Until the middle 1930’s there were a number of shamans among the Washo (Stewart 1944). However, with the introduction of the peyote cult, which among the Washo is concerned with curing, the shaman was superseded. Today only a single Washo practices shamanistic curing. Interestingly enough this man, now seventy-five, was an informant of Lowie’s in the 1920’s, and at that time Lowie described him as a sophisticated young Washo, somewhat mystic and with shamanistic ambitions (Lowie 1939). This man, Henry Rupert, spent ten years in the Indian school at the Stewart Agency and after graduation worked for a number of years in a printing plant in Reno. When questioned about the old days he was a fair informant, seldom offering more information than was asked for and clearly enjoying the business of making a white man work for every scrap of information. He was also given to dropping subtle hints and waiting with stolid indifference to see if I had been alert. He did not deny his shamanistic practices but was less than willing to discuss them in detail. His equipment, he admitted (but refused to show me), consisted of a butterfly-cocoon rattle, an eagle-bone whistle, and a feather headband. “I don’t really do nothing but help nature,” he said. When I replied that only some people know how to help nature he was gratified and smiled. “Oh well, it’s all psychological anyway,” he answered, confirming Lowie’s description of him as a sophisticate. He is noted for his rather atypical practice of tending a garden, which consists mostly of fruit trees, and for his open liking for old-fashioned foods, which he collects, including fly grubs and locusts. I was not able to observe his curing procedures, but they were described to me by another informant, a seventy-five-year-old woman, considered one of the most progressive of the residents of Dresslerville. “I took my granddaughter to Rupert after the white doctors didn’t do nothing for her. He don’t doctor in the real old Indian way [a phrase I later learned meant that he did not hold a series of four one-night sessions but only a short ceremony]. He don’t give you nothing, just sings and prays and talks over you for a while. He has a rattle and a whistle and a band on his head. After we went to him my granddaughter got well.”