Anthropology

150. Regional Variation of Culture

As one first becomes acquainted with a totally strange people spread over a large area, such as the Indians of North America, they are likely to seem rather uniform. The distinctions between individual and individual, and even the greater distinctions between one group and another, become buried under the overwhelming mass-effect of their difference from ourselves. Growing familiarity, however, renders individual, local, and tribal peculiarities plainer. The specialist, finally, comes to concern himself with particular traits until the peculiarities occupy more of his attention than the uniformities. His danger always is to let himself get into the habit of taking sweeping similarities so much for granted that he ends by underemphasizing or forgetting them. At the same time his business is to add something new to human understanding—facts at any rate, interpretation if possible. Generalities are likely to be pretty widely known, and progress, new formulations, therefore depend ultimately on mastery of detail. This means that if a scientist is to contribute anything to the world’s comprehension, is to add a new mental tool to its chest, he must devote himself to specific traits, to discriminations of fine detail. It is only by finding new trees that he helps to make the woods larger.

If then we approach a race like the American Indians with the scientist’s or student’s purpose of discovering something more than we already know, we quickly find that institutions, customs, and utensils, in other words the cultures, vary from tribe to tribe. When one compares tribes living so far apart as to be no longer united in intercourse, nor even by communication with common intermediaries, there is scarcely a trait in which their cultures are wholly identical. Within a limited district a fair degree of uniformity is found to prevail. Yet when the boundaries of such an area are crossed, a new type of culture begins to be encountered, which again holds with local variations until a third district is entered.

151. Plains, Southwest, Northwest Areas

For instance, the Indians of the Plains between the Rocky mountains and the Mississippi river form a comparative unit. They are all warlike, the great aim in life of every man in these tribes being attainment of military glory. All the Plains tribes subsisted to a large extent on buffalo, lived in tipis—tents made of buffalo skins—and boiled their food with hot stones in buffalo rawhide. Nearly all of them performed a four days’ religious ceremony known as the Sun Dance, of which one of the outstanding acts was fasting and sometimes self-torture inflicted with skewers drawn through the skin and torn out. These customs were common to the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Blackfeet, Assiniboine, Omaha, Kiowa, Comanche, and other tribes.

As one passes from this region to the mountainous plateau which constitutes the present New Mexico and Arizona—the Southwest of the United States—one encounters a series of tribes often inhabiting stone houses, subsisting by agriculture, cooking in earthenware pots, little given to fighting, according authority to priests rather than warriors, erecting altars, and performing masked dances representing divinities. This Southwestern culture, its internal relations, and the tribes participating in it, have already been discussed in another connection (§ 87).

If, however, on leaving the Plains one turns northwest to the shores of British Columbia and southern Alaska, a third distinctive type of native civilization appears. Among these Northwestern or North Pacific Coast tribes, such as the Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, Nutka, and Salish, the priest as well as the warrior bowed before the rich man, an elaborate set of rules and honors separating the wealthy high-born from the poor and lowly. Aristocracy, commoners, and slaves made up distinct strata of society in this region. Public rituals were occasions for the ostentation of wealth. Houses were carpentered of wood. Cooking was done in boxes. The prevalent food was fish.

The significant thing is that these are not three tribes, but three groups each consisting of a number of politically independent tribes spread over a considerable territory and evincing a fairly fundamental similarity of customs and institutions. We are confronting three kinds of culture, each super-tribal in range and attached to a certain area. These areas have sometimes been called “ethnographic provinces”; they are generally known as “culture-areas.” Of such areas ten are generally recognized on the North American continent. These are the Plains, Southwest, North Pacific Coast, Mackenzie-Yukon, Arctic, Plateau, California, Northeast, Southeast, and Mexico.[23]

Obviously we have here a classification comparable to that which the naturalist makes of animals. As the zoölogist divides the vertebrate animals into mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes, so the anthropologist divides the generic North American Indian culture into the cultures of these ten areas. The naturalist however cannot stop with a group as inclusive as the mammals, and goes on to subdivide them into orders, such as the rodents, carnivores, ungulates, and the like. Each of these again he goes on splitting into families, genera, and finally species. The species correspond to the smallest groups in human society, namely the tribes or nations. Parallel to the family or order which the naturalist finds between a particular species and the great class of mammals, one may therefore expect to discover groups intermediate between particular tribes and the large culture-areas. Such intermediate groups would consist of clusters of tribes constituting fractions of a culture-area: clearly pertaining to this area, but yet somewhat set off from other clusters within the same area—like the Pueblos and Navaho within the Southwest, as already described (§ 87). We may call such clusters or fractions sub-culture-areas, and must concern ourselves with them if we desire to deepen our understanding of aboriginal American civilization.

For the sake of simplicity, it will be well to select a limited portion of North America, instead of wrestling with the intricacies of the continent as a whole, in an endeavor to see how its culture-areas and sub-culture-areas reveal themselves in detail and help to throw light on native history. California will serve as a type example.

152. California and Its Sub-areas

Modern state boundaries frequently do not coincide with either ethnic lines of division or with natural physiographic areas, especially when political units are created by legislative enactment, as has been the case with most of the United States. This partial discrepancy holds for California. The native culture most distinctive of California covered only the middle two-thirds of the present state, but took in Nevada and much of the Great Basin (Fig. 31).

Northernmost California, especially along the ocean, was inhabited by Indians that affiliated with the tribes of the North Pacific coast. One after another their customs and arts prove on examination to be related to the customs and arts of the coast of British Columbia, and to differ more or less from the corresponding practices of the Central California Indians. Here then we have a second cultural type, that of Northwestern California, which constitutes a subdivision of the North Pacific Coast culture-area.

The southern California Indians link with the Indians of the adjoining states of Arizona and New Mexico. In short, this part of California forms part of the Southwest culture-area. The southern California tribes are however not wholly uniform among themselves, but constitute two groups: those of the islands, coast, and mountains, and those of the Colorado river. These are distinguished primarily by the fact that only the river tribes practised agriculture. We may designate these two divisions as “Southern California” proper and “Lower Colorado River.”

The table on the opposite page gives a brief characterization of these four sub-culture-areas.

153. The Shaping of a Problem

So far we have been discriminating, that is, looking for characteristic differences. On the other hand, there has always existed a consensus of impression, among experienced as well as hasty observers, that a certain likeness runs through the culture of most the tribes of California, northern, central, and southern. With scarcely an exception they were unwarlike; nearly all of them made excellent baskets, but were deficient in wood-working. Obviously it is necessary to reconcile these uniformities with the peculiarities that distinguish the four regional types or sub-culture-areas, as well as to account for the peculiarities.

Let us simplify the problem by considering only one aspect of the four native cultures instead of the whole cultures. In this way there will be more likelihood of making a substantial beginning; any results obtained from the example can be subsequently checked from other aspects of the cultures to see if the findings are broadly representative. Further, let us arrange the items of information that are available on this one aspect of culture, not haphazardly, nor mechanically as under an alphabetic classification, nor in the sequence in which authors have published their observations, but naturally, or according to some principle that is likely to work out into an interpretation. Since part of the problem is the relation of the uniform features to the peculiar ones, a promising order will be to put at one end of the line or series of data the most universal features, and at the other the most particular or localized ones.

Let us select religion as that part of native culture to be examined, and limit this still farther by eliminating from consideration, for the time being, all forms of religion except public rituals, which among Indians are frequently accompanied or signalized by sacred dances. We may forget, for the moment, private rites, individual sacrifices, superstitions and taboos, medicine men, myths, and the like, and direct attention to dances made by groups of people, or the obvious equivalents of such dances, and ritual acts definitely associated with the dances or the common weal.

Choice of this phase of native culture is not quite random; ritual ordinarily is rather freer from the complications caused by natural environment than most other institutions and customs. Had industrial arts, for instance, been selected as the point of attack, it might be imagined that certain tribes made pottery, and others did not, because of the presence or absence of suitable clay in their respective habitats; or perhaps that a particular weave of basketry occurred universally because this weave followed more or less directly from the physical properties of some plant material that abounded everywhere in the state. On the other hand, when tribes do or do not make dances in honor of their divinities, or when they do or do not practise an elaborate mourning for their dead, these are customs into which the influence of natural environment can scarcely enter, since all peoples believe in spirits and suffer the loss of relatives.

154. Girls’ Adolescence Rite

When, then, we review the religious dances of the California tribes en masse, we find that there are only two which come near to being universal. One of these is the Victory Dance held over the head or scalp of a slain enemy; the other is an Adolescence Rite performed for girls at puberty. The latter is the more profitable to consider. It is the more widely spread, having been performed in every district of California, and by almost every tribe. The Victory Dance was not made by the Indians of northern California, who substituted for it a war incitement dance of different character. Further, a tribe having the tradition of the Victory Dance might often be at peace and go for a generation or two without the celebration. But a ceremony which it was thought necessary to make for each girl at puberty was obviously due to be performed every few years even among a small group.

There are many local variations in the Californian Adolescence Rite, but certain of its features emerge with constancy. These traits are based on the belief that the girl who is at this moment passing from childhood to maturity must be undergoing a critical transition. The occasion was considered critical not only for her but for the community, and, since the Indians’ outlook was limited, for the whole of their little world. A girl who at this period did not show fortitude to hardship would be forever weak and complaining: therefore she fasted. If she carried wood and water industriously, she would remain a good worker all her life, whereas if she defaulted, she would grow up a lazy woman. So crucial, in fact, was this moment, that she was thought extremely potent upon her surroundings, as constituting a latent danger. If she looked abroad upon the world, oak trees might become barren and next year’s crop of acorns fail, or the salmon refuse to ascend the river. Among many tribes, therefore, the maturing girl was covered with a blanket, set under a large basket, or made to wear a visor of feathers over her eyes. Others had her throw her hair forward and keep her head bowed. She was given the benefit of having ancient religious songs sung over her, and dances revolved around her night after night. Certain additional developments of the ceremony were locally restricted. Thus it was only in the south that the girl was put into a pit and baked in hot sand. But a number of specific features occur from the north to the south end of the state. Among these are the following rules. The girl must not eat meat, fat, or salt. She must not scratch her head with her fingers, but use a stick or bone implement made for the purpose. She must not look at people; and she should be sung over.

It should be added that most of these traits of the Girls’ Rite recur among the tribes of a much larger area than California, including those of Nevada and the Great Basin and the Pacific coast for a long distance north. This institution, then, is remarkably widespread and has preserved nearly the same fundamental features wherever it is found.

155. The First Period

What can be inferred from this uniformity and broad diffusion? It seems fair to try the presumptive conclusion of antiquity. A continent is likely to be older than an island. A family of animals has probably existed longer than a single species. A world-wide custom normally is more ancient than one that is confined to a narrow locality. If it spread from one people to another, this diffusion over the whole earth would usually require a long time. If on the other hand such a custom had originated separately among each people, its very universality would indicate it as the response to a deep and primary need, and such a need would presumably manifest itself early in the history of the race.

It is true that one may not place too positive a reliance on evidence of this sort. The history of civilization furnishes some contrary examples. Thus the Persian fire-worshiping religion is older than Christianity, yet is now confined to the Parsees of Bombay and to one or two small groups in Persia. The use of tobacco has spread over the eastern hemisphere in four centuries. Still, such cases are exceptional; and in the absence of specific contrary considerations, heavy weight must be given to wideness of occurrence in rating antiquity.

If the Girls’ Rite were identical among all the tribes that practise it, there might be warrant for the conclusion that it had originated only a few centuries ago but had for some reason been carried from one tribe to another with such unusual rapidity as not to have been subjected to the alterations of time. Yet the fact that the essential uniformity of the rite is overlaid by so much local diversity—as for instance the baking custom restricted to southern California—indicates the unlikelihood of such a rapid and late diffusion. The ceremony is much in the status of Christianity, which, in the course of its long history, has also become broken into national varieties or sects, all of which however remain Christian.

The facts then warrant this tentative conclusion: that the Girls’ Rite is representative of the oldest stratum of religion that can be traced among the Indians of California—their “First Period.” The Victory Dance would presumably be of nearly but not quite the same antiquity.

156. The Second Period: Mourning Anniversary and First-salmon Rite

Pursuing the same method farther, let us look for rituals that are less widely spread than these but yet not confined to small districts. The outstanding one in this class is the Mourning Anniversary. This is a custom of bewailing each year, or at intervals of a few years, those members of the tribe who have died since the last performance, and the burning of large quantities of wealth—shell money, baskets, and the like—in their memory. Each family offers for its own dead, but people of special consideration are honored by having images made of them and consumed with the property. Until the anniversary has been performed, the relatives of the dead remain mourners. After it, they are free to resume normal enjoyment of life; and the name of the deceased, which until then has been strictly taboo, may now be bestowed on a baby in the family.

The Mourning Anniversary as here outlined is practised with little variation, less than the Girls’ Rite shows, throughout southern California and a great part of central California, especially the Sierra Nevada district. Its distribution thus covers more than half of the state. But it has not spread elsewhere except to a small area in southern Nevada and western Arizona.

In northern California the Mourning Anniversary is lacking. It is not that the Indians here fail to mourn their dead. In fact they frequently bewail them for a longer time than most civilized peoples think necessary. They may bury or burn some property with the corpse. But they do not practise the regular public commemoration of the southerly tribes. They do not assiduously accumulate wealth for months or years in order to throw it into a communal fire at the end. And they do not make images of their dead. In fact, they would be shocked at the idea as indelicate, if not impious. Is there anything in this northern part of California that takes the place of the anniversary?

Not as a psychological equivalent; but as regards distribution, there is. This is the custom, established in northern California and parts of Oregon, for a leading shaman or medicine-man to conduct a ceremony at the beginning of each year’s salmon run. Until he had done this, no one fished for salmon or ate them. If any got caught, they were carefully returned to the river. When the medicine-man had gone through his secret rites, he caught and ate the first fish of the year. After this, the season was open. To eat salmon no longer brought illness and disaster, as it was thought it would a few days earlier. Moreover, the prayers or formulas recited by the shaman propitiated the salmon and caused them to run abundantly, so that every one had plenty. There is clearly a communal motive in the rite, even though its performance was entrusted to an individual.

The one specific element common to the Mourning Anniversary and this First-salmon Rite is their connection with the natural year, the cycle of the seasons, a trait necessarily lacking in the Girls’ Rite with its intimately personal character. Because of this common feature; because, also, neither of these two rituals is as widespread as the Girls’ Rite and yet between them they cover the whole of California with substantially mutual exclusiveness, it seems fair to assume that they both originated at a later time than the Girls’ Rite, but still in fairly remote antiquity. They may therefore be provisionally assigned to a Second Period of the prehistory of California.

157. Era of Regional Differentiation

It is now necessary to return to the four regional divisions or sub-culture-areas of the modern tribes of California. Since the Northwestern one affiliated with the extensive North Pacific culture, and those of Southern California and the Colorado River with the great culture of the Southwest, many of their customs must have originated in those parts of these two culture-areas which lie outside of California. Even if the northern and southern Californians “lent” as well as “borrowed” inventions and institutions, they must on the whole have received or learned or imitated more in the interchange than they imparted. This is clear from the fact that the Indians of British Columbia are more advanced in their manufacturing ability, richer in variety of tools and utensils, and more elaborate in their organization of society, than those of Northwestern California; and a similar relation of superiority and priority exists between the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona and the Southern California tribes (§ 87). In other words, a stream of civilizational influences has evidently run from southern Alaska and British Columbia southward along the coast as far as Northwestern California, and another from the town-dwelling Pueblos to the village-inhabiting tribes of Southern California, in much the same way that civilization flowed from ancient Babylonia into Palestine, from Egypt into Crete, from Greece to Rome, from Rome to Gaul and Britain, from western Europe to the Americas after their discovery, and from the Christian to the non-Christian nations of to-day. Somewhere in the unraveling of the prehistory of California the first indications of these streams from the outside should be encountered.

They are not manifest in the two periods which have so far been established. The distribution of the Girls’ Rite of the First Period and of the Mourning Anniversary and First-salmon Rite of the Second, does not coincide with the major culture-areas of the continent. The Southwest, for instance, from which the modern southern Californians have received so much, does not possess any of these ceremonies. The Southwest culture therefore evidently originated, or began to take on its recent aspect, or at least to influence Southern California, chiefly after the two periods had passed by in which these ceremonies became established in California. The Girls’ Rite, to be sure, extends up the Pacific coast into Alaska. Yet it is more widespread than the North Pacific Coast culture, since this has its southerly limit in Northwestern California, whereas the ceremony is universal as far as to the southern end of the state, besides occurring inland throughout the Great Basin and Plateau regions. Being more widely spread than the Coast culture, the Girls’ Rite is presumptively more ancient.

The beginnings of the four modern types of California native culture must thus evidently be looked for at about the point now reached in our reconstruction. At first there was a single very widespread ceremony; then two less widely diffused ones; the next logical step in development would have been the growth of a still larger number of ceremonies or ritual systems. These, on account of their greater recency, and perhaps on account of conflicting with one another, would have spread only over comparatively small areas. Let us therefore assume that to this Third Period belonged the beginnings of the Wealth-display dances of the Northwestern Indians which are coupled with the idea of world renovation (table, p. 299); the so-called Kuksu dances made among the Central Californians by members of a secret society disguised as divinities; the Jimsonweed rites of the Southern tribes who use this narcotic plant as a mystical means of initiating the young into their religious society; and the series of long singings that the Colorado River tribes are addicted to and believe they have miraculously dreamed.

Of course, the idea could scarcely be entertained that these four local systems sprang into existence full-fledged. They are complicated sets of rituals, quite different from the simple Girls’ Rite and Mourning Anniversary. They must have grown up gradually from more meager beginnings and have been a considerable time reaching their present elaboration. It would thus seem justifiable to add not only one but two further periods of religious growth, in the earlier of which—the Third—these ceremonial systems of the historic Indians began their development, whereas in the later or Fourth they achieved it.

158. Third and Fourth Periods in Central California: Kuksu and Hesi

For instance, in the Central California sub-culture-area a series of tribes possess a society to which young men are admitted only after a double initiation with formal teaching by their elders, the first initiation coming in boyhood, the second soon after puberty. The society holds great four-day dances in large earth-covered houses. Time is beaten to the dance and song with rattles of split sticks, and stamped with the feet on a great log drum. The dancers wear showy feather costumes which disguise them to the uninitiated women, children, and strangers, who take them to be spirits of old that have come to exhibit themselves for the good of the people. There may be as many as twelve divinities represented in this way, each with his distinctive name and dress. One of the most prominent of these is the god or “first-man” Kuksu, the founder of the sacred rites, after whom the entire system has been named the “Kuksu Cult.”

The tribes participating in the Kuksu Cult are the Patwin, nearer Maidu, Porno, Yuki, Miwok, and several others. They occupy an area which may be described as the heart of California: namely, the districts adjoining the lower Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and the Bay of San Francisco into which the two streams pour the drainage of the great interior valley (Fig. 32).

Beyond the Kuksu-dancing tribes there are others, like the farther Maidu, the Wailaki, and some of the Yokuts, among whom the medicine-men are wont to gather for public demonstration of their magical prowess. Thus, they assemble for a competition of “throwing” sickness into one another, or to charm the rattlesnakes so that they can be handled and that no one in the tribe may be bitten during the ensuing year. In these gatherings there is the idea of an association of people endowed with particular powers and operating more or less jointly for the benefit of the community. In short, this fringe of Central tribes beyond the border of the Kuksu Cult evince some of the psychology and motives of the Cult, but without the definite organization of the latter, and also without some of its specific practices, such as god-impersonation. These gatherings of the medicine men thus look as if they might have been the simple and generalized substratum out of which the Kuksu Cult grew by a process of gradual formalization and ritualistic elaboration. This conclusion is corroborated by the distribution. It is the tribes at the ends of the great interior valley, or in the hills above it, whose rites are of this loose type, while in the center are the true Kuksu-dancing groups. There is a periphery of low organization and a core of high organization. According to our previous rule (§ 87, 97), recency in acquisition but antiquity of stage pertain to the marginal as the more widely distributed; the geographically more compact nucleus representing an earlier beginning but a later stage of present development. That is, it is reasonable to believe that the Kuksu Cult grew out of semi-formal gatherings of medicine-men such as still survive in the outlying districts—the “backwoods” of the Central area.

Evidently if a still later religious movement developed as an elaboration or addition of the Kuksu Cult, it should be less widely diffused than this system, forming a sort of nucleus within the core. Actually there is such a later growth. This is the Hesi Dance, confined to the Patwin and Maidu of the lower Sacramento valley (Fig. 32), and regarded by them as the most sacred portion of the Kuksu system. It is the one of all their rituals into which the largest number of differently garbed performers enter, and is made twice a year as the spectacular beginning and finale of the series of lesser Kuksu dances.

The history of native ritual in Central California thus is fairly plain. Early in the Third Period, perhaps already during the Second, the specialists in religion, the medicine-men, had acquired the habit of giving public demonstrations. This resulted in a bond of fellowship among themselves and a sense of exclusiveness toward the community as a whole. Out of this sense there was elaborated during the Third Period, somewhere about the lower Sacramento Valley, the idea of an organized secret society with initiated members. The performances became more and more elaborate, and the production of proof of supernatural power gradually crystallized into impersonations of deities. By the beginning of the Fourth Period, the Kuksu Cult had been established. During this period, it was carried from the center of origin to its farthest limits, whereas at the center the Hesi Dance was evolved as a characteristic addition. If native development had been able to proceed undisturbed, if, for instance, the coming of the white race had been deferred a few centuries longer, the Hesi might have followed the diffusion of the earlier Kuksu Cult; and while this new spread was in progress, the Patwin who form the central nucleus of the whole Kuksu-Hesi movement might have been devising a still newer increment to the system.

159. Third and Fourth Periods in Southern California: Jimsonweed and Chungichnish

The Southern California Jimsonweed Rites are quite distinct from the Kuksu Cult in their regalia, dances, and teachings, but are also based on initiation. It may therefore be concluded, first, that they grew up contemporaneously in the Third Period; and next, that they sprang out of the same soil, a growing tendency of the medicine-men toward professional association. The selection of the jimsonweed as the distinctive element in the south seems to have been due to influences from Mexico and the Southwest. The tribes of Arizona and New Mexico use the plant in religion, the Aztecs ascribed supernatural powers to it, and the modern Tepecano of Mexico pray to it like a god. The Spanish-American name for the plant, toloache, is an Aztec word. Because Mexican civilization was so much the more advanced, it seems likely that the use of jimsonweed originated in Mexico, was carried into the Southwest, and from there spread into Southern California—perhaps at the receptive moment when the medicine-men’s associations were drawing more closely together and feeling the need of some powerful emotional element to lend an impetus to their cults.

While the Jimsonweed religion was followed by Californian tribes from the Yokuts on the north to the Diegueño on the south, its most elaborate forms occur among groups near the center of Southern California, especially the Gabrielino of Los Angeles and Catalina Island. This group associates the greatest number of rituals and dances with the Jimsonweed Society, and is therefore likely to have had the leading share in the working out of the religion.

By the opening of the Fourth Period the Gabrielino must have had the Jimsonweed Rites pretty fully developed, while the peripheral tribes like the Yokuts and Diegueño were perhaps only learning the religious use of the drug. The Gabrielino however did not stand still during this Fourth Period, and while the original rather simple Jimsonweed Rites spread north and south, they were adding a new element. This is the Chungichnish Cult, based on belief in a great, wise, powerful god of this name, to whom are due the final ordaining of the world and the institution of the Jimsonweed Rites and their correct performance. Associated with this belief is the use of the “ground painting.” This is a large picture, usually of the world, drawn in colored earths, sands, seeds, or paints, on the floor of the sacred enclosure in which the Jimsonweed rituals were practised. This ground painting served both as an altar for the rites and as a means of instructing the initiates (§ 192, 193). The custom of this sacred painting became firmly established among the Gabrielino, and is known to have spread from them to other tribes, such as the Luiseño. From these it has been carried, in part during the last century, after the white man was in the land, to still more remote tribes like the Diegueño, who recognize the Gabrielino island of Catalina as the source of the Chungichnish Cult and sing its songs to Gabrielino words (Fig. 32).

160. Third and Fourth Periods on the Lower Colorado: Dream Singing

In Southeastern California, among the tribes of the Lower Colorado River, the Third and Fourth Periods are less easily distinguished. The reason for this seems to be the fact that religion developed among these tribes less through the invention or establishment of new elements, than by the lopping away of older ones, with the result of a rather narrow specialization on the few elements that were retained. Tribes like the Yuma and Mohave scarcely danced for religious purposes. The special costumes, showy feather headdresses, disguises, musical instruments, sand-paintings, altars, and ritualistic processions that mark the Kuksu and Jimsonweed cults, were lacking among them. They did adhere to the widespread and ancient idea that dreams are a source and evidence of supernatural power. In short, their religion turned inward, not outward. Instead of their medicine-men forming a society based on initiation, the Colorado River tribes came to feel that every one might be a medicine-man according to his dreams. They put emphasis on these internal experiences. The result has been that they believe that a legend can be true and sacred only if it has been dreamed, and that a man’s songs should be acquired in the same way. Religion, therefore, is an intensely individualistic affair among them. Since no two men can dream quite alike, no two Yumas or Mohaves tell their myths or sing their song cycles identically. This cast to their religion is so strong that it looks to be fairly ancient. The beginnings of this local type of religion may therefore be set in the Third Period. As for the Fourth Period, it may be inferred that this chiefly accentuated the tendencies developed in the Third, the dream basis augmenting as ceremonialism dropped away.

161. Northwestern California: World-renewal and Wealth Display

The Third and Fourth periods are also not readily distinguishable in Northwestern California. Yet here the rooting of these two eras in the Second is clearer. We have seen that all through northern California there exists the First-salmon Rite conducted by a prominent medicine-man of each locality; and we have referred the probable origin of this rite to the Second period. The modern Indians of Northwestern California consider their great dances of ten or twelve days’ duration as being essentially the showy public accompaniment of an extremely sacred and secret act performed by a single priest who recites a magical formula. His purpose in some instances is to open the salmon season, in others to inaugurate the acorn crop, in still others to make new fire for the community. But whatever the particular object, it is always believed that he renews something important to the world. He “makes the world,” as the Indians call it, for another year. These New-year or World-renewing functions of the rites of the modern Indians of Northwestern California thus appear to lead back by a natural transition to the First-salmon Rite which is so widely spread in northern California. Evidently this specific rite that originated in the Second Period was developed in the Northwest during the Third and Fourth eras by being broadened in its objective and having attached to it certain characteristic dances.

These dances are the Deerskin and Jumping Dances. They differ from those of the Central and Southern tribes in that every one may participate in them. There is no idea of a society with membership, and hence no exclusion of the uninitiated. In fact the dances are primarily occasions for displays of wealth, which are regarded as successful in proportion to the size of the audience. The albino deerskins, ornaments of woodpecker scalps, furs, and great blades of flint and obsidian which are carried in these dances, constitute the treasures of these tribes. The dances are the best opportunity of the rich men to produce their heirlooms before the public and in that way signalize the honor of ownership—which is one of the things dearest in life to the Northwest Californian.

Another feature of these Northwestern dances which marks them off from the Central and Southern ones is the fact that they can only be held in certain spots. A Kuksu dance is rightly made indoors, but any properly built dance house will answer for its performance. A Yurok or Hupa however would consider it fundamentally wrong to make a Deerskin Dance other than on the accepted spot where his great-grandfather had always seen it. The reason for this attachment to the spot seems to be his conviction that the most essential part of the dance is a secret, magical rite enacted only in the specified place because the formula recited as its nucleus mentions that spot.

In the Northwest we again seem to be able to recognize, as in the Central and Southern regions, an increasing contraction of area for each successively developed ritual. Whereas the First-salmon Rite of the Second Period covers the whole northern third of California and parts of Oregon, the Wealth-display dances and World-renewing rites of the Third and Fourth Periods occur only in Northwestern California. The Jumping Dance was performed at a dozen or more villages, the slightly more splendid Deerskin Dance only in eight (Fig. 32). This suggests that the Jumping Dance is the earlier, possibly going back to the Third Period, whereas the Deerskin Dance more probably originated during the Fourth.

162. Summary of Religious Development

The history of religious cults among the Indians of California seems thus to be reconstructible, with some probability of correctness in its essential outlines, as a progressive differentiation during four fairly distinct periods. During these four eras, the most typical cults gradually changed from a personal to a communal aim, ceremonies grew more numerous as well as more elaborate, influences from the outside affected the tribes within California, and local differences increased until the original rather close uniformity had been replaced by four quite distinct systems of cults, separated in most cases by transitional areas in which the less specialized developments of the earlier stages have been preserved. This history may be expressed in visual form, as on page 314.