The Kuksu Religion

The Kuksu religion was, at least in historic times, restricted to a portion of North-Central California, involving in one form or another all the Pomo groups, as well as the Coast, Lake, and Plains Miwok, the Maidu, the Patwin, the Yuki, and several other groups distributed around the northern end of San Francisco Bay and up the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys. The Kuksu (based on the Eastern Pomo term kúksu) was a godlike spirit figure—the focus of secret societies, initiation rituals, curing ceremonies, and dance cycles where the Kuksu and other spirit figures would be impersonated by society members wearing sacred, highly elaborate costumes. For the space of time that these supernatural figures were brought to life through impersonation during the ceremonies, they “re-created sacred time and in one way or another restored their people to the unsullied state that had prevailed at the time of creation” (Bean and Vane 1978:665). The Kuksu religion (often amalgamated with elements of other, prior or parallel, belief systems) has likely been indigenous to the region for thousands of years, though other more recent religions, such as the post-Contact Bole Maru and Ghost Dance cults, have wholly or partially overwritten its territory in historic times.