They are not manifest in the two periods which have so far been established. The distribution of the Girls’ Rite of the First Period and of the Mourning Anniversary and First-salmon Rite of the Second, does not coincide with the major culture-areas of the continent. The Southwest, for instance, from which the modern southern Californians have received so much, does not possess any of these ceremonies. The Southwest culture therefore evidently originated, or began to take on its recent aspect, or at least to influence Southern California, chiefly after the two periods had passed by in which these ceremonies became established in California. The Girls’ Rite, to be sure, extends up the Pacific coast into Alaska. Yet it is more widespread than the North Pacific Coast culture, since this has its southerly limit in Northwestern California, whereas the ceremony is universal as far as to the southern end of the state, besides occurring inland throughout the Great Basin and Plateau regions. Being more widely spread than the Coast culture, the Girls’ Rite is presumptively more ancient.
The beginnings of the four modern types of California native culture must thus evidently be looked for at about the point now reached in our reconstruction. At first there was a single very widespread ceremony; then two less widely diffused ones; the next logical step in development would have been the growth of a still larger number of ceremonies or ritual systems. These, on account of their greater recency, and perhaps on account of conflicting with one another, would have spread only over comparatively small areas. Let us therefore assume that to this Third Period belonged the beginnings of the Wealth-display dances of the Northwestern Indians which are coupled with the idea of world renovation (table, p. 299); the so-called Kuksu dances made among the Central Californians by members of a secret society disguised as divinities; the Jimsonweed rites of the Southern tribes who use this narcotic plant as a mystical means of initiating the young into their religious society; and the series of long singings that the Colorado River tribes are addicted to and believe they have miraculously dreamed.
Of course, the idea could scarcely be entertained that these four local systems sprang into existence full-fledged. They are complicated sets of rituals, quite different from the simple Girls’ Rite and Mourning Anniversary. They must have grown up gradually from more meager beginnings and have been a considerable time reaching their present elaboration. It would thus seem justifiable to add not only one but two further periods of religious growth, in the earlier of which—the Third—these ceremonial systems of the historic Indians began their development, whereas in the later or Fourth they achieved it.
158. Third and Fourth Periods in Central California: Kuksu and Hesi
For instance, in the Central California sub-culture-area a series of tribes possess a society to which young men are admitted only after a double initiation with formal teaching by their elders, the first initiation coming in boyhood, the second soon after puberty. The society holds great four-day dances in large earth-covered houses. Time is beaten to the dance and song with rattles of split sticks, and stamped with the feet on a great log drum. The dancers wear showy feather costumes which disguise them to the uninitiated women, children, and strangers, who take them to be spirits of old that have come to exhibit themselves for the good of the people. There may be as many as twelve divinities represented in this way, each with his distinctive name and dress. One of the most prominent of these is the god or “first-man” Kuksu, the founder of the sacred rites, after whom the entire system has been named the “Kuksu Cult.”
The tribes participating in the Kuksu Cult are the Patwin, nearer Maidu, Porno, Yuki, Miwok, and several others. They occupy an area which may be described as the heart of California: namely, the districts adjoining the lower Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and the Bay of San Francisco into which the two streams pour the drainage of the great interior valley ([Fig. 32]).
Beyond the Kuksu-dancing tribes there are others, like the farther Maidu, the Wailaki, and some of the Yokuts, among whom the medicine-men are wont to gather for public demonstration of their magical prowess. Thus, they assemble for a competition of “throwing” sickness into one another, or to charm the rattlesnakes so that they can be handled and that no one in the tribe may be bitten during the ensuing year. In these gatherings there is the idea of an association of people endowed with particular powers and operating more or less jointly for the benefit of the community. In short, this fringe of Central tribes beyond the border of the Kuksu Cult evince some of the psychology and motives of the Cult, but without the definite organization of the latter, and also without some of its specific practices, such as god-impersonation. These gatherings of the medicine men thus look as if they might have been the simple and generalized substratum out of which the Kuksu Cult grew by a process of gradual formalization and ritualistic elaboration. This conclusion is corroborated by the distribution. It is the tribes at the ends of the great interior valley, or in the hills above it, whose rites are of this loose type, while in the center are the true Kuksu-dancing groups. There is a periphery of low organization and a core of high organization. According to our previous rule (§ [87], [97]), recency in acquisition but antiquity of stage pertain to the marginal as the more widely distributed; the geographically more compact nucleus representing an earlier beginning but a later stage of present development. That is, it is reasonable to believe that the Kuksu Cult grew out of semi-formal gatherings of medicine-men such as still survive in the outlying districts—the “backwoods” of the Central area.
Fig. 32. Native ritual growths in the Californian area, the range of each narrowing in proportion to its recency and specialization. First period, stippling: Girls’ Rite. Second period, shading: horizontal, MA, Mourning Anniversary; vertical, FS, First-Salmon Rite. Third and fourth periods, outlines: A3, Wealth Display, A4, Deerskin Dance; B3, Kuksu Society, B4, Hesi Dance; C3, Jimsonweed Cult, C4, Chungichnish Cult; D3-4, Dream Singing.