the ritualized aspects of rabbit driving is not
complete, however, and many Washo prefer to hunt with a certain man who
lives in the Indian colony at Carson City. While no one will openly claim
that he has supernatural power, it seems clear that his presence is
important to other Indians. His role is that of leader or captain who
superintends the order and discipline of the line of hunters who today
sweep a wide area, armed with shotguns. D'Azevedo, who was fortunate
enough to take part in a hunt in 1955, states that prior to the hunt this
man withdrew from the group. When he asked what the leader was doing he
met evasion, and he concluded that perhaps the man was praying. In the
period covered by the memory of my oldest informants, dances were often
staged nightly during the rabbit drives. The dancing is invariably
described as "just for fun" and probably was more social than religious,
but such dancing appears to have been part of other ceremonial or
semiceremonial occasions such as the girls' dances, first-fish ceremonies
and the pine-nut dances. It seems clear that whatever tendency there was
to shift the ritualized aspects of antelope hunting to rabbit drives has
been stemmed by a growing dependence of the Washo on wage labor which
precludes their response to dream-inspired hunts.

_Bear_ (298, 2558-2561).--Bear hunting appears never to have been a
subsistence activity among the Washo. Many informants stoutly deny that
bear meat was ever eaten, although bear were hunted. No Washo ever gave a
direct answer to the question of why they hunted bear if they didn't eat
the meat. Others stated that the bear might be eaten in extreme starvation
conditions but was never eaten regularly.

On the other hand, almost all Washo men were able to describe in detail
the method of hunting and they obviously enjoyed telling bear-hunting
stories. The following story told to me by one of the eldest men in
Dresslerville, who claims it was told to him by a very old man, is
consistent with the stories told by other informants.

"There was hardly any Washo who kill bear. But I know this much
... the man who went in there and did it tells me ... bears have
their own home in the rocks ... a hole going in the rocks. Go in
there naked with a knife or arrow in one hand and burning pitch in
other ... light scares him out [the bear], then other men shoot
the bear in the mouth with poison arrow [see deer hunting for