Harry Roberts as a young boy (cir. 1917) with Yurok medicine woman.
Click image for larger picture and full discription.

I was introduced to the Yurok culture through our children’s piano teacher, one of the few left who would come to our home to give lessons, in about 1952. Alice would tell us stories about Harry Roberts and thus, we were gradually introduced to him. He was a remarkable and interesting man. This was his second or third marriage, but the only one Harry carried on about was his first love as a young man when he was being reared by the Yuroks. Harry’s life with them had started as a boy when he and his family moved to the mouth of the Klamath river where there was a salmon processing plant. Harry’s father was in charge of that operation which was located in the center of the salmon dominated waters and inhabited by the Yurok Indians.

As a boy, Harry was completely captivated by this remarkable tribal civilization. He spent most of his time with them and with his teacher, Robert Spott (1888-1953), who, in effect, adopted him. Robert Spott was the last full chief of the Yuroks and he presented Harry with a series of tests which were necessary to prepare him for the role of tribal leadership. The first challenge was to be able to hear "the rock" speak. One summer I went with Harry to that very same rock, which he pointed out to me there on the beach at the Klamath River Delta. I approached the rock with more than a little caution and consternation. What might take place? Would I hear something or would I draw a blank? So there I am with my ear plastered to the rock, wondering what I am listening to, or for. After a time I realized that something very subtle had been going on for some time now and then it began to make some sort of sense to me. I was hearing a sound which was more like music than a voice&emdash;subtle, so that I had to really listen. It was like the way you would have to "look" if you were trying to tune into an elf or nature spirit a la Robert Ogalvie Cromby. That is, one does not "look" straight on but sort of obliquely. So it was with this listening. One could not dissect it, or use one’s faculty of discrimination at all directly, but only perceive this "out of the corner" of one’s mind. Elfin fairy "voices" do not easily yield their secrets any more than they yield their forms to the tribal people in Elsie’s gathering . Only she and the chief could see the derisive elf and all of it’s antics. So while I got only the hint of a whisper of these fairy sounds that day, it was memorable enough to be with me as I write today. Thus I received the merest hint of what it must have been like for Harry in his boyhood being guided by the great Robert Spott through test after test.

I recall Harry looking at me with his sly, critical, demanding, piercing and glittering eye, as he said; "You know the Yurok child is taught but one lesson at a time. If the child or young person cannot answer the question his teacher asks, then he simply goes off and "studies" that area until he comes up with a better answer. Until he does, he is not asked another question. His education has come to an end until one thing at a time is mastered." So Harry’s lessons went from the simple and mundane to the heights of the secret teachings held in reverence by the tribal elders and chiefs.

"The rock" was first, and later there were more difficult trials. There were tests to see if you could talk to the fish in the bay to see which were ready to be caught. Harry’s first giant step in the tests of manhood was the making of Medicines. This "maha" test was the test of water or the ordeal of the sea. The aspirant was required to swim out to a large rock which stood at least a half mile out in the bay at the mouth of the sacred Klamath. Then he was to circle it and hit it with his hand on the far side before returning. The strong currents make this is a very difficult undertaking and so this was called "making one’s water medicine". Following this was....

THE MAKING OF THE LAND MEDICINE:

For this he arose in the dark of the night and dressed in only his drawstring and his Medicine Pouch, he would run full tilt through the forest listening for the telepathic instructions of his teacher who followed, always keeping a half day behind. At the crack of dawn, Harry had not fallen down and broken a leg, run into a tree or similarly disabled himself. Then, as a part of this same trip, the spirit medicine is made. Harry continued to run for three nights before the spirit trial started. His teacher directed him to find a cave and to spend the night there in chanting and prayer, making a medicine packet from the materials in the pouch he had brought. Then he was directed to find a ledge in the cave and to feel for the packets of medicine left there by candidates who had endured this very trial at some time in the past.

Harry tells it this way: "I find this cave and I do my medicine thing...then I reach up to put it on the shelf and, just out of curiosity, I run my hand back and forth to feel and know what’s there. I feel a crumbly packet and another, hardly a bundle at all, and then only dust with a few lumps, so I get the hell out of there. It’s a sacred and spooky place. I spend the day as directed and later, just for the hell of it, I go back and look for the cave. I couldn’t find it. I must have made a wrong turn but I couldn’t find it. Even the ones I did find did not have any shelf.

See also: PENDEJO CAVE.

Soon Robert shows up and greets me in ceremonial fashion and I know from the twinkle in his eye that I made it and I dance around for Joy. On the way back I asked about the cave and Robert said "You say you couldn’t find it?" "Yes, there’s no place like it". And he laughed himself silly and I saw he knew it all and then I saw it all as well and I said "you mean…???" And Robert shouted: "YES! YES!" and we both roared our joy to each other."

Even though the Pomos and the Yuroks have different cultures, there are similarities in their approach to Shamanism and how they recognize and cultivate the talents of a candidate who might become their next Shaman. Such care and discrimination, or in our terms, hierarchical distinctions, are carried to great lengths all over the tribal world. In the Tibetan tradition, the practice of Divination directs their priests to discover the Tulku, or lineage holder of their unbroken spiritual line, and makes this continuity possible. Succession by virtue of blood line alone, which is now practiced by the regimes of royalty throughout the world, seems to be a degraded version of these anciently cultivated virtues.

Robert Spott was willing to see Harry become the next chief, even though he was an Irishman with red hair and only a trace of Indian blood, because he had demonstrated that he had the talents which were required. His observed and acknowledged qualifications superseded the fact that he was not even a tribal member. That is true hierarchy. But it just wasn’t to be. Harry was not able to make a clear choice. He was a man divided in every respect-by his language and his blood. He was drawn more by the world of possibilities than by the role of chief of his newly adopted tribe.

The Yurok culture had in place perhaps the most distinctive, astonishing and complex societal structure that one could conceive of. Harry described it to me over the years until he died in the 80’s. To my knowledge these things are not revealed in the scholarly literature, or in Erickson’s work. Even Krober-the great UC anthropologist did not write about these things. And it is even rare to hear about it in their oral tradition.

Harry was certainly grossly prejudiced in favor of the Yuroks, but this did not diminish his reliability as a reporter. The Indians always knew that their most loyal and fiercely idealistic supporters were white people who had become "converted" to the Indian’s way of life. So, they were always on the lookout for such souls. Harry was certainly one of these dedicated enthusiasts. I don’t believe he was ever caught in an inconsistency and his certainty seemed not to be affected by his addictive tendencies very prominent in his Irish heredity. He was addicted in the best and worst ways to alcohol and tobacco, and he told great love stories. His love for his adopted brothers, the Yurok was unshakable. And his anger with the white culture for their unconscionable treatment of this fast dying dream world of native Americans was fierce. When drunk, Harry would look at me and pronounce "You’re OK for a white man, but really none of you are worth a damn." Then he would lapse into semi-coma and carry on long monologues in the Yurok language, waxing eloquent with tears falling down his troubled face, mourning the decline of himself and his dear departed brothers and sisters.

Drunk or sober, Harry loved to tell me of his people. One day he reached into his shirt, and my breath whooshed out of me at what I saw. Suspended on a cord was a nearly round stone the size of a small chicken egg and speckled like a piece of smooth, polished granite. Most remarkable of all was the way it was held by the string. There had been a hole drilled through it and it was strung from this. Harry said "this is a dinosaur crop stone (indicating that the Yurok had known for centuries that these beasts were birds) and it has been handed down and worn by our chiefs for untold ages. The last guess that all the experts who had seen and examined it was that it was at least 25,000 years old. When this stone is in constant use it holds great power to heal and prophecy. But when such an object is not used by a Shaman as an intimate part of his work of magic and power, it loses it’s mana. He would then dismiss it as a "has been" saying, "Oh it doesn’t have much force now".

Once he said, "You know we are the only ocean going Indians in America. Just look at the design of our canoes with the high prow obviously made for rough water. We have legends of trading regularly with the people across the Pacific." Harry also kept two day and night baskets, about 2 inches wide. And he had a pipe inlaid with mother of pearl which was passed from person to person, promoting harmony. He showed me a few other interesting objects...wooden hooks for netting fish, and some sewing tools.

Ten years after I borrowed and photographed these things, the crop stone disappeared. I thought it would be interesting to have these objects "read" by someone who was a good psychometrist (where the reader holds such an object in his hand and then gives you a verbal impression of the pictures, incidents, thoughts and voices which are perceived in such circumstances of focused attention.) I still had these things when Peter Hurkos, world renowned Dutch Jewish psychic was being tested by Charles Tart. It was obvious that the testing situation was interfering with any talents Peter had, and this is not unusual when dealing with the combination of science and the subtle. However, when Peter and I sat alone while I transcribed his words, he was able to offer beautiful cameos which suggested where these objects had come from, who had used them and which described the essence of something quite wonderful and elusive that these objects transmitted. When I presented these impressions to Harry he was amazed and happy to have some confirmation about what he knew of their history.

One of the most puzzling and absorbing of Harry’s legacies, about which Harry could carry on endlessly, was the mystery of the Yurok language or, rather, languages. The Yurok used two languages, the one that everyone used, and the one that was used in private circumstances. He referred to the latter as "the high language". There were two distinctions in their society: the high and the common, which he even called the "low" people. And it went further. Harry actually described the skin coloring as lighter in the high. He said that many of the High among them had lighter hair, blue eyes and sometimes reddish hair and were more slender in build. Many times Harry would (mostly when drunk) speak in one language and then translate this into the high language, pointing out to me that the latter sounded more like Gaelic than the common base from which most of the Indian languages were derived in the Americas. He didn’t describe any difficulties among the tribal members resulting from their social position, office, or intermarriage. It’s a shame that none of this was recorded in Harry’s time here. He occasionally referred to certain cultural and physiognomic aspects in greater detail than the ones I can remember here.

I believe Harry’s first love and wife was Yurok. He described her as a light haired, carefree beauty whose loss he was still mourning now forty years later (in the 70’s). As Harry’s death approached, he gradually spent less energy on dwelling in the land of their high language and began to spend much of his time in his "mothers presence" singing all the little boy songs he knew to any and all who would listen, in English. You see, Harry had lost Robert Spott quite early in his life, about the same time his father died, but his mother was very much alive on my several visits to her home in the 60’s.

The vast Yurok territory was preserved by a highly developed system of responsible stewardship. There were specialists in every aspect of hunting, fishing and land management. Each activity had it’s own intricate system of guidelines. Those whose specialty was the Deer culture would be responsible to "call" the deer and would assist the hunters in tracking, but he would NEVER KILL A DEER HIMSELF. He was then given his own portion of the kill. And in the fishing culture, there were similar customs that were honored by all. Harry said that the display of special talents was expected; it was even acceptable to brag about one’s prowess, but exaggeration was never tolerated.

Harry was one of our last Renaissance men. He wrote fluently, was expert in goldsmithing, and photography, he was a designer, botanist, nursery man, and naturalist. He easily won all the prizes at the county fairs for native Californian exhibits of plants, and above all he was a great and humorous story teller. He wrote a lengthy treatise on horticulture but his benefactor at the San Francisco Green Gulch Zen Center, where Harry spent his last few years, and where he died, never published it. It was full of the most exquisite illustrations and photos and it included, I am sure, Harry’s 500 year plan for the Zen Center. I assisted the residents in carrying out the initial plans for moving and planting salt water resistant trees in a grove close to the ocean. He included instructions about where and when each planting should be made and why. Even when Harry was in his decline he told us where to go and collect these saplings and how to plant them which we did with great holiday spirit one week-end or two.

Harry was a great visionary, replete with his own faults and weaknesses, but still living and dying a Warrior Priest. Having heard of the hallucinogenic properties of the Sacred Datura as used by Native Americans of the southwest, I once asked him to show me where the Amanita Muscaria mushrooms were and perhaps the more rare pantherimas. Harry answered "Yes, yes, you’ll find them 600 feet off shore under the Bishop pines." So, together we sallied forth for the north coast and the pines and there they were in great profusion. We picked a trunk load of them. I don’t remember what I did with them except for drying and tasting a few, very delicious, but I didn’t take enough to experience their hallucinogenic effect. I must have given them away, as I habitually did with all of my most prized possessions.

As he lay dying he asked Herb Arnold and myself to get a mess of salmon, the king variety, not silversides, and he tried to give us detailed directions for their smoking. He told us how to build the smoker and to gather alder wood for the fires. We did all of this as an act of love and respect for Harry. And I trust that by now Harry has reincarnated in one of his beloved Yurok villages to take up the leadership for which he was so lovingly groomed, and which he did not choose in this life.

TALON AND SCRATCH MARKS FROM THE GIANT BIRD

THE WANDERLING'S JOURNEY

(please click)

SHAMANISM WEB CIRCLE

DREAM
CATCHER

SITE

THIS SITE LISTED ON
THE GATE KEEPER'S
LIST OF SPIRITUAL TEACHERS

Lee Sannella, M.D., is a psychiatrist and ophthalmologist (retired) and the author of the widely read book The Kundalini Experience, which introduced the kundalini phenomenon to the psychiatric profession. He is cofounder of the Kundalini Clinic in California. Last known address for the clinic:

Kundalini Clinic
1951 Oak View Drive
Oakland, CA 94602-1945

AMANITA MUSCARIA

In North America Many of the rituals were carried over when the first humans crossed the land bridge. The Ojibway Indians call the mushrooms Oshtimisk Wajashkwedo meaning red-top mushroom. The natives of the coasts and mountains of the Pacific Northwest and Canada also use the Amanitas. It is used in cleansing ceremonies and as a sacrament to the gods by the shaman. The hallucinogen powers of the mushroom were used to do battle with evil spirits that were causing one to be sick. The Shaman would ingest a mixture of Amanita and other herbs to gain strength and the power to see the demons and other spirits. The 5000 year old "Ice Man," called Otzi by scientists, found frozen high in the mountains a few years ago and considered to be a Shaman, was found to be carrying similar mushrooms in his Medicine Bag.

See also: SACRED DATURA

GREEN GULCH ZEN CENTER

Just as a matter of note, a Buddhist, Shaman of some repute, Jeffrey Ellis, who founded the Toltec Mystery School in Boulder, Colorado, and studied under Shunryu Suzuki Roshi at the Zen Center, was apprenticed to Harold Roberts for quite a number of years.

Green Gulch Farm Zen Center is also known as Green Dragon Temple (Soryu-ji) and is one of three centers that make up the San Francisco Zen Center. It is a Buddhist practice center in the Japanese Soto Zen tradition offering training in Zen Meditation and ordinary work and

Green Gulch Farm is located in Marin County, just north of San Francisco, in a valley that opens out onto the Pacific Ocean. In addition to the temple program of meditation and study, it includes an organic farm and garden, as well as a guest and conference center.

Other BUDDHIST SHAMANS of note:

TSERIN ZARIN BOO

JOAN HALIFAX

(JPG © 2000 San Francisco Zen Center)
THE GREEN GULCH ZEN CENTER
Near Stinson Beach, California

ROBERT SPOTT

Robert F. Heizer and Alan J. Almquist, in The Other Californians, (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1971) in an extrapolation write:

Robert Spott

Native North American cultures are a distant echo of prehistoric Asian cultures. Tens of thousands of years ago both continents were peopled by societies in harmony with the Way, the people of P’u or the Uncarved Block of Taoist tradition. In northwestern California along the banks of the Klamath river, the Yurok people inhabit the land as they have done for thousands of years. Robert Spott, last full chief of the Yuroks and a friend of anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, once told Kroeber’s wife Theodora how the creator gods set about creating the world, teaching its inhabitants the same doctrine as that of Lao Tzu, the Tao Te Ching, the Way:

”Upon the emergence of the people into their world, these same gods taught them the Way they were to follow, the rules and the customs and beliefs by which the Way should be forever maintained. They taught the people as well the language they were to speak. The Way proved good, the language intrinsic to it.”

NOTE: the meaning of the term "Uncarved Block" (P'u):

The essence of the Uncarved Block is that things in their original simplicity contain their own natural power, power that is easily spoiled and lost when that simplicity is changed. This principle applies not only to things, but to people as well.

"Like an Uncarved Block" is living a path of harmony -- simple in its form, but not yet carved by the world around it. This is what one should be, to return to, to find -- the true original inner nature of simplicity. The reality of motion manifests itself in both simplicity and complexity. Balance is nedded with both, yet primal simplicity needs to be kept in order to better deal with complexity. There is nothing wrong with complexity, so long as you aren't swept up in its whirlwind, which will only cause your mind to become congested with impurities. You should see the simple and embrace the primal, so that you are better able to manage the complex. So, the Tao says become like an Uncarved Block, untouched by the shaping of reality's complexities.

Photograph of Alice Spott (Taylor) and young Harry Roberts about 1917. Note that Alice Spott, who had made "medicine for the strong" has her hair done in the top knot of a warrior, as is appropriate for a woman who was a fisherman, only "medicine trained" female being able to fish. The notch at the left of the image is that marking the canyon of Blue Creek; the bluffs are to the left. The foreground is the "lower Knapp Place" on the Klamath River bar. The Spott family had fishing rights from the rocks at the river bank on the opposite shore. Alice Spott brought her fishing net with her when she travelled. When this photograph was taken about 1917, the "old law" was still in effect and she would not use another's fishing spot.

ROBERTS PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION
Humboldt State University Library Collection