Indians of Lassen Volcanic National Park and Vicinity

by Paul E. Schulz

Youths were prepared for questing by being lectured to by fathers or uncles who also pierced their nose septa. Each youth went alone and unclothed into certain portions of the mountains for several days and nights. He slept little and fasted, eating little or nothing at all; all flesh was taboo. The questing usually included swimming in lakes or special pools and placing the nose piercing stick in an underwater niche, and (Yana) securing certain bird feathers. He built a fire, smoking his body over it, and cut himself deliberately. If successful, the power came to him in a trance or faint producing bleeding from the nose or mouth.

The guardian spirit communicated with the novice, appearing in a vision usually. It gave instructions and taught its special ceremonial song. To shamans of some tribes the guardian spirit looked something like a human; to others it looked like a bug or like a small hair. This was the “pain” or poison object and yet was considered to be a guardian spirit at the same time. This is what the novice acquired in becoming a shaman. This pain or guardian spirit could come from any of many sources. It was alive and could talk, and gave the novice certain resultant powers. Most commonly powers were from animals such as coyote, bear, and the like, but also might come from sun, moon, wind, thunder and lightning, eagle, hawk, small birds, reptiles, frog, or oldman spirit.

The novice then acquired what we might call magic feathers. There were several types including the popular salmon colored flicker feathers. Most important, however, was the feather tuft known as kaku among the Atsugewi. This allegedly was found in finished form and not made. So full of power was the kaku that it could not be kept in a house. It was placed outside securely tied to a willow branch beside a stream or hidden inside a hollow tree trunk. The kaku was able to move by itself so had to be tied down or placed under a rock. When the novice shaman discovered his kaku, the feathers were singing; when he died, blood dripped from its feathers!

Upon his return to the village, the successful seeker stayed out of dwelling houses for a day or two. Among some tribes he was sick for this period. Universally he sweated and swam. Eating habits of the novice shaman varied in different cases, but were always as dictated by the specific instructions given to him by his guardian spirit. Invariably all forms of flesh were shunned. He smoked tobacco and gave his first hunting kill to an old man. During the novice period the new shaman was helped by old shamans at the fireside in the sweat house. He did much dancing, singing, handled hot coals and fire, bled from the mouth, and might fall into a trance.

In contrast to herbalist doctors who gave private treatment, that of shamans was public and usually conducted indoors, preferably in sweat lodges. The shaman needed singing help and the more help and the more persons who attended his doctoring the better. Sucking Shamans were the most important and required official assistants. These included one or more interpreters to communicate with the lay helpers or supporters, while the shaman was doctoring, and an outside speaker to help call the shaman’s spirits. Doctoring could take from one to three days and nights.

To diagnose the patient’s ills the shaman danced about, blowing smoke on him, and singing with the help of the audience. The shamans also drank water, sometimes with a tube, from portable stone mortars with spirit power. They often squirted water from their mouths. A whistle was used in some cases and often the supernatural powerful cocoon rattle. Among mountain Maidu herb medicines might be administered to the patient also.

At length the shaman’s guardian spirit or pain told him the location of the disease object, and then he could see or feel it. Often the shaman learned further from the spirit just who it was who had sent the disease object to plague his patient.

Curing the afflicted was accomplished next by the shaman’s sucking this pain or disease object out of some portion of the person’s body. The evil pain could be any curious small object and this the shaman exhibited to all present. The malignant pain was disposed of in a number of ways. It might be sent back to the owner who sent it, that is, the offending shaman. Or, it might be sent to his children who would be doomed because a shaman could not doctor his own pain. Other times the curing shaman would destroy the disease object by biting it and burning it or dispose of it by taking the pain into his own charmed body.

When a whole community had been affected by a pain sent by an evil shaman, the pain usually hid in the bushes nearby. In such a case, the shaman had to be very powerful to get the best of the situation. First he conducted the ceremony of detection of one victim in the usual sweat house manner. Once the shaman found out where the trouble was, he went outdoors with the villagers to help in corraling the offending pain. Frequently only after a lengthy search was he successful in finding the pain and then capturing it. Upon taking it into his body it might be so powerful as to cause him to go into a trance. In this event his assistants had to support him bodily, and had to sing for him, otherwise the shaman might die. Without wishing to appear facetious or disparaging, it can be said that a good shaman had to be an excellent showman as well.

Sucking Shamans were obligated to accept all cases which they were asked to treat. If they refused any and the afflicted died, then the shamans might be killed themselves by relatives of the persons who succumbed. The thinking was that if a shaman refused a case, he must have had something to do with making the person sick in the first place.