o
get them stones in one place. Then I went to the hospital and they
operated and got out the biggest gallstone they ever saw. It would
hardly go in a fruit jar. I told that Peyote that the job was too
big for it all alone that it should just help them white doctors
and get all them stones in one place."

Another informant, mentioned earlier as a peyote chief with special curing
power, recounts the events leading up to the death of his former wife of
cancer of the kidneys.

"Yeah I had a couple of meetings for Onie. I helped her too.
Except she would not do the things I told her to do. I made that
cancer move around from her back where it hurt a lot. I got it
around in front where it didn't hurt her so much. But she wouldn't
keep doing the things I told her to do."

These two incidents reveal traditional attitudes transferred into a new
framework of curing. In the first place, illness is a corporeal object
which can be manipulated--moved and (if one's power is sufficient) removed.
Secondly, peyote is viewed as a manifestation of a spiritual power. The
informant with gallstones did not attend meetings to have his ailment
cured; rather, he used water and tobacco, traditional adjuncts to
shamanistic curing. Moreover he did not take peyote for his illness; he
simply prayed to Peyote in a manner very similar to praying to a spirit
guardian for assistance.

Other shadows of the shamanistic past seem to lie heavily on the minds of
modern Washo peyotists. In his discussion of peyotism, d'Azevedo (1957,
pp. 624-626) describes in some detail the attitudes about the assistance
or interference that one peyote singer or drummer may receive from
another. The statements of his informants, although couched in different
terms, are reminiscent of many I heard dealing with competitions between
shamans.

For several years peyotists were a powerful factor in the tribal council,
and they were not loath to play upon the connection between peyote and
poison parsnips in the minds of their cotribalists. The peyote button is
considered to be a powerful agent and as such potentially dangerous.
Therefore a man who could deal with this agent, just like a shaman who
could eat the poison parsnip with impunity, was a man to be listened to
and followed.

Despite a belief in and a dependence on shamanistic curing or its
latter-day counterpart, the peyote curing session, most Washo are willing
patients