Pomo Bear Doctors

One of the most concrete and persistent convictions of the Indians of a large part of California is the belief in the existence of persons of magic power able to turn themselves into grizzly bears. Such shamans are called “bear doctors” by the English-speaking Indians and their American neighbors. In this publication, the anthropologist S.A. Barret presents a detailed account of the practices which surround this belief among the Pomo Indians, as they were in 1917.