Far more important than the curers, however, were the Indian doctors. Such men were never exclusive specialists and were apparently expected to share in the work of hunting and fishing with less gifted men. With the introduction of money by the whites, shamans appear to have approached something like specialization, charging fees of up to twenty dollars a session for their services.

Until the middle 1930's there were a number of shamans among the Washo (Stewart 1944). However, with the introduction of the peyote cult, which among the Washo is concerned with curing, the shaman was superseded. Today only a single Washo practices shamanistic curing. Interestingly enough this man, now seventy-five, was an informant of Lowie's in the 1920's, and at that time Lowie described him as a sophisticated young Washo, somewhat mystic and with shamanistic ambitions (Lowie 1939).

This man, Henry Rupert, spent ten years in the Indian school at the Stewart Agency and after graduation worked for a number of years in a printing plant in Reno. When questioned about the old days he was a fair informant, seldom offering more information than was asked for and clearly enjoying the business of making a white man work for every scrap of information. He was also given to dropping subtle hints and waiting with stolid indifference to see if I had been alert. He did not deny his shamanistic practices but was less than willing to discuss them in detail.

His equipment, he admitted (but refused to show me), consisted of a butterfly-cocoon rattle, an eagle-bone whistle, and a feather headband. “I don't really do nothing but help nature,” he said. When I replied that only some people know how to help nature he was gratified and smiled. “Oh well, it's all psychological anyway,” he answered, confirming Lowie's description of him as a sophisticate.

He is noted for his rather atypical practice of tending a garden, which consists mostly of fruit trees, and for his open liking for old-fashioned foods, which he collects, including fly grubs and locusts. I was not able to observe his curing procedures, but they were described to me by another informant, a seventy-five-year-old woman, considered one of the most progressive of the residents of Dresslerville.

Another informant, the man who was cured by his mother—curiously another graduate of the Stewart School and outwardly a progressive Indian—was a veritable fountain of shamanistic knowledge. His father and maternal uncle were both well-known shamans. Although he insisted that he had no particular power himself, other Indians generally claimed that he had certain hunting medicines which assisted him in taking game. There is little doubt that he believed he had been approached by spirits offering him shamanistic power. His life story was a long recital of ailments and mystic occurrences. The ailments, coupled with his attitude about spiritual power, suggested strongly that his suffering had been due to a rejection of the power offered (Whiting 1950). He supplied the following account about the process of becoming a shaman.

This recital of the process of becoming a doctor shows clearly the ideal situation, the receiving of powers, unsought, from supernatural sources, the guardian spirit watching over its protÉgÉ's career, providing him with the wherewithal in the form of songs, spells, and paraphernalia. In fact, however, it would appear that the process of becoming a shaman was far more a conscious and voluntary act on the part of an individual than would be supposed from the foregoing story.

Doctoring power clearly seems to have remained within certain families. The informant who gave the foregoing account was himself the son of a woman curer and a famous doctor and the nephew of another doctor. From his childhood he was familiar with the procedures of curing, with stories about dreams, spirit visitations, trips to the afterworld, mysterious and sacred locations. He somewhat proudly admitted that as a boy he “used to shake that rattle” himself. In short, until his shamanistic education was interrupted by white man's schooling, he was a shaman's apprentice.

This view is supported by the statements of other informants: “Of course them people that is from a doctor family, they have dreams and get curing power,” said one rather assimilated woman of about seventy-five. Another informant, a man of sixty, who repeatedly indicated his fear of “power” but at the same time was reputed to be an important curer in the peyote church said: “If you come from a family of dreamers there ain't nothing you can do. You're trapped by it.”

Young shamans appear to have undergone a period of informal apprenticeship under an older doctor. Although there appears to have been no special requirement that a shaman have an assistant, it was not uncommon for a younger man to help out. According to one informant, when Blind Mike, one of the well-known doctors in historic times, was becoming a doctor, his teacher required him to smoke four hand-rolled cigarettes in a row without allowing the smoke to escape from his lungs. This was not considered an exercise in legerdemain but a way to develop the younger man's control over his power.

Each doctor received instruction from his spirit familiar as to what paraphernalia he should gather but there was a great deal of uniformity in the outfits of Washo doctors. The following description is of the kit of my informant's uncle, who practiced until the first decade of this century, and it includes some items clearly postwhite in origin.

Washo doctors often worked together on “tough” cases. One such was the treatment of what seems to have been an infected elbow by my informant's uncle and Blind Mike. The first step in the process was to blow smoke in a circle around the painful area so that the sickness couldn't move. This was followed by singing, rattling, and sucking until something bright began to come out. It was, according to witnesses, as bright as a star, so bright in fact that even Blind Mike could see it. The bright object proved to be (if we can trust descriptions) the stone and setting of a cheap ring which was removed from the sore arm. It is interesting to note that while this process was successful my informant seemed to consider the cure less than one-hundred-per-cent effective because the woman who was being treated died two years later.

Doctors were privy to a number of secrets which were not common knowledge among most Washo. Such a secret was the cave reputed to be inside Cave Rock at Lake Tahoe. This cave was a retreat for shamans who went there to commune with their spirits or to secrete a particularly important piece of paraphernalia. The cave could be entered through a narrow opening on the landward side, but most shamans preferred a more dramatic entrance. By standing on a certain rock and singing a special song they were lowered through the water and then lifted into the cave. The last doctor to attempt this was Blind Mike. He was directed to go to the cave in a dream. However, he permitted [pg 371] his wife to accompany him and when she saw him begin to sink into the water she screamed with fear. The rock stopped sinking with Mike only knee deep in the water. Since that time no one has attempted to enter the room. This promontory is the center of Water Baby habitation and is reported to be the upper end of a tunnel which extends under the mountains to Genoa so that Water Babies can move freely from the lake to the valley. The rock also marks the eastern end of a road of white sand reported to cross the lake bottom. On the northwest end of the road was located a bed of plants, probably wild parsnips, which doctors gathered for medicine. The wild parsnip was poisonous but doctors ate it to demonstrate their power. They also chewed it into a paste and spread it on rattlesnake bites.

Another spot familiar to doctors was a mysterious hole in the mountains near Blue Lake. The hole could be located by following a spiraling path of white quartz toward the center. According to the Washo tale, if a man dropped even as much as a hair into this hole it made a great roaring sound. Suzie Dick, a Washo woman, whose claim of being one hundred years' old is borne out by white residents, insists that as a fifteen-year-old girl she went to see this hole and was terrorized by a huge hand which reached up out of the darkness and tried to seize her.

Vaguely known to most Washo but familiar to doctors was a cave situated south and west of Gardnerville where ready-made grinding stones were to be found. These, depending on the informant, were made by old Indians or were put there by “nature” for the use of the Washo.