a couple at a dance. Ceremonial gatherings, such as the
pine-nut dances and the girls' dances were important in the selection of
marriage partners, inasmuch as boys and girls came together at these
gatherings to engage in flirtation, affairs, and courtship. Dreamers at
the "big times" are reported by informants to have exhorted married
couples to be good to each other and not fight (see also Lowie 1939, p.
303).

Death (2389-2453)

No amount of social dislocation or cultural impact alters the constant
fact of death. Each generation faces this inevitability. It is less than
surprising then that changes in attitudes and rituals surrounding death
among the Washo have changed very slowly. The only changes which appear to
have developed in Washo death customs are those imposed by direct
intervention of the whites or as unavoidable consequences of changes in
other aspects of the culture.

In the past, when a person died the house in which he expired was
abandoned by his family. Of course, if the death occurred in the spring or
summer such abandonment was simple; during these seasons the Washo usually
lived in simple brush shelters. A winter death was a more serious matter;
it was during this season that the Washo lived in the gal'sdanl--a
structure made to last through the winter and until the next winter, when
it was reoccupied. Valley Washo often made these winter homes of brush or
tules. In the foothills and mountains, bark slabs and tree limbs were
utilized. If an occupant died, this home must be abandoned and was often
burned down, and the immediate family moved to another campsite. Thus a
family which suffered no deaths during the winters might spend several
years in a single campground, whereas a less fortunate family might have
to move every winter, or even oftener than that.

A few Washo began building simple rectangular board and batten houses in
the 1890's. Most of the others continued to live in gal'sdan?l made of
boards and scrap, begged, stolen, or purchased from the lumber mills which
were quite numerous in the area at the beginning of the century. In the
1920's, when most of the Washo moved into the "colonies" established for
them by the government, the native-style houses were abandoned in favor of
the wooden homes built by the government. No longer permitted to move
about the country at will, and frankly unwilling to abandon the more
comfortable white-style houses, the Washo adjusted their death