What I Found under a Cairn of Stones

From:

Our wild Indians; thirty-three years' personal experience among the red men ...

http://books.google.com/books?id=ySTVAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22What%20I%20Found%20under%20a%20Cairn%20of%20Stones%22&pg=PA27#v=onepage&q=%22What%20I%20Found%20under%20a%20Cairn%20of%20Stones%22&f=false 
By Richard Irving Dodge

 "One day I crossed a fresh trail of Indians. On a hill a little distance off was planted a slight pole, ten or twelve feet high, to the top of which was fastened a streamer of white cotton cloth. Under a small cairn of stones at the foot of the pole was discovered a piece of skin carefully rolled and tied with a thong. On opening it I found a bundle of thirty-seven sticks tied together; a piece of cotton cloth on which were painted in colors some ten or twelve hieroglyphics; a small pouch containing tobacco, and another of corn. My interpreter, an old Mexican who had married and lived almost all his life among the Sioux, explained. The party which made the trail consisted of thirty seven warriors; the hieroglyphics were the totems or signatures of the chiefs and most prominent men (all reservation Indians), and the totem of the band of hostile Sioux to which they were going; the tobacco indicated that they were going to " smoke," that is, join their fortunes with the hostiles; corn indicated that they had, or expected to have plenty to eat, (an unusual thing with reservation Indians); the white streamer invited their friends to follow them; while the pole marked the place of deposit of their communication.

If, as is generally believed, these Indians could have expressed all these ideas by painting, there would have been no need for so many other symbols.

A vast deal of research and wisdom have been devoted to the elucidation of Indian hieroglyphics. Inscriptions on rocks and trees have been photographed, or carefully and minutely copied, and sent to various learned bodies for interpretation. The lucubrations of these sages, are, as a rule, exactly on a par with those of the Pickwick club, over the stone sent by its learned founder from Cobham.

  In common with all "the rest of mankind," the Indian dearly loves to see his name in a conspicuous place. Wherever, near a camping-place of favorite resort, is found a large stone, or mass of rock, favorably situated, it will, almost invariably, be covered with drawings. In nearly every case, these are merely the signatures, the almost universal expression of vanity, of the warriors; or are designs and sketches made by the young men and boys in wantonness, and with no more hidden significance than those which the white schoolboy in his moments of laziness or mischief draws on his slate, or on the newly whitewashed fence of his neighbor.

  While this is literally true of most of the isolated figures drawn on rocks and trees by different hands, generally believed to be, and spoken of by learned writers as symbolic, it must yet be understood that the Plains Indians, more than most others, use pictures to express action and situation. There is a broad line of demarcation between symbolism and pictography. The Plains Indian uses the former but little, and then only as an adjunct to the latter, enabling him to show in his picture something which is impossible to his limited knowledge of drawing and perspective. Almost every warrior makes a picture of each prominent event of his life, and many of them keep a book in which their acts are thus recorded. But his pictures are not symbolic. The fight or other act is depicted as nearly as possible as the Indian wishes it to be seen; himself the prominent figure in the foreground, dealing death, or otherwise performing the act. Their pictures of fights in which numbers are engaged, are simply the representation of individuals who were prominent either for courage or from being killed or wounded. In such pictures symbolism is used to make up the deficiencies of the draughtsman; thus a great many marks of horses' feet indicate that great numbers were engaged; many arrows or bullets represented in the air show that the fight was hotly contested.

  There is nothing in which white men differ more than in drawing. One draws exquisitely, another with equal opportunities, and equally as well educated in other respects, cannot draw at all. Not so with Indians; all draw, and though entirely without knowledge of perspective, all draw quite as well as, the average of whites. If one wants Indian pictures^ {here is no need to hunt a special artist. All he has to do is to give some paper and a few colored pencils to any middle-aged warrior. I have many such pictures, drawn by men of different tribes, all so essentially alike in character and execution, that they might have been drawn by the same hand."

http://books.google.com/books?id=ySTVAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA27&dq=%22What+I+Found+under+a+Cairn+of+Stones%22&output=text#c_top

More from the CT State Library

Frank Cogswell 1933 -

Dave's Comment & East Bay Walls of CA & a CT Link

Dave from Delaware left a comment to a post called Mt Wachusett bing mapped with some good instructions:
"Bing Maps does have a fantastic Bird's Eye" view of the "East Bay Walls" (aka the "Berkeley Mystery Walls"). These are extensive ancient stone walls identical in construction to Ron's rock lines, that run intermittenly along the mountain ridges that run from Berkeley all the way down to San Jose, just east of the San Francisco Bay waters.

To see them, just punch in "Misson Peak Regional Park" into the Bing Maps search function. Go to aerial maps and magnify. You will see a white building on the top of Mission Peak - it is a transmission tower. Start your search there and many walls and partial walls can easily be seen, some a few yards long, some miles long. For example look east of the tower about 4000 feet for a good example. Then go to Birds Eye and you will be quite pleased with the quality of the view. Astonishing."
I put a red circle around the tower in a screen capture.
And it is indeed astonishing to see the stones amid all those lines of sheep and cattle erosion, once you zero in on them.

Lately I've been referring people to the CT State Library Website and it's online collection of Connecticut Aerial Photos. You'll find that:
"In 1934 Connecticut became the first state to complete a statewide aerial survey. The State Library has several aerial surveys of the entire state, along with some partial surveys, and has put the 1934, 1938 (partial survey), and 1965 (in process) surveys online."

It's astonishing, to me anyway, to see all the stone rows that appear on these photos.
And to see how similar these rows are to the CA rows.
If perhaps you know of and are familiar enough to be able to locate an area of "mysterious stone walls" in Montville or Stonington or anywhere in CT, you might like to try to find the area at: http://cslib.cdmhost.com/custom/aerials.php.
You might be astonished too.

Familiar enough with my own property, I'll use it as an example:

Magnified View:

The big red rectangle is my house (circa 1700), yellow lines are existing features (rows of stone, including the fish weir in the river), and the various yellow shapes are mounds in my old chicken yard and, way to the left, a turtle petroform...

Stone Age hunting traps found deep in Great Lakes

  13:44 09 June 2009 by Catherine Brahic

§  For similar stories, visit the Human Evolution Topic Guide

“Nearly 10,000 years ago, 50 metres beneath the surface of what is now North America's Lake Huron, hunters set an ambush. Caribou were herded through stone corridors towards archers that lay waiting behind low parapets. No bones or drawings have been found to tell this ancient tale. Instead sonar mapping has given researchers detailed views of the lake floor, which flooded 8000 years ago, preserving a Pompeii-like snapshot of local human history…Another intriguing find was brought about by a lucky accident, says the team. While they were investigating the site with their remotely operated submarine, its trailing communications cable snagged on a stone. When taking the sub back to free the cable, the operators found that it was caught on another pile of rocks that were seemingly arranged by human hands. The feature consists of a flat rock standing vertically on top of a pile of other stones. Meadows says it resembles an inukshuk – a type of "sculpture" used by modern-day Inuit to signal that they have been in an area.”

Caption: Caribou drive lanes have been used in the Canadian Arctic for many hundreds of years.

 (Image: O’Shea et al./PNAS)

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17275-stone-age-hunting-traps-found-deep-in-great-lakes.html

§  Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0902785106)

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/06/09/at-the-bottom-of-lake-huron-an-ancient-hunting-ground/

Inferences Regarding Aboriginal Hunting Behavior

"Inferences Regarding Aboriginal Hunting Behavior in the Saline Valley, Inyo County, California"

Journal Issue:

Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, 2(1)

Author:

Brook, Richard A

Publication Date:

1980 Publication Info: Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, UC Merced Library, UC Merced

Permalink:

http://escholarship.org/uc/item/73k1t7jm

 Abstract: The documented use of stone "hunting blinds" behind which marksmen hid themselves "ventre a terre" (Baillie-Grohman 1884: 168) waiting for sheep to be driven along trails, can be found in the writings of a number of early historians (Baillie-Grohman 1884; Spears 1892; Muir 1901; Bailey 1940). Recent archaeological discoveries of rock features believed to be hunting blinds at the Upper Warm Springs (Fig. I) in Saline Valley, Inyo County, California, provide a basis to substantiate, build upon, and evaluate these observations and the ethnographic descriptions of hunting in the Great Basin (Steward 1933, 1938, 1941; Driver 1937; Voegelin 1938; Stewart 1941).

       ". . . curious structures . . . on the tops of round bald hills, a short distance to the northwest of the springs, being low walls of loose stones curved in the shape of a demilune, about ten feet in length and about three feet high . , . , There were twenty or thirty of them

     In another instance. Spears (1892:73) reported that prospectors watched the Indians construct these rock features with a great deal of apprehension. They jumped to the conclusion that the Indians were building forts to protect their mines of fabulous wealth and were preparing to attack the White travelers. Clearly, then, a good deal of lore and mystique surrounded the earliest accounts of these features.

John R. Spears, a reporter for the

"These sheep find their feed on the benches and gulches of the mountain side and, while eating, it is said, they never look upward. But when they are alarmed they fly to the top, and if there is a ridge there, follow it to the highest peak. Having observed this peculiarity, the Paiutes build blinds on the ridgetop runways. They started in during the fall of 1891 to build a number of such blinds on crests overlooking several Death Valley trails. The blinds were in all cases semicircular walls of stone . . . when all preparations were complete, [the Indians] posted their best marksmen in the blinds while the others chased the sheep up to the slaughter [1892:73]."

New York Sun, described rock structures in Death Valley and their function in hunting bighorn sheep:

. . . we took [them] to be graves, but which, as they face in one direction—that is to the northwest—were probably intended as lodging places to break the force of the violent prevailing winds; but why they should resort to the tops of these hills, and neglect the shelter of the numerous caverns and rocky crevices, is inexplicable. It may be that the bottoms have been subjected to deluges, and that it is to provide shelter during these overflows that the hills are chosen for the erection of these small parapets of stone; but the greatest probability is that they are connected with some of their religious observances [Woodward 1961 ;49].

An examination of these features, their location, orientation, and associations in conjunction with ethological attributes, strongly support the notion of a hunting function, and the argument is made that Desert Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni) were the primary target of this activity with perhaps a secondary emphasis on hunting of Pronghorn Antelope (Antilocapra americana).



Ms. Lucy Says

To the American Indian: reminiscences of a Yurok woman By Lucy Thompson

http://books.google.com/books?id=TEn1O3rGzPAC&lpg=PR22&ots=LYrIG8TgjK&dq=yurok%20cultural%20landscape&pg=PA67#v=onepage&q=yurok%20cultural%20landscape&f=false

Chapter IV (Page 81): Traditions of the Ancient White People (the Wa-gas or Wo-ge)
("White" may be a metaphor for "Old" - as in "White Hair" - not necessarily skin pigmentation.) 

The Yurok, coming into the Klamath River region for the first time, found the area inhabited by “a white race of people known among us as the We-gas.” For a time the We-gas and Yurok lived together, but one day the We-gas “abandoned their ancient homes.”  Lucy Thompson writes:

“…in their farewell journey across this land they left landmarks of stone monuments on the tops of high mountains and places commanding a view of the surrounding country. These landmarks we have kept in repair down through the ages in loving remembrance. I have seen many of these landmarks myself and often repaired them…Oh how little we know of the depths of the ages gone; how wide, how profound and deep is the knowledge we seek. A monument of stone, a stone bowl, a broken symbol, a hallowed spot, a lodge of ruins: all this makes a golden page glittering with diamonds that trills the emotions with mysterious longings for truth and light in the depths of the unknown.”

[There’s also something about the uma’a, the wild Indians who “lived apart from towns in caves back in the hills (xviii).”]

Curtis photos (http://www.tendreams.org/curtis/40.htm; http://www.tendreams.org/curtis/50.htm; http://www.tendreams.org/curtis/42.htm & http://www.tendreams.org/curtis/53.htm)

Mt Wachusett bing mapped

I used Peter's map at: http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2010/09/getting-closer-to-mt-wachusett.html to locate the place on Bing Maps. When I spin the images around in the bird's eye view option, north to east to south to west, I seem to think I see "Stone Walls" that are alot like Ron's "Rock Lines" photos...
One at random:

They look alot like

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-squiggles.html



First People

"At The Shrine; Navaho"

from:

American Indians: First People of America and Canada - Turtle Island.

Where it is written: "If you are thinking of using this image, please read this. Thank you."



Native Americans

http://www.firstpeople.us/

"First People is a child friendly site about Native Americans and members of the First Nations. 1400+ legends, 400+ agreements and treaties, 10,000+ pictures, free clipart, Pueblo pottery, American Indian jewelry, Native American Flutes and more."

Images (with stones) from Gallery H - 796 old photographs of American Indians in everyday life, buildings, land, totems, effigies etc.

Stone Structures in South Africa

 

Dear Mr "Turtleman",

 

      I know you are interested in the ancient stone structures in New England and California from reading your blog and "Rock Piles". Here is something I just recently learned about that I think will be of interest to you - extremely extensive and very old stone structures in South Africa that bear an amazing similarity to the works in New England and California (and elsewhere in our country). This page has lots of good photos and information, and though I agree with them that the stuctures were not built by the Bantu tribesmen as claimed by the conventional academic wisdom (their equivalent to our conventional wisdom that the structures in NE were built by white settlers) I would not agree with age of the structures that these people claim. Lots to think about here, and you can itake the evidence and fit it into your own framework.

  

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sumer_anunnaki/esp_sumer_annunaki35.htm

 

          I was totally amazed when I used Google Earth to look at the structures. I highly recomment it. Just go to these four points and start looking around.

 

Carolina -- 25 55' 53.28" S / 30 16' 13.13" E Badplaas -- 25 47' 33.45" S / 30 40' 38.76" E Waterval -- 25 38' 07.82" S / 30 21' 18.79" E Machadodorp -- 25 39' 22.42" S / 30 17' 03.25" E

 

     My hunch is these are Bronze Age structures that were used for mining gold, diamonds and other ores. Many ancient mine shafts have been found in the same area as the structures.

 

     I enjoy your blog and Rock Piles.

 

     Best regards,

                     D____ from Delaware

                           



Rock structures, interpreted as:

Figure 9.  Dummy hunters.  These stacked rock features are located atop the north-facing ridge on the volcanic tablelands above Renegade Canyon.  Photo by Bill Wight.

“Great numbers of Indians were …required. … (and) they were compelled…to build rows of dummy hunters out of stones, along the ridge-tops which they wished to prevent the sheep from crossing.  And without discrediting the sagacity of the game, these dummies were found effective; for with a few live Indians moving about excitedly among them, they could hardly be distinguished at a little distance from men, by anyone not in on the secret.  The whole ridgetop then seemed alive with archers.” – Muir (1898:321-322)

"Bighorn hunts were conducted in a variety of ways ⁷⁶.  The analog for the Coso pattern are communal hunts, surrounding sheep, driving them into enclosures or nets, guiding the sheep with fire and dogs, and running the sheep past hidden hunters ⁷⁷.  Stewart notes that hunters would also occasionally make loud noises – pounding objects together to imitate the clash of rams in battle… (Paradigm Shifts, Rock Art Studies, and the “Coso Sheep Cult” of Eastern California

By Alan P. Garfinkel, Ph.D. September 2007)

http://www.petroglyphs.us/article_coso_sheep_cult.htm &http://westinstenv.org/histwl/2007/12/05/the-coso-sheep-cult-of-eastern-california/

John Muir: "The Modoc and Pah Ute Indians are, or rather have been, the most successful hunters of the wild sheep in the regions that have come under my own observation. I have seen large numbers of heads and horns in the caves of Mount Shasta and the Modoc lava-beds, where the Indians had been feasting in stormy weather; also in the canyons of the Sierra opposite Owen's Valley; while the heavy obsidian arrow-heads found on some of the highest peaks show that this warfare has long been going on.

In the more accessible ranges that stretch across the desert regions of western Utah and Nevada, considerable numbers of Indians used to hunt in company like packs of wolves, and being perfectly acquainted with the topography of their hunting grounds, and with the habits and instincts of the game, they were pretty successful. On the tops of nearly every one of the Nevada mountains that I have visited, I found small, nest-like enclosures built of stones, in which, as I afterward learned, one or more Indians would lie in wait while their companions scoured the ridges below, knowing that the alarmed sheep would surely run to the summit, and when they could be made to approach with the wind they were shot at short range.

Still larger bands of Indians used to make extensive hunts upon some dominant mountain much frequented by the sheep, such as Mount Grant on the Wassuck Range to the west of Walker Lake. On some particular spot, favorably situated with reference to the well-known trails of the sheep, they built a high-walled corral, with long guiding wings diverging from the gateway; and into this inclosure they sometimes succeeded in driving the noble game. Great numbers of Indians were of course required, more, indeed, than they could usually muster, counting in squaws, children, and all; they were compelled, therefore, to build rows of dummy hunters out of stones, along the ridge-tops which they wished to prevent the sheep from crossing. And, without discrediting the sagacity of the game, these dummies were found effective; for, with a few live Indians moving about excitedly among them, they could hardly be distinguished at a little distance from men, by any one not in the secret. The whole ridge-top then seemed to be alive with hunters."

 http://books.google.com/books?id=BwgNAAAAIAAJ&dq=Muir%2C%20John%201898%20The%20Mountains%20of%20California&pg=PA321#v=onepage&q=dummy%20hunters%20&f=false

Pendleton and Thomas: The Fort Sage Drift Fence, Washoe County, Nevada

Journal Issue:

Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, 5(2)

Author:

Raymond, Anan, Dept. of Anthropology, Washington State Univ.

Publication Date:

1983

Publication Info:

Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, UC Merced Library, UC Merced

Permalink:

http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1q88p56p

The Fort Sage Drift Fence, Washoe County,

Nevada. Lorann S. A. Pendleton and

David Hurst Thomas. New York: American

Museum of Natural History Anthropological

Papers. Vol. 58: Part 2, 1983.

Reviewed by ANAN RAYMOND

Dept. of Anthropology

Washington State Univ.

Pullman, WA 99164

      It is difficult to accurately interpret the age and function of surface rock alignments and their association with nearby lithic scatters. Pendleton and Thomas wrestle with this problem at the Fort Sage Drift Fence, concluding that this alignment helped prehistoric hunters intercept and dispatch pronghorn antelope and/or bighorn sheep.

          The Fort Sage Drift Fence is an 1800 m.-long rock alignment 20 to 80 cm. high.

[1800 meters = 5905.5 feet. 20cm converts into 7.87 inches, which is more than 1/2 foot but less than one foot. 80 cm = 2.6 feet (2ft and 4in.)]        Traversing three low hills, the alignment includes ten apparently intentional gaps, three of which occur where drainages bisect the fence. The walls are constructed of basalt boulders that appear (from the photographs) to be derived from nearby bedrock outcroppings and the adjacent hillside...



       In the second part of the paper Pendleton and Thomas provide a valuable discussion on the interpretation of such a large hunting feature. Rather than emphasize specific behaviors indicated in the flaked stone artifacts, they concentrate on the strategy reflected by the rock alignment. Pendleton and Thomas discuss two basic hunting strategies, "encounter" and "intercept," that may have been used prehistorically. An encounter strategy is suited to dispersed populations of game animals that move unpredictably. An intercept hunting strategy provides an efficient means to ambush game that may congregate seasonally and "migrate" in a predictable pattern.

     An intercept strategy employs natural (e.g., ridges, drainages) and artificial (e.g., rock alignments, brush barriers) features to direct the animals' movement to the hunters' advantage. As a technique of intensifying resources, intercept strategies will often incorporate features with high archaeological visibility such as rock alignments, fish weirs, and bison jumps, while the archaeological remains of encounter hunts usually consist of little more than isolated losses (e.g., projectile points).

     Pendleton and Thomas then discuss how the distribution of local deer, bighorn sheep, and pronghorn antelope populations might have conditioned the hunting strategy in the Fort Sage area. They also review ethnographic accounts of encounter and intercept hunting of these three game species. They conclude that the Fort Sage Drift Fence functioned in an intercept strategy to dispatch groups of pronghorn antelope and/or bighorn sheep moving in response to seasonal availability of browse and forage.

Pendleton and Thomas also speculate on how the Fort Sage site reflects a general model of hunter-gatherer subsistence and settlement (Binford 1980; Thomas 1983). They argue that the Fort Sage Drift Fence was labor intensive. However, for a highly mobile foraging strategy, the cost of constructing the alignment outweighs the advantage of simply moving to the animals. On the other hand, a less mobile "logistical" subsistence strategy will obtain resources through a network of specialized and relatively permanent task sites in areas of high resource density and predictability.

      They suggest that as a permanent and labor intensive facility, the Fort Sage Drift Fence implies a predictable and successful hunting strategy that was "logistically" organized.

        After reviewing the antiquity of rock alignment hunting facilities in the Great Basin, Pendleton and Thomas suggest that high-cost permanent hunting features, and the logistic subsistence strategy implied by them, became less important in the protohistoric period. They cite a lack of "permanent" hunting features during the protohistoric period, to support their argument. However, they may be confusing construction materials with permanence. The ethnographic Steward 1938) and archaeological (Raymond 1982; Frison 1978) literature attest to the recency of large tree-and-brush game procurement facilities. The alignments at Fort Sage may not have been constructed with trees and brush because basalt boulders were more accessible.

     This study deserves attention by all interested in approaches to the analysis of surface sites, especially hunting features. Furthermore, the report, like much of Thomas's work, shows how the archaeological record can provide interesting glimpses of prehistoric behavior.

REFERENCES

Binford, Lewis R.

1980 Willow Smoke and Dogs' Tails; Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Systems and Archaeological Site Formation. American Antiquity 8:281-290.

Frison, George C. 1978 Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains. New York; Academic Press.

Raymond, Anan 1982 Two Historic Aboriginal Game Drive Enclosures in the Eastern Great Basin. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 4(l);23-33.

Steward, Julian H. 1938 Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups. Washington, D.C: Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 120.

Thomas, D. H.

1983 The Archaeology of Monitor Valley I; Epistemology.

New York: American Museum of Natural History Anthropological Papers 58(1).

Rocky Point Cemetery

http://qmackie.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/asbc-talk-tuesday-february-16th/
And: http://home.istar.ca/~bthom/thesis.htmhttp://www.wisconsinhistory.org/archaeology/archaeologists-consultants/arch-resources/guide-to-forms.pdf

"Rock feature/petroform-- any feature consisting of arranged but unmortared and unaltered stones,

including rock alignments, cairns, stone walls, boulder mosaics, stone effigies, stone circles

("tipi rings"), etc. See also Fish weir."

"What is it?"

I pondered this question at Somewhere along the Klamath by asking "What is it?"

Maybe it is a "luck basin/rock bowl/rock basket:"

"Besides being prominent in the context of sweathouse practices generally (see chapter 4), crying was a recurrent theme in spoken formulas for wealth. In some examples, a spirit-person's crying produced some distinctive feature of the natural landscape, which then became a place where humans could make medicine (also by crying). Thus for example there is a rock formation at Trinidad Head which is identified by the Yurok name "He Sits Forever." This marks the spot where a spirit-person went to cry and ask for money. Gradually, he began to see dentalium shells swimming in the tidepools as if they were fish. He was mesmerized by this vision and sat there watching the money swim around until he turned into stone himself. This became a mythic event that humans could reenact while making medicine at that spot (Waterman 1920:270).

     This medicine was to be used at a special "luck basin" that Shoemaker knew about. This term refers to a basinlike depression in a rock formation, and the Hupa word for it is translated into English as "rock bowl" or "rock basket" (Golla, in press [MS p. 214]). The use of a luck basin for success in gambling is described as follows:

  When you find such a place you must "smoke" it with incense root and speak to it. You smoke it for ten days and talk to it about the people you're going to gamble with, and how many points you want to make in a stretch, and so on. Then you clap your hands to it, and leave some incense root in it. When you are ready to gamble, you go up to it and rub your hands with the incense root. (Golla, in press [MS p. 213])"

http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8g5008k8&chunk.id=d0e1239&toc.id=d0e310&brand=eschol

Keeling, Richard. Cry for Luck: Sacred Song and Speech Among the Yurok, Hupa, and Karok Indians of Northwestern California. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  c1992 1992. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft8g5008k8/

Yurok Indian Spirituality

[on Klamath river , in Humboldt county, CA], 4

http://texts.00.gs/Standing_Ground,_4.htm

Yu-rok "spoke ... sa.>agoh, one of only two known Algonkin languages west of the Rockies. (The second is Wiyot, ... spoken ... to the south.)"

"They were the "human beings," >o.lekwoh, "the ones who stay here" after the wo.gey, the Spirit People or First People, had invented culture and ... departed at the beginning of "Indian Time." Some early American visitors called these >o.lekwoh "the Allequa"; Yuroks came to call the whites wo.gey". {cf. the Aztec belief that the European were the departed folk of Quetzalcoatl; and the Quechua belief that the Europeans were the departed folk of Viracocha}

"seeking the aid of Lightning and of the ten Thunder Brothers, the spiritual allies ... . ... In the wintertime, when it thundered and the lightning just kept on and on ... – then they’d take a boat ... and drag it down to the gravel bar to see if the lightning ... would give them strength here on earth ... . Now, ... there’s different kinds of thunder and some of it sounds like trailing gravel, [at] the end. That’s when ... you ... Take the boat and drag it along the gravel bar to see if it will please the Thunder ... . Then he gives them part of his strength."
"some Hupas training ... customarily slept in a cleft in a rock near the village of Matildon ... through the night as they sought spiritual aid ... . Others seeking power ... ran in the hills at night and knew that they’d "got it" if lightning struck and split a tree near them. ...
When spirits appear unbidden, in a dream for instance, they come to announce that a person has a certain option, or potential. It is now up to that person to realize this potential through application of will power ... . A person might dream of powerful beings or a place where "power" is available, for instance, but it remains to obtain the spirit’s blessings and to bring them under control."
"He’d started training ... to spend the night on a downed tree that hung over a creek".
"Certain Yurok men once acquired guardian spirits through training and medicine-making that imbued they with bravery ... . They were called weskweloy, a word that made reference to the style in which they alone were privileged to wear their hair ... . These ... got their powers through ... vision questing in the winter, usually in the ocean near great rock formations – seastacks – or in riverine whirlpools, in lakes and other places that gave them access to the Thunders. In the waters they encountered the Thunders or one of the water monsters called ka.mes or a sa>al, a bad ghost-spirit that lives in a spring and brings disease. Some trained in the lower hills and mountains and in the hollow or cleft rocks there. ... Falling unconscious, men travel to the underworld to the house of the Thunders, overcoming ferocious guardians – panthers, rattlesnakes – and entering to be cut up into pieces, cooked, and reassembled as weskweloy."
"luck came to him through a stone talisman that he obtained from a spring in the mountains after hard training. Once men made luck medicine in other watery place as well, such as an ocean pothole near Big Lagoon. They might train specifically for hunting or fishing luck, diving down in the Klamath to touch a special rock or making medicine at a "wishing place" in the mountains, where a pure man could hear the barking of hunting dog spirits ... . ... these dog-spirits as being wo., "ancient" or "holy," ... "You hear them barking, a-way off. It’s deep.""

"going into the mountains to seek the pity and aid of supernatural forces" : "They know you’re worthy of it. Otherwise ... there’d be no tears. ... if you have this feeling that the forces blessed you, the you’re a worthy person

"you fast for ten days and then on the tenth day you go there and clap your hands and you tell this rock what you want and then if you hear the echo you’re going to get your wish."
"a qualified person can go to Doctor Rock, a place associated with the most powerful shamans, to pray ... for high powers, such as those for doctoring".
"the correct procedure is "to announce yourself. Say who you are, where you’re from, what you want." A man should go "where a rock runs out. ... You sit there, you have your fire in front of you; you stay there all night."
"as a man sits before his small fire he prays and ... when he has attained the proper spiritual state he claps his hands, listening for a clear, ricocheting echo : "The men go there and sit in the [prayer] seat there. Then after a while they clap their hands, and if the echo comes back clear they know they have what they’ve prayed for ... ." Other men shout, listening for an echo."
"A person who is well prepared ... can go into the "high country," the physically and spiritually highest mountains. He will encounter spiritual beings associated with specific places, and they will teach him – "talk to him." ... these beings are immemorial spirits ... . ... training really ultimately means just sitting down with spiritual beings and talking with them."
"A person might meet spirits in the mountains and "sit right down and talk with them," or he night meet them after returning home ... . "Maybe after you come back from the mountains, some night in your home, you wake up ... . There are spirits in the room and it’s full of light. They’ll teach you ... .""
"transformative experience" : "Going into a trance in a "prayer seat" in the high mountains, he saw, as though through a tunnel, a small hole of light opening into a meadow ... in the sky ... . {This is a common form of "near-death experience".} A spiritual being took him up into the world above. He saw people there, "all in the prime of life – about thirty-five years." ...
He knew this to be the "beauty world," where the spirits of trained people go at death, waiting, he told me, for the time when they would come back to earth in new forms. He was guided back to the seat by one of the spirit beings, and when returned to his body in the prayer seat he knew what "beauty" truly was, and "walked in beauty."" {"Beauty" is a common perception in spiritual enlightenment.}
" "High men" and women who are doctors are said to be able to return to the mountain precincts ... later, without leaving the lowland villages, through out-of-the-body travel." Legend "told ... about a hero who "left something like his picture at home while he traveled to the end of the world" ... . [One informant] said that he commonly traveled out of his body to the place where his medicine was, in the inland mountains, and ... yet another spoke of retrieving medicine from an inland lake while physically remaining in the sweathouse at Pecwan."
Thomas Buckley : Standing Ground : Yurok Indian Spirituality. U of CA Pr, Berkeley, 2002.