Marriage (2018-2051)
Marriage is entirely a social institution, and no religious elements appear to have entered into it. Traditionally the ceremony, if there was any at all, consisted of a “chief” (respected man) throwing a blanket over the shoulders of a couple at a dance. Ceremonial gatherings, such as the pine-nut dances and the girls' dances were important in the selection of marriage partners, inasmuch as boys and girls came together at these gatherings to engage in flirtation, affairs, and courtship. Dreamers at the “big times” are reported by informants to have exhorted married couples to be good to each other and not fight (see also Lowie 1939, p. 303).
Death (2389-2453)
No amount of social dislocation or cultural impact alters the constant fact of death. Each generation faces this inevitability. It is less than surprising then that changes in attitudes and rituals surrounding death among the Washo have changed very slowly. The only changes which appear to have developed in Washo death customs are those imposed by direct intervention of the whites or as unavoidable consequences of changes in other aspects of the culture.
In the past, when a person died the house in which he expired was abandoned by his family. Of course, if the death occurred in the spring or summer such abandonment was simple; during these seasons the Washo usually lived in simple brush shelters. A winter death was a more serious matter; it was during this season that the Washo lived in the gal'sdaɲl—a structure made to last through the winter and until the next winter, when it was reoccupied. Valley Washo often made these winter homes of brush or tules. In the foothills and mountains, bark slabs and tree limbs were utilized. If an occupant died, this home must be abandoned and was often burned down, and the immediate family moved to another campsite. Thus a family which suffered no deaths during the winters might spend several years in a single campground, whereas a less fortunate family might have to move every winter, or even oftener than that.
A few Washo began building simple rectangular board and batten houses in the 1890's. Most of the others continued to live in gal'sdaɲ¿l made of boards and scrap, begged, stolen, or purchased from the lumber mills which were quite numerous in the area at the beginning of the century. In the 1920's, when most of the Washo moved into the “colonies” established for them by the government, the native-style houses were abandoned in favor of the wooden homes built by the government. No longer permitted to move about the country at will, and frankly unwilling to abandon the more comfortable white-style houses, the Washo adjusted their death customs. The most common adjustment was to prepare for an impending death by shifting seriously ill persons into an adjoining structure, often a shack built in the native manner or a shed or lean-to. This structure could be burned down without loss when its inhabitant died.[7]
The Washo viewed this destruction of a house occupied by a dead person as simply preventing his spirit from bothering the living.
Most Washo death customs display a conscious attempt to avoid association with the dead. Barrett reports that cremation was practiced, and the bones placed in a stream to prevent their desecration. However, this appears to have been only one of the disposal customs and is not well remembered by Washo living today. The burning or burying of the personal possessions of the dead was common. Certain prized possessions were interred with the body, which was usually wrapped in a shroud of matting, deerskin, or bearhide and placed in a fissure or cave in the mountains. Although there are a number of locations known by both Indians and local whites as old burying grounds, all my informants agreed that in the “real old days” there was no special cemetery and that these burial spots have developed since the coming of the white man. This may well have been as a result of direct white interference with native funeral customs and an insistence that Indians concentrate their burials. Some of these sites have become traditional among the Washo.