The spirit left the body right after death. Mountain Maidu thought that it turned back once before going on. Yana believed that the spirit tarried in the vicinity of the body for a while, going to the south first briefly for a sort of trial or evaluation which included determination as to whether or not the nose septum had been pierced. Then, as all local Indians apparently agreed, the ghost or spirit went to a distant place in the west via the Milky Way. Yana thought that there was some distinction in destination of good and bad persons’ ghosts, but our other tribes conceived only of one place for all spirits finally. We do not today have a very clear understanding of the aboriginal Indian concept of heaven except that people lived in this land of the dead in sweat houses, hunting, eating, loving, and sleeping, but with complete absence of sickness. Concepts of the life of spirits changed with the coming of the whites preceding even the advent of pioneer settler days. All information in that regard which students have been able to gain from informants in this region is decidedly flavored with Christian dogma.
Spirits or ghosts returned to old haunts of the body on occasion or, more often, to the vicinity of the grave. For this reason burial grounds were usually well removed from villages. Bad smells would drive spirits away, while whistling and flowers attracted them. Fiber-wound crossed sticks were hung in sweat houses of Yana tribes to keep spirits out. All tribes of the Lassen area thought that ghosts visited the living in dreams and also considered it feasible that the spirits of people might go to visit those of the dead when the persons were asleep, or more commonly when the living were unconscious.
Mountain Maidu didn’t speak much about ghosts, but if one had been making a nuisance of itself by visiting much in dreams, they fed it by having all members of the family throw small portions of food into the fire before commencing to eat their meals. Besides, a shaman was hired under these circumstances to sing for the dreamer. The same ceremony was observed by the Atsugewi. It was also the practice of the dreamer in this tribe to eat with a dog, spitting out some of the food, saying to the dog, “You better eat for me. Take that spirit away.” Atsugewi were evidently very conscious of ghosts for they spoke to them, spit out chewed epos roots for the spirits, smoked tobacco for them, burned hair and skin to repel them, and tobacco and feather bundles were hung near the house doorways for their benefit. New Atsugewi parents had a unique ritual at the time of their first meat eating after the taboos of childbirth—they chewed small amounts of meat and put this on their toes for the dogs to eat.