I am indebted to Mr. W. L. d’Azevedo, who encouraged me to carry on field work among the Washo and who has made his own field notes and knowledge available to me. I have indicated information attributable to d’Azevedo by placing his name in parentheses in the text; where his name appears with a date, the reference is to a work published by him. I also wish to express my thanks for the suggestions made by J. H. Rowe, R. F. Millon, and D. M. Schneider, who read this article before it went to press, and to acknowledge the final reading given the manuscript by the late A. L. Kroeber. In addition, my thanks are owed to Mr. Frank Yapparagari, Mrs. Juanita Schubert, and Mrs. Lois Buck of Gardnerville and Minden, Nevada, to Mr. Richard Shulter of the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, Nevada, and to Mrs. E. M. Keenan of Paradise, California, who assisted in various ways in the progress of the investigation. Last, to the various members of the Washo tribe, who with patience and good humor bore the probing into their lives, my deepest gratitude. James F. Downs INTRODUCTION This paper will devote itself to a description of the religious life of the Washo Indians living in the communities of Sierraville, Loyalton, and Woodfords, in California, and Reno, Carson City, and Dresslerville, Nevada. Smaller numbers are scattered throughout the area which was their aboriginal range, roughly from the southern end of Honey Lake to Antelope Valley and from the divide of the Pinenut Range in Nevada, almost to Placerville, California. A short ethnography by Barrett dealing in large part with material culture, Lowie’s Ethnographic Notes, and Stewart’s Element Lists constitute almost the only general references on Washo culture. Various other writers have dealt with specialized questions such as linguistics (Kroeber, Jacobson), peyotism (Siskin, d’Azevedo), and music (Merriam). Most of the statements about the Washo give the impression that they have long been on the edge of oblivion (Mooney, Kroeber, etc.), and population estimates have been well under one thousand for the past fifty years. However, I find myself in agreement with d’Azevedo(1) that the Washo are a vigorous and continuing cultural entity. My own rather impressionistic estimate of population is that there are perhaps two thousand Indians in the area who consider themselves as Washo and form a part of a viable cultural unit.