The dispute between the widow and the sister mentioned earlier was an argument as to whether the deceased would be buried in one of these sites or in the cemetery at Stewart, Nevada.
A white man who has lived in the area for ninety years, reported that as a boy he often came across caches of belongings of dead Indians in the mountains. Today, prized possessions are either crowded into the casket with the body or burned or secreted in some remote area of the Sierra.
Funeral ceremonies were apparently simple. The body was wrapped and carried into the hills to be interred. Prayers in the form of a short speech were directed toward the dead. “We are burying you because you are dead. It's not because we are mad at you or don't like you. But you are dead. Please don't come back and bother us.”
Widows traditionally cut their hair in mourning, a custom which is still practiced. Stewart reports that mourners painted their faces black. My informants denied this, but one elaborated: “I remember when I was a little girl old Indians who had lost someone would cry a lot and let the tears run down their faces and not wash their faces until they were real dirty and black with fire smoke.” Crying at a funeral was expected and in fact positively sanctioned. At a funeral conducted while I was present the sheriff arrested a drunken Washo who was wailing quite loudly. The Indians were all bitter about this because: “All of us cry at a funeral whether we are drunk or not. That's the way the Washo do it.” (This funeral was that of a murder victim and the sheriff was present because he feared there might be a reprisal attempt.)
A newspaper report of a funeral in Genoa, Nevada, in the late 1880's records that the Indians had borrowed a wagon from a white man to transport the corpse (that of a well-known Indian woman) to the burying ground. The wagon was followed by a large crowd of weeping mourners.
Modern funerals usually take place under the auspices of a funeral director, and generally services are performed by a Christian minister from the Stewart Indian agency. After the white minister has left, it is usual for an older Indian to approach the casket and repeat the old funeral prayers. The reason for waiting until the minister leaves is to avoid hurting his feelings. My informants said the prayers made the older Indians feel more comfortable. It is usually not necessary to burn the deceased's home, but his belongings are disposed of. There is an increasing tendency to tend graves and put flowers on them. The cemetery at Stewart appears to be well decorated with flowers. Two old Indian graves near Lake Tahoe are regularly visited and jars of flowers placed on them.[8]
When the husband of one of my informants died, following a twelve-year illness spent in a secondary house, she went to visit a daughter living near Lake Tahoe. When she returned to Dresslerville her two sons had torn down the shed and disposed of all their father's possessions. In deference to their mother's rather modern views about funerals, nothing had been placed in the casket.
While I was in Dresslerville an Indian of about forty put the torch to the house in which his mother and father had lived. The house had been unoccupied since their deaths. While the house burned no effort was made to extinguish the fire or to call the fire department. A nearby rancher saw the fire and summoned the fire department, but the Indians refused to tell the firemen how the fire had started. The local newspaper reported it had been burned to drive away evil spirits. This upset my informants, one of whom said that the sight of the house simply made the man sad. She elaborated that the Washo felt they were helping God wipe out the tracks of a dead person. The Washo claim that after a death there is always a rain or sand storm which wipes out the tracks of the deceased.
After the Washo return home from a funeral, they immediately wash their faces and hands. They would not feel safe in handling food or children until this ritual had been carried out.
The behavior of the dead is a matter of concern for most Washo (2606-2609a). Ideally, the spirit is supposed to go up and to the south where dead Indians are. This land of the dead is guarded by a number of men with bows. Some shamans were able to make the trip to the land of the dead (2541-2544). If they could elude these guards, they were sometimes able to recover the spirit of a recently dead person and return it. If, however, the spirit has partaken of the water of a spring immediately behind the guards, it can never be recovered. The by-now-familiar uncle of my informant once visited the land of the dead and reported that there were lots of Indians there playing games and having a good time. If murder victims were present they were with the celebrants, but the spirits of the killers were segregated and were not having a good time.