a mixture of the mythic and the ultra-practical
Photo by Roger Sturtevant, 1931
“Despite the title ‘Bear Doctor,’ these shamans did not cure: they were berserkers, as befits their totem, with a license to kill up to four people per year.”
In contrast to other shamanistic traditions, the Pomo Bear Doctors didn’t serve as any kind of intermediary between the physical and spiritual worlds, and performed no beneficial tasks for the tribe, such as treating illness. No one, except the chief (who got a share of stolen valuables) and other bear doctors, knew exactly who they were. In complex grizzly bear disguises, with the strength and speed of actual grizzly bears, but amplified with power granted by supernatural beings, the bear doctors operated in secrecy and for their own enrichment and amusement, ambushing hunting parties or people gathering berries, killing them and taking their stuff. New bear doctors were initiated into these unique practices by older bear doctors, who would tutor the initiate, sometimes a captive held against his or her will, and finally hand over the bear suit and role as a bear man (or woman). The instructor would then be given a large cut of the new bear doctor’s spoils. Sometimes prisoners who turned out to be unpromising would be kept around as servants.
Bill Benson, Lakeport Pomo, in Bear Doctor outfit. Photo by Roger Sturtevant, 1931
The supernatural practice of bear-doctoring originated in a historical, pre-human period, when animals were themselves human. During a successful bear hunt, a bird, who was smaller than all the others, figured out how to carry a dead grizzly all by himself, by tying the bear’s front and back legs together and wearing him slung over his shoulder like a messenger bag. No one else had ever thought of carrying a bear in this way, and it was extra-impressive given the bird’s tiny size. Because of this breakthrough, after the grizzly bear was divided up among his fellow villagers, the smallest of the birds was awarded the skin, which was extremely valuable, by the chief, a blue jay.
The little bird, who’d been given the name Grizzly-Bear-You-Carrier, obsessed about his new possession, and became very jealous of the natural abilities of the grizzly bear. He took his brother into confidence, and together they set out in secret, their mission to employ the bear skin somehow in order to learn the secrets of the grizzly bear’s endurance, ferocity and cunning. On a mountain side far from their village they excavated a cave, not unlike a bear’s den, to use as a hidden base of operations. Here they fashioned the skin into a wearable and realistic disguise, and, after many months of experimentation, they developed an elaborate, multi-step ritual during which the suit was slowly donned, bestowing upon its wearer powers far greater, especially in terms of mortality, than those of real grizzly bears. After promptly slaying another bear and using its skin to make a second suit, the brothers embarked on a secret career of murder and theft.
Though the story is rooted in what may be close to regular Pomo mythology, when we come to the suit and its use, things get very practical and matter-of-fact. For instance, the head part of the suit would be stretched over a carefully woven basket of white oak twigs that matched the shape of the grizzly’s head exactly, and fit the wearer’s head well enough to stay on even when he or she moved violently. Holes were left for the nose, mouth and eyes, and abalone shell discs with slots cut in them were fixed in the eye sockets. The rest of the hide was made to fit the wearer’s body so that no part of him showed. Sometimes a net covered in soaproot fiber was used instead of a real skin, but the rest of the details were more or less the same. Basketry shoes and sometimes gloves were woven to look like giant paws.
Beneath the bear skin they wore a system of belted bead-mail, which served as a defense against arrow wounds, and also as a valuable bribe for anyone who might happen to discover what the bear doctors were up to. Especially large, disc-shaped beads covered the upper torso and heart. Sometimes certain sections of the armor were covered with a top layer of woodpecker scalps. Beneath the jaw and armpits the bear doctor wore small spherical baskets partially filled with water, which would would make sloshing noises as he walked, like the swaying viscera of real bears. The bear doctors carried ten-inch elk horn daggers with which to disembowel their prey. Sometimes obsidian knives and other things were regular parts of the weaponry.
Pomo elkhorn dagger
The dance ritual which surrounded the putting on of the suit is especially long and full of many gradual steps, such as approaching the suit and then backing away from all four cardinal directions, multiple times, while an assistant sang ceremonial songs addressed to particular supernatural beings who lent the bear doctors power. The bear doctor would finally carry each individual component of the outfit again and again, individually, then finally all together, in clockwise and counter-clockwise circles, repeating the entire sequence a few times from beginning to end, then doing it all again, precisely, in reverse. The assistant kept track of each step as it happened by moving counting sticks from a pile on one side of him to the other side. There were four hundred counting sticks. Among the song’s intended audience were Mountain-man, Water-man, Valley-man, Shade-man, Fire-man, Insanity-man, Disease-man, Pond-woman, Whittled-leg widow, Blind-man, Sun-man, Sun-woman and Deer-man. Sun-man was addressed first, because he was the most powerful and could see everything that happened in every part of the land, and because, as he rose with the sun each morning, he was prepared to shoot any wrongdoers with arrows. The message for the Sun-man was “I am going to do as you do. I am going to kill people. You must give me good luck.”
In addition to the obviously important singing aide, the bear doctor required an additional female assistant, also indispensable, who made and repaired gear for him and also prepared a special menu which the bear doctor required for his (or her) strenuous activities.
Bear doctors were defeatable only through the complete loss of their supernatural powers, which could happen as a result of being somehow captured, or losing their headgear in a fight, or if they greedily killed more than four people in a single year, which was the limit for some reason. They often operated in teams of two or more, meeting in secluded spots known only to them, a kind of sorcerous secret order. It would seem that individual bear doctors couldn’t necessarily amass great wealth easily from the murder of only four people a year, taking whatever the victims happened to be carrying with them at the time, and especially after giving up half the spoils to the retired bear doctors who trained them, cutting in the chief, and supporting a staff of two talented assistants. They must have spent most of their time as lethal super bears just for the thrill of it, for the pleasure of becoming something else, specifically the most fearsome and powerful creature one might expect to encounter. This is, to say the least, understandable. In this light, the consequence-free four-murder quota seems almost like a minor perk.
