Although modern informants do not remember taboos dealing with hair
combing and scratching during menstruation, they do recall being warned
against combing their hair at night. “My father used to say that if we did
it we’d marry out of the tribe. Mike (her husband) used to tell the same
thing to our girls but they didn’t listen and every one of them married
out of the tribe.”
The dried body of a bat, described as having several different kinds of
hair (Lowie 1939, p. 332) was a powerful gambling charm. Professional
Indian gamblers, who traveled about the country participating in the hand
game, often carried one. Bat power was considered extremely dangerous if
one did not know how to use it. “My daughter found a bat in a field one
day, but an old Indian said that if she didn’t know how to treat it, it
would eat up her children.” Women especially were afraid of bat-talismans
and of living bats. The Washo believe that a bat charm is also a powerful
love medicine and that a woman once touched by such a charm is powerless
in the hands of its owner. “You touch a woman with that thing and it
hypnotizes her. She follow the guy and die if she don’t go with him. I
don’t believe I ever heard of a Washo use one. We’d be too afraid. But
them Paiutes and Shoshones use it.”
Except for the painting of a girl during her puberty dance, painting of
the face and body had little part in Washo ritualism, although its social
significance may have been important (Lowie 1939, p. 304). However,
certain other customs of dress and adornment appear to have had religious
significance. Eagle feathers and magpie feathers, as well as a bearskin
robe, conferred power. A similar notion may explain the use of the skin of
the agile and wise long-tailed weasel as a binding for hair braids.
The hooting of an owl or singing of birds at night was considered as a
warning of danger or an omen of death.