In Northwestern California there is a special development of spoken formulae, whose content is little else than a myth and which constitute not only the basis and essential element of public ceremonies but are connected with almost all customary observances. To such an extent have these formulae, locally called "medicines," grown into the mind of these Indians as being what is most sacred and most efficacious in all aspects of religion, that they partly supplant shamanism, which is a less important feature of religious life here than elsewhere in the state, where the characteristic features of this peculiar ritual by formula are almost absent. Not only purification from death and other defilement, but luck in hunting and fishing, in gambling, escape from danger, success in felling trees and making baskets, in the acquisition of wealth, in short the proper achievement of every human wish, were thought to be accompanied by the proper knowledge and recitation of these traditional myth-formulae, usually accompanied by only the smallest amount of ritualistic action. SHAMANISM. Shamanism, the supposed individual control of the supernatural through a personally acquired power of communication with the spirit world, rests upon much the same basis in California as elsewhere in North America. In general among uncivilized tribes the simpler the stage of culture the more important the shaman. It is as if he constituted an element that remained nearly constant in quantity of effect, as it is fundamentally unvarying in form, through all successive periods of civilization to the highest; but that as increase in degree of civilization brought with it ever more and more new elements, religious and otherwise, and these unfolded in ever expanding complexity, he became, relatively to the total mass of thought and action of a people, less and less important. Certainly the difference is marked between the Eskimo, whose religion consists of little else than shamanism, and the much more highly organized Indians of the North Pacific Coast, where shamanism is but one of several and by no means the most important religious factor, even though it may be the most deep seated. The same contrast is found between the rude simple-minded Indians of California as compared with those of the Plains and of the Southwest, where the supremacy of the shaman is rather obscured by that of the priest conversant with a ceremony. Even within California the difference holds good. In the Northwest, where the native civilization reached on the whole its greatest complexity, the shaman is less prominent than anywhere else in the state. In the south, where the culture is also more developed than in the Central part of the state, the shaman is certainly as much dreaded as there; but that his province is more restricted is shown by the fact that in Southern California the shamans in their capacity as such do not seem to form associations, perform