customs.
The most common adjustment was to prepare for an impending death by
shifting seriously ill persons into an adjoining structure, often a shack
built in the native manner or a shed or lean-to. This structure could be
burned down without loss when its inhabitant died.(7)

The Washo viewed this destruction of a house occupied by a dead person as
simply preventing his spirit from bothering the living.

Most Washo death customs display a conscious attempt to avoid association
with the dead. Barrett reports that cremation was practiced, and the bones
placed in a stream to prevent their desecration. However, this appears to
have been only one of the disposal customs and is not well remembered by
Washo living today. The burning or burying of the personal possessions of
the dead was common. Certain prized possessions were interred with the
body, which was usually wrapped in a shroud of matting, deerskin, or
bearhide and placed in a fissure or cave in the mountains. Although there
are a number of locations known by both Indians and local whites as old
burying grounds, all my informants agreed that in the "real old days"
there was no special cemetery and that these burial spots have developed
since the coming of the white man. This may well have been as a result of
direct white interference with native funeral customs and an insistence
that Indians concentrate their burials. Some of these sites have become
traditional among the Washo.

The dispute between the widow and the sister mentioned earlier was an
argument as to whether the deceased would be buried in one of these sites
or in the cemetery at Stewart, Nevada.

A white man who has lived in the area for ninety years, reported that as a
boy he often came across caches of belongings of dead Indians in the
mountains. Today, prized possessions are either crowded into the casket
with the body or burned or secreted in some remote area of the Sierra.

Funeral ceremonies were apparently simple. The body was wrapped and
carried into the hills to be interred. Prayers in the form of a short
speech were directed toward the dead. "We are burying you because you are
dead. It's not because we are mad at you or don't like you. But you are
dead. Please don't come back and bother us."

Widows traditionally cut their hair in mourning, a custom which is still
practiced. Stewart reports that mourners painted their faces black. My
informants denied this, but one elaborated: "I remember