This view is supported by the statements of other informants: “Of course them people that is from a doctor family, they have dreams and get curing power,” said one rather assimilated woman of about seventy-five. Another informant, a man of sixty, who repeatedly indicated his fear of “power” but at the same time was reputed to be an important curer in the peyote church said: “If you come from a family of dreamers there ain’t nothing you can do. You’re trapped by it.” Young shamans appear to have undergone a period of informal apprenticeship under an older doctor. Although there appears to have been no special requirement that a shaman have an assistant, it was not uncommon for a younger man to help out. According to one informant, when Blind Mike, one of the well-known doctors in historic times, was becoming a doctor, his teacher required him to smoke four hand-rolled cigarettes in a row without allowing the smoke to escape from his lungs. This was not considered an exercise in legerdemain but a way to develop the younger man’s control over his power. Each doctor received instruction from his spirit familiar as to what paraphernalia he should gather but there was a great deal of uniformity in the outfits of Washo doctors. The following description is of the kit of my informant’s uncle, who practiced until the first decade of this century, and it includes some items clearly postwhite in origin. “I don’t know what all doctors had but I’ll tell you what my old uncle had ’cause I seen it lots of times. [At this point another Indian entered the house, obviously curious, and my informant stopped talking until the visitor left.] He had eagle feathers and magpie feathers. He had a rattle with six or eight cocoons on a stick wrapped in weasel skin and humming bird feathers. He had a tobacco pouch of tree-squirrel hide. He also had a stone. It looked like a big tooth with a cavity in it. He told me how he got that stone. He was walking to town [Genoa, Nevada] one day and he heard something whistle. He kept on walking but it whistled again. So he went looking for what was making that noise and he found that stone setting by a fence post. I heard that stone whistle sometimes when he was doctoring. He also had a tie made out of beadwork. Lots of times a doctor would pay some woman to make him a real fine basket or some bead work because that’s what his power told him to do.”