certain families.
The informant who gave the foregoing account was himself the son of a
woman curer and a famous doctor and the nephew of another doctor. From his
childhood he was familiar with the procedures of curing, with stories
about dreams, spirit visitations, trips to the afterworld, mysterious and
sacred locations. He somewhat proudly admitted that as a boy he "used to
shake that rattle" himself. In short, until his shamanistic education was
interrupted by white man's schooling, he was a shaman's apprentice.

This view is supported by the statements of other informants: "Of course
them people that is from a doctor family, they have dreams and get curing
power," said one rather assimilated woman of about seventy-five. Another
informant, a man of sixty, who repeatedly indicated his fear of "power"
but at the same time was reputed to be an important curer in the peyote
church said: "If you come from a family of dreamers there ain't nothing
you can do. You're trapped by it."

Young shamans appear to have undergone a period of informal apprenticeship
under an older doctor. Although there appears to have been no special
requirement that a shaman have an assistant, it was not uncommon for a
younger man to help out. According to one informant, when Blind Mike, one
of the well-known doctors in historic times, was becoming a doctor, his
teacher required him to smoke four hand-rolled cigarettes in a row without
allowing the smoke to escape from his lungs. This was not considered an
exercise in legerdemain but a way to develop the younger man's control
over his power.

Each doctor received instruction from his spirit familiar as to what
paraphernalia he should gather but there was a great deal of uniformity in
the outfits of Washo doctors. The following description is of the kit of
my informant's uncle, who practiced until the first decade of this
century, and it includes some items clearly postwhite in origin.

"I don't know what all doctors had but I'll tell you what my old
uncle had 'cause I seen it lots of times. [At this point another
Indian entered the house, obviously curious, and my informant
stopped talking until the visitor left.] He had eagle feathers and
magpie feathers. He had a rattle with six or eight cocoons on a
stick wrapped in weasel skin and humming bird feathers. He had a
tobacco pouch of tree-squirrel hide. He also had a stone. It
looked like a big tooth with a cav