Moebius Anthropology

Essays on the Forming of Form

Don Handelman, Matan Shapiro, Jackie Feldman

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781789208559
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Kultur- & Sozialanthropologie

Don Handelman's groundbreaking work in anthropology is showcased in this collection of his most powerful essays, edited by Matan Shapiro and Jackie Feldman. The book looks at the intellectual and spiritual roots of Handelman's initiation into anthropology; his work on ritual and on "bureaucratic logic"; analyses of cosmology; and innovative essays on Anthropology and Deleuzian thinking. Handelman reconsiders his theory of the forming of form and how this relates to a new theory of the dynamics of time. This will be the definitive collection of articles by one of the most important anthropologists of the late 20th Century.

PART I

SOME SIGNIFICANT FORMATIVE INFLUENCES

CHAPTER 1

HENRY RUPERT, WASHO SHAMAN

Author’s Note

In 1964 I received an MA in Anthropology from McGill University for a thesis entitled, West Indian Voluntary Associations in Montreal (see Handelman 1967). A workmanlike job, brick on brick, uninspired and uninspiring, enabled mainly by the caring intelligence of my supervisor, the late Richard (“Dick”) Salisbury, a Papua New Guinea specialist, himself the student of S. F. Nadel. On my way to the University of Pittsburgh to begin PhD studies in anthropology I passed that summer in a field training program in Nevada. There I met the shaman, Henry Rupert, and, through Henry, I began to learn to perceive and, so, to learn. And to learn through serendipity, accident, surprise, and abduction. Elsewhere (see Chapter Two, this volume, and Handelman 1993) I’ve described how it happened that Henry (who literally had declared himself dead to anthropologists) agreed to tell me about his shamanism. That summer with Henry and his family changed my sense of selfness and through this my sense of what anthropology might become for me. Henry opened my horizons, expanded my vision. Above all, my discussions with Henry whetted my imagination (that until then had been devoted mainly to reading science fiction). Put simply, Henry opened to me a life in anthropology. I left Nevada a different anthropologist.

And there were resonances and reverberations. Matan Shapiro mentions at the outset of the Introduction to this volume that Henry came to me in 1998 while I was being healed in Copenhagen by the shaman, Jonathan Horwitz. At that time, while we were visiting Copenhagen, my beloved friend, the late Galina Lindquist, brought me to Jonathan. Galina had studied with Jonathan in preparation for her doctoral fieldwork on neo-shamanism in Sweden (Lindquist 1997, Handelman 1999). Jonathan and his partner at the time, Anette Host, greeted me as an old friend, though we had never met. Jonathan told me something of his own story. When he returned from soldiering in Vietnam, Jonathan decided to study anthropology and enrolled in the graduate program at Columbia University. There he read the essay on Henry, published in 1967, that is reprinted below. Jonathan told me that this text had had a powerful effect on him and helped him decide to switch from anthropology to becoming a healing shaman, the healer I met in 1998. Then and there, Henry recursively returned to me, breathing life into me (once again) and telling me, “Know through your feelings, but know.” The injunction, its synergistic synthesis, penetrated me through and through. The Cartesian divide took its leave.

Yet Henry’s appearance did not close the circle. There were resonances and reverberations. His injunction pervaded the last fieldwork that I was able to participate in, in Andhra Pradesh together with M. V. Krishnayya and David Shulman (see Handelman 2014: 115–213) and, too, it has nudged me on and off, and perhaps is most prominent in this volume in Chapter Two on tracing bureaucratic logic and in Chapter Ten on the David Lynch film, Mulholland Drive. Too, I also should mention that while he was healing me in 1998, Jonathan had a vision, one that at the time made no sense whatsoever to me, and that I will not go into here. But over a year later that vision filled with significance . . .

This chapter presents the life history of the last shaman among the Washo Indians of western Nevada and eastern California. This man, Henry Rupert, presents us with a unique case of the development of a shamanic worldview through time. More specifically, he offers us an opportunity to examine the shaman as an innovator and potential innovator, especially with respect to the curing techniques and personal ideology relating him to the supernatural, the natural environment, and other men. While the anthropological literature is replete with descriptions of shamanic rituals and cultural configurations of shamanism in particular societies, as well as functional explanations purporting to explain the existence of shamanic institutions, little attention has been paid to the shaman as an innovator, although the idea was presented by Nadel (1946), exemplified by Voget (1950) in a somewhat different religious context, and briefly touched upon by Murphy (1964: 77). Henry Rupert exemplifies the shaman as a creative innovator and potential “cultural broker,” and his life history will be presented as an essentially chronological sequence of events, situations, and ideas.

In the period before White contact, the Washo occupied territory between Lake Tahoe, on the border of present-day California and Nevada, and the Pine Nut Mountains east of Reno and Carson City; in the north their territory extended to Honey Lake, and in the south to Antelope Valley (Merriam and d’Azevedo 1957; Downs 1963: 117). In terms of social organization, the Washo were composed of three bands, although the family, sometimes nuclear and sometimes extended, was the primary unit of social organization; and the family unit decided the yearly round of hunting and gathering activities, sometimes under the leadership of antelope shamans and rabbit “bosses.” A high prevalence of witches and sorcerers has also been reported among the aboriginal Washo (Leis 1963; Siskin 1941) in much the same configuration as has been reported for the neighboring Northern Paiute (Park 1939; Whiting 1950), with all shamans suspect as potential sorcerers. With increasing White occupation of their territory during the late nineteenth century, their seasonal round was disrupted, and the Washo settled around White habitations and ranches, working as seasonal laborers, ranch hands, lumberjacks, and domestic servants. It was into this disrupted cultural milieu, and disorganized social situation, that Henry Rupert was born.

The Becoming and Being of a Shaman

Henry Rupert was born in 1885, the son of Pete Duncan and Susie John, both Washo, in Genoa, Nevada. Genoa was an area of lush farm- and ranch-land amidst the arid Nevada semi-desert which had been first settled by Mormon emigrants from Utah. In the shadows of Job’s Peak, a 9,000-foot mountain in the Sierra Nevada range, the Mormons had farmed the desert and transformed it into the rich grassland it still is today. When Henry Rupert was still very young, about two to three years old, his father deserted the family. Henry did not meet his father again until he was twenty years old and his father, a complete stranger, was working as a handyman in a Chinese restaurant in Carson City. By this time Pete Duncan had remarried; and father and son remained strangers until Pete Duncan died.

Henry’s mother, Susie John, worked as a domestic servant for a ranch in Genoa. Most of her time was taken up with her domestic chores, and Annie Rube, Henry’s older sister, organized and managed the family household and acted as the family disciplinarian. Her husband, Charley Rube, worked as a ranch hand and fisherman, but he was also an antelope shaman, a man who in aboriginal times was entrusted with the task of “singing” antelope to sleep during the annual Washo antelope drives. Near the encampment of Henry Rupert’s family lived Henry’s mother’s sister’s husband, Welewkushkush, and his wife. Until the age of eight, when he was taken to school, Henry divided most of his time between Genoa during the winter and the shores of Lake Tahoe during the summer, usually in the company of either Charley Rube or Welewkushkush.

During his early years, Henry had a series of dreams which he still remembers with clarity, and which probably marked him early as having shamanic and mystic potential. As he describes the situation, he would go to sleep on the ground inside the family lean-to and dream of a bear who came and stood in the lean-to opening and stared at him. When he looked at the bear, it would vanish, and then Henry would fly up into the sky toward the moon. This dream recurred frequently over a fairly long period. As a youngster, Henry was also subject to spells of dizziness and fainting. These spells also occurred at bedtime, and both the lean-to and ground would whirl around in a circular motion. Henry would then tell his family to go outside the lean-to and build large fires to stop the ground from whirling about. However, no one paid any attention to his demands, and after a while he would recover.¹

Welewkushkush, a well-known shaman among the Washo, was already between sixty and seventy years old when Henry was born, and on a number of occasions Henry was able to watch him healing. During one of these curing sessions, Henry observed Welewkushkush dance barefoot in a lean-to fire and emerge unscathed. Not surprisingly, the youngster respected his uncle greatly both for his curing feats and for his generous, kind attitude and demeanor toward his patients, relatives, and acquaintances. Henry maintains that he harbored similar feelings of respect toward his brother-in-law, Charley Rube, and that the same general attitudes prevailed in his family relationships. He was never severely disciplined at any time, and only his sister, Annie Rube, scolded him. Nevertheless, even within this milieu, Henry exhibited strong feelings of hostility and aggression as well as independence, as exemplified by the following incident, quoted verbatim:

Someone, I don’t remember who, gave me a little puppy. I liked it very much. One evening that puppy made lots of noise, and he stealed [sic] some of the food we were going to have for supper. My elder sister gave me hell about it. She said: “You don’t need that puppy in here; it’s no good; get rid of it.” I made up my mind to kill that puppy. I took it to a fence made out of rocks and I threw a big rock on top of the puppy and killed it. My mind was made up. When I make up my mind, I don’t change it. The next evening they asked me where the puppy was. I told them I killed it, because they told me it had been no good.

During these early years Henry had few friends. He spent much time by himself wandering over desert and mountain for days at a time, living off the land when he could, and going hungry when he could not. Given the laissez-faire attitude within his family, he had to report to no one, nor did he even have to be home at regular intervals. While not self-sufficient, he was able and independent. On one occasion, he “hopped” a freight train to Sacramento to see what lay on the other side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He also exhibited a boundless curiosity about the natural world around him, a world filled with strange forces and beings, and their existence was often manifested to him. He still remembers sleeping in an abandoned campsite one night and seeing a strange object resembling a cloud pass close by his body while he was awake, and wondering what it represented. On another occasion, while walking down a deserted path at dusk, he saw a white object ahead of him. As he walked forward, it moved. When he stopped, the object also halted. He began to sweat heavily and was extremely frightened. Finally he gathered his courage, walked up to the object, and found an old nightshirt flapping in the evening breeze. Yet he wondered that the object flapped only when he walked forward and stopped when he desisted. Such incidents were not simple coincidences; they suggested an importance and significance that he was not yet able to unravel.

In 1892, at the age of seven, Henry received the first conscious intimation of what his future powers might be. A relative of his mother died; his mother was deep in mourning and quite despondent. Henry dreamt of the event which would follow, and the event came to pass during that winter. His mother went from the family encampment to a slue on the frozen Carson River, and there she attempted suicide by trying to break through the ice and drown herself. But the ice was too thick, and her attempt failed. This was the first time that Henry began to feel that he too might be gifted in the manner of his beloved uncle, Welewkushkush.

Without becoming unduly analytic at this point, it is pertinent to indicate that during these first eight years of Henry Rupert’s life many of the elements which resulted in his becoming a shaman were already present. During these early years Henry was a Washo, but a Washo who camped on the fringes of the dominant White society upon whom his mother depended for her livelihood. He spoke no English, only Washo; his mother worked as a menial, a domestic servant; and his father had forever deserted the family encampment. There is little doubt that these factors engendered much hostility in Henry. Yet, because of the great degree of freedom allowed him, much of this hostility was dissipated in his extensive and lengthy wanderings, which at times almost take on the attributes of a rudimentary vision quest. As a child of a culturally disrupted and socially disorganized Indian group, he differed little from many other Indian children in the area, but even at this early age his dreams, visions, and fantasy world were beginning to coalesce around the conception that he might have unusual abilities. Also, he had no peers with whom to identify. His models of socialization and learning were much older and more important; they included a shaman and an antelope shaman, both very well versed in Washo lore and tradition. Both of these men, and in fact his whole family, presented him with models of behavior based on kindness and sympathy, and to a lesser extent, understanding. The aforementioned incident involving the puppy was apparently the one occasion in which Henry’s hostility was expressed within the family milieu, and even here it was met with sympathy. Up to the present time, Henry Rupert exhibits strong loyalties and deep affection toward his immediate family, their children, and grandchildren.

In the phase of his life just described, Henry had models of behavior, models of affect, that he admired and respected, and on the whole, this outweighed his aggressive and hostile sentiments. But even more important in the long run were the personal qualities that he exhibited at an early age—his curiosity, independence, and perseverance, which overcame his strongest fears. We shall find these themes recurring again and again throughout his life.

Some ten miles north of Genoa and two miles south of Carson City is the Stewart Indian School. Today it is a boarding school primarily for Indian children from the Southwest, but in 1893 it was a center for the “forced acculturation” of Indian children from the Great Basin under the supervision and control of the United States Army. As part of its pacification program in the area, the Army required all Indian children to attend and board at Stewart until they had completed the equivalent of an eighth-grade education. Children held back by their parents were forcibly removed from their families by the cavalry. At the age of eight, Henry Rupert was taken from Genoa to Stewart, where he lived until the age of eighteen. It was here that he received the “power dream” which marked him as a potential shaman; here, too, he met his future wife, and here he began to formulate the basis of his philosophy of healing and his rationale for becoming a shaman, both of which were to be greatly expanded in later life.

At Stewart, Henry experienced an environment vastly different from that of his years of freedom and independence. Stewart was highly regimented and often brutal. This was Henry Rupert’s first sustained contact with White society. Discipline was harsh, and every effort was made at forced acculturation. Order was maintained with a rawhide whip and detention cells. Children were not allowed to return home for short respites until they had completed three full years at Stewart. Classes were held in the mornings and in the evenings. In the afternoons the children were taught a trade. If a child was late for meals, he did not eat. Here also, Henry was introduced to White religion through a profusion of Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, and Anglican proselytizers. All the children were forcibly baptized. Every morning, before breakfast, the children attended services. At breakfast, prayers were sung in Latin. On Sundays the children went to church in the morning, and in the evening, they attended Bible classes and sang hymns. Some proselytizers even came on Saturdays and preached all afternoon.

The day after Henry arrived, he ran away, but he was quickly returned. All told he ran away three times. The second time he was severely whipped on his bare back. However, Henry did well in school, and he learned to set newspaper type. He found a friend in the school cook, who often gave him extra food to supplement the bare school rations. He also developed his own techniques for maintaining some symbolic degree of independence. On one occasion he accidentally broke a spoon and in consequence was forbidden to eat with a spoon for the next month; he then stole a spoon and used it. He resisted the blandishments of his schoolmates with regard to alcohol. The temptation was probably great, since his schoolmates went so far as to place a bottle of liquor under his pillow. At Stewart, Henry made his first close friend, Frank Rivers, another Washo; only to Frank did Henry confide his potential powers. It was also at Stewart that Henry first came to know intimately Indians from other tribes in the Great Basin—Northern Paiute and Shoshone—and his first girlfriend was a Paiute. One of Henry’s strongest assets was his ability to absorb selectively those aspects of White culture which he felt were beneficial to him; thus he was able to master academic subjects, notably reading and writing, and learn an occupation, while resisting Christianity, regimentation, and alcohol.

In 1902, at the age of seventeen, Henry experienced his power dream, the event which marked him with certainty as shamanic material and which conferred certain abilities upon him. He described it to me as follows:

I was sleeping in the school dormitory. I had a dream. I saw a buck in the west. It was a horned buck. It looked east. A voice said to me: “Don’t kill my babies any more.” I woke up, and it was raining outside, and I had a nosebleed in bed.

Henry interpreted the dream in the following way. The conjunction of buck and rain suggested that he could control the weather, since the buck was the “boss of the rain.” The buck was standing in the west but looking east. The Washo believed that the souls of the recently dead travel south but that, soon after, the souls of those who have been evil turn east. The buck looking east was interpreted as a warning against developing certain potentialities which could become evil. The voice in the dream was that of a snake warning against the indiscriminate taking of life; previously Henry had killed wildlife, insects, and snakes without much concern. The rain, to which he had awakened, indicated that his major spirit power would be water. Awakening with a nosebleed placed the stamp of legitimacy upon the whole experience, since the Washo believed that this kind of physical reaction is necessary if the dream is to confer power. The fact th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I. Some Significant Formative Influences
• Part II. Forming Form: Ritual and Bureaucratic Logic
• Part III. Cosmological Trajectories
• Part IV. Deleuzian Conjunctions
• Epilogue. Forming Form, Folding Time (Toward Dynamics through an Anthropology of Form)
• Index