The Numu are camped in a village on a bench above the Deschutes River, near the mouth of a small creek. Tall tufa cliffs shadow it from the afternoon sun. A dozen wikiups, brush covered willow frame shelters, are loosely arranged around a central area mostly cleared of brush and stones. Near the center of the village stands a willow frame supporting a sparse roof of sage brush.
This is not the first time that the band has used this site, but it is not occupied every year. The Numu do not build permanent structures nor do they maintain fixed towns or villages. They move about their territory in a constant search for food and shelter.
This village has been used from spring into the summer as the river flow generates a constant breeze that moderates summer temperatures. In this early spring camp it serves to hasten the drying of the salmon hanging on racks built along the river. Scattered among the wikiups are smaller structures, like baskets on stilts—shelters for the band’s supply of roots and pine nuts.
It is early on a clear frosty morning, the chief is already awake. A heavy frost coats the sagebrush as the first rays of sun light desert sky. He has climbed a trail to the plateau overlooking the village; he sits next to a rock on which his father had many years ago painted a power figure. He faces the rising sun watching the desert come awake, thinking, and planning. It’s nearly time for the people to move into the mountains. The spring salmon runs have thinned, the drying racks are full, and the mountain snows are melting. From here he can almost see mountain meadows colored with spring flowers; and he imagines their scent on the light breeze. But, it is up to him to balance the band’s desire for fresh food with the various dangers of life. Will enough camas be in bloom? Will there be deer and elk for the people to hunt, or will the animals and the people be scattered and harried by wolves and Grizzly bears?
His son is getting restless; he fears the elk will retreat into the higher forests before they get there. He says his children are pining for sweet salmonberry shoots. The thought of the “bear candy” brings a smile to his face. He remembers anticipating the yearly move into the mountains as a child—and thinks of the time he loaded a basket, borrowed from his mother, with the sweet treat and left it to be found by his future wife. He waited, concealed in the brush, the pounding of his heart announcing his presence to the world, until she came up the trail—then it seemed to stop. The look on her face when she recognized the basket and knew its implication was still clear in his mind. Yes, now it’s his responsibility to ensure that his grandchildren will have an experience like that.
His reverie is broken by movement below. A group of young men and boys are off to check their traps. He recognizes two of his grandsons among them. They will bring back the night’s take of ground squirrels and perhaps they will come on a bird or two. As they leave, the women are starting the fires and preparing to bathe. He nods to the snow cover peak, rises and stretches. Today he will ask his wives how long it will take them to prepare for the move; and he will ask the men to do the same.
By midmorning the men have returned. They have brought ground squirrels and rabbits, but no birds. They report the poor harvest to their wives with the thought that the land is telling them to move. It’s holding back the animals from their traps. They will sing tonight but the sentiment is that it’s time to move. The women skin the rabbits and place the meat with the whole ground squirrels into pit ovens to cook. After eating a breakfast of lomatium cakes and salmon the men move off to the sweat-house.
The sun has risen and by mid-afternoon it’s become a clear, warm, early spring day. In several places throughout the village smoke is rising from underground pit ovens where ground squirrels, rabbit meat, and roots are being roasted for the evening meal. People are clustered near the doors of the houses. Three men sit together twisting cordage and repairing a rabbit net. Not far off, a group of children are playing a game of Wolf and Deer. Here and there an older person is lying face down on a woven tule mat, napping in the warmth of the afternoon sun.
At the edge of the village a group of women sit together grinding lomatium roots. With mortars between their outstretched legs, they sway back and forth, raising the pestles and letting them fall again. The women are singing together, and the pestles rise and fall in unison. As heavy as the pestles are, they are lifted easily—not so much by muscular effort, but in the women’s minds, by the powerful rhythm of their songs. The singing of the women and the synchronized thumping of a dozen stone pestles create a familiar background noise—a noise that has been heard by the Numu people for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.
The women are dressed only in buckskin skirts. They are muscular, with rounded healthy features. They wear no shoes or at most sandals—neither do the men—and their feet are hardened from a lifetime of barefoot walking. They are wearing necklaces strung with abalone and olivella shell beads, pine nuts, and feathers. The necklaces jingle pleasantly as the women pound the roots into meal. Not far away, children are playing with clay toys or spinning wood roarers over their heads. Several of the women have babies by their sides, bound tightly into cradles woven from willow and lovingly decorated with beads and shells.
As the women pause in their work, they talk, complain, and laugh among themselves. It is the beginning of spring now, and everyone is yearning to leave the river and head into the mountains. The wikiups seem confining and all are eager to desert them. The snow should have cleared from the salmonberry shoots, and spring greens; the long-awaited camas must be blooming in the meadows. The mountains call.
Everyone is waiting for the chief to decide to move. A few days before, he had talked of the situation. As always, anyone was free to go to the mountains, but his family would stay on the river a bit longer. Here the occasional salmon is still being caught, the winter stores of roots, pine nuts, and dried meat are still plentiful. In the hills there would be camas bulbs and salmonberry shoots, beyond doubt; but the snows are still deep on the land and there are likely to be very few. Gathering them in sufficient numbers to feed the entire band would spread the people far and wide; too far to protect each other.
There are sure to be surly, newly awoken Grizzlies prowling about. And a woman could be carried off by their northern neighbors, or a man attacked and beheaded without the others being aware. Sure, there had been no problems with them for several years. But this winter many people had fallen ill—some had even died. Where did the illness come from? Might it not be the people to the north were working evil against them?
The women grinding roots talk about the chief’s speech, and on this warm spring afternoon they laugh at the old men. They want to avoid trouble with the neighboring groups, and that is good. But hadn’t the northerners been peaceful for years now? They had even been peaceful, if not exactly friendly, during the gathering at the falls last summer. And her friend has said that her husband wants to eat fresh elk, so he may take his family and leave soon—that would make her sad.
Also, the hills do indeed have enough camas, greens, elk, and deer—the people would not have to spread out far and wide. Just look at the color on the mountains! The snows are plenty high enough. The birds too have begun to sing their spring songs in the willows along the creek. It is time to leave. The old men are too cautious, too suspicious. Still, no one leave for the hills yet. But they have started to prepare. Perhaps in another day or two the men will catch up to them.
On a warm day like this, almost all village activity takes place outdoors, for the houses are rather small. Of relatively simple design (they are made by fastening bunches of tule and sagebrush onto a framework of bent willow poles), they range in size from six to twelve feet. The larger dwellings hold one or two families—as many as twelve people—and each house is crowded with possessions. Blankets woven from rabbit skins, cooking and storage baskets lie strewn about the fire pit. Hamper baskets in which pine nuts, dried berries, roots, dried meat, and dried fish are stored stand against the smoke darkened walls. Winnowing, serving, sifting, and cooking baskets, along with unfinished baskets in various stages of completion are stacked near the entrance way. Tucked into the rafters are bundles of basket-making material, dried rabbit skin ropes, and deer-skin pouches full of ornaments and tools: sets of awls, bone scrapers, file stones, obsidian knives, and twist drills. Many of the houses also contain decoys made from duck skins stretched over a tule form, piles of fishing nets, fish traps, snares, clay balls ready to be made into paint, and bundles of dogbane waiting to be made into cordage.
While all of the houses are similar in construction, they are not identical. One of them set off to the side of the village near the creek is larger than the others and dug into the earth. It has a tiny door—one would have to crawl on all fours to enter—and it is decorated with a pole from which hang feathers and a strip of rabbit skin. Its walls are plastered with mud and the door is an old, well smoked hide. This is the sweat-house. A number of adolescent boys are lingering around its door, listening to the rhythmic sounds of a split-stick clapper coming from within. The men inside are singing and sweating, preparing themselves and their weapons for the next day’s hunt.
As the afternoon wears on, a group of boys return to the village. They are carrying snares, throwing sticks, bows and arrows, and pieces of firewood. They run to the women grinding the acorns and show what they have caught: rabbits, a ground squirrel, and a few small birds. The smallest boy among them, no more than about four years old, is particularly delighted. He has caught his first animal—a mouse! There is no laughter among the women—just great praise.
“How fat it looks”, says the mother matter-of-factly, hiding her pride lest the other women think her boastful. After removing its hair by rolling it in hot coals, she will roast the mouse whole in a pit oven; it will provide about two good bites. But the food value is not nearly as important as the fact that her child is becoming a hunter. Indeed, she feels that she has done well by him. When she was pregnant she followed all the right taboos. She ate neither meat nor fish. She bathed him in cold water when he was born, and tied his umbilical cord to a very tall juniper tree with a string made from strands of her own hair. When he was still a baby she fed him quail eggs to make him fast on his feet. She nursed him for two full years during which time she made love to no one, lest it sour her milk.
Now he is growing up and becoming a hunter. Perhaps it is Quail who is helping him. Quail is a good helper for a little boy, she thinks. Later on, when he reaches manhood, he will seek others. She wonders who they will be. Preferably not Coyote, who is not very reliable, to say the least—one has to be a wise and powerful person to deal with a helper like that. She hopes that he will seek more stable helpers. Mountain lion would be excellent for a hunter. Badger, too. She is partial to Badger, and she hopes that her son will one day have badger dreams. Badger was one of her father’s helpers, and major family totem, and…
But no sooner does that thought enter her mind than she shuts it out. Her father is dead. Along with her mother she had singed her hair, blackened her face, and mourned him for a full year. Now she must never mention his name lest his spirit return and snatch the breath from a loved one. She must try not to think about him. He is dead.
A ripple of laughter among the other women brings her back. They are laughing and their eyes are dancing. “It feels lucky tonight. Let’s gamble”
Tonight they will gamble. They will sing their gambling songs and court fortune. The woman is glad this is not the time of her period, for then she would have to stay away from other people lest she ruin their luck.
“I’ll get that necklace tonight,” one of the women yells, pointing at another’s necklace of shells and eagle down. “I’ll win it yet; won’t it look fine on me?” Everyone laughs. The grinding song resumes, and the mother continues pounding.
Toward the end of the afternoon more and more people drift back to the village. A group of women, children, and old men return from down river. Everyone is carrying a digging stick and the women are carrying on their back baskets of roots and fish. The large conical baskets are supported from their heads by tumplines; straps woven from dogbane and looped around the basket.
Suddenly all eyes turn towards an old woman making her way into the village. Where has she been all day? Perhaps she has been out collecting power plants, singing her songs in sacred places, communicating with spirit world helpers, or visiting a secret hiding place where she keeps her medicine bundle. No one asks. The women watch her carefully and greet her politely. She is a Spirit Doctor; a Shaman.
So far everyone agrees that the Shaman has been above reproach. She has accumulated much power and cured many people. Indeed, she has danced for hours at a time, and with her hollow tube has sucked out of their bodies many malignant objects: lizards, inchworms, bits of deer bone, and pieces of quartz—hideous things, all sent to them by their enemies. But one always has to watch Shamans, for sometimes they turn evil. They learn to communicate with Owls, they take on the character of Bears. The people they touch begin to die. When that happens, it may be necessary for the people of the village to kill the Shaman. However, this is a difficult and serious business—especially if the Shaman has many supernatural helpers or is a close friend of the chief.
The women have finished grinding. They pile fresh wood onto the outdoor cooking fires, and begin to cook the evening meal. The pit ovens which they started in the morning are dug up and the steaming contents added to the feast.
The men have finished sweating and dancing, and now they come from the direction of the sweat-house. The have scraped their bodies clean with curved deer ribs, and they have bathed in the river’s clear cold water.
As they come forward some pointedly refuse any meat. Everyone knows that these are the ones who will go hunting the next day. Tonight they will eat only roots and dried pine nuts and they will spend the entire night in the sweat house. The next day if their dreams are favorable, they will go out to seek the deer. The women however say nothing. A woman must never talk to a man about deer hunting. To say anything at all would bring bad luck to the hunter, and perhaps illness or death to the woman.
The villagers eat in groups around the various houses. Then meals are noisy, full of jokes and good humor. People exchange stories of the day’s activities. A lazy woman who has ground her root badly and an inept fisherman who has not caught any fish are teased by everyone—as they have been teased many times before. The people dip the bland food from their bowls with their fingers.
As darkness falls, infants and toddlers crawl in among the rabbit-skin blankets to sleep. Others wear their blankets as capes against the evening chill. The older children gather around their grandfathers and grandmothers, hoping for a story.
Suddenly, a scream breaks through the night sounds. Everyone looks up, just in time to see a coyote race from a wikiup with a piece of dried fish in its mouth. The dog is swiftly pursued by a furious woman waving a digging stick. One of the old men laughs. Coyote is like that, yes indeed, Coyote is like that. And the old man tells once again the hilarious exploits of Coyote during the creation of the world.
As he tells the story, the sound of chanting rises from the far end of the village. The women have begun to gamble. They sit in two teams, on either side of a fire, facing each other. There are four women to a team. One team is led by an attractive, imperious young woman, perhaps eighteen years old and taller than the rest. She tosses her head to the rhythm of the chant and bounces lightly on her haunches to the music. The other women on her team are enjoying her animated antics as the all chant their favorite team song. The women range in age from and eight year old girl who shows promise to a white-haired woman known for her great skill and luck.
While the other team sits silently and watches, the four women sing intensely. They are smiling and laughing, because tonight they are powerful!
Each leader rattles her dice, eight pieces of carefully split and smoothed willow, one side of which was painted red. Who will it be? The young girl looks especially strong and lucky. The leader hands her the dice. The girl jiggles them a bit, chanting softly. She watches the leader of the other side, and then deftly bounces the dice off her knee just as if she had done this for many years. The young girl’s dice have shown six natural sides. Everyone on both teams laughs and applauds. The leader of the other team tosses her dice; two natural. The girl is marvelous, yes, marvelous! Time after time throughout the evening she tosses the winning throw. Someday, everyone acknowledges, she will be one of the truly great gamblers.
A pause in the women’s chanting allows the sounds of another chant to be heard. It is low and rhythmic, accompanied by the sound of the split-stick clapper. The men have returned to the sweat house. They are singing their deer hunting songs. Some are dancing. Tonight they will tell hunting stories, smoke tobacco, and perhaps dream the right dreams. If the dreams are favorable, tomorrow they will light fires in the sweat-house again, sweat some more, paint their bodies, and go out to hunt.
The older people of the village smile. Perhaps tomorrow there will be fresh deer meat. That is good, very good. Everyone will get some. But more than that, if the men head out into the hills they will bring back news about the lomatium. Perhaps the chief will give word to move into the hills where people can delight in the wonderfully sweet shoots of newly sprouted salmonberry, and where they can taste again the roasted bulbs of camas. The people feel glad inside just thinking about it. It is the end of winter, and soon they will move into the mountains.