and Prayer Seats
on Modern Klamath and Modoc Religion and World View – Patrick Haynal (2000)
(Sort of in response to the Secret Landscapes post: Moon HillCorner - and the desecration of the site...)
(Sort of in response to the Secret Landscapes post: Moon HillCorner - and the desecration of the site...)
(With photos by the kind permission of Alyssa Alexandria)
“TRADITIONALLY, ethnographers have been brief in
their discussions of the ritual importance of rock cairns to the Klamath/Modoc
(e.g., Gatschet 1890; Spier 1930; Ray 1963; Stern 1966), and prayer seats
receive no direct mention at all. This article focuses on determining the
importance of these two categories of sacred sites to the practice of modern
Klamath and Modoc (hereafter Klamath/Modoc) religion and the shaping of their
contemporary world view.' To accomplish this, interviews were conducted with
several Klamath/Modoc individuals selected from a list approved by the Klamath
tribes. Rock cairns and prayer seats and their relationship to various rituals
and practices, such as the power/vision quest and funerary rites, are integral
features of the Klamath/Modoc sacred cultural landscape...For the purposes of
this article, rock cairns are defined as any stacked rock feature…Cairns come
in two general physical forms: the stacked rock column, constructed by placing
one rock directly atop another in sequence to varying heights; and the conical
cairn that has a variable number of rocks forming the base and there after
built up with additional rocks until a conical (or mound like) shape is
achieved. Occasionally linear “s” shaped or “wall-like” rock features were
constructed as well…
...Loubser and Whitley (1999) interpreted rock art
from eight sites in the Lava Beds National Monument as having several
religious connections, including vision questing (by both shamans and
nonshamans), mythic associations, hunting magic and other ritual
specializations, and mortuary associations. They reached their
conclusions by careful application of the ethnographic record and
recently obtained data on the manner in which the brain processes and
recalls visions received during a hallucinatory state (Loubser and
Whitley 1999; also see Whitley 1998). If rock art is associated with the
power quest, what is the spatial association between rock art and
cairns?
(2 images added 12/02/2021):
The land that formed Klamath territory was believed
to have been brought forth solely for the Klamath by the creator and culture
hero, Gmo 'kam 'c. Two Klamath tribal members (Priscilla Bettles and
Karen Ray) explained that the land and the people are a part of each other and were
created to care for and nurture one another (Haynal 1994:317). The Modoc had a
similar spiritual bond with the land. In fact, the two tribes recognized the
spiritual and sacred nature of each other's lands (Curtin 1912:vi). Obtaining power
from the spirits located throughout the landscape was a key aspect of
Klamath/Modoc traditional religion. Virtually every unique rock feature,
mountain, cave, body of water, meadow, or any other distinct location within
the land had a spirit and everything with a spirit had power. The animals of
the land had power as well. From the Klamath perspective, all the cosmos, both animate
and inanimate, was alive and everything alive had both spirit and power.
Even a
single rock had power. A rock from Mt. Shasta carried a portion of the great
power of the mountain itself (Spier 1930; Ray 1963)…Interviewee 3, a young
Klamath man in his twenties, explained that [a] rock cairn is basically the
same thing as a church, people go there to pray, men go there for puberty to
put on vision quests, it's just a very spiritual place.
Interviewee 4 made a similar comment about rock
cairns, stating: To me those cairns are no different than a church. We know how
our people would go on a vision quest or power quest and be up all night long
building the cairn as a method of prayer.”
(Below is the detail of the "pain basket" in the bottom center of the photo above)
Interviewee 6 also described the cairns as sacred
altars: “When our people went out to seek God…seeking the truth, seeking power,
seeking direction, seeking guidance . . . whenever they went there and received
an answer or confirmation or received a power . . . they built an altar saying
"this is where the Creator spoke to me" and this is now sacred.”
In noting the power of cairns, Interviewee 6 added
that [t]he thing about cairns is, if you knock them over or if people destroy
them with malicious intent . . . somehow the spirit of the place or of this
person who put it there could come back on you…”
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