Religion and Social Practices

The natives’ religious beliefs shaped their social practices. Considerable variation existed in both matters, rendering generalization difficult. Still, some commonalities can be identified as long as important qualifications and exceptions are noted.

Most California Indians believed in the existence of a hierarchical universe comprised of three interrelated worlds, or in a variation of this view. An upper world was inhabited by quasi-human and animal-like beings in the form of the Sun, Moon, and constellations. A second or middle world contained humans, their environment, and non-mortal beings. A third or underworld was home to reptilian and amphibious spirits harmful to people. In short, to natives, spirits were everywhere, punishing or rewarding humans depending on how faithfully they followed their religion.

The religions of the California Indians were ecologically based. A core principle ran through virtually all of their spiritual beliefs: The earth and all life on it comprised a sacred, interdependent whole of which humans were but one part among all the other coequal parts. Instead of being separate from the environment and above other species, humans - in order to survive - must reverence their connection to the Earth and care for it. This is not to say that California’s Indians always practiced environmental stewardship, for in fact they at times over-hunted and over-fished. The important point is that they learned from their mistakes, as survival was a grim teacher.

Caring for the Earth would assuredly address the needs of generations to come, but Indian seers also believed that in the distant future the universe would be depleted of life-sustaining energy and that nature’s bounty would eventually give out. Such a religion-inspired cosmology is consistent with the modern notion of entropy, of considerable interest to physicists who foresee a similar ending of the Cosmos.

Other beliefs also reflected the importance of the natural world in Native Californian religions. Indians, for example, differed on whether there was one god or many. Most groups believed in the existence of many deities or spirits that were to be found in animals, places, streams, trees, natural processes, and landforms. The spirits would punish wasting and hoarding, that is, behaviors that upset the ecological balance and threatened life. Being on good terms with the spirit world, then, was required for the maintenance of a stable, predictable environment.

Rituals aimed at conciliating the spirits followed from these and related beliefs. Ceremonies marked the year’s first salmon catches and acorn harvests. Though tribelets differed in the ways they conducted ceremonies, indigenous rites in and beyond Indian California focused largely on the major stages of the human life span: birth, puberty, marriage, sex, childbearing, sickness, and death.

Coming-of-age or puberty ceremonies were held for both sexes, though such rites were generally more involved for girls than for boys. For girls on the cusp of womanhood a lengthy dance was usually performed. Many northern California native groups believed that a female’s potential for evil greatly intensified when going through puberty. Accordingly, elders gave pubescent girls detailed rules for gathering firewood and performing other chores as well as for comporting themselves with modesty. In the southern parts of California tribelets applied direct means to counter the supposed consequences of the physiological changes associated with blossoming womanhood. Warmth was thought essential in this process. Adolescent females were not allowed to drink cold water and bathing had to occur only in heated water. Among the Gabrielino and Luiseno peoples girls being initiated were placed in a warm pit simulating roasting in an earthen oven. In this instance the elders saw themselves as providing for the girls’ future health rather than combating any presumed evil tendencies.

Initiation rites for males often included the infliction of pain and suffering, such as being whipped by a bow string and fasting. Such were the ways of the Achomawi and Shasta natives in the northeastern corner of California. Additionally, the Achomawi pierced young men’s ears. Completion of these rites gained males (and in some locales females) membership into California’s two major religious cults, the Kuksu and the toloache. The former cult impersonated spirits by using distinctive disguises in their rituals. The latter cult used jimsonweed (Datura stramonium), a narcotic, to induce sacred trances.

For young initiated natives - indeed for virtually all North American Indians - shamanism, the belief that priests have powers drawn from the spirit world that among other things cause and cure diseases, was a central component of religion. Sickness was thought to result from foreign objects that had lodged in one’s body. Shamanistic cures, therefore, involved the removal of any such objects, usually by sucking, accompanied among the Colorado River tribes by blowing tobacco smoke on the injured body area. Throughout California singing and dancing were often integral to the curing process as well. A shaman’s presumed power to produce diseases at times led to inter-tribal war, especially in cases where rival groups attributed a disease to a shamanistic curse imposed by their foes. As can be seen from the fact that priests in the northwestern areas usually were women, shamanistic customs varied throughout Indian California.

As mentioned, Indian social practices derived largely from religion. This was partially true with respect to war. Connections between religion and social practices are also evident in matters of class and wealth distribution, gender roles, and marriage.

Regarding war, California natives engaged in occasional violent conflicts but overall were comparatively peaceful, except for the Mojave and Yuma groups, as noted. In addition to charges of being victimized by the casting of shamanistic curses, other causes of war included poaching game, boundary intrusions, and the capturing of women. The Chumash are reported to have gone to war over insults directed at their chiefs. Though gruesome, hostilities usually did not last long. The weapons of choice included bows and arrows, war clubs, stones, and slings. The Yuma, Mojave, and Diegueno were the only tribes to use shields - usually constructed of unornamented animal hides. Generally, prisoners were not taken. Men seized in battle were summarily killed and decapitated; women and children were slaughtered, though females sometimes were taken as captives. With the exception of warring northwestern Shasta, and Wintun groups, victorious tribes commonly took scalps.

A consideration of Indian wealth, its importance, and its distribution illustrates the importance of looking beyond California’s physical borders when attempting to understand its past. Significantly, the Indians of northern California were culturally linked to the aboriginals of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest (Oregon and Washington), who attached great importance to wealth and the social status it represented. Northern Indians with the most property controlled rituals. For them, religion and socio-economic status were closely linked. In northwestern California, Indians enslaved one another for unpaid debts. Servitude existed nowhere else in the province during the pre-contact period. Throughout much the rest of California, Indians showed relatively little interest in property acquisition and class distinctions.

Gender roles throughout California, on the other hand, tended to be more clearly defined than class distinctions and, again, had a religious dimension. Females raised the children, assisted with births, and made family clothing. As mentioned, they gathered, processed, and cooked foods, and constructed granaries. Mothers transmitted knowledge, both practical and folkloric, to their children. They weaved baskets, danced, and sang. Among the Chumash, with their highly advanced hunter-gatherer culture, matrons often ruled villages; in more northern areas, as shown, females served as priests. Men hunted, fished, fought, gambled, controlled most of the property, and wielded the bulk of political and religious authority.

California natives viewed the family as society’s most important institution, and marriage lay at the heart of it. Bride-purchase was practiced widely, except for groups east of the Sierra and along the Colorado River. Sometimes marriages involved religious rites; in other instances tribelets recognized a couple as being married if the two had lived together for a length of time. Divorce was rare but possible. Husbands often had more than one wife; this was particularly true for chiefs and shamans, who valued the multiple political ties afforded by polygamy. Among some tribelets, if a wife was unfaithful the husband could claim the wife of his wife’s lover. Prostitution was practically unknown.

Usually the lineage (a large, extended family of blood relatives and in-laws) was traced through the man’s ancestry. Lineages, far more than tribal affiliations, marked a person’s identity and exerted authority over individuals.

Pacific Profile: Anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber

When the last survivor of the Yani tribe emerged starving and near-naked in the northern California town of Oroville in 1911, the so-called “savage” ended up in jail. California’s leading anthropologist, Alfred L. Kroeber, on hearing about the capture, telegraphed the arresting sheriff in clipped language: “Hold Indian till arrival professor State University who will take charge and be responsible for him. Matter important account aboriginal history.” Given custody of reportedly the last Stone Age Indian in America, Kroeber named his new ward “Ishi” - meaning “man” in the Yahi subgroup dialect of the virtually extinct Yani tribe. Subsequently, the anthropologist and the Indian formed a short-term working relationship that made possible the recovery of the language and culture of an indigenous people who otherwise would have vanished through the cracks of California history. Lacking immunity to whites’ diseases, Ishi lived for a little less than five years after being brought to the University of California at Berkeley for study. Saddened and depressed by Ishi’s death in 1916, Kroeber sought psychoanalysis for a while before returning to his research in cultural anthropology. Theodora Kroeber, the anthropologist’s second wife (his first having died of tuberculosis in 1913), told the Indian’s story and described her husband’s relationship with him in Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America (1961).

Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876-1960) was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, and grew up in New York City. As a Columbia University graduate student he studied Eskimo languages and the cultures of several Californian tribes - the Yurok, Yokut, and Mojave. While finishing his studies, Kroeber secured a job as curator

Of the anthropological collections at the small California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Shortly after receiving in 1901 the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia, the young scholar accepted a teaching position in the University of California at Berkeley’s newly established anthropology department.

In addition to teaching dozens of graduate students, some of whom became leading anthropologists, Kroeber poured himself into travel research and publications on indigenous cultures in California, Mexico, and Peru. His massive Handbook of the Indians of California (1925), an anthology of writings, secured his reputation as the preeminent authority on the subject matter. During World War II the U. S. government commissioned him to teach an Army Specialized Training Program at Berkeley in Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese languages to select military personnel who would accompany American invasion forces in Asia. A heart attack forced Kroeber to carry out this task only in an advisory capacity.

Toward the end of his lengthy career, Kroeber became a venerated generalist, devoting himself to studying the diffusion of culture based on his findings regarding California’s aborigines. One major product of this shift was his 1923 publication of the first textbook in his field, titled Anthropology. The work, updated in 1948, is noted for its position that there is no objective evidence indicating the inferiority of any racial group. This view stood in opposition to earlier and popular EuroAmerican pronouncements about the supposed inferiority of the California Indians. He died in 1960, revered for his work on the indigenous peoples of the Golden State and parts of the Pacific Rim.