As soon as a girl matures she is marriageable. Several and simple are the ways in which a Washoe youth shows his preference and desire for marriage. Equally simple are the girl's signs of acceptance or rejection. There is no ceremony as the White Race understands that term, though to the Indian there is everything that is necessary to make the rite as binding as it is to his white brother and sister.
Though polygamy has always been practiced, the custom to-day limits the wives to two, and only a few men have more than one wife. Where plural wives are taken they are generally sisters. There is little intermarriage among other tribes. Though it occasionally occurs it is fiercely frowned upon and all parties are made to feel uncomfortable.
Prostitution with the whites and Chinese is not uncommon, and children born of such relationship have just as good a standing as those born in wedlock. The Indian sees no sense in punishing an innocent child for what it is in no way responsible for. He frankly argues that only a silly fool of a white man or woman would do so cruel and idiotic a thing.
Children are invariably welcomed and made much of at birth, though it is seldom a Washoe woman has more than four or five babies. They are always nursed by the mother, and not often weaned until they are four or five years old.
In the early days the labor of the sexes was clearly defined. The man was the hunter and the warrior, the guardian of the family. The woman was the gatherer of the seeds, the preparer of the food, the care-taker of the children. To-day there is not much difference in the division of labor. The breaking down of all the old customs by contact with the whites has made men and women alike indifferent to what work they do so that the family larder and purse are replenished thereby.
In the early days the Washoes were expert hunters of bear and deer. They used to cross over into the mountains of California for this purpose, and the women would accompany them. A camp would be established just below the snow line, and while the men and youths went out hunting the women gathered acorns. My informant, an old Indian, was a lad of eighteen at the time of which he spoke. In effect he said: "One day while I was out I found the tracks of a bear which I followed to a cave. Then I went to camp. But we Indians are not like you white men. You would have rushed in and shouted to everybody, 'I've found a bear's track!' Instead I waited until night and when all the squaws had gone to bed I leisurely told the men who were chatting around the camp fire. They wished to know if I knew where the cave was, and of course I assured them I could go directly to it. The next morning early my uncle quietly aroused me, saying, 'Let's go and get that bear.' I was scared but had to go. When we arrived he took some pieces of pitch-pine from his pocket, and lighting them, gave me one, and told me to stand at the mouth of the cave ready to shoot the bear, while he went in and drove it out. I didn't like the idea, but I daren't confess my cowardice, for he at once went in. In a few moments I heard terrific growlings and roarings and then the bear rushed out. I banged away and he fell, and I was proud to tell my uncle, when he came out, that I had killed the bear. 'No, you didn't,' said he; 'your shots all went wild. Here's the shot that killed him,' and sure enough it was a shot of a different size from that of my gun."
"Another time when I found a bear in a cave he said, 'You must go in this time and drive out the bear.' I was sure I couldn't do it, but he insisted, and thrusting the lighted sticks into my hands bade me crawl in, keeping my eyes fixed the while, as soon as I saw them, upon those of the bear. I was to keep my back to the wall, and when I got well in, was to dash the light behind the bear and give a yell. I crawled in all right and soon got to where I could just about stand up, but when I saw the bear and he began to growl I was scared and backed out pretty quick and said I didn't have light enough. My uncle grabbed the sticks from me, called me a coward, rushed in, and as the bear dashed out shot and killed it."
It is generally thought that Indians are good shots, but the testimony of the hunters of the Tahoe region is that the Washoes are very poor shots. One hunter tells me he has seen an Indian take as fine a standing shot as one need desire, again and again, and miss every time. On one occasion he was hunting deer with an Indian. The latter had gone up a steep slope, when, suddenly, he began to fire, and kept it up until fourteen shots were fired. Said he: "I was sure he must have a bunch of deer and was making a big killing, and hurried up to his side. When I got there I found he had sent all those shot after one buck, and had succeeded only in breaking its leg. With one shot I killed the wounded animal, went up to it and was about to cut its throat, when he begged me not to do so, asserting that if I cut the deer's throat that way I should never get a standing shot again, the deer would always be able to smell me."
This is a quaint superstition. The Indians believe that though the particular deer be slain it has the power of communicating with living deer and informing them of the peculiar "smell" of the hunter. Hence, as in the olden days they had no guns, only bows and arrows, and were compelled to creep up much nearer to their prey than is needful with a gun, anything that seemed to add to the deer's power of scenting the hunter must studiously be avoided.
And, although the gun had rendered the old methods of hunting unnecessary, this particular precaution still persisted and had all the force of established custom.