and for the Tago and Wada Northern Paiute by Stewart. These three groups

constitute the only ones having formalized bear ceremonialism of any sort

in the Basin. The bear dance and a note about impersonating bears (Steward

1941, pp. 266, 322) suggest that formalized bear ceremonialism came into

the Basin from the Rocky Mountains via the Ute and Bannock. However,

Kroeber reports awe of the bear, special euphemisms for them, and

ritualized secrecy about hunting them among the Miwok which seem more

closely related to Washo behavior. Bear impersonators among the Battle

Mountain Paiute were credited with invulnerability in war, which is

reminiscent of the use of a bear-hide cloak by Washo “rough men.” Although

it is not possible to make any conclusive statement about the role of the

bear in the supernatural life of the Washo, it seems clear that the animal

is held in special awe and esteem by modern Indians.