Wohpekumeu Culture

The final characteristic of Wohpekumeu is his transformative power. You see this most clearly when he talks to tree bark and convinces it to transform into acorns and acorn bread (Kroeber 106-108). Transformation is embedded in Yurok culture and is at the heart of medicine making. Plants were once thought to be wo’gey, but they transformed themselves into plants when humans came. The Yurok believe that if a skilled medicine person treats a plant the right way, and say a certain set of words called a formula, that they can make a plant have medicinal qualities. No plants are inherently medicinal, the process of reciting a formula and going through a ritual gives them healing powers (Keeling 55-56). The concept of transformation is also something
Before the European and Spanish invasion, Yaquis lived in small groups of about 250 people that were dispersed throughout their land. They lived in a subsistence culture and had a simple irrigation system living off corns, beans, squash, wild plants game, and shellfish (Gale Encyclopedia of North American Tribes 372). Yaqui is the name that the settlers gave them because of the Rio Yaqui River that ran through their original land, but the Yaqui call themselves the Yoemem (Evers and Molina
It is believed that in these worlds, the religions of the Surem are still practiced. There is a debate on whether the Surem people still exist as human-like creatures of if they transformed into animals (Evers and Molina 41-45). Understanding the Yurok and Yaqui cosmogony and cosmology provides the framework, with which we can intelligently observe and evaluate Yurok and Yaqui music.
There are some important similarities between the musical expression of the Yurok and the Yaqui people. The most fundamental commonality between the music of these two tribes is that their music is sacred in nature. For the Yurok and the Yaqui, there is no separate category for secular and sacred music, all music is sacred. No kinds of secular music exist in the traditional Yurok and Yaqui religion. Another major similarity is that both tribe’s music follows a prescribed set of actions that were dictated by the people that existed before them. For the Yurok, Wohpekumeu is the model for musical expression. When Wohpekumeu wanted something, he cried for it and because he was so powerful, he got what he wanted (Keeling 2). For the Yurok, crying is the same as wishing and by mimicking the actions of Wohpekumeu they hope that they can receive the same reward