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Weather Control (Rain-Making etc)

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  • Weather Control (Rain-Making etc)

    RAIN-MAKER BUNDLE FROM SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

    Links provided by member [kenwhite]

    Shamanic “weather control” was generally practiced throughout the arid portions of the western United States, but southern California in particular is noted for its “rain-doctors”. Shamans of all kinds practiced their arts using the contents of a “bundle” which included the “tools of the trade” together with associated items of ritual significance.
    Frank Fenenga and Francis (Fritz) Riddell et al originally researched a rain-doctor’s shamanic bundle which is on loan to the Kern Valley Museum in California. The owner is a local Indian and granddaughter of a Tübatulabal chief (timiwal) - Esteban Miranda – who died in 1942. The bundle is believed to have first been owned and used by Esteban’s stepfather – a Chumash shaman from Tejon.

    Frank Fenega’s son Gerrit (et al) added to the research at a later time when it became apparent that the bundle had originally contained other items which had become separated from it. The total accumulation includes:

    Nine conical smoking pipes (mostly steatite and some with bird-bone mouthpieces)
    Six quartz items (three crystal fragments, one flake/chip, one crystalline geode, and one piece of milky quartz)
    Five obsidian pieces (three small flakes and two biface fragments)
    Five water-worn pebbles
    Three steatite vessels (two bowls and one dipper-like)
    Three pieces of steatite (with some working)
    Three charmstones (two plummet-like and one pestle-like)
    Two sucking tubes (of the kind used to draw out illness from the body)
    One piece of stibnite (an antimony mineral)
    One abalone-shell ornament (a “banjo” ornament)
    One fossil fish vertebra
    Four types of plant material (all recently introduced foreign species)
    Three squash seeds (apparently burnt)
    Some dry soil
    Two deerskin pouches (one of which was a medicine bag)
    Some feather down in a blue denim sack
    One small tobacco sack
    One strip of beaver-tail rawhide
    One piece of (modern) elbow macaroni (!)

    Many of the lithic pieces exhibit traces of a reddish-brown stain which is probably red ochre (powdered hematite). It is also clear that the assemblage had been put together over a period of time, including “heirloom” items as well as more modern ones.

    You can view the original report (NOTE: you need to have registered with academia.edu to download papers) “A Weather Shaman’s Rain-Making Bundle from the Tübatulabal and its Relationship to the History of Weather Control in South-Central California” here:

    http://www.academia.edu/3076236/Nati...Basin_-_Part_1

    … and the supplemental later report: “Further Relections on California Rain-Making Shamanism: “The Other Half” of the Tübatulabal Shaman’s Rain-Making Bundle” here:

    http://www.academia.edu/3076246/Nati...Basin_-_Part_2
    Last edited by painshill; 01-28-2016, 11:10 AM.
    I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.
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