Washo Religion Part 4

Conception And Contraception

Apparently the Washo have no specific ritual to encourage conception. They are extremely fond of children and desire as many as possible. No Washo has ever heard of, or will admit having heard of, infanticide among the Washo, although they have heard of the practice among other Indians. The birth of an illegitimate child, despite the att.i.tude of whites, is greeted with as much joy as that of a legitimate child.

However, it is believed that conception can be prevented by manipulation of the afterbirth. When the afterbirth is expelled it is wrapped in a piece of deer hide or cloth and buried. It is always placed right side up if a woman desires to continue bearing children. If she wishes not to have children it is buried upside down. If at a later time she wishes to become pregnant, she will turn the earth where the upside-down afterbirth was buried. Informants say that not many people do this any more, mainly because younger women go to the hospital to have their babies, but that many people know how and some may still do it.

Certain Indians are reported to be able to prevent the birth of children without the knowledge of the woman concerned. This requires the cooperation of a woman who has just had a child and who will give the magician the afterbirth. It is then buried or hidden upside down and the woman concerned will not become pregnant. The method of transferring the influence of the afterbirth from the real mother to the victim was not explained, and in fact the practice was revealed with a good deal of reluctance.

Birth (2178-2293)

Informants report that the baby was not touched, either by the mother or her attendants, until the afterbirth was expelled. The birth and recuperation were carried out in a pit filled with warm ashes. A slow birth was blamed on the belief that the mother had slept too much or been lazy during her pregnancy.

The mother was not allowed to eat salt until the baby's umbilicus dropped off, usually in two or three days. The umbilicus was dried and hung on the right side of the cradleboard to insure that the baby would be right-handed.

The baby's hair was cut about thirty days after its birth. Until that time the mother was not permitted to eat meat or to leave her bed of ashes.

However, one of my informants who had borne eight children claimed never to have spent more than two weeks in her lying-in bed. She did insist that "in the old days" women adhered to the traditional thirty-day period.

A pregnant woman was not permitted to eat eggs with double yolks, or double fruit, lest she have twins. No special action was taken if twins were born, however.

During her confinement a woman was not supposed to rub the sweat from her face. She might dab the sweat off, but to rub it would cause her to be wrinkled in her old age. One informant a.s.sured me that this was the truth and pointed to her own relatively unwrinkled face as proof.

When a child loses a milk tooth, it is taken up and thrown into the brush.

At that time an admonition is shouted to "some little animal with sharp teeth," that it should exchange the milk tooth for a good permanent one (2295a-2301)

p.u.b.erty: Girls (2305-2352)

Aside from the "big times" which will be described later, the girls'

p.u.b.erty dance was the most important ceremonial gathering among the Washo.

This custom has survived with tenacity and it is still considered a matter of real concern if for some reason a girl does not have "her dance."

Although much of the activity at a girls' dance is clearly social throughout the occasion, there is a series of ritual actions which must be carried out. The following account is an idealized version of the "old way." Other accounts will describe variations which have developed in the past years.

Certain statements which I make will appear to be at variance with Stewart's Culture Element Distribution Lists. However, I am inclined to think that the absence of traits in the memory of my own informants represents a pattern of change rather than inaccuracies on the part of earlier investigators. With minor exceptions, differences between statements made today and Stewart's lists take the form of traits marked present in the lists which are unknown to my own informants. Moreover, most of these differences are to be found in the hair-combing and scratching complex and suggest that the taboos on hair combing were abandoned some time between the childhood of his informants, who were in their seventies in 1936, and that of my own informants, who are in their seventies today (1959).

The parents of my informants must not have known or not enforced combing taboos, while the parents of Stewart's informants must have considered them proper and so instructed their children. We can speculate, on this basis, that the taboo on hair combing and scratching was abandoned by the Washo some time in the first half of the century. Whether this can be credited to the influence of the white man or to a continuing pattern of change is a matter for further investigation.

The account of the entire p.u.b.erty complex which follows was given to me by a seventy-five-year-old Washo woman who is generally consulted whenever a family plans to hold the girls' dance.

"When a girl is about ten she is told what is going to happen to her. When her first period comes [she is not specially confined]

people tell her to be active and not to be lazy. She drinks only warm water. In the old days anything that she gathered anyone could come along and take. She couldn't eat meat or salt but Washo don't think eggs are the same as meat."

(This last statement was in response to direct questions and does not reflect special Washo traits. In fact, all food appears to have been forbidden for four days.)

The family of the girl immediately prepares as much food as possible to feed the guests. One informant remembers in his youth that a family of a girl eligible for a dance would light a large fire part way up on Job's Peak to announce the event.

The dance itself is carried out at night. Singing and hand-clapping accompany the dancing, which may go on all night. During the dance the girl carries a wand about six or seven feet long. The wand is made of a very light wood, often elderberry, and painted red with a native pigment.

In the past, groups camped about Dresslerville staged their dances at the base of a prominent hill nearby. During the night the girl was required to run to the top of the hill and light four fires; this practice has been discontinued for many years, however, apparently as a result of white accusations that the Indians started range fires and also to avoid attracting curious whites.

About dawn one of the girl's male relatives ran forward and s.n.a.t.c.hed the stick from her. He then ran with it into the hills and hid it in an upright position in some out-of-the-way place.

The elderberry wand is a device used to insure the girl's continued agility and lightness of foot. As long as the hidden stick remains unbroken the girl will remain straight and agile.

After the stick was taken away, an older female relative took a small amount of ash on a whisk of sage, and dusted the nude girl on the head, arms, and legs. This ritual was accompanied by an informal prayer that the girl not suffer pains in her head, arms, or legs. She was told: "I am doing this early in the morning so that you will get up early in the morning and work hard." The whisk was then thrown into the crowd, along with a gift, which today is usually a bit of money. Food or beads were apparently used in the past.

After the dusting, a basketful of water was brought forward and the girl was bathed. The basket was then thrown into the crowd. This was considered a high point of the celebration. After she was bathed, a few dabs of native pigment were placed on her chest and face.

The ceremony above was described as the "real way to do it ... the way they did it in the old days."

The Carson Valley Record Courier reports a p.u.b.erty dance held in the summer of 1919 in which at least some of these activities were observed (although the reporter thought he was attending a betrothal dance) Some two-hundred Indians were in attendance. There were no fires, only lanterns and flashlights. The partic.i.p.ants had taken up a collection and purchased watermelon, ice cream, cake, pie, bread, and meat for the feast. The food was served (to the surprise of the reporter) on a long table with plates.

About midnight two girls appeared in the center of the dancing circle carrying long wands.

In 1926 Lowie witnessed a girls' dance near Minden and was obviously unimpressed. The crowd gathered slowly and gradually began to dance. He makes no mention of either the wand or the ash-dusting ritual, nor does he give us details of the feast. The bath was given from a tin can, and he does not report a basket's being thrown (Lowie 1939, pp. 305-308).

One suspects that dances held today are somewhat more elaborate than those of three or four decades ago, possibly as a response to increasing awareness and pride in the fact of Indianness. Certainly every girl expects to have her dance, just as a debutante expects to have a coming-out party. When death in the family made it inadvisable to hold a dance on a girl's first menstrual period, everyone agreed that it was indeed a shame. The girl went through her four-day fast and a small party was held for her when her second period occurred. One informant insisted that in the "old days" a dance was always held on the occasion of a girl's second period but that this had long since been abandoned (Cartwright, 1952, confirms).

The basket plays an important part in the ceremony and it would be considered improper if there were no basket to be thrown to the crowd. It is best if the basket is well made and can actually hold the ceremonial bath water. If such a basket cannot be obtained, and they are growing rarer as the older basket makers die, the bath is poured from a bucket, but a less fancy basket is still thrown to the crowd. The bath and dusting are now given to the girl while clad in her slip, in deference to white notions of modesty which are strictly observed by the Washo. The painting is carried out only if native pigment is available. The wand is left unpainted unless native pigments are available.

The ritual of seizing and hiding the wand is carried out perfunctorily.

During a recent dance the girl's uncle took the wand but simply carried it to the grandmother's house, intending to take it to the mountains later.

However, the stick remained with the grandmother, who was somewhat concerned about it. It was kept in an upright position, and she constantly reminded the man that he should take it. He regularly promised that he would, the next time he came to visit, but just as regularly forgot it. It may well be that as an adult and an important peyote chief, he was reluctant to carry out what he considered an old Indian superst.i.tion.

There is no indication now that the girls' p.u.b.erty dance is dying out among the Washo. It may well be changing in form and developing into more of a party. As the number of persons who know white dances increases, these may replace Indian dances. There is some suggestion of this in other ceremonial activities. And of course the fact that future generations of Washo girls will attend integrated Nevada public schools and a.s.sociate with white students with different aspirations for approaching adulthood may have important effects on the future of the girls' dance.

Pine-nut flour seems to have taken on an important symbolic role in latter-day dances. We see no mention of this food in 1919 or 1926. Today it might be considered proper to delay holding a dance if it was not possible to get enough pine-nut flour to feed the crowd.

p.u.b.erty: Boys (2379-2386, 369-374)

The approaching maturity of a boy cannot be measured in dramatic physiological terms, and p.u.b.erty is considered to occur about when a boy's voice changes. The ritual for boys is less important than that for girls.

The emphasis for a boy is on his developing ability as a hunter. Although hunting is far less important today than it was even in the recent past, few Washo go through the winter without depending on rabbit or deer for meat. The pursuit of the squirrel, ground squirrel, gopher, and other small game appears to be minimal, but certainly this food is not spurned, if available. One of the common legal conflicts with the white man stems from out-of-season hunting during the winter by Washo men filling out the family larder.