ich they
claim were attended by all the Washo, were held between 1880 and 1900.
Most Washo agree that these large meetings were the way "they did it in
the old days." However, "the old days" appear not to be aboriginal but the
late nineteenth century, when the Washo experienced a brief period of
semi-unity and prosperity.

Rupert, the psychologically oriented shaman comments, "Hell, them northern
Washo didn't come down to Double Springs very much. They got their pine
nuts southeast of Reno. Captain Jim he was only a big man to them Carson
Valley Washo. He didn't have nothing to say to the northern bunch."

Despite this, it seems clear that during the last part of the nineteenth
century large numbers of Washo from the various areas did, in fact, gather
at Double Springs prior to the pine nutting. It seems equally clear that
this was distinctly a postwhite phenomenon and that in aboriginal times
such gatherings were much smaller.

The essential elements of these pine-nut ceremonies are clear. There was a
gathering of a number of bands, usually at the prompting of a dreamer who
knew certain prayers and songs which would insure a successful harvest.
There was a sharing of food among the celebrants, as well as dancing and
ceremonial bathing. Such affairs were held in Sierra Valley and at Double
Springs and probably at a number of other places in the pine-nut hills.

The large celebrations at Double Springs appear to have taken on a
distinctly nativistic or revitalistic cast. Informants remember Captain
Jim's exhortations to abstain from white man's whiskey, to treat each
other as brothers and sisters, to eat Indian food, and to apply themselves
to the business of hunting and gathering. He himself refused to wear new
white clothing but accepted only used garments. It was during this period
that Washo received individual pine-nut allotments based on their
traditional picking grounds.

Mooney (1896), whose information on the Washo was filtered through the
Paiute, reports the Washo during this period as a shattered remnant of a
former society eking out an existence in the dump heaps of white
settlements in Nevada. The fact that the Washo did not respond to the
Ghost Dance seems in his mind to support his notions about the condition
of the tribe. However, among older informants this period is invariably
recalled as an almost golden age. Although the implications of movements
such as the Ghost Dance were not clear in Mooney's