For many indigenous people, spirit power was at its greatest around the time of creation and has diminished ever since. In this view, the world is a precarious balance of features and there is a natural tendency toward deterioration and breakdown of balance. Human communities must exert spiritual power toward all elements of the world and return features to balance. This is best achieved in ritualized activities that bring together collective human power. For some people, with especially strong social institutions, these activities were planned and executed on a regular annual basis.
Individual people possess different degrees of awareness of the spiritual world and achieve different degrees of expressing or tapping spiritual power. In the extreme, an individual may become a shaman, a person who is in strong contact with the spirit world and who accepts this as a life commitment. For the great majority of people, however, the actual exercise of spiritual power is slight.
In nearly all indigenous societies, boys become men through a process of initiation that involves at least some instruction in spirituality. Similar initiations are designed for girls, though less frequently and usually less challenging. The initiation is the first organized attempt to identify and become acquainted with one's personal spirit power. It is necessary to break down the powerful organization of the normal world so that the person can become aware of the more subtle aspects of the spiritual world. For this reason, stress and exposure are often used. Also, hallucinogenic drugs are employed. Initiation is most successful when one has identified an animal spirit-helper.
Even before initiation, some individuals will experience special powers. These may be observed in dreams, hallucinations, psychic traumas, spiritual illnesses, indicative acts [special or extraordinary feats], or great fortune in gambling. Someone who demonstrates special powers will usually be counseled by an elder or even a shaman who will help the person to direct and focus these skills.
If a person eventually decides to commit herself/himself to full expression of special powers, she/he will begin to demonstrate these powers to the community. Ritual occasions offer various ways for a potential shaman to compete with others and to demonstrate powers. If successful, the person's services will be sought by the community or by individuals. The accomplished shaman usually does little of the normal village work and is provided for by those to whom services have been rendered. The shaman may dress somewhat differently, using highly symbolic and powerful objects like crystals, feathers, bones, etc. The truly accomplished shaman includes a high level of dramatization in his/her activities. There is good evidence that at least some of the petroglyphs and pictographs, commonly found in the West, involve uncommonly "scientific" reference to the cosmos and calendars; these were undoubtedly created by shamans.
Some (mostly male) shamans focus their energy on the natural order in relation to maintenance of good weather and prevention of natural disasters (earthquakes, etc.). The male shaman of this order will likely become involved with other leaders in preparations for collective ritual events. If the collective power of people is going to have a constructive effect, the way must be prepared well by purification and gaining the attention of the spiritual realm.
Others (mostly women) focus their energy on healing. Some of these are lowly herbalists, dealing with everything from headaches and colds to snake bites and broken limbs. Virtually all indigenous people utilized large numbers of local plants for specific remedies to health problems. While the general knowledge of these remedies was passed down through oral tradition, there were also specialists who took responsibility for maintaining this knowledge. Others are priests who deal with more mysterious ailments such as soul loss or spiritual infection.
While the shaman is a necessary and valuable resource to a village, the shaman is also a potentially dangerous person. Special powers can be used for good or ill. The shaman's actions are always under scrutiny and a shaman who is believed to be evil will surely be run off and may even be attacked and killed. If this isn't enough, a shaman may suffer loss of spirit power. This can happen through illness or my malicious practices of another shaman. However, the general world view of indigenous people suggests that power is diminishing since primal time and the same process can always happen for the individual. In some, the reduction of power can be precipitous.
The relationship between indigenous spiritualism and religion is somewhat confusing, especially when working from the framework of Western religious institutions. First of all, Judeo-Christian beliefs tend to focus on specific spiritual powers or figures; in contrast, indigenous spiritualism tends to be pervasive, recognizing spiritual power in everything. Second, Western religions tend to be institutionalized and even secure spiritual power to agents of the institutions. Lay spirituality tends to be rejected or looked down upon, in the West; while all indigenous people possess spiritual power to some degree. Third, Westerners tend to identify religion and spirituality as one and the same phenomenon; while indigenous people hold spiritualism as a fundamental aspect of world view and regard religion, or ritual, as a collective activity.
Nevertheless, both religious ritual and oral narratives tended to be essential in maintaining a people's view of, and contact with, the spirit world. A variety of stories were told. Some of these, like Genesis were genuine creation myths. Other narrative tales speak of the spirit world less directly by illustrating spiritual life, events of spiritual power, and pre(human-)historic animal societies. Many of these narratives were simply part of the whole "literature" of indigenous people, to be discussed later on; but some were considered sacred and were only told on ritual occasions.
In the Great Basin, as in many other parts of the Western United States, there are few mythic characters in human form; virtually all mythic characters, especially those possessing primal power in the disposition of the world and life, are in animal form. However, while these animals are recognizable for traits they share with their contemporary counterparts, they are by no means the same as the animals we know today. Indigenous mythology always imagines a division in time when humans first appear and when zoomorphs retire into their contemporary forms and habits. While Coyote is a favorite character in much of the West, he is joined by Wolf throughout the Great Basin. In fact, Coyote and Wolf are conceived of as brothers --- "big (older) wolf" and "little wolf (coyote)". In the Basin, Wolf plays the role of the "supreme being" and the "people's father," whereas Coyote plays his typical part as trickster. (Hultkrantz, 637-640) Thus, the two represent an opposition between the mysterious creative powers of nature and the mundane practical dispositions of men and beasts. Furthermore, Coyote, as trickster, represents the fundamental duality in living beings, creating lasting institutions here but creating havoc there.
The people of the Great Basin shared creation stories in common with many others in Northern California and along the Northwest Coast (in fact, throughout the world). The principle character of the primeval world is water. There are two standard variants to the tale. In one, the primeval world is literally water (and implicitly sky) and the earth has to be made. In the other, the earth exists but it has been flooded, in a great deluge, so that it is covered (perhaps with the exception of some prominent local mountain peak). In the primal water version, Earthmaker, "our father", or Wolf, set upon the task of making earth and usually do this, floating on the water, by sending one animal or another below the surface to look for mud. In some locations, frog or turtle is used; among the Northern Shoshone, muskrat is sent. In a slight variation, Wolf and Coyote throw soil down from the upper world. Once in possession of some mud or soil, Earthmaker is usually assisted by various characters (often Coyote) in stretching it out to create and cover earth as an extensive habitat of dry land. In the flood version, the underlying world is eventually revealed as the flood waters recede. The real difference in this version is the requirement of some explanation for the deluge; and this varies from a malevolent "water ogre", among the Washoe and Shoshone, to the idea that Coyote wanted to "wash the world", among some Nortern Shoshone. (Hultkrantz, 638)
Steward repeats the following facinating version of a flood tale from the Owens Valley Paiute.
"The world was once nothing but water. The only land above the
water was Black Mountain (a prominent peak to the east of presentday
Big Pine in the White Mountains). All the people lived up there when the
flood came, and their fireplaces can still be seen.
Fish-eater and Hawk lived there. Fish-eater was Hawk's uncle.
One day they were singing and shaking a rattle. As they sang, Hawk
shook this rattle and dirt began to fall out of it. They sang all night,
shaking the rattle the whole time. Soon there was so much dirt on the
water that the water started to go down. When it had gone all the way
down, they put up the Sierra Nevada to hold the ocean back. Soon they
saw a river running down through the Valley.
When they finished making the earth, Hawk said, "Well, we have
finished. Here is a rabbit for me. I will live on rabbits in my lifetime."
(Steward, 364)
Two of the myths published by Steward describe the creation of presentday humans by suggesting that Coyote fathered them with a lone (human) woman. This female character is common to the Basin and is either a malevolent person who has eaten all of her former (human) mates or one who has teeth in her genitals, making intercourse precarious. It takes the cunning and the appetite of a Coyote to make the fathering of people possible under these circumstances! (Steward, 365-366) After people have been created, there are many other things to be settled. One of these, typically, is death. It is almost universal, in the West, that Earthmaker or Mukat (in Southern California) or Wolf intuitively want humans to live for ever. Among the Owens Valley Paiute, according to two stories reported by Steward, Wolf intends that people should have two deaths (I assume this means "a second chance at life"). However, Coyote is universally the one who argues for a single and final death. "He (the people) must have one death, that is all. . . When a person dies, that is the end of him. . . When a person dies, we have to cry. The tears must dry on our cheeks, so that people will notice we have lost one of our family. That is better." (Steward, 368) The tale always has the ironic twist that Coyote's son is the first to die, sometimes from an accident and sometimes from illness, so that Coyote is caught in tearful remorse.
Coyote is also accounted as the source of fire among the Paiutes of Owens Valley. In both accounts reported by Steward, there is fire across the mountains to the west --- probably among the Southern Yokuts, since both of the versions suggest that it is a tule fire. Coyote is assisted by Deer because of his strong running ability or by Hawk because of his ability to fly high and see things. But the plots agree that Coyote's cunning is what succeeds in stealing the fire from the western people. In both cases, Coyote wears a false tail to a big-time dance and purposely catches it on fire only to run away with the valued possession. (Steward, 368-369)
The Cahuilla of Southern California told (sang) an extended cycle of stories about their creation and these were considered sacred so that they were performed only during their annual nukil ritual. In contrast, the people of the Great Basin seem to have told portions of their creation stories at any time when appropriate. Stories were fragmentary, though they could be elaborated dramatically by an individual storyteller. In this sense, they were simply a part of the whole oral literary tradition. Their importance in that tradition was to maintain beliefs about spiritual connections and realities. In other words, they sustained peoples basic world views.
To call Great Basin spiritualism "religious" is somewhat presumptuous because it did not lead to an annual calendar of ritual events and had little collective force. There were two main foci of activities and beliefs. The first of these was the well being of the ecology in the immediate region of habitation; and the second was the life cycle of individual humans, taken in the context of the relatively small extended family. These two foci of spirituality are clearly linked with the Basin's archaic lifeways --- especially the delicate balance of natural resources in connection with the people's annual round and the low density of population in any single area.
When ritual ceremonies did occur, it was generally at times when larger numbers of people gathered together for common economic purposes such as the annual pine nut harvest, group hunts (rabbits, antelope, and waterfowl), and fish runs (where they occured). Rituals were simple and included mainly prayers to correct spiritual balances, or assuage powers, and the round dance. (Hultkrantz, 633-635) Most ritual activity was aimed at improvement of resources or harvest. In some instances, it was clearly linked with collective sharing. Thus, harvest could not begin until after the "first fruits" celebration had occured, preventing individuals from going early and taking advantage of more than their share. Generally speaking, then, rituals dealt with abundance and sharing, matters of grave importance in such precarious economies.
The Washoe followed fairly elaborate practices in honor of a birth and in honor of a girl's puberty. But other aspects of life's passage seem to have been taken more privately, and throughout the rest of the Great Basin not even these seem to have been strong. Death, too, was simply a family matter. Like other indigenous people, those of the Basin did not have strong beliefs about life-after-death, but they did imagine the dead person's soul (or ghost) to be released. Souls of the dead were greatly feared, since they might attempt to draw others into death along with them, and it was assumed that they lingered in the area for some period of time. For reasons such as this, the personal belongings of the dead person, including the house, were usually destroyed, and ritual activities or prayers might ask the dead soul to depart. It was imagined that the dead soul eventually traveled to "the land of the dead." Perhaps this was more satisfying to living people because it rationalized the ghost's departure to a safe distance than offering a tempting picture of after life. In the Great Basin, the spirit was usually imagined passing along the Milky Way to this land. People of the Basin had few ideas about this land, but some were imagined through "Orpheus" narratives. (Orpheus-like men are found in tales throughout the world, traveling into the land-of-the-dead to reclaim a loved wife but never with success.) (Hultkrantz, 636-637)