Finally, any Washo man might hunt singly. Often groups of five or six men went hunting together but each did his own stalking.
Whatever the technique, hunting magic was an individual affair which did not require any ceremonial activities.
A single hunter, before the days of firearms, often stalked in the antlers and hide of a deer. Washo were often superstitious about using the real antlers and made artificial sets from manzanita branches. This fear of using real antlers appears related to the treatment which was accorded to the bones of deer. These, once the meat had been completely stripped off, were submerged in a stream to prevent their being eaten by dogs or wild animals. Perhaps the best account of the magic involved in stalking is the following by an aged informant, reputed to have “hunting medicine.”
“We never had no poison arrow for bear or deer but had something just as good. We took red paint and mixed it with marrow from a deer leg and rubbed it on the shaft and point of the arrow. Arrowheads for war were little but those for big game like deer or bear were pretty big.”
When I asked my informant the Washo word for this mixture he evaded the question.
“I don't think they had a word for it. They didn't talk about it, just used it. If you used it you had to carry some medicine to work against it, 'cause if you got a scratch of that mixture and didn't have this other stuff [the counter agent], you was a goner.
“A long time ago one man would hunt. Some of them fellas was superstitious about using real deer horns, so they would make horns of manzanita and then cover up with a deer hide. They'd move along ... taking a long time, just like a deer. That old buck would try to get to the side away from the wind to smell you, but you kept circling around so he wouldn't smell you. Finally you could get real close, maybe only three, four feet ... going around making sounds just like a deer. Sometimes them bucks would really believe you and want to fight and then it was dangerous. When you was close you shot that arrow into the deer right behind the shoulder blade. That way when he jumped, the shoulder blade comes back and breaks off the shaft. The man would grab the shaft and suck off the blood. Then he'd make a little fire on a flat stone and when it was hot he'd sweep off the fire and spit that on the stone and it would bubble up and disappear. Then you'd go after the deer and you'd find him laying there with blood bubbling out of his nose just like that blood bubbled on the stone.”
Other rituals related to hunting dealt with the loss of hunting luck. To regain one's luck in hunting, a sweat lodge was built, consisting of a temporary brush shelter (688-759).
To insure luck it was common in the old days to bathe and rub the leaves of a certain mountain plant over one's body. Other Washo carried a plant on their persons while hunting, to insure luck. I was unable to get my informant to give me the Washo name of this plant. Certain other special medicines are reported. One man, it is hinted, has a medicine which he rubs on his gun to insure good aim. Old hunters are said to have obtained medicine from the Miwok which would put deer to sleep. Today this medicine is a subject of esoteric humor between my informant and his son-in-law. The latter insists that the bear has a medicine which will put his father-in-law to sleep because he came upon the old man asleep under a tree one day when he should have been hunting. Although the Washo depended on ritual to assist them in hunting, it is clear that they considered a successful hunter the possessor of power beyond simple magic. Like curers or dreamers, certain hunters obviously had been blessed by spirits and were able to outthink and outsmart animals and therefore were particularly good hunters. At least some of the Washo who hunt today attempt to give the impression that their success is based on something more than luck or skill.
Antelope (27a-75).—There are no Washo alive today who can remember antelope surrounds. It appears that most of the Washo territory was not inhabited by antelope, lying as it does between the northern and [pg 380] southern ranges of the Nevada herds. However, small herds did range in the eastern portion of Washo country, but the appearance of firearms and livestock eliminated the antelope completely in this area. One informant, himself seventy-five, remembers stories about the hunts, told to him by a very old brother-in-law who remembered the antelope songs.